Kari’s Cross Creek Manor Testimony

Let me preface this by saying that I was not the most well-behaved child. I started smoking cigarettes and marijuana at age 15. When I was 16, I started drinking, and at 17, I was doing cocaine. I had more than dabbled in drugs, spent nights out, and been to the psych hospital. See, I was diagnosed with child-onset bipolar disorder at age 15.

I was young and dumb and made a lot of bad choices. One day I was feeling so manic, I was invincible. I went to school with booze. I got drunk and I got caught. My parents picked me up and took me home. That night, I lay on the couch and watched a film with my dad. I fell asleep on the couch and was later guided up to my room.

At 4 am, I was awoken to a man and a woman standing over me. The man told me to put some clothes on and that we were leaving. I refused. They told me that if I did not leave with them, they would handcuff me and drag me out of the house. They put hands on me and guided me out of my room. I was terrified. I was being kidnapped. Once I got out of my room, I could see my parents were awake and standing by the stairway. I screamed for them to help me, and they just turned away, like they couldn’t bear to see the sight. The transporters dragged me to a van, outside. The van drove to the airport. I was crying. While in the airport, I cried for help, but no one would listen to me. I begged and pleaded and said I was being kidnapped, but no one cared. No one did anything. I remember being pushed past those faces, distraught faces, but faces unwilling to do anything but hurry on their way. Is this how Kitty Genovese felt before she died? We boarded the plane and flew to fabulous Las Vegas.

After the flight, the transporters (kidnappers) shoved me in a van and we went on the drive to St. George, UT. It had been 7 long, hard hours of travel. I had no idea where I was going or what was going on. When we arrived at our final destination… that is where I started losing memory. It goes without saying that the memory creation of people in trauma situations is highly debilitated. High amounts of stress can cause glucocorticoids to be secreted, ultimately causing neuronal damage in the hippocampus, making it hard to form lasting memories. I don’t know what it was like to do the intake.

The next thing I remember is being in a small, windowless room with a woman. She must have been young at the time. Younger than I am, now. She told me to get fully undressed. I refused and she said that If I wouldn’t get undressed that someone would help me to get undressed. I took off my clothes and stood there. A teenager nude, in front of an adult. She began probing my body. Putting her hands under my breasts, cupping them, between my legs, and down the crease of my butt. I had never been touched like that before, and I was scared. When she gave me clothes to put on, I threw them on, immediately. An orange t-shirt and ill fitting navy khakis.

I can’t remember if It was that day or the next, but I remember I was led to a room set up with old-style desks. There were maybe 20 of them in a small room in a classroom-esque style set up. There was a man at the front of the room. He was bald and old, barrel-bodied with small, skinny legs. I was terrified and told him that I needed to call my parents. Surely they did not intend all this to happen. I could help set them straight. He laughed loudly. Then he called out to the room, “Your parents don’t want to talk to you! They sent you here on Christmas, just to get away from you!” I got up out of my chair and began to yell. I’m not sure what I yelled, but Ron Garett got on his walkie talkie and called for back-up. Two men arrived and grabbed me by my arms, twisting them like they were each giving me a rug burn. I cried out as they drug me into the hallway, up stairs, into a room with three small (a bit bigger than closet sized) rooms attached to the N side of it. I was tossed forcefully into one of the rooms and told to lay down on my face with my hands on the back of my head, or else. My arms were aching and I did what they said. The floor was painted concrete. It was cold. The whole room was freezing. I asked for a blanket or a sweatshirt, but was denied. I was to lay there. Lay there and not sleep, not close my eyes. If I fell asleep, staff reminded me, I would have to stay longer. When I needed to use the bathroom I had to ask to get up and then the staff watched me as I used the toilet and wiped. They then guided me back to the isolation room and I resumed the prone position. I laid there for hours, which turned into days. I was able to leave the room, only to go to sleep at night. They brought food for me, but it was never enough and the taste was terrible, though I ate it anyway. Eventually, I was allowed to sit up. I sat with my legs crossed and focused on meditating. I sat incredibly still, letting thoughts just roll through my head, trying to think of nothing at all. Nothing. Then the staff questioned me. “What are you doing?” I replied that I was meditating. The staff looked frustrated and told me I was not to meditate anymore because it was a paegan practice. For the rest of the time, I sat there, I had to respond to them when prompted so that they could tell I was paying attention to this hell.

