From 2016-2017 I was in an all girls rehabilitation center for fourteen months. My goal here is to share my own story and what I experienced living there for so long. I’d like to say that not everyone’s experience was negative or the same, by any means. People were treated differently there, based upon the staffs feelings towards them at any given time, and every TC center differs slightly in rules/regulations. Here I am specifically referring to my own experience in Teen Challenge, Kansas City. This facility housed an average amount of 25 girls (more or less) at any given time. (This center is now called Kansas City Girls Academy).
Upon coming there you are separated from your parents almost immediately. I was lucky enough to have been driven there by my parents, however some girls are “transported”. This is when your parents and staff arrange for you to be taken in the middle of the night, only told that you are “going to your new school”. Staff transports you in a van to the center, the ride being sometimes ten+ hours long, as there are girls taken from all over the US. A majority of the girls driven by their parents have no idea what they are getting themselves into or where they are actually going, myself included.
Almost as soon as you arrive, you are to strip down in front of a staff member, to show that you are not hiding any drugs or paraphernalia. People (students, actually) searched through every item I brought, labeling my names on things, and putting aside things I am not allowed to have. You are given a binder including a set of rules, nineteen pages long, and several other pages including bible verses and other things. For the first two weeks, you do not focus on school, and you are not allowed to communicate with anyone outside of teen challenge, family included. You can only speak to staff (sometimes) and two other students called your Big Sisters, who are supposed to guide you in how to act there and what is expected of you. Those girls are chosen and given to you based upon who has been there longest and who respects the rules. You are required to fully hand write the rules and other paperwork in your binder onto notebook paper. Along with this, you are required to memorize Bible verses, among a binder of other paperwork, in this two week time frame. If you do not comply, you will not progress in the program.
There is a “level” system there, which is mainly based upon how long you have been in the program. You are required to continue following the rules and continuing memorizing bible verses, among many other things. The higher level you are, the more privileges you have. Privileges being, what you wear, who you communicate with, how long of family phone calls you have, and what you are allowed to do at any given time. During the whole program you cannot use a cell phone, wear makeup, speak to anyone outside of your family, or speak while staff is not monitoring the conversation. As well as this, no “secular” things are tolerated. You may not listen to music that is not Christian, swear, or really do anything that is not under the Christian religion, or there are major repercussions. You must ask to do anything at all, including getting up for the bathroom. You are to never be in a separate room from the other students or staff your whole program. No privacy is given. Anything you do, you are told to do. You may not ask for “special privileges”. Even when we would go to church, we were not allowed to socialize with anyone outside of the program. No physical contact is tolerated.
During your time there, you only are allowed outside the center about every two months. These are referred to as “passes”. The first pass is on campus, and is only several hours long. The time you have outside of the center increases the longer you are there, however you are still required to comply to the Teen Challenge rules, even with family. The longest pass you are allowed, at the very end, is ten days. Until then you are not allowed to use phones or makeup, even outside of the facility and with your family present. If you do not comply to their rules in general, they frequently threaten to take away these passes and any time with your family.
I’d also like to include several punishments they give you, which are not included anywhere online or in paperwork they give to your parents. First is the written disciplines. I have had a few, and they can be given to you for very little logical reason. There is a list of “character qualities” in your binder, which are words/traits you should “strive” to be. There is a definition of the quality, with two bible verses included. A majority of the disciplines include writing these over and over, paragraphs, until you are finished. No free time is given until you finish. Now, most of the time you have to write these paragraphs hundreds, if not a thousand times if you are to get one. A girl I knew had to write the nineteen page rules, 20 times, along with a great amount of other written disciplines. I can remember one of the times she was given a discipline, solely because she did not close her eyes during a group prayer, which staff deemed disrespectful. They picked on her, among many others, for not having “faith”.
Next is “Full Restriction”. In this, you have no privileges. You are to wear a set of navy blue clothing at all times, and to speak to no one, including staff unless they feel like it. You cannot have perfume, jewelry, scented lotion, or a majority of your normal clothes you brought with you. You sleep on a top bunk. Anything you can think of, you do not have. You are given the bare minimum to be alive. You do not have free time, you are only to be writing disciplines. If you are not given a written discipline, you are to write down chapters of the Bible until you are off of Full Restriction. This can go on for however long they wish. I have heard of girls being on this for a year straight. The minimum I have seen is one month. They threaten you with this discipline very, very often.
