News2022-08-25T18:03:37-07:00

BREAKING CODE SILENCE NEWS

Alien on Earth

“Alien on Earth” I walk amongst your people. I even wear your skin. But you wouldn’t ever notice, I blend right in. No need to fear, I’m not here on purpose. I got lost in my travels and I feel so worthless. Have you ever been alone and secluded? Unable to communicate so your words become muted. Disowned by my people, left on earth as a penance. This is no way to live, but it is a life sentence. Disconnected, introspective, and misunderstood. I watch the world pass me by from underneath my hood. I see a world filled with madness, chaos, and disarray. I inhale deeply telling myself, it’ll all be okay. But I’m trapped on a planet on which I don’t belong. To me, what is right is to them what is wrong. Floating along, I continue to cruise. No purpose, no passion, and nothing to lose. I stay for them, not for me. Because someday they’ll see me. Not today. Not tomorrow. But someday they’ll need me. -Julian C. Hersh

March 1, 2023|Categories: BLOG POSTS|

Why Are You In Charge?

By Jordyn (Jax) Krauss We all long for community. We all want to know that we aren’t alone in the struggles we face and that there are people who can empathize and help with what we’re going through. As a child, or even as a teenager, you look to the adult figures in your life for guidance and understanding. You crave that support. Unfortunately, in residential programs, empathy and understanding are usually the last things you find in the people who run them and the people they hire.  From my experience, and from the experiences of many others, it is well known that the staff who are hired to watch over and take care of the teens in programs are usually unqualified, young, and inexperienced. I personally can remember being seventeen and the staff in charge of taking care of us being as young as nineteen, while the older therapists and directors who were assigned to work with us kept their distance unless it was a specific activity or a one-to-one session. When the staff are so young, it creates a very uncomfortable power dynamic. You ask yourself, “They’re the same age as me, why are they in charge?” And it’s a good question. Why are they in charge? It doesn’t make sense. These programs that advertise how qualified and amazing their faculty are, hire children to take care of their own peers. Most of the daily staff at my program were college students who weren't aware of what ...

February 27, 2023|Categories: BLOG POSTS|

Caged

Caged A Poem As I lay amongst the countless white bricks, a chill runs down my spine. For the bricks are cold. I stare upward, longing the bright blue sky, the gaze of the sun peering through the cotton candy clouds, the light wind brushing my face. For I now know, just that view, just that breeze, just that moment is a luxury. I am ripped back to reality as the rickety wheels of the lunch cart wonders about the halls. No longer am I admiring the beautiful blue sky, or the gentle breeze of the calm wind touching my cheek. My eyes are met by the dim ceiling of the empty cage separating me from the outer world. As I sit in solitude, I am forced to wonder, "Do I belong here? Is this my future?" I hope and pray it is not, for I am scared and alone. Neither of which do I voice aloud. I sit in silence, for speaking makes me vulnerable. The monotone voice overhead informs me I have visitors. An overwhelming joy fills my body, but is masked by a face of stone. "They cannot know I feel", I tell myself repeatedly. For feeling is weakness and I must be strong to push through this. I stand in front of a large metal door, the only thing separating me from the ones I love. I pull open the heavy door, anticipating a bombarding of hugs and a room flooded by tears of joy. ...

December 7, 2022|Categories: BLOG POSTS|

Protest in Response to Utah’s Maple Lake Academy Decision

Earlier this year, we received news that Maple Lake Academy (MLA) of Spanish Fork, Utah, was being shut down by the state due to a child's death in January while under this facility's care and because of other documented instances of medical neglect. However, after a closed-door meeting with facility owners earlier this month, the Utah Department of Health Services decided the facility could remain in operation and retain their license after the facility agreed to a corrective action plan. Jessica Miller goes into more details of the incident and other relevant information in her article here. We do not believe this was an isolated incident that a corrective action plan will fix. Unfortunately, our In Memoriam page indicates otherwise. A child’s death is not a statistical anomaly when it comes to the "care" a child receives while at a Troubled Teen Industry (TTI) facility or program. We recently conducted an interview with a Maple Lake Academy survivor. You can listen to or read their story here for further details of their experience at this facility. We are deeply disturbed by the state of Utah’s ruling to allow MLA to retain their license and continue to operate. While our outrage is sparked by the unnecessary death of this child, we believe their decision is a direct result of a much larger systemic issue. In response to the state of Utah’s decision to allow this facility to continue to operate, which is overwhelmingly consistent with their usual leniency in regulating ...

