I was a rebellious child. My parents decided to send me to the King George School, an “emotional growth boarding school” in Vermont. It was a CEDU school. CEDU was a company founded by members of the cult Synanon, who owned and operated several therapeutic boarding schools and behavior modification programs. Before its bankruptcy, the company’s schools faced numerous allegations of abuse. Here is my story. When I was taken to the school, I was not fully informed what it was. I was told it was an arts school and that I was going to be able to dance. Yes, they had dance classes in the name of “art therapy” but that was not the full picture. When I arrived, they started going through my bags in front of me. I did not understand why I could only choose 5 CDs to keep (so much for an arts therapeutic school promoting music) or why they took away the condoms that, while I was a virgin at the time, my stepmom graciously gifted me so I was prepared when I was ready. I was then strip searched naked and had to jump up and down and cough before being allowed in any other building. The first few days when kids asked me “why are you here?” I answered, “for school…?” I literally had to figure out what this school was all about by putting the pieces together.  I have blocked out many memories from the experience and I wish I could bring them back to fully paint the picture of my life there. Maybe from continuing to do this work, they will come back…for better or for worse. The biggest trauma from the high school was simply having my basic rights taken away, in little ways, daily. Absolutely no physical touch was allowed, so either we were deprived of that need or we would sneak into the cubby room and have a third “watch out” for us. All phone calls to parents were listened to and monitored by staff, so we felt like prisoners who could not speak out against our experience. There were no phone calls allowed to friends. All incoming and outgoing mail was read and any information negative about the school in outgoing mail or “triggering” to us in incoming mail was blacked out. I received pieces of mail from friends where I could only see their intro and sign off. Not that I look down on my friends at all, but it was very traumatic when all of my closest high school friends would casually tell stories about sleeping around for drug money when I hadn’t even drunk alcohol. It was normal to be sitting in class and just seeing someone run down the hall screaming and banging her head against the wall or threatening to self-harm. The students at the school ranged from “my parents don’t know how to parent” to drug addicts to serious mental health disorders. And to be clear, NONE of our staff had therapeutic or social works credentials or even backgrounds. It was just the highest paying job in town. To make this clear, one of our biggest activities was called “raps.” Twice daily we would sit in a circle and talk about what was going on at the school. Mostly it was to call people out for not staying “in code.” In one particular rap, the night before, a bunch of girls were sitting around gossiping and talking about my best friend Zoe (not nice, but as girls do…) Instead of just letting that blow over, in the rap the next day, the counselors decided that the best way to handle this was to have each girl go around the circle and share directly to Zoe what they don’t like about her. Imagine a teenage girl and how traumatic that is.  Academics were a joke. The dance program that I was “there for” was a complete joke. There was a dance teacher that they hired that actively told students that being gay was not okay. Again, teenagers in their formative years and figuring out who they are, being told that they are not okay. I invited her to my presentation for debate class about gay marriage. She was not pleased. They had people going up on pointe before they were strong enough. I saw massive injuries take place in the dance studio. Then, when our dance teachers quit and they did not have anyone to teach the classes, they approached me and asked me to be the dance teacher at my own school. They took me out of art history class, said they would give me a certain grade, and I taught my friends to dance. This was the education that parents were paying money for students to be studying dance. I did not get to explore with rebellion, a development experience for teenagers. I had never been to a house party or a normal prom. After a few months of being at the school, they decided I was still too rebellious and that the reason I was not doing well was because I did not go to a wilderness program before boarding school. They told my parents that the only way they would allow me to stay at the school was if I left, went to a wilderness program, and then came back. But of course, what wilderness program were they pushing on my parents?  Ascent in Northern Idaho, also a CEDU program (owned by the same company as my high school.) You will see in an upcoming documentary, Teens For Profit, how all this money is wrapped up with each other. It’s sick. The worst was when I was sent to the wilderness program. At the program, I was physically and emotionally abused.  We did an exercise where we had to present to our group every bad thing we’d ever done and every major trauma or milestone we went through. I presented and then was asked to step