{"id":18753,"date":"2022-06-10T16:00:34","date_gmt":"2022-06-10T23:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unsilenced.org\/?p=18753"},"modified":"2022-06-10T17:04:42","modified_gmt":"2022-06-11T00:04:42","slug":"aris-testimony-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unsilenced.org\/aris-testimony-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Ari’s Testimony – Part 1 – Island View\/Elevations RTC and Uinta Academy (2019 – 2021)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Ari’s Testimony – Part 1<\/h1><\/span>
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Island View\/Elevations RTC and Uinta Academy<\/p>\n

2019 – 2021<\/p><\/h3><\/span>

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I entered the troubled teen industry on April 27, 2018 when I was thirteen after a suicide attempt. After two weeks in psych and a short stay at an RTC in California, I arrived at Uinta Academy on June 27, 2018, a few weeks after I turned fourteen. I was struggling with depression, anxiety, self harm, and suicidal behavior, and I was hoping that they could help me.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>

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Uinta Academy<\/strong><\/span>
\nThe stress of being in a new state combined with the mental health issues I was dealing with resulted in me having more panic attacks during the beginning of my stay. When I had panic attacks, my therapist would tell the staff that I was \u201cseeking negative attention\u201d and to ignore the behavior. After a while of this, the staff began to distance themselves from me when I was struggling, and eventually stopped offering help altogether in favor of punishment. There were times that I would be crying and screaming that I wanted to end my life and the staff would sit there and ignore me until I stopped, and then give me consequences for being \u201cout of instructional control\u201d, or OIC. These consequences, delivered to me as negative points on my point card, would result in the next entire day (or multiple days or weeks) of manual labor, extremely limited socialization with the other students, and withholding of sweet snacks. In the summer I spent entire days pulling weeds and raking moldy hay out of the hay barn, and in the winter I spent hours shoveling snow and scrubbing the kitchen floor with a toothbrush and a spray bottle of water.<\/p>\n

Not even two months into my stay at Uinta, I was so desperate to escape that I started running away. The house was pretty much surrounded by wheat fields, so this often resulted in me running until I couldn\u2019t run anymore, collapsing, and a staff catching up with me and forcing me into the van and back to the house. There were a few times that I was gone for a few hours at night, until the police were called and I was restrained in the dirt on the side of the road and brought back.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>

After these escape attempts, I was put on a long-term punishment called Reflection, which resulted in weeks of manual labor, essay writing, and desperately trying to make enough points to get off of Reflection. They also made me spend weeks, if not months, (I don\u2019t specifically remember how long) sleeping on the living room floor with no mattress, sometimes without a blanket or pillow.<\/p>\n

The food at Uinta was controlled so much that it left me with eating issues that I still struggle with daily. Each serving was portioned with leveled measuring cups and we were not allowed seconds unless it was a half serving of vegetables. I was forced to eat foods I didn\u2019t like and I often felt sick from being forced to eat spoonfuls of peanut butter or a food I just hated. I started stealing food from the usually locked pantry because I was hungry and wasn\u2019t allowed enough food during meals.<\/p>\n

I was put on a restriction called no privacy, where a staff would enter the bathroom with me, shut the door, and stare at me while I used the bathroom and showered. They let me wear a bathing suit in the shower, but since they watched me change into it there was really no point. There was no exception for any kind of bathroom need or even being in public, and it was violating and embarrassing. I began delaying using the bathroom for days and didn\u2019t shower for weeks because of how much I hated it, and I would be punished for this. Staff would lead me into the bathroom, shut the door, and wait for me to robotically \u201cdisagree appropriately\u201d in order to not use the bathroom. Only then would they let me out of the room. When I changed my clothes I would crouch in the corner with my towel around me, but the staff began to say that this was \u201ctoo risky\u201d and they took the towel away. This made it so I could not hide my body from staff when I was changing.<\/p>\n

I remember one day when I was showering, a staff told me that I wasn\u2019t washing my body correctly. I ignored it because I didn\u2019t want her to watch me putting my hands under the bathing suit in order to wash myself. She told me explicitly that I needed to wash certain areas of my body and physically would not let me leave the shower until I did what she said. She stared as I put my hands under the bathing suit and washed myself. This happened multiple times. I don\u2019t remember how many times I was on this restriction, but I know from journal entries that it was at least three. It was impossible to tell anyone what was happening because if you got \u201ctoo upset\u201d or talked badly about Uinta while on a phone call, the staff would make you hang up or take the phone away.
\nThe day I got kicked out of Uinta was scary for me, and I had been so convinced that they would help me and that they were my last chance that I begged to go back. I missed my friends. After nine weeks at the University Neuropsychiatric Unit (UNI), I was returned to Uinta for three weeks before being kicked out for a second time and sent back to UNI. I was not allowed to say goodbye to any of the friends that I had lived with for thirteen months. I wrote the house a goodbye letter and my therapist said she would read it to the house, but years later I learned that she never did. After this stay at UNI, I was sent to Elevations RTC.<\/p>\n