August 25, 2022|Categories: BLOG POSTS|Tags: , , |

Interview with a Survivor from Maple Lake Academy

Jesse: I'm Jesse Jensen with Breaking Code Silence. On May 24th, 2022, the Salt Lake Tribune reported that Utah state regulators are revoking the facility license from Maple Lake Academy in Spanish Fork because of two cases in which girls detained there did not receive adequate medical care. One of these cases resulted in the child's death. Maple Lake has now posted a letter from the State Department of Human Services on their website, which is dated June 16th and states that Maple Lake is appealing the revocation and as such, they are being permitted to operate on a conditional basis until the appeal process concludes. The appeal hearing is scheduled for August. We at Breaking Code Silence are working to end institutional child abuse. We have survivors of Maple Lake Academy in our ranks. We consider this an important moment to share what we know about the harsh realities of this facility. One of those survivors has agreed to join me today to answer some questions about their experience. Jordyn Krauss was held at Maple Lake for a year and 10 months as a teenager released in July of 2020. Welcome Jordyn and thank you. Can you hear me? Jordyn: Yes I can. Jesse: Can you tell me about when you were first taken into Maple Lake Academy? Jordyn: So I was taken to Maple Lake Academy in 2018 in September. I had just gotten out of Wilderness. I was 15, and I had heard really good ...

A Trans Survivor Story

Anonymous Author One week during my wilderness therapy program, I was given an assignment to write a letter to the “treatment world.” I wrote: “Dear treatment world, I am a 17-year-old trans guy and I live in you. I have for almost a year now. My story is one of running from you--not because of a lack of self-awareness or lack of desire to get better, but because of your implications for kids like me all over the world. There is not one coed wilderness therapy program in America. Coed residential programs and therapeutic boarding schools are in the minority and unbelievably hard to come by. The fact that this is reality, my reality, makes it really hard to be alive right now. I’m telling my story to name this apparent blind spot in the treatment world, one that is so detrimental to the treatment of every gender diverse kid who enters you.” I’ve read those words in that little, tattered notebook over and over again. I wrote them in a moment of desperation, bravery, or stupidity. I’m not sure which. A few months after these words were written, I would be too beaten into compliance to allow myself to even think like that. Just a few months later, I was a shell of myself, barely clinging onto my name and pronouns, inches away from sacrificing those too. I would have said or done almost anything that they asked me to. Anything to get out. But these words, this ...

June 24, 2022|Categories: BLOG POSTS, Awareness|Tags: , , , |

Survivor Peer Support Training Opportunity

Survivor Peer Support Training Opportunity The survivor community is a specific population of individuals, many of whom share severe trauma experiences. Due to the abusive nature of some of the behavior management techniques utilized in programs being promoted under the guise of “therapy,” oftentimes there is a distrust of therapists within the survivor community.  Even if survivors turn to therapists and move past the abuse they received at the hands of program “therapists,” many times therapists are not familiar with the TTI and the types of experiences so many survivors shared in these institutions. Survivors may face being referred from therapist to therapist trying to find someone equipped to handle the aftermath of extreme trauma, and as a result, they may be asked to repeat their traumatic backstory over and over again until they can find a therapist willing to work with them. While many have found solace in the community of other survivors, there is also the risk in making online community support groups one’s main avenue of therapeutic processing. In her 2020 paper An Exploratory Study on Adult Survivors of the Troubled Teen Industry’s Therapeutic Boarding Schools and Wilderness Programs, Olivia Stull notes, “One of the main sources of support for TTI program survivors includes online communities of their peers. While this provides a place for survivors to feel heard, understood, and validated, there are negatives to this type of community support, too. Several participants noted how they regularly lose someone in their online support group to ...