Next is R&R, “Relationship Restriction”. Most of the time this is a consequence of getting “too close” to the girls you are living with, or having a “toxic relationship” with them. Personally I was put on Relationship Restriction with a minimum of nine girls during my program. Several of those girls I was not allowed communication with, simply because we hugged during my program behind staffs back. They told me to pretend they are dead. Not even eye contact is tolerated. If you slept in the same room as them, we were relocated. I left Teen Challenge STILL being on this discipline, and was not allowed to ever say goodbye to some of my closest friends because of this, even when I was walking out the doors.
Now, on the contrary, there is also I&I. If you do NOT get along with a girl, you can be forced to be at a separate table from others, with ONLY them. I knew of two girls that hated each other, and they were told they were babies, forced to do absolutely everything with the other person. They were given pacifiers to wear around their neck, wore pigtails and matching T-shirt’s, humiliating them as a result. I believe they were stuck on this discipline for several months.
Another is Daniel Diet. They may give you this for many reasons, such as if you steal food, if you are “ungrateful”, or sometimes if they just feel like you deserve it. You are given one cup of meat, one cup of fruit, and one cup of veggies per meal, literally measured out. For breakfast you eat a slice of bread and one cup of milk. There have been girls that have had to be taken off of this “diet” because they were so malnourished from being on it for months at a time.
If you even talk about wanting to leave, especially running away, they threaten you with shackles or “the boot”, or any number of punishments. I have seen girls shackled behind their backs, even in their beds at night.
They also give you “projects”, which are not disciplines but are given to prove a point. Several of us, myself included, had to wear a child’s animal mask for four days straight, as to prove “social media is a mask”. Another girl had to wear a backpack with forty pounds in it at all times, even while working out. This was supposed to be a correlation to the “weight” that holding onto your depression gives you. There is truly no “list” of disciplines I could provide you with, as they can really give you anything they think you deserve at any given time. They have been very creative with these.
There is an online school in another building on the property, essentially just a room with computers in it. Outside of this building, you are not allowed to focus your time on school. You are only to work on your disciplines or memorizing bible verses, etc. This was detrimental to my credits and learning experience. Prior to Teen Challenge, I was already behind. This way of schooling made it much more difficult and ruined my credits, on top of the mistakes I had previously made in public schooling. In this program there is no “summer”, and you are required to work on school year round.
The food we were given was mainly donated to us. One time there were worms in our potatoes. We were lucky if the bananas were not rotten, among most other fruit. Every meal we were given, we were required to finish, otherwise they would threaten to put us on Daniel Diet.
Anything they did “for” us, there seemed to be a catch. I remember a time we all got to go out to pizza because we had helped the director with their own yard work, behind their house. Another time we got to go out in public to eat, because we had helped a staff member move their furniture to another house. Usually when we were allowed to go into public, it was paid for by our parents or church. Rarely Teen Challenge. At one point we all went on a trip a little over three hours away, to the directors farm. We stayed at their local church, sleeping on mats on the floor in a room which barely had enough space to fit us all. The showers barely worked, and they got mad at us for using the bathroom too much (STAFF had the only comforters). We went to the farm and worked on building a fence all day, several days in a row. We were told this was an educational experience. We would also frequently watch the staffs kids, and their kids would run around the facility while we had to sit at tables 24/7. I remember a girl telling me that the directors child told her she could tell her to do whatever she wanted, because she was in a program and her mother was the director (this was coming from a nine year old).
Staff themselves did not communicate much with our parents, and we were not allowed to contact them without staff surveillance. I believe they kept our parents in the dark intentionally. I also believe the purpose of having “mentally unstable” girls there was for their benefit, as you can easily convince parents their child deserved the cruel treatment. Some parents were told that the girl was not “ready” to go home at the end of their program, convincing parents they needed more time there, pumping more money into the program as a result.
Little therapy is done. I believe I saw the counselor less than ten times my whole program. I was told I would have counseling with my family before I was ready to go home, and once it got to that point, the director herself told me she does not want to “deal” with my mom. So what qualifies you to be a director here then, exactly? The staff is not counselors or therapists by any means. There were two trained therapists that I saw very, very little the entire time.