Once a day, I was taken out into the yard in the hot sun to walk laps. The contrast between the cold room and the hot sun made me dizzy and faint. I was being treated like a dog in a kennel. I was no longer a human being. I had no rights. There was no one there to save me. I was an animal in a cage. When I first got to the program, I was taking medication for bipolar disorder. I recall being in an orange shirt, begging for my meds and being told that I didn’t deserve them. That my parents didn’t care to send them. I was terrified. I wanted to commit suicide more than any time during my life. I have a disability and I needed meds to survive. Eventually, I got my meds, but it was an excruciating month waiting for them and being told “No.”

Finally, after I had done my time in solitary, I was returned to the classroom. The classroom was called ‘worksheets’. While in worksheets, you did one thing. You listened to audio tapes and wrote notes on them. The audio tapes were not for education. They were pointless messages. Sometimes self help. Sometimes about a historic figure. Mostly droning black holes sucking in every last brain cell. You were a stenographer. How good of a stenographer you were determined your time in worksheets, so everyone diligently wrote as quickly as they could. At the end of the tape, a test was given. You either pass or fail. The reward for passing was to shorten your time in the room. To fail, left you there longer.

There were two different colors of shirts in worksheets: blue and orange. Blue meant that you were stripped of your privileges. It was a scarlet letter of sorts. Look at me, I fucked up. Orange meant that you were a risk to self or others. I was a risk to self and others. The lowest common denominator. You had no rights and you were constantly watched. Even in the bathroom and shower you were not alone.

Bathroom breaks were scheduled. If you needed to go before the break, you had to hold it as best you could. I recall one girl soiling herself, tears running from her eyes. Not only was she mortified from urinating in front of a group of strangers, but she was punished and made to stay in worksheets even longer. When it was time for a break, everyone would form a line and walk to the bathroom. One at a time, the girls would enter the bathroom stalls. We were instructed to place our palms flat on the floor as we used the bathroom. A staff member watched us to make sure our hands were down. When we were done urinating or defecating, we were to ask to lift our hands off the ground to wipe ourselves. They also watched us shower. The stalls were small and cold and you had exactly 5 minutes to shower, while staff watched through see-through shower curtains. The staff were always there.

When I finally got out of worksheets, I was placed in a group. ‘B’ group. This was the group for substance abusers, and it was run by ‘therapist’ and a ‘family rep’. I never found out what the qualifications for the positions were, though I heard that at least some of the ‘therapists’ were unaccredited, later. One of my most frustrating memories was when I first met my therapist. He went through a list of drugs and asked if I did them or not. If I said no, he said I was lying and that I would be in the orange shirt in worksheets forever until I told the truth, so I said yes. In the end, I admitted to doing every drug under the sun, including heroin. And that morphed into sharing needles. And that morphed into me possibly having HIV. In all honesty, I did coke, marijuana, and ecstasy and I had already been caught by my parents for all of them, but now I was a junkie, and that term would follow me throughout the program. I was coaxed by staff to make up elaborate stories, which I shared to show how much I was working the program. The worse the story, the harder you were working.

One of the more tortuous practices the therapist and family rep would do was to recreate a rape scene. Many of the young women who stayed at the facility had been sexually molested, before entering the program. One of the most clear and memorable situations I had, ever in the program took place in one of these meetings. We sat in a circle. We were to explain a traumatic event like we were there. This one girl… she had a terrible story. She had been part of a “drug ring” of some sort. The men in the circle had raped her. They had forced a yam up her ass hole. Raped her with it. Tore her open. Her description was painful. It has been one of the most devastating situations in the program and I didn’t even live it.

