Michaela’s KW Legacy Ranch Testimony

PLEASE READ!!! WORTH THE READ!!!

I went to KW Legacy Ranch for 13 months of my life and I ended up convincing my mom to sign me out early when she came to visit me. I was very nervous to ask her to do that because if she were to tell Luke the owner that I had asked to leave I would have faced absolute horrible horrifying consequences but I was already there for over 13 months and they were trying to force me to move to Utah in order to phase up and graduate the program. The program doesn’t give you nor your family an exit date, its all based off your “progress.”

I was so desperate to get out of the program I agreed with them and faked like I wanted to go to Utah and since they refused to phase me up unless I complied and since all of the letters we wrote home to our families were monitored by the staff and were not mailed if they didn’t like or agree what was written, so I wrote to my mother about how I was “excited” and “wanted to go to Utah” when in all honesty I absolutely 100% did not want to go there at all. I just wanted some way out of KW. They had me apply at all different colleges in Utah for the fall semester.

When visitation with our family would accrue we would be sat down with our families and Luke the owner and the ring leader of it all. He would tell both me and my family some rules that I MUST follow during my family visitation. The biggest rule that he was very persistent about was that I was NOT to ever ask about leaving or when my discharge date would be while I was with my parents and if such things happened parents are to report immediately to Luke. I followed sed rule the first 2 visits due to complete and utter fear of the punishment I’d be given.

When my mom came to visit the third time, I told her that she needed to help me get out I told her how I had been lying and faking and how I was not moving forward in the program and how they were refusing to phase me up, or even allow me to do any of my current phase assignments, I explained to my mom how I believed that they didn’t want me moving forward because they wanted me to graduate and go directly to start school in the fall which was nearly 10 months away. In that moment I knew I couldn’t make it another 10 months. I was already there over a year faking my way through every day, trying to be obedient while being forced to do manual labor, withheld food/meals, talked to, and treated like nothing like I was no one like my life didn’t matter.

After talking to her she agreed to remove me from the program. However, she had a catch: she said she would come back and get me in one week. I just had to go back to KW till then. I was extremely scared that my mom was going to tell Luke and never come back for me. I thought she only said she’d come back to get me to just calm down. It just didn’t make sense for her to drive 7 1/2 hours to Nevada to visit me for a day then drive 7 1/2 hours home just to do that exact same thing next week. I was absolutely no doubt in my mind that I was stuck there.

The next day I was woken up ready to be punished for asking my mom however that was not why they woke me up. They had woken me up because my mom was there to sign me out. They argued with her for quite some time trying to push her and pressure her into saying that I broke the rule and “manipulated” her into signing me out. Somehow someway I don’t know if it was god or if my mom could see the desperation in my eyes but a blessing happened at that moment and all that came out of my mothers mouth was “I miss my daughter, I’m taking her home.”

I was there for a total of almost 14 months and I’ve been out for almost 5 years. I think now and I still have nightmares about every dehumanizing torment I endured every day and I still hardly ever talk about KW because it’s just very hard for me. Frankly, when I tell people no one believes me. I was taken to this minor youth program the day before my 18th birthday by 2 random people. A man and a woman woke me up standing over me as well as 2 police officers. I remember looking for my phone under my pillow but it was gone I felt like it was a bad dream my mom had treated me since I was 16 years old this would happen one day and I didn’t doubt her but it was literally the actual day before my 18th birthday. I had only graduated from high school, not even a month. I felt like this wasn’t real, but sadly it was.

They proceeded to drag me into a large van took away my shoes and drove me away on a 7 1/2 hour drive to Hiko Nevada. The whole ride I was planning on running until we turned down this one road, right after the loves truck stop, and saw nothing but dirt for miles and miles and miles at least over 70 – 100 miles of pure nothingness and dirt. I realized then I was completely screwed.

This place has tormented me and broken me down to nothing. This place has caused me such trauma and PTSD. We experienced torment day in and day out, we were forced to dig a large trench through the yard about 100 ft across the yard and about 4-5 ft deep, which was a pretty normal thing for us, manual labor was all we did. However, this one was different. It started to smell really bad as we dug deeper. Then we hit what they had us digging for: the septic tank.

I, me, myself was the one chosen out of us girls to lift up the septic tanks lid with my bare hands, and then as a group, we were all forced to shovel human shit. Yes, HUMAN SHIT into buckets and carry these heavy shit and piss-filled buckets about 200 ft away around the fence and dump sed buckets down the hole in the outhouse that we literally were forced to build a week prior. We all were gaged COVERED in human waste our bare arms and hands all over our clothing. That’s just one of many very fucked up, morally wrong, and not to mention illegal things we had to do.

