I received a write-up once because I was unable to sit down in time by the end of a staff count down. For those of us who were quieter, the unfair treatment was unbearable at times. Staff picked favorites and if you were a staff favorite, you got more privileges or were allowed to get away with more. If I kept my head down and faked the program, I would stay safe from the abuse of the staff and rules. Going through my mandatory daily journal is rather shocking to me because I would write things like, “Oh, this girl tried to kill herself today, but we had peanut butter toast for breakfast this morning, so it’s alright!” I learned quickly this meant to stay blind, deaf and dumb to everything. With only one hour of individual therapy a week, I was basically left to figure out how to survive on my own. Rain, snow, or shine, we were there, digging fence post holes, lugging hay bales around, clearing forests for new pastures with our bare hands- I have never been more exhausted in my life than equine therapy days. With two hours for every 10 hills, punishment usually lasted all day long and left girls no free time during the weekend, our only designated time for leisure.Įquine therapy was conducted once a week but it consisted of the girls doing manual labor at a staff member’s farm all day long and probably 20 minutes to an hour total with the horses. Labor hours were completed after hills were finished. The hill was a minimum 40° slope, long enough that it would leave our whole bodies burning after a single round. Conducted on a local construction site, we would be woken early on weekends, and taken there to climb a steep hill for punishment. A write-up consisted of 2 hours of manual labor on the weekend, plus 10 hills. Doing something “wrong” resulted in a write-up, sometimes a level drop or even isolation. Image was important to convince the parents everything was okay.Īnything and everything would get you in trouble. Only during the workshops held every 3 months with our parents were we made to dress up and wear makeup. I remember that we were punished if we tried to tuck our khaki uniform pants into our socks because it “wasn’t the dress code.” Showers ranged from 5 to 20 minutes lucky to receive the latter, hygiene stayed awful throughout my stay. My friend who had a mullet had their head shaved. Girls with “inappropriate hairstyles” received haircuts. Self-expression in any form was not allowed. Upper levels acted as superficial staff who ratted girls out for misbehavior, ultimately creating an atmosphere of distrust for my entire stay.Įverything was monitored, there were no locks on bathrooms, no doors on the dorm rooms, bathroom holds after mealtimes, routine random strip searches, harsh punishments, mandatory labor, etc. The higher you were in the program, the more privileges you received. ![]() We faced strict schedules, harsh punishment, conversion therapy (despite having LGBT staff, as a Christian boarding school, homophobia was a rule), isolation, no privacy, rights, etc. I struggled for a long time afterward to get over the trauma. I spent an entire year in a state of numbness and mass dissociation. My time spent at Clearview Horizon feels like a fever dream to me. According to my parents, the founder of the facility advised them to have the transporters come to get me and place me in the preliminary wilderness program first. Most girls were kidnapped in the middle of the night by strangers, handcuffed, and flown to the facility. After I was told to leave school for these issues, my parents decided to send me to a boarding school in Montana for “three months.” They gave me three days notice before I was driven there on May 4th, 2018. I struggled with severe depression and anxiety my whole life and by high school. Hello, my name is Isabelle and I was contained at Clearview Horizon therapeutic boarding school for girls from 2017 to 2018.
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