Every day we would watch Veggie Tales. All day and all night. When we ate our meals, we would listen to the 4 agreements, or Dale Carnagie’s keys to success. Some self-help tape. We would eat these meals. Hot food, but that was it. Many meals made me feel ill. Sometimes I’d be terrified, as I had heard that if people threw up their food, they were forced to eat their own vomit. I ate slowly and carefully. The food was frozen and reheated. The fruit was the only non frozen option and I ate a great deal of pears.

Being in the cafeteria was interesting… There was a room down a flight of stairs that had a door right at the door to the cafeteria. It was scary to sit in the cafeteria, because you could hear yelling and screaming coming from the room below the cafeteria. People would shriek, you would hear thumping and yelling through the walls. To get out of the program, you had to work through several “Seminars”. The seminars were held in this side room below the cafeteria. The first seminar was “Discovery”. During this seminar you explored how much you hated your parents and more importantly your life. What everyone remembers from this seminar is hitting rolled up towels on the ground. During this event, each youth was handed out a towel, rolled up. The lights were then turned off. Youth were to slam, pound, beat towels on the ground, yelling about how much they hated their guardians. This would go on for hours. Staffers would creep through the rows of youth and whisper disparaging comments. “Fuck your mom…” “your dad always hated you…” “ “your parents left you alone here!”

It’s really hard to remember the seminars. They were so abusive and painful. I remember small details. Nasty memories that I can’t forget. Here are a couple of things I remember. One is being yelled at. I’m not sure how it came to be, but we had shared some terrible things about ourselves. See, we were supposed to share our most terrible secrets, which staffers used as ammunition against us. Kids who had been raped were called sluts and whores. Made to take accountability for their trauma. Kids who had been abused had to take accountability for the abuse. Kids whose parents divorced were told to be accountable for the relationship breaking up. I remember a man named David Gilcrese told a rape victim that she was a whore and slept around with any guy she could get. The girl protested that she didn’t. She said that she was a virgin before the rape and hadn’t had consenting sex. Gilcrese declared “I could have you on my lap in an instant.”, and the girl had to take accountability for that, too.

One of the processes I remember best was the “lifeboat” process. During this event, youth had to decide who would live and who would die. We had 3 votes. The person who lived on the lifeboat was the one who received the most votes. Essentially, it was a popularity contest. I used my votes to vote up three other people. I was terrified that if I chose myself I would look selfish and be reprimanded. When the process of choosing was over, the folks who lived were sent to the front of the room. Then we were berated for our choices. If you voted for yourself, you were told how self serving you were. How greedy you were. How you never cared for anyone but yourself. If you didn’t choose yourself, you were told that you were a doormat. You didn’t care about yourself. You were a loser and you knew it. The staffers said “How do you feel knowing that no one likes you? That you are worthless in the eyes of your peers. How does it feel knowing they want you to die?” The whole room was crying. The room echoed with sobs. Then the folks in the front were attacked. They were asked how they felt to let their peers die. Staffers wanted to know how they felt letting their peers break down like that. They demanded to know if they felt guilty. Everyone was crying. They played music that you were to cry to. One of the songs was Desperado by the Eagles. To this day, 17 years later, I can’t listen to this song. I panic. I start to cry. My heart races, (but addressing my trauma will have to come later). You had to cry in seminar, but you had to cry just the right amount. Too much and you chose out. Too little and you chose out. “Choosing out of seminar was one of the worst things you could do. It meant another month in the program. There were many things you could do to choose out, including a game of musical chairs that happened each time the youth entered the seminar room. A song from 2001: A space Odyssey would play, and if you couldn’t find a seat before the song was over, you were out and had to try again the next month.

The seminars lasted all day long. At night there was homework. Kids wrote pages and pages late at night and sometimes into the morning. However long it took, you had to do it, or else. It was exhausting. Everyone was sleep deprived and malnourished.The goal was to break you down, until you were a shell of a human being. A husk.

