Thora’s Testimony – Burwell for Kids

My name is Thora Lodbrok Johnston and I’m a Trouble Teen Industry survivor. I willingly when to this program that was painted to me as a program called Burwell for kids with disabilities and that they were going to get me through high school. The first year was great no problems it was the second year is when the teachers started to verbally abuse the students and we were not allowed to see or socialize with the outside students. We were not allowed to eat our lunch in the lunchroom. We had to eat within the program in the classrooms. My mom had a meeting with the director of the program before I was placed in the program and my mother asked them if there were any troubled kids in the program. They straight up lied to my mother’s face. They literally automatically think you are suicidal. There were a couple of times I passed out because of stress and they did not call 911 or even notify my parents. They literally thought I was faking passing out just to get out of class and leave school. Multiple times they kept me after school just to fuck with me and piss me off. And I was told that there was a counselor there and the counselor was one of the teachers who made me sit right next to her desk so that she could verbally abuse me and say that I will get nowhere in life so you better just give up now and you’re a waste of life. Every time I would cry from the hurtful things they would say they would laugh until they were crying. There were only two teachers that actually cared. This one teacher was the worst who was racist and also was very sexist and this teacher literally grabbed a student and flipped him on his back and me and some other students reported it to the head we all got detention which is isolation staring at a brick wall sitting up straight hands in our laps and no talking for hours on end after school. When I told my mom all this she arranged a meeting with the director and the director called that teacher in the meeting and I was too scared to say anything because I was scared of retaliation. Please whatever you do please do not send your disabled kids to Burwell I came out with more problems than I went in with Acute PTSD being one of them.