Giovanna’s Testimony – Teen Challenge Kansas City Girls Academy

Basically, I was sent to this program a month before my fifteenth birthday due to extreme relationship dysfunction between men and my mother.

Upon arrival, staff immediately told my mother to leave and I was not allowed to say goodbye.

I was strip searched but a woman I obviously hadn’t known a full minute who would later come to make suggestive comments towards me and touch me throughout my program.

I was given two “big sister” who staffed just pinned on me and told me they were the only girls I could talk to for two weeks until I finished orientation work and it was approved by my (unlicensed) counselor. The same girls..for two weeks.

They also took me a week before the summer camp we all went to knowing full well that I would be stuck with staff the whole time. I received several moments of pure harassment from staff through:

• Suggestive comments from two staff (I was in the bathroom alone with one staff who told me she loved me and would not let go of my waist for a good three minutes)
• Nonconsensual hugs and touching (which I was judged for and targeted my staff if I didn’t comply to touching
• Mocking of my peanut allergy (severely lethal allergy)
• Director screamed at me when I accepted a punishment from him because I wasn’t begging him for forgiveness and was misogynistic towards his wife who was a ditz and also psycho
• Had a comment made about my rear by another female staff who already expressed she had no boundaries and was very uncomfortable Touchy with staff in front of us but students were punished if we touched each other.
• Had a month added to my program for bumping a girl in the shoulder because the director wanted to break me so bad he was desperate as hell
• Was constantly harassed by teachers because I made it very clear I didn’t like them touching me and they decided they hated me because I actually had boundaries and they did not as so they made my life a living hell because I didn’t want to be their “best friends”
• I had a “person journal” that was constantly checked by staff even though I was told staff weren’t allowed to see it but there was so much I wasn’t allowed to do with it that I never used my journal
• I witnessed a girl admitted to the program who was severely miserable and was banging on staff apartment door for a food two hours before they decided to stop ignoring her at like 3 in the morning
• A friend of mine who went to the program with me was forced to go off her meds cold turkey and was severely neglected while staff told us never to feel sorry for her since it was the devil in her.
• When I left, I had several staff attack to contact me and follow me on social media when they hated me and treated me like crap even on my last day