There was no saying the word “No” when being instructed with a task unless you wanted to face extreme, inhuman, mentally, and or physically painful punishments. When I first arrived there I was coming off multiple different drugs and withdrawing extremely hard. They made me hike 4 miles withdrawing and coming down off of cocaine, meth, alcohol, and Xanax. For those of you who don’t know, the only withdrawals that you CAN actually die from are alcohol and benzo withdrawals, I was coming off of both. When you come off of alcohol and Xanax you need to be carefully monitored for your safety, but nope. I was hiking. I hiked to a canyon where I proceeded to have multiple seizures due to my withdrawal, throwing up blood, while fighting an inner battle with myself things this all was just hallucinations. Sadly, it was all real, and sadly, they didn’t care.

They made me pitch a tent, and sit on a stump of a tree, and was not allowed to move unless I needed to use the out house and I had to ask to enter and exit the log stump area, They called this aria “the square’ it was about a 3ft by 3ft area boxed in with rocks to show you your boundaries and you MUST ask before moving at all, for example, “may I exit the square” “may I enter the outhouse” “may I exit the out house” and so on.

I got to this hell hole called KW Legacy Ranch on June 21 2017.  My 18th birthday is June 22. I turned 18 years old in the canyon, sitting on a log by myself with some shitty staff who fed me old moldy bread. Once I turned 18, literally on the day of my birthday I asked to sign myself out due to it being a minor program and I was at that point officially an adult, they proceeded to lie to me and say that in the state of Nevada that programs can hold you until 21 years of age. I had just turned 18. I still remember that feeling I felt in that moment completely alone, withdrawing hard off of drugs, 100% helpless and 100% hopeless. I had ran out of ideas, I was trapped stuck here against my will. I was in that canyon for 7 days, then I was brought down to the girls’ house. Once at the girls’ house, we are forced to do extremely difficult labor work, such as 2 girls being assigned to lift a 50-gallon drum water trough and carry it over 50-70 feet and dump the water out without setting it down.

If you set it down or drop it you get put on a punishment called contemplation which is when they take away your boots and your belt. They take your boots to deter you from running and your belt so you can’t hurt yourself or others. They sit you outside on a hard metal chair in negative degree weather as well as weather in the hundreds and you must sit there outside from 5am – 9pm only allowed to move if you act permission to use the outhouse then once you come inside you must sleep on the hard wooden floor in the living room. You are fed moldy bread and ramen without flavor once I was fed ice cold tomato soup with rice and peas and a moldy piece of bread. If you don’t finish what you are fed, you stay out there longer. You typically stay out there for 5-10 days if you are well-behaved.

The longest I’ve been out was 18 days because I was humming. You are never allowed to sing, hum, or dance at all. Not allowed to crack your knuckles, say certain words such as “cool” or “awesome” or any type of “slang.” When we were not working on the ranch as their little slaves, the other girls would do their online high school. As I stated before, I had just graduated. This meant I hardly caught a break or got to be inside the house and sit at the tables and just do something less physically demanding. Instead they took advantage of me not needing to be in school by having  work on the ranch from sun up to sun down.

You 100% must ask to enter and exit every room you go into. as I said earlier,For example when I needed to use the rest room I must ask “may I use the restroom” then “may I put my stuff away” then “may I enter the restroom” and then I must ask to exit it. We got 8-minute showers that include the time we get to get our clothes on, soap, and get undressed shower dry off and redress. We had to sign out on the whiteboard what the exact time we were starting to begin the process of getting in the shower was.  If you didn’t complete all your shower tasks in that 8 minutes, you got a consequence. Our hygiene was kept all together in like some sort of toolbox with baggies inside with our names. Inside that bag would be a bar of soap, shampoo, and a toothbrush. First, when the staff tells you to get your shower you immediately had to start the process. you start by signing out on the whiteboard with the time. That’s when the 8 minutes started. Then ask “may I grab my hygiene” then “may I enter my room (in order to get clothes) then “may I exit my room” then “may I enter the bathroom” mind you all this time is all counting towards your 8 minutes. A handful of times I’ve asked to exit my room or enter the bathroom to take my shower and the staff would blatantly ignore me, knowing that I can not leave or enter that room until they say it was okay, knowing that I only get 8 minutes to do all of these things plus wash my hair and body, dry off, redress, go return my hygiene.

I’m not proud to say this but I probably only showered maybe 20-30 times in the entire 14 months I was there due to the fact that I just couldn’t get everything done in under 8 minutes.  I would just stick my head over the tub to wet my hair so it looked wet so I didn’t get in trouble for not showering.

What I have just described to you was 2% of the absolute torment I, as well as so many more men and females, have had to suffer.