This post is not to deter from any other survivor who has told their story. This is my story. They have their own stories which deserve just as much if not more attention than mine does. It has taken me 16+ years to tell my story to the world. This post barley scratches the surface of my story though. It is a long post too. You may look at the photos and see me as a smiling and happy teen but that is far from the truth. I was in a dark place in my mind and an even darker place in person. I feel it is my time, my right, and my duty to #breakcodesilence. Many have seen the documentary with Paris Hilton but these stories have been told for a longer time period and ignored. Now is our time as survivors to step up and tell our stories…. this is mine. I was 15 and at a boarding school in Connecticut called Canterbury. It was a normal prep/boarding school. I was struggling academically by choice and  because I wasn’t comprehending some things. I was skipping class constantly and creating lies. I told everyone I received an email saying my biological father had died. It was my attempt to get attention. I was failing school and only doing well in the theatre program and swim team. I had made friends but alienated a lot of people as well. I was taken for testing and psych evaluations. They recommended seeing an Educational Conaultant. That was the beginning of what even my family would come to see as the start of even worse times in my life. My consultant who recommended a lot of other children to the same program recommend I go to Hidden Lake Academy. Her name was Jean Hague. My eval said I needed to be somewhere with therapeutic benefits and an established theatre program. My counselors I was lucky to have because they actually tried to help us. A lot were not as lucky as I was in the counseling department. I was truly blessed with the two counselors I had. There was no established theatre program either. I was withdrawn from Canterbury and brought to HLA by my Aunt and Uncle. The school was nestled in the mountains of Dalonegha,GA. It turns out hell looks awfully pretty. Brochures showed kids riding horses, a pool, and smiling teens. The setting seemed to be perfect for what my family thought was going to be a great place. Immediately upon arrival I was told a list of rules including limited contact with the opposite sex. I was there to focus on Adam not Adam and Eve for sure not Adam and Steve. From this moment everything changed. I was taken to a room where my belongings were being rooted through. I was told all my cds were to be donated to the school. At this moment all my clothes were takin to be monogrammed with my initials. I was then escorted to a bathroom by a rather large guy and told to hand over my clothes. He then instructed me to squat , cup my testicles, cough , and turn in a circle. I was 15 being stripped searched for what would be the 1st of 50 times probably. I was taken to general student population and thrown to the wolves. There was no pool, horses or smiling teens .This school taught all of us to be against each other. It was worse than any high school bullies or cliques. I was right away told I was gay, a fag, a bitch, and mutiple other things. I was compared to a student who was there before me that was gay. He was not me nor was I him but older students thought it funny to point out similarities and make fun of me for those similarities. I found my group though. It was the losers club basically. They would become my life long friends though. We were all bullied by students and staff though. I wasn’t aware yet of the deep dark secrets this place held. My first night was filled with hazing from night staff, kids snorting laundry detergent or acne pills and screams in the night. My first few weeks went by without event for the most part other than the night time rituals. In therapy we really hadn’t begun to dig to the root of problems yet. They had something called restrictions. For those that got into trouble we were placed in single file lines after school. They would then Have us do army PT or calisthenics and what amounted to child labor in the afternoons. We dug trenches, built staircases, cleaned the property, cleaned students sheets, cleaned dumpsters with a toothbrush, carried downed telephone polls from one location to turn right back around and take them where they had been, and we did writing assignments. Things such as a 30 page life story, 10 pages on why you held hands with someone, 5 pages defining what oppositional meant. All this was meant to be therapeutic. I stayed out of trouble for about 4 months until I got restrictions for being in a relationship. Relationships here meant hand holding in secret, whispering and just basic human contact. Some obviously went further than others but we were teenagers with no freedom or semblance of teen child hood. When I got to restrictions the first time I knew it was bad. I was out of shape being degraded by military personnel. I was called every name under the sun. I was fed moldy cheese sandwiches and warm Gatorade that at times had been peed in. Eating was already rough as sometimes you had 5 min for an entire meal and sometimes you missed a meal due to chores. The food was mediocre but on restrictions it got worse. We were marched around campus and told to do random chores all while being barked at by people who