Anonymous’ Testimony – Heritage RTC

I’m a survivor of Heritage RTC, aka the Heritage Community, in Provo, Utah. I was sent to Heritage by my school district due to being suspended for getting into fights with other classmates, however I strongly suspect that my autism diagnosis was a major factor in the district’s decision to place me at Heritage. I was sent to Heritage in February 2014, when I was 16, and I did not leave until March 2015, just a few months short of my 18th birthday. I guess I was lucky in that regard; I knew kids there who literally spent all their teen years in the industry!

Heritage presents itself as a therapeutic boarding school for young people (ages 12-17) who are at-risk, ranging from misbehavior/truancy at school, drug/alcohol dependency, having mental disorders such as depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety, OCD, autism, ADHD, learning disorders, eating disorders, etc. Heritage is a very manipulative business that markets itself as better and “less strict and abusive” than other TTI programs in order to hide its more sinister environment. Many staff who worked or are still working at Heritage have previously worked at confirmedly abusive behavior modification programs. For example, Heritage’s current CEO, Jerry Spanos, worked as a therapist at the notorious Provo Canyon School from 1976 to 1984. As residents there, we had no sense of autonomy and were under 24/7 surveillance by staff.

There were seven levels or phases you had to move through: Orientation, Awareness, Honesty, Courage, Trust, Integrity, and Mastery. At the beginning levels (Orientation and Awareness) you have no rights or privileges. As you moved up each level, you earned certain privileges such as going on field trips or visiting friends at other dorms.

Heritage is a co-ed with both boys and girls placed there. However, boys and girls were tightly segregated from one another. The boys had their own dorms- Alta, Brighton North, Brighton South, Cascade North, Cascade South, and Denali-, their own school time, their own group activities, etc., while the girls had their own as well (due to this segregation I knew little about the girls’ experience at Heritage). The admin, for some reason, had some kind of bias towards the dorms depending on what type of residents they held. For example, Brighton and Cascade North, which housed teens with drug/alcohol/legal issues, ADHD, oppositional defiant disorders and misbehavior or truancy at school, were given more competent staff, more privileges, and better stable housing. Brighton and Cascade South and Denali, which housed teens with autism, bipolar disorder, anxiety, OCD, and learning/social disorders given less privileges, incompetent/abusive staff members, and poor quality housing/unstable living environment.

My whole time there I have seen and experienced so much abuse- emotional, medical, verbal, and often physical, both from staff and from peers. Most of my time there I was bullied and harassed on a daily basis, most often by peers who lived in the same dorm (Denali) with me. Whenever I complained to the staff, they either ignored me or did a half-assed job to defend me. Whenever I defended myself from physical assault, I got placed in isolation (Granite South) while my bullies got no repercussions. I remember one staff member named Joe who knew I was autistic and didn’t like/had difficulty being social around others, and he encouraged my peers to bully me unless I started being more social around them. In other words, “get with the program.”

I had been put in isolation so many times I lost count. Mostly it was because I fought back against my bullies, other times I asked to be put there to get away from them. Most cases it was for one to two nights. The longest time I’d been in isolation was up to a week. I had known kids who’d literally spend months in isolation. I’ve even witnessed kids being locked in a single room the size of a closet with a large window on the front door so they would have no privacy.

While there were no locks in any of the dorms, there were so-called security staff constantly monitoring the students’ movements. These kinds of staff were usually big, muscular men who would violently restrain a child for even the smallest infraction, such as walking away from a group, complaining/arguing with a staff member, or even having a panic attack. I have seen kids ganged up on, body-slammed, thrown to the ground, and pinned by adults three times their size and strength. Not surprisingly, such restraints resulted in broken bones.

Now, being at a place like Heritage was bad enough, but as an LGBT person, my time at Heritage was nothing short of a full-blown nightmare. Every single adult who worked at Heritage was Mormon, and so there resulted a strong homophobic climate. Of all the places I’d been to so far, I had never experienced such blatant homophobia. The therapists and staff were always quick to shame or gaslight me just for being queer as probably one of the reasons I needed “help.” Most of the bullying I experienced was because of my queerness. In fact, I’ve known homophobic staff members who encouraged straight kids to bully their LGBT peers, myself included. I’ve experienced verbal, emotional, and sexual harassment on a DAILY basis all because of this, and not a single bully faced any sort of consequence. While you were punished saying “fuck” or “cunt”, you could freely say “faggot” and no one would lift a finger.

While there were some boys at Heritage who were gay or bi, we were discouraged from forming friendships with each other, and some were often punished or put on extra surveillance for being suspected of being in a relationship. For example, I was once friends with a gay teen from Cascade North for several months until his therapist ordered him to end our friendship, claiming that I was a “bad influence.” There was nothing romantic or sexual about our relationship- we were best friends! In fact, that person was my only close friend I could rely on emotionally at that time. When I was told we couldn’t be friends anymore, I felt so isolated I sank into a deep depression for weeks, and oh man, the bullies took advantage of that!

In all honesty, what I’ve experienced personally at Heritage just covers the tip of the iceberg. There are so many kids who went to that awful place and have suffered way more than I did, and their stories need to be heard. Heritage prides itself as being “better or safer than the other programs,” but that’s bullshit. There’s no such thing as a “safe” TTI program. Most if not all of us never “healed” or “got better”, we only got with the program because he had to in order to get out and go home. Sometimes the therapists and staff liked you and if you had a little luck, (and sometimes the privilege of a wealthy and/or stable family), you got to go home in less than a year. But in most cases, you stayed there for a year or longer. In some cases, you stayed until you turned eighteen.

Most of the time, when you did leave, you left as a shell of your old self.

Sometimes, you returned home to the same fractured/abusive/toxic family members.

Sometimes you have flashbacks.

Sometimes you relapse.

Sometimes you get sent back.

Some of my old friends from Heritage are dead from overdoses, others have been in and out of jail and struggled or are currently struggling with homelessness and financial insecurity. I will say this though: despite the trauma I went through during those thirteen months, I was fortunate to find some good friends who helped me get by and stay true to myself, and I think the reason I’m still here is because of them. And yes, I did have problems when I was a teen, and in a way I needed guidance and healing, but I’ll be damned if I ever give Heritage the fucking credit! There was NOTHING healing about my time there. Not for me, and definitely not for anyone else who’d been imprisoned there.

I write this testimony not just on my behalf, but on the behalf of every Heritage survivor, and every TTI survivor. Your stories and your experiences are valid. Just because some kids “got better” doesn’t mean we all did.

Shut down Heritage!

Shut down the troubled teen industry!