There were so many crazy and unbelievable things about the program. For example, you couldn’t pick at your skin or you would get a self harm “category” (punishment) and drop back down to a “first level” orange shirt. A girl in my group had trichotillomania and pica. She would pull out her eyebrow hairs and eat them. Instead of receiving help, I remember her being punished for it, put in an orange shirt for a compulsion she had little control over.

You could be dropped levels for anything staff deemed worthy. Looking out a window, of which there were several, would get you dropped straight into an orange shirt for ‘run plans’. Accidentally farting would get you in trouble. Not eating all your food would get you in trouble. Even being ill could get you in trouble.

I think one of the most frustrating aspects of my time at the program was that it ended up that I was falsely imprisoned as an adult there. I had been told I had an “exit plan” I could take upon turning 18. This ‘plan’ consisted of a bus ride to the next town, the clothes on my back, and $50. It was a terrible choice to have to make. I’d be homeless and have no way to return to my family but I wanted to take it so badly. On the day of my 18th birthday, I was called into the therapist’s office and told that it had been decided in court that I was a ‘vulnerable adult’ and therefore still in custody of the program where I had to stay for ‘involuntary treatment’. I was flabbergasted. I begged to speak with my parents, but I wasn’t allowed to. And I just took it. I took it at face value. I believed them. Much later I would find out that this was all a lie. There was no court order and my parents were told that I chose, of my own free will, to stay after 18.

I spent an entire year of my life falsely imprisoned as an adult. I tried to find court documents on the ITA, but none exist, because it wasn’t real. Theoretically, I could’ve just walked out the gate, and they would’ve had no legal recourse, but I didnt. I believed them. I feel terrible about this to this day & I hate myself for my ignorance and naïvety. This has created major trust issues and feelings of lack of autonomy in me, even 20 years later.

When I finally got home I was confused. I was thrown straight into college. I couldn’t go to class. I couldn’t sleep at night in the dorm. I was anxious all the time. I was naive. Anyone had authority over me. I just had no idea how to be an adult. I think that played a big part in my rape. An older man was telling me what to do, and I just did it. I drank the drink. I followed him to his car. The rest is history. While the rape was certainly awful, I never think about it. I’ve never had a dream about it. I’ve never stayed up crying at night because of it. It’s never gotten in the way of my relationships. I’ve never been afraid to tell anyone about it, and I have never thought other people would think poorly of me for bringing it up. I wish I could say the same for my trauma surrounding the program. It’s been 17 years, and the program still wears on me. I have a nightmare once every week or two. Not just a nightmare, but a night terror.

I have two dreams and in both I am my current age. One is that I am being kidnapped from my bed. I have recurring dreams about vans and airports. Knowing that if I can be dragged into that van or onto that plane, my life will be over. I’ll be trapped. And it’s not just fear, it’s pain. My arms are being twisted and no matter how hard I visibly struggle, no one comes to my rescue. People just walk by. I try and try to scream. I’d do anything to get the scream out! And then I wake up, screaming. My other nightmare is a sad one. In this one, I realize that I am already at the program. I want to leave, but I know I can’t. I follow a mundane schedule; eat, sleep, walk in circles. Always walking in circles. I think “I’m going to be here, forever.” and I just… accept it. This is my life, now. I cry and cry. I’m in mourning for my life of freedom. Mourning my life with my husband and dogs, who I will never see again. Eat, sleep, walk. Eat, sleep, walk. All the while being watched. Crying and crying, wishing for a death that never comes. Then I wake up.

These are the worst dreams, and they really make it hard to get through my day. I feel deeply, deeply depressed after having them. I feel like a failure. I have spent my whole life holding myself accountable for absolutely unreasonable things, while struggling to take accountability for my own life. Everything is my fault. Even if it doesn’t seem like it is, it most certainly is.