The reason my parents sent me there was because they were afraid I was going to kill myself, and I had been self harming and fighting with them. I had no history of drug abuse or gang violence, like they advertised this program was for. There were several violent and mentally unstable girls. But I believe they would take any girls they could.. anyone willing to pay for it is welcome, and forced to stay, even with no history of violence. Once again, there is a clear intentional lack of communication. I have seen girls disappear in the middle of the night because of bad behavior, sent somewhere they would not disclose. If we asked, we were told to mind our own business. I have seen girls seizing on the floor and having panic attacks, among other things, and we were told they were doing this so they do not have to be here. Like it was an act. I have seen staff accused of sexual acts which they, once again, said it was fake and only to get out of the program. Even if it was, there should be a red flag right there that girls were desperate enough to create a scene in order to get out. In fact, we did not have toilet paper springs at all, because a girl had previously stabbed herself in the leg with one in order to go to the emergency room and be released.
I’d also like to bring up that the area surrounding this facility was extremely dangerous. In fact one time there was a shooting, nearly ON the property. We had to go on lockdown in the middle of the school day, not being told what was going on. They vaguely told our parents what had happened, and threatened us with Full Restriction if we were to tell our parents our side. As a result of enduring this, they gave us soda and an extra snack. They would frequently use food to shut us up, it seemed. We were also told horror stories of girls running away, as the neighborhood was extremely high in crime. One girl ran away and went to a house in the same neighborhood, and we were told when she came back she was pleading to be let in because she had been raped and burned with cigarettes. We were told of stories like this frequently, as they didn’t want us to leave.
We were required to work out for an hour once a day, minus weekends. We were not allowed to work out at any time besides this. These workouts were run by an almost 70 year old man, who was previously a football coach. We were not allowed to give up. If one girl told them she could not finish the workout, we all were punished. I can think of several times where we ran up and down a hill forty times. It was common to run 4 miles in an hour for this workout. It was extremely grueling, and I believe the man running it was later fired for sexual comments. As well as this, I remember a staff member snap chatting videos of us working out, zooming in on our faces like a child, making fun of us. I have no idea who those videos were sent to and never gave permission to be recorded in the first place, not that we had much of a choice.
As well as a $50,000 requirement for attending this program, they accept donations online. There is a horse therapy that we went to for an hour twice a week for seven weeks in our program, which is an extra cost to your parents. Food is donated. Clothing and toiletries are paid for by your parents. Staff complains about being paid very little. Once again if we go into public, this was also mainly paid for by our parents or church. According to staff, there are “fees for housing minors”. However I can’t help but wonder where a majority of this money goes. In fact, to save costs, they installed cameras in the hallways and at school, which a staff member was to monitor at night (including male staff members). We had no idea when we were actually being watched. It was a lockdown facility, and so it was scary to be alone at night without staff, as we had no way of getting out in an emergency. One time the fire alarms went off in the middle of the night, thankfully on accident, but we had no way of getting out and no idea what to do.
It is a struggle to not be biased or show emotion, I am only trying to share facts. I have had a history of suicide attempts, and enduring fourteen months of this has only propelled that wish further. I urge you to not send any child here, as it only amplifies any mental instability they already had. It is hard to know what to do, and what your options are, but I promise there is no valid excuse to send your child here. My first thought was to include other stories in along with mine, however I don’t want to put other girls in a stressful situation where they are going to be harassed by staff. I am certain there will be backlash to this, however it pales in comparison to many of the things we have had to go through! I have not spoken of all of this to anyone, not even family. So my hope is that in some way I can find closure by finally sharing some of my experience.
I always want to end on a positive note, so I would like to say that the only positive takeaway I have from this program is several of the girls I met. I truly believe that as a result of the chaos and abuse we went through, it has given us a bond that is unmatched in normal relationships. I would never choose to be in a place like that ever again, however I will never regret the time I had with these girls. I have learned that the most unstable and hurting are often the most loyal and giving. I have learned to never give up no matter the circumstances, and that there are people out there that will never give up on me.
I love you all and my main intention is not out of aggression, but out of finally revealing the truth. Of course, I cannot adequately share every story I have, as I would have to write a book. This is only a small summary of what went on. As of today, there are new directors. I have been told they are even harsher, but I cannot speak for it, as I was only there for the previous staff. Not a single girl has opened up about this center, as staff, to this day, intimidates them out of it. Right here and right now I want to open up a conversation of what went on in this facility. I can only imagine the amount of stories revolving around this center and the corruption, so I urge you to share your story as well.
*Edit: if you would like to share this post on Facebook or hear more on this my full name is Olivia Russell and feel free to add me!!<3 Lots of girls shared their stories on my original post on FB but unfortunately when shared, it only links to my tumblr and not my original post! Many girls are commenting more stories on my page and I think it’s important to read!!
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