I was 15 years old on falcons unit from July to November 2018. Around October a new 13yo kid named Casey came and we quickly became friends talking about SoundCloud rappers and NBA. Before I left he told me I should sneak him a note with my phone number but for some reason I gave him a note with the link to my SoundCloud instead. I really don’t know why I did this the place made me crazy. I posted a couple songs on SoundCloud after my release and got all hate comments, justifiably, the songs were really bad i attribute the shittiness to my trauma from meridell. Anyway I deleted the SoundCloud and I’ve never made contact with Casey to this day. I hope to become successful enough in music or fashion or something (I became a decently successful underground rapper years later after retrying) I hope to become successful enough in something so that he’ll see me. I’ve commented on some youtube videos of meridell and managed to reconnect with the kid on the other boys unit who we would always look at each other for being the only ones with cool fits but we were never able to talk. He was really happy when I found him in 2021 but he just spent a couple years in prison and now he’s in jail rn again. Anyway. I wish I could find Casey or anyone else who was on falcons at the same time as me. It’s been 8 years of constant rumination

I just had this weird memory pop up about one of the residential i was at. It was written in the handbook (we had a level system), that at the base level you were only allowed to shower for five minutes… I never understood how they expected someone to physically be able to get completely clean in under five minutes. They would bust into the bathroom as a “safety check” if you ignored the timer going off. We weren’t allowed to shower more than five minutes as a safety precaution… So weird!

Did anyone else experience this rule or something similar about hygiene? This specific facility had a lot of weird rules about hygiene.

How many of you went to places that had P.P.C.? (Positive Peer Culture)

I dont miss it at all. It was a way for kids to ostracize people they did not like.

Has the forum seen the South Park episode where Troubled Teen programs are parodied as part of the goth/emo replacement kids story arc? Maybe some would think South Park is too light a treatment for this phenomenon, but the show does offer parody and publicity. Likely more eyes are on the phenomenon and the fact of resistance due to this show episode. I remember being told students who passively resisted the outdoors program I attended were sent "someplace worse "... but I imagine they were probably sent somewhere that looks like Troubled Acres in the South Park episode ... a place closer to a hospital psych ward than a program with strenuous labor. The phenomenon of forced removal and the involuntary aspects of these programs are visible in the show .... as is the theme and anxiety around brainwashing and personality replacement ... dramatized in the story of Henrietta ... who after passing through the program goes from being a "goth" ... to being "emo." Even some of the anxiety around the morals of staffing and possible conflicts with the media are hinted at towards the end of the show ... where a senior staffer ends up on a kind of "punk'd" hidden camera style prank show.

I know they were used as a holding center for kids from ICE raids, but what are they doing with the property? Wouldn’t it be easier just to sell it?I know it’s in the middle of nowhere Michigan but so many kids have died there. I bet Floyd Starr is rolling in his grave.

1. Dead, Insane or in Jail • A CEDU Memoir

2. Trapped in Paradise : A Memoir

3. RUN

4. ESCAPE - My Lifelong War Against Cults

5. Institutionalized Persuasion - Technology of Reformation in Straight Inc and the Residential Teen Treatment industry

6. The Discarded Ones

7. Girl Sent Away

8. Crossing the Water

9. No Matter How Loud I Shout

10. What it Takes to Pull me Through

11. Kids for Cash

12. Gone to the Crazies

13. COMEBACK

14 The Whitehouse Boys

1. Bootcamp

2. Help at Any Cost

3. When Abuse and Neglect Occur at Residential Treatment Facilities

4. Breaking Their Will

5. An America Gulag - Secret POW Camps for Teens