Elevations RTC<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Elevations RTC was a very controlled environment. We lived in locked dorms and moved from building to building in straight, silent lines. Punishments were called \u201cprivs\u201d because it would result in one of your privileges being taken away, such as listening to music, having free time, or hanging out in your room. There was a time when I was dropped down in their level system because I had a panic attack. The staff told me that it was because I refused to go to group, but it was really because I was hyperventilating and crying so much that I physically could not move. She didn\u2019t believe me and took my level anyway.
\nI remember one instance where I was put in a violent restraint for no reason, one that even my therapist later told me was unnecessary. I had been sitting in the hallway and cutting myself when a staff grabbed my forearm and dragged me down the carpeted hallway by my arm, making me writhe and scream because I was afraid. When he got to the end of the hall where the \u201ctime out room\u201d was, he pulled me to my feet and held my wrists behind my back. I tend to panic when put in restraints so I fought against it, at which point he kicked my legs in the spot behind my knees, buckling my legs and making me fall to the floor onto my stomach. He got on top of me and held one of my arms out against the floor like half of a T pose, and twisted the other one so far behind my back that it almost touched my head. No matter how much I screamed, no one did anything. I was held like that for almost half an hour, and every time I struggled, he twisted my arm farther to make the hold more painful.<\/p>\n

I was on restrictions that forced me to drag my mattress into the dorm hallway every night and sleep there with a staff watching me. This felt normal at the time because lots of kids did this, but looking back it just feels wrong to make children sleep in a hallway instead of their bedrooms so I\u2019m including it here. I also saw multiple students get put on a restriction called Individual Focus, or IF. This involved days or (usually) weeks of the child sitting alone in their room and writing essay after essay. We were punished if we spoke to them and they were not allowed to speak to anyone, including staff. When they needed to go to the bathroom, they had to write it on a piece of paper and put it by their door. I was put on a similar restriction called Community Break where I wrote essays for three days sitting in the corner of the hallway.<\/p>\n

I do want to acknowledge that there were only two staff members who I trusted at Elevations, and they saved my life. If it wasn\u2019t for them, I would likely still be in the TTI.<\/p>\n

The Approach<\/strong><\/span>
\nI graduated from Elevations RTC in January 2021 when I was sixteen, after a fourteen month stay. I was sent to The Approach, and honestly, I was excited. I thought it would be a good place for me to learn how to live at home. This hope was gone quickly. The home manager told me that she thought I was making up my anxiety and panic attacks for attention, and that I only had panic attacks when I wanted to get out of something I didn\u2019t want to do. She yelled at me when she was frustrated and I was trying to offer help, and more than once her words made me cry. I was never once listened to by management and they constantly pushed me to do things I was not comfortable with, like going to the gym every single morning with no exceptions or accommodations for my social anxiety. When I got my COVID-19 vaccine and was having a bad reaction, I was punished for not going to the gym that morning. I felt so sick that I couldn\u2019t stand up for more than five minutes and they still punished me for not doing a workout. Their expectations were unreasonably strict and they did not care about how I felt or what I had to say.<\/p>\n

I was finally released from The Approach on October 26, 2021 when I was seventeen, ending my three and a half year stay with the troubled teen industry. I had no idea how to function in the real world and I was terrified, but at the same time I was so happy to finally be free. Nothing about the TTI prepared me for life on the outside, and I still struggle daily with basic activities and processing this trauma with my current therapist.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18754,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"acf":[],"cp_meta_data":{"_edit_lock":["1654905749:2"],"_edit_last":["2"],"_fusion":["a:16:{s:25:\"show_first_featured_image\";s:2:\"no\";s:4:\"fimg\";a:2:{s:5:\"width\";s:0:\"\";s:6:\"height\";s:0:\"\";}s:17:\"post_links_target\";s:2:\"no\";s:7:\"bg_full\";s:2:\"no\";s:17:\"slider_visibility\";s:51:\"small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility\";s:12:\"main_padding\";a:2:{s:3:\"top\";s:0:\"\";s:6:\"bottom\";s:0:\"\";}s:15:\"content_bg_full\";s:2:\"no\";s:20:\"image_rollover_icons\";s:7:\"default\";s:9:\"bg_repeat\";s:7:\"default\";s:11:\"slider_type\";s:2:\"no\";s:9:\"wooslider\";s:1:\"0\";s:19:\"blog_page_title_bar\";s:7:\"default\";s:17:\"content_bg_repeat\";s:7:\"default\";s:13:\"posts_sidebar\";s:15:\"default_sidebar\";s:15:\"posts_sidebar_2\";s:15:\"default_sidebar\";s:14:\"sidebar_sticky\";s:7:\"default\";}"],"_fusion_google_fonts":[""],"fusion_builder_status":["active"],"elegant_typography":[""],"om_disable_all_campaigns":[""],"_sq_old_slug":["?p=18753"],"avada_post_views_count":["1100"],"avada_today_post_views_count":["1"],"avada_post_views_count_today_date":["26-04-2024"],"_thumbnail_id":["18754"]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unsilenced.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18753"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unsilenced.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unsilenced.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unsilenced.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unsilenced.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.unsilenced.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18753\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unsilenced.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unsilenced.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unsilenced.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unsilenced.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}