Beetle’s Testimony – Wingate Wilderness and New Haven RTC

On October 27th, 2017,  I was woken up at 2:07 am to two strangers coming into my room, dragging me out of bed, telling me I could go the easy way or the hard way and that I didn’t deserve to be with my family anymore. During my time being transported I was threatened to be handcuffed and restrained, despite being cooperative and even apologizing to them for crying. The entire time they refused to tell me where we were going or when we would even get there. I was told I’d be back home in 6 to 8 days.

They took me to Wingate Wilderness Therapy in Kanab, Utah, where I was completely stripped, told to squat and coughed and body checked by two staff while in a room connected to the main staff office, with a window opening up to their lounging area. I was given an ill fitting men’s pack, some clothes, some food, and a tarp and driven two hours deep into the Grand Escalante.

During my time at Wingate, I cracked 3 ribs, got a serious concussion that left me with brain damage, and had hypothermia that was “treated” by being forced to hike 6 miles. We were forced to climb the white cliffs three times with no safety equipment or training, with staff who admitted to never climbing it before. During these hikes up, I nearly slipped and fell off a cliff, a girl fell and hit her face on a rock, likely breaking her nose, and another girl was pinned by a falling rock that staff and i had to lift off her.

We were always forced to finish hikes no matter the injury. Forced to eat with sticks, denied hygiene, denied medical care, denied food and water, and threatened with being dumped at a homeless shelter in Salt Lake if we ran, without our parents being notified. We were forced to do dangerous hikes with under qualified and under trained staff, some of who were only 19 and former students themselves. Another girl in my camp broke her foot and, when taken to the hospital, was given a boot and told she had to keep hiking no matter what, on her broken foot.

After Wingate, I was sent to New Haven Residential in Spanish Fork, Utah. Days before I got there, a staff member had been found sexually assaulting a student. We were not allowed to talk about it. At NH, we were forced to do all the cleaning for every building on campus, were forced to care for livestock, and they would “rent us out” to different groups that needed “volunteers”. These jobs would include caring for livestock for a Hindu temple picking up trash and litter during a festival in Provo.

My time there was filled with psychological abuse and manipulation. Staff would purposefully antagonize and berate me just to “see what would happen”. When girls would run I would be told by staff that it was my job, at 17, to keep the house quiet, and if the girls were scared, it was my fault and I would be dropped. One of the worst things was probably the interventions. Girls would have to were humiliating signs around their necks, carry backpacks full of rocks, be put on communication block, and to be forced to “accept help” I was legitimately treated and spoken to like I was a literal baby for weeks on end, and if i tried to fight back against it I was threatened with being dropped or having this punishment last longer. I watched girls be thrown to the ground and sat or kneeled upon while they screamed that they couldn’t breathe.

I watched girls try to throw themselves off of balconies, out windows, and in front of cars just desperate to escape. Many girls ran, and were always ostracized when they got back. Staff loved to threaten girls with being dropped if any mistake was made.

Staff could not separate their religious beliefs from their work, so there were many times I was told that being bisexual is wrong, that god wont love me, and much more. They even went as far as telling me that because I’m bi, I was a predator. That every relationship I have is inherently predatory and that I cannot even comfort another girl in the house because that would mean I’m trying to “change them”.

While I was there, a girl in the other house on campus was sexually assaulted and we were not allowed to talk about it. We were told if we did, we would be dropped. While on a home pass, I was raped by a close friend. When I came back and came forward about what I had experienced at home, I was shamed. I was told it was my own fault, that I led him on, and made me describe the experience in group therapy, in front of our whole house.

There was no way to report abuse and all communication with parents was monitored until you were brainwashed enough to not say anything. New Haven even purposefully prolonged my treatment for an extra four months with no real explanation other than “i wasn’t ready to go home yet.” Every week I was being told by all my staff and therapists that I would be going home soon, or getting my next phase this week, to be publicly humiliated in front of the entire treatment team or my whole house.

My experiences at both programs were so incredibly abusive and traumatic that I genuinely don’t remember a lot of it, only bits and pieces.

I have been left with brain damage, nerve damage, and lifelong problems with my back and hips.

I now live with severe paranoia and hyper-vigilance that makes it so I can barely even leave my house.

I have constant nightmares and flashbacks.

My experience is going to haunt me for the rest of my life.