Each year, its estimated that 50,000 kids are forced into residential treatment programs against their will, either placed there through foster care, the Department of Education, mental health services, or by their own parents, according to Breaking Code Silence, an initiative organized by survivors and activists to raise awareness of the Troubled Teen Industry. As an 18 year old ADULTI WAS LIVING MY LIFE DEPENDING ON HOW MANY POINTS I GOT ON A FLAT CARDSTOCK PIECE OF FUCKING PAPER SO THAT MAYBE IF I MADE ENOUGH POINTS THAT DAY FOR DOING GOOD THINGS I COULD HAVE MY PRIVILEGES for the night and get to eat night snack which was a single serving portion of whatever was planned. Eva Carlston Academy is a residential treatment program designed to help teenage girls grow and improve while overcoming the difficulties of emotional and behavioral disorders. I have a history of sexual abuse, so this was particularly terrifying to me. ECA bases its campus culture, or milieu, on the Family Teaching Model made popular by Boys Town. At least some of the programs seem intent on maintaining the silence that allows the Troubled Teen Industry to thrive. However, this particular implementation of the model is punitive and had a corrosive effect on our daughter. Salt Lake City, UT Residential Treatment Center History and Background Information Eva Carlston Academy is . Some staff would threaten us with the causes of getting in trouble if we didnt do something they wanted us too. I also had my wisdom teeth removed while I was at ECA. at the end of Eva I had severe issues with food. There was and is a girl there that has put other people in danger over and over again wether that be throwing windex at someones head. At Eva Carlston Academy, this is something that we utilize within our organization to ensure top care, and safety, and to create an optimal treatment plan. As survivors of these institutions continue to speak out, the movement toward reforming them is growing ever stronger. When we went swimming we were forced to leave in wet swimsuits with wet hair because there was no time to change. The staff treats the girls abusively with extreme amounts of intimidation. You got 500 points for every good thing you did like going to workout in the morning, raising your hand in school, introducing yourself to someone new, doing your room chore in the morning(holy shit I need to come back to that part later wowwwza). If you accept the attack, its seen as a good thing. I could write a book about this place. the tactics they pulled bordered on conversion therapy if you didnt knuckle down and let them shut you up. sorry got a little off track again. Except Eva Carlston Academy punishes the gardener for months and brainwashes them into thinking the dandelion is a flower instead of a weed. The girls are away from their families and in a very vulnerable time of their lives.The school tries to give them discipline, but ultimately it is a cold, cruel system of punishment that I believe severely damages the children psychologically. The students are consistently underfed (our daughter was rail thin upon graduation and developed an eating disorder after learning to ignore her hunger signals for a year). It is marketed as a Residential Treatment Center for teenage girls aged 12-18. NO ONE should be here talk about loss of education. Even our daughters therapist snuck in food for her to eat during therapy sessions. Over a year ago, I willingly came into this program depressed, anxious, and suffering from an eating disorder and dissociative identity disorder (the latter was, at the time, undiagnosed) no behavioral problems. They only show five-star reviews on the website, and only positive reviews are highlighted in the blurb you see upon searching Eva Carlston Academy. . If you do get lucky enough to go on an outing, youll get severe punishments for even looking in the same direction of a male. A consequence was -2000 points on the daily level and those consequences were given for things like forgetting your water bottle for morning workout, not opening your blinds in your room in the morning, not making your bed neat enough, having holes in your socks, the list of minute stupid tiny little baby fucking joke bad things you could get a consequence for goes on and on. They are underfed or sometimes force fed to the point of nausea. CORE stands for Customized Objectives and Realistic Expectations; which emphasizes our individual approach to helping parents meet their goals. 13. as low as 10 serving size or 13 is NOT ENOUGH FOR 16 PEOPLE!!!! I can barely mop the floor without wanting to cry from the memories of what they did. The staff make girls work out every day, yet dont feed us enough food. The rest of it was not only unhelpful for me but harmful and traumatic. I still get panic attacks, flashbacks, and terrible anxiety filled thoughts. I would love for someone to call up the ed consultant and pose as a parent to see if they recommend it. I was at Eva Carlston back in 2013. Once enrolled, girls can expect to . but the other outings we went on were going to symphonies, art galleries, walking around the ginormous mormon church in downtown salt lake, and sometimes if we were lucky going to hockey games. I've been gone from there something like three years and I have nightmares to this day about the cold cruelty I was treated with daily. To avoid punishment, our child gave us inaccurate descriptions of how she was feeling. These are just a few examples of what happened to me while I was there. Our students are encouraged to support one another despite possible differences, and to interact in a way that fosters mutual growth and healing. We were forced to do everything and it was horrid. Once, when she was nearly faint for lack of food, she begged staff for a snack the Family Teacher on shift gave her 3 Wheat Thins to assuage her hunger. I cant speak for every graduate, but I have had the privilege to stay in touch with many alumnae, most of whom I was able to get to know quite well at ECA. They told me I was asking for special privileges. WHATV THE FUCK. If you are in an urgent situation and need help call 911. Constant anxiety. The staff seemed more like prison guards. I only lasted about a month because of how absolutely awful it was. Most of them needed love, affection, and attention (in my opinion). It was overwhelming, the type of abuse we all experienced. Some of the worst experiences were just random punishments that the staff would give us and these things called interventions that they would put us on, she explains. they constantly left me and went into the other room and sometimes even got mad at me for not following me even though I didnt know they were leaving me and it was there fucking job to watch me not my job to follow them around. It should be noted that while they advertise that they are able to treat girls with eating disorders, they cannot. Based on our family's experience, our educational consultant says she will no longer refer families to this program. Sue Johansen-Hoffman is the Clinical Director of Eva Carlston Academy. They put so much shit on our shoulders that we cant take. If you needed to be sent to a different floor of the house a staff screams out to another staff member. I must speak my truth even if this comment is deleted my Kristi Ragsdale . This place will steal your soul. , Eva Carlston Academys website has been carefully designed to depict their residential treatment center as a caring and nurturing environment where teenage girls can feel physically and emotionally safe enough to process and recover from trauma and mental illness. Eva Carlston Academy Survivors. Little did I know it was part of Kristi Ragsdales elaborate scheme to reel in all of the wealthiest troubled teens she could and make it seem like there was no possible way of any kind of abuse going on at her facilities. After researching this facility we had the impression this would be a nurturing and supportive environment for our child to continue her growth and development as she was exhibiting depression and anxiety. We were referred to this program by a highly-experienced and well-regarded educational consultant. Certain staff were very disrespectful but we couldnt speak up about it because we would get in trouble if we did. No matter how girls who were there behaved, they left with regrets. Eva Carlston became a NATSAP member in 2015. as low as 10 serving size or 13 is NOT ENOUGH FOR 16 PEOPLE!!!! I actually continue to have nightmares and anxiety specifically from my experience at Eva Carlston. A lot of times I would be really hungry during the day and I struggled to manage my emotions because of that. Eva Carlston did not respond to Refinery29s request for comment about interventions or under-feeding residents, citing HIPAA laws. We got phone calls with our parents for 15 minutes and if we went over they would grab the phone from our hands wether or not we said goodbye. The campus contains three houses, in which anywhere from 12 to 16 girls live. Rae, for instance, successfully ran away from Spring Ridge Academy, but was found by police within 48 hours, an experience she recounts on her TikTok page. Every phone call I was allowed which was only once a week for 15 minutes, I couldnt tel. Every day I counted my card every 5 minutes and brainstormed constantly about how I was going to make enough points for the day so I could eat an extra 100 calories or so after dinner and chat nervously with my friends. For these reasons, it is rare for a student to complain about the program for fear of being reported and punished. If a student loses too much weight, she is fed Ensure rather than being allowed to eat more food. Which was to write down a consequence for asking when I could pack my bags(yes the night before they would still not allow me access to my luggage to pack) so I walked upstairs without asking, to my bedroom and started reading a book and ignoring the staff trying to tell me to write down numbers on a fuck piece of cardstock. I was taking a longer time that was normal for me and the girl said let me see and snatched my paper and then our interaction ended in -2,000 points because I was taking too long. However, this particular implementation of the model is punitive and had a corrosive effect on our daughter. Dec 23. . The dietary restrictions at ECA are incomprehensible. Says Eva Carlston's therapist, Ashlee Jacobs. It broke my heart to see what you all went through. The girls are punished for complaining and rewarded for reporting other students infractions. My name is . I felt so much love for you all and I really hope your life improved after that horrible experience. They locked it in a closet and never let me use it. then I told my therapist I was experiencing these things and she gave me the same look everyone else was giving me. Someone had to sit next to you while you ate to make sure that you finished ALL of it even though you were not required too. It was supposed to be my golden year, I had missed junior prom to go to wildy, I was about to have my 18th birthday, finally go to prom that I had somehow missed every year, and soak up all the final moments with my best friends before heading off to college.HAAHA what a fucking joke. Even so, theres a lot of work to be done: On March 12, the Montana Senate Public Health, Welfare and Safety committee tabled Senate Bill 312, which aimed to close a loophole that allows religious residential treatment programs to operate without any state oversight. You might wonder why there are so many positive reviews of this place readily available on the Academys website and other places on the internet. okay last big part of this. One staff member took a picture of my back. It has a maximum enrollment of 44, and the average length of stay is reported to be around 12 months. Aswell as we were force fed. This was my fucking reality not too long ago. Our students may have experienced devastating trauma, clinical depression, loss, anxiety, or personality disorders. There were very few things that I look back and think were therapeutic at all, frankly. a teenager doesnt want to go to a symphony or art gallery, let alone a teenager that is in a fucking treatment center. It is worth noting that many of the positive reviews are from parents, written shortly after their daughters discharge from the program. One day a girl had asked several times to use the restroom but was denied. Theyre using their voices and their platforms no matter the size to speak about their experiences past and present. During a typical hot seat session at Eva Carlston, Kyra says, one person gets up in front of the entire group and we all go around and tell them what is wrong with them. Girls were forced to starve themselves because everyone had to take measuring cup servings. The school Rae attended is called Spring Ridge Academy and was founded by a woman named Jeannie Courtney, who had reportedly previously worked in some capacity with Cross Creek Manor, a since-shuttered behavior modification program in St. George, UT that has faced a number of lawsuits (some of which are still ongoing) over its alleged mistreatment of students. so yeah if I wouldve stayed there for the rest of my junior year then senior year I would have failed all my classes no doubt about it. oh also on saturdays we either did photography, acting at SLAC, or volunteer work(shoveling, intense cleaning, taking down christmas lights. It completely destroyed the concept of intuitive eating for me.. Not one word that you've written is remotely new to us; the same thing happens day in, day out, across many hundreds of facilities in the U.S. We were referred to this program by a highly-experienced and well-regarded educational consultant. i left with severe PTSD and a deep wariness of all therapists. Group therapy offers a unique opportunity for girls to find their place and their voice within a peer group. They are underfed or sometimes force fed to the point of nausea. With regards to the schooling, there were more negative points given for bad grades than positive points when good grades were achieved. you wouldnt be allowed to speak to anyone, read a book, write in your journal, or do anything except silently work on assignments and ask for more. They only show five-star reviews on the website, and only positive reviews are highlighted in the blurb you see upon searching Eva Carlston Academy. The only part of this program that was helpful was the individual therapy. This led to severe emotional harm as I was restricted in telling my parents what I was experiencing and was manipulated to hold it in. The portions are very controlled, she tells Refinery29. Paris Hilton didnt set out to become the face of a movement. Talk about horrific inculcation. She currently still works as the Executive Director of Eva Carlston. Believe it or not there was a lot I couldnt even cover because Im typing on an LG tablet and the autocorrect is driving me too crazy to go back and edit and add more for now . This system has been used in many confirmedly abusive programs, including the notoriously abusive WWASP programs. okay there are so many fucked up things in that equation. Together we can make a difference! Treatment always works better when its integrated with real world situations. Im an adult now in my mid 20s, doing well in life, and happy, thanks to the years of therapy Ive been through to resolve the trauma and PTSD I gained while at ECA. Mine is not the only complaint that they have received about ECA. We had to eat every bit of food on our plates in a specified time frame, for example breakfast was required to be finished within 10 minutes including preparation. Find people working at Eva Carlston Academy. My daughter has been incarcerated there, with no access to proper authorities, her family and the world. its like a weird subtraction system that I never got on and it never made sense to me. Address: 4943 S Wasatch Boulevard, Salt Lake City, Utah 84124. You may not believe this, but I swear to you that it is the truth. I would never send my child here. I will say that staff there(not including the owner and founder, Kristi Ragsdale) are mainly caring people, but they cant help when the entire program is behavior based. , I dont even know where to begin with this place. This impression was reinforced during our tour. If you self harmed they made you sleep on a fucking camping cot in the living room with the full overhead lights on with a staff right next to you. Dont send your kid here please. , Nightmares and panic attacks are commonplace among my friends after having left. We got phone calls with our parents for 15 minutes and if we went over they would grab the phone from our hands wether or not we said goodbye. A handful of family teachers were abusive and used shame and humiliation in addition to an extreme focus on negative consequences. I wasnt there to clean Kristis fuckin house. It's through a combination of sophisticated therapy, mentorship, the arts, and experiential learning that . Another girl who graduated with our daughter dropped from a size 6/8 to 00 pants during her time in the program. Girls were denied social interaction for up to 24 hours or longer (mine lasted almost 6 weeks once) and expected to stay sane. It is a critical developmental task for adolescents to seek their identity and place in a peer group. This means that she loses a certain number of points, usually between 2,000 and 20,000. AWFUL and no one should be in a place like this. Makes sense that parents would appreciate the company that relieved them of 12-18 months of parenting responsibilities. You must accept it even if you strongly disagree. If you call the Utah State Department of Licensing and ask to hear what reports were filed against the program, you'll be told that a patient was slapped by a staff member. They need to be shut down, Hilton tells Refinery29, speaking about what she describes as the strikingly abusive facilities. She would know: During her teen years, in the late 1990s, Hilton not only spent time at Provo Canyon, but also several other youth treatment centers. Terrible. Apply to Counselor, Peer Counselor, Sheriff and more! That same student, alleges Rayburn, tried to hang herself in her bedroom one night. or being more efficient with day to day activities. One day a girl had asked several times to use the restroom but was denied. okay so all in all. All residents are fed a highly low-fat diet with strict portion control. They are given a very short amount of time to eat the food given, which often times causes them to vomit due to this added stress; again this results in another negative consequence. I remember I had terrible eczema while I was there (due to high stress). Kay recalls that one of the most insidious parts of her time in the program centered around eating. The rest of it was not only unhelpful for me but harmful and traumatic. Anonymous (Niche), 8/6/2020: (SURVIVOR) hi so i