An Interview with a Neurodiverse Survivor

What was your life like prior to being in a program? I grew u​​p in the Pittsburgh area of Pennsylvania. My family and I were very religious. My first experience that really sticks out to me as being different was being left alone at the park and then a neighbor called the police to report neglect; after that I was locked in my room for hours (while both parents were gone) and then another few times left by myself in the backyard with no one home. I remember going to a Christian preschool and struggling with the academic expectations of the school. For example, I didn’t know the alphabet.  Eventually, I was kicked out of my initial preschool, and I then attended a second one.  By the time I went to kindergarten, I had switched over to public school. Kindergarten went smoothly for me, with the exception of one strange comment I received on my report card– the teacher noted that I was “trying too hard to make friends with the other students.” In hindsight, reading that comment back as an adult, it occurs to me that it is in line with something sad that is commonly said about autistic children “that they don’t play correctly.” In first grade I was officially placed in a specialized reading class to help me catch-up to grade level expectations as I was a little behind, the time I was in second grade, I was academically strong in all subjects with a particular ...

A Year in Review

As a new year limped its way across the calendar in a climate of chaos, BCS volunteers across the country have been working relentlessly to provide a glimmer of hope. The progress made in Breaking Code Silence’s very first functional year has been astounding! Established just March 22, 2021, our incredible volunteers are so proud of their work on numerous projects and honored by the positive impacts being seen by survivors, professionals, and regulations of the TTI. A year of progress for an industry in desperate need of it! Let’s celebrate this organization’s hard-earned accomplishments! Our research teams have been fighting to distinguish TTI survivors as a unique demographic in academic literature with the help of several university partners, namely UNCW, LLU, and UCLA. This comprehensive data collection project brings the life-long effects of the TTI to the mainstream research community. BCS collaborated with the University of North Carolina at Wilmington to analyze data collected from over 800 survivors of institutional child abuse. This project hosted 4 international researchers and broadened BCS outreach to touch parallel task forces around the globe.  Our BCS research team also compiled a comprehensive online library, providing streamlined access to dozens of research and investigative studies conducted from 2015 on, relating to the Troubled Teen Industry and its effects.  Organization representatives presented TTI-related content at several national and local academic conferences, as well as online platforms. This information has been able to reach varying graduate programs as prominent minds connect with extensive data and ...

Playing the Game: The Origins and Impact of Synanon

Playing the Game: The Origins and Impact of Synanon By Laura Wixon and Jordyn Krauss What is “The Game”? Attack. Manipulation. “Therapy.” These terms coincide in a tactic called “The Game,” a toxic practice that is a foundational component of the Troubled Teen Industry (TTI). The Game was created by Synanon, a cult masquerading under the guise of addiction treatment. How did The Game become so common? Why is it still so widely used?  To answer these questions, we need to turn back the pages of the Troubled Teen Industry a century, to March 22 1913, when the founder Charles Dederich Jr. was born in Toledo, Ohio.  Charles lost his alcoholic father in a car accident when he was only 4 years old.  Four years later, his brother passed away. Later his mother remarried to a man Charles detested, and by the time Charles graduated high school, he was drinking heavily.   His alcoholism consumed him far into his adult years, ruining his career and two separate marriages before he finally found a twelve step program at age 43. Charles spent two years within Alcoholics Anonymous before founding his own recovery program in 1958 in Santa Monica, which he titled Synanon.  Differing reports exist regarding the genesis of this program title. Some believe that it is a combination of ‘Syn’ meaning together, and ‘anon’ short for anonymous. Others say that the program title was formed as a combination of the words “seminar” and “symposium.”   Established initially as a two year ...

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