Harley’s Diamond Ranch Academy Testimony

I was taken to Diamond Ranch Academy on August 6, 2011 when I was sixteen years old. I had just gotten out of another program, Ridge Creek School, which was shut down after a riot. I was gooned when I was taken to Ridge Creek, but not Diamond Ranch. I absolutely did not want to go to DRA, but I went without a fight anyway. When my dad was dropping me off there, I was actually optimistic after reading the brochures.

Ridge Creek had been such a mess, and Diamond Ranch seemed to have so much more to offer. It was definitely more polished. I thought that I could actually get the help the I needed there. I was so wrong. Once my dad left, I was forced to strip naked and then put on the O&A uniform, a blue t-shirt, and silver basketball shorts. All of my things were taken from me except for my tennis shoes. I was told some basic rules for O&A and then sent outside with the other kids. O&A stood for “observation and assessment”. During O&A, we were outside all the time except for sleeping or if it was too cold. We had to use a port-o-potty because using indoor plumbing apparently was a privilege. We were not allowed to speak at all unless we raised our hand and got permission first, and everything we said had to be “on-task”, meaning we could only ask relevant questions or ask permission to do things. We couldn’t stand up, sit down, take a drink of water, or even put our hair up without permission. We weren’t allowed to look in mirrors. We had to walk in straight lines everywhere, and count when we went through doorways. We also had to count while using the toilet or shower. Showers were three minutes long in O&A but extended to five whole minutes afterwards. I didn’t wash 90% of my body in the entire year that I was there because I didn’t have time.

In O&A, we had to haul around a literal cattle cart a couple of times a day, and do manual labor outside. Because it was Utah in the summer, it was excruciatingly hot. Because of this, we were forced to drink nearly a gallon of water every day. If we weren’t going to be able to drink it in time, we would chug it to avoid getting cited. The problem was, bathroom breaks were at set times, and if we had to go outside of them, we would be cited. We often held our bladders both in O&A and in the main program, so UTI’s were commonplace. If we got too many citations in one day while in O&A, our time in O&A would be longer. O&A was a minimum of 14 days. We weren’t allowed any contact with our parents until we got “inside”, which means out of O&A and in with the general population.

One of the tasks that we had to complete while in O&A was to learn the 100% Responsibility Motto. Once inside, we would all stand and say it in unison before every meal. If that sounds cult-ish, that’s because it is. I’ve been out of DRA for over ten years, and I still remember every word of its toxic message. “I am 100% responsible for every relationship in my life, and I will do whatever is necessary to achieve the desired results. This is not a 50/50 proposition. It is not 100/100, both equally and fully responsible in order for the relationship to work. It is solely and always 100 to 0 percent. If there is any blame, it is mine. No excuse is legitimate, sought, or accepted. I am 100% responsible for creating what I get, and I get what I deserve.” Now remember that many of the girls there were victims of sexual assault both before and during the program and think about what a motto like that would mean to them. The responsibility thing was a theme throughout the entire program, and it stuck with me for years afterwards, causing me to blame myself for literally anything that went wrong in any relationship I had.

My first night at DRA did not go well. After being explained more of the rules by an “upper level”, a girl that had been there longer and advanced in the ranks, I realized how bad the place actually was and was very freaked out. I put on my shoes and walked out of the dorm. At my previous program, if you had done this, the staff would just follow you, talk to you, and encourage you to rejoin the group. You might have gotten a work assignment (essentially just extra chores), but nothing overly harsh. I was not aware that that was NOT the case at DRA. So again, I was just WALKING. At a leisurely pace. And all of a sudden I hear the staff member from my dorm yelling, “CODE RED! CODE RED!” into her walkie talkie. I ignore it and keep walking. I see a woman run out of another building towards me. She’s coming kind of aggressively, so once she gets in earshot, I just say, “Don’t touch me.” Of course, she doesn’t listen. She tries to put me on the ground. Let’s just say that since I had nine years of martial arts training under my belt, that didn’t end well for her. That was one of my few triumphs at DRA. What came next really wasn’t.

At this point, having been attacked, I started actually trying to run away. The thing was, I couldn’t remember where the exit was. The campus was big, and I had only been there a few hours. So I start running in the worst direction I could’ve picked, towards the boys’ campus. I have no idea why there were so many Samoans in Utah, but suddenly there were a couple of guys that look like Maui from Moana coming at me. I saw them coming, realized I was screwed, and chose to literally just sit down on a raised area covered in artificial turf. I was clearly not going anywhere. Didn’t matter. They tackled me facedown, pinned my arm behind my back, and bent my wrist back as far as it could go. The pain was excruciating. I was screaming and crying, and they wouldn’t let me go until I stopped, which was hard to do because again, it felt like my wrist was about to snap. When they finally let me up and were scolding me, I kicked one of them in the knee and tried to run again. This time, I got knocked down onto the path made of lava rocks. My knee got busted up, my face got scraped, and my wrist was bent back again. When they let me up that time, I gave up. I had blood running down my leg from my busted knee, but next up was “energy release.”

They made me do a bunch of calisthenics despite my injuries in an attempt to tire me out. Once that was done, I got put on “searches.” This was by far the worst thing that happened to me while I was there. They strip searched me every two hours for about a week. Not for safety, but to humiliate me and break me down. They also did strip searches at night, where someone would come to the dorm, wake me up, make me go into the bathroom for the strip search, make me strip all the sheets off the bed and then remake it, and then attempt to go back to sleep before repeating the process two hours later. The sleep deprivation aspect of searches was far worse than the humiliation of it. After a couple of days of it, I was begging for them to just let me sleep, but they wouldn’t. I wasn’t the only one that this happened to.

Other instances of horrific abuse and neglect happened while I was there, but not to me. One of the worst things was that almost all of the girls were given forced “pap smears” upon arrival. These weren’t done by a gynecologist, and they weren’t actually pap smears. Another horrible thing was that when a girl tried to kill herself, she was punished for it instead of being given any actual help. She was locked in sick bay for weeks, being strip searched every fifteen minutes and not allowed to sleep. As I mentioned before, UTI’s were commonplace due to restriction of bathroom usage. I got one at one point, and luckily it was treated in a timely fashion. One girl was not so lucky. She was accused of faking it and hers was left untreated. It eventually progressed into a kidney infection. One girl was accused of being dramatic about her asthma on one of the first days she was there, and she ended up in an ambulance after being forced to do calisthenics without her inhaler. One girl had an ovarian cyst that was causing her excruciating pain, and she still was forced to do the cart walk.

Near the beginning of my time at DRA, a friend of mine managed to show me a place where she had recently cut herself. I was really concerned by this, and somehow I still hadn’t figured out that the program wasn’t actually there to help. I went to a staff member and reported it because I was genuinely concerned for my friend. My friend was punished by being sent back out to O&A for a week. She wasn’t my friend after that. The environment of DRA was very carefully crafted, always keeping everyone very tightly controlled through psychological means. Every little infraction would be cited, so we were always on pins and needles trying no to mess up at all and prolong our stay. We also would get in trouble if we knew someone else had broken a rule and didn’t report it.

There were levels that we had to go through in order to get out, and we couldn’t progress unless we followed the rules perfectly. The levels were “Student”, “Supervisor”, “Manager”, “Director”, and “Graduate”. “Student” is the level that everyone starts at after O&A. Each level was six weeks, except for “Supervisor”, which was eight. At “Supervisor” level, we got certain privileges like a movie night once a week and our parents getting to visit for an on-campus visit. At “Manager” level, we were considered “upper levels” and got other special privileges. We could not see our parents at all before “Supervisor” level, and all of our mail and phone calls were carefully monitored. If we said something in a phone call that the staff didn’t like, the call would be ended, and we would be punished. If we wrote something in a letter that the staff didn’t like, our letters wouldn’t be sent, and we wouldn’t even be told about it.

There was literally no way for us to report anything that was going on. We were on “blackout” most of the time. “Blackout” meant we couldn’t communicate with each other at all. No talking, whispering, or even non-verbal communication. When we were allowed to speak, we always had to be within earshot of a staff member, and there were many subjects that we were not allowed to discuss. For example, my friend wanted to be a tattoo artist when she grew up (which I didn’t find out until after we got out), but she would always say that she wanted to be a waitress. We couldn’t talk about why we were there or anything taboo like sex, drugs, etc. There was also a “negative attitude” citation if we complained about basically anything. We absolutely could not use any profanity. Even “oh my god” would get us a “profanity” citation. In order to advance through the levels, we had to “pass our weeks”. In order to pass, you had to get below a certain number of points throughout the whole week, and that number got smaller with each level. At “Student” level, we were allowed nine points, but at “Graduate”, we were only allowed one, meaning we essentially had to be perfect. Each citation had a number of points assigned to it.

There were major citations like for fighting and destruction of property that were worth ten points, all the way down to one-point cites like “unprepared”, “program structure: and “accidental destruction of property”. We would get “unprepared” cites if we had to use the bathroom outside of designated times. “Program structure” cites were a catch-all for any minor infraction such as forgetting to ask permission before walking through a doorway. “Accidental destruction of property cites” were what they sound like. You drop a dish, it breaks, you get cited. If we did anything outright defiant or particularly disagreeable, we would get cited and also sent back out to O&A for a few days. I got sent back out several times.

After about six months and realizing I wasn’t ever going to get out unless I at least faked it, I went with the program. By the time I got out of DRA, I was completely brainwashed. I believed that everything they had done to me and everyone else was completely justified because I was “better”. In reality, I was well-behaved to the point of having intense anxiety from breaking even tiny rules (like, taking a piece of candy from the kitchen without asking “tiny”), and I believed that everything about my past self was wrong and evil. My entire personality had changed. I was very passive and did everything I could to be “good” and “normal”.

In reality, I am a person who likes hard rock music, alternative/emo styles, and most things considered “dark” or “weird”. I’m very sex positive, and have a bold and assertive personality. That’s who I managed to get back to after the Stockholm Syndrome wore off, but it’s not even close to who I was for the first year or so after getting out of DRA. Once I realized what they had done to me, I ended up having very severe PTSD to the point that I would wake up screaming from nightmares most nights. It tanked my grades in college, negatively impacted my relationships, and eventually led to a substance abuse issue so severe that I almost died on multiple occasions.

Eventually, my parents got me actual help when it had gotten to the point that I literally couldn’t take care of myself at twenty-two years old, and things have been better since then. But I will always have PTSD. I will never have not gone to DRA, and I will always have these scars. The troubled teen industry costs people their lives. They lose huge portions of their childhoods and end up with trauma from neglect and abuse. Those of us that can’t handle that trauma very often turn to drugs or see suicide as the only way out. Five people who I knew in programs died before they were thirty. ALL of us have PTSD. We were called troubled teens for a reason; we could be really difficult to deal with. But the troubled teen industry is absolutely not the solution. (A note on my photo: I was assigned female at birth, but I have since transitioned. I am non-binary, and my pronouns are “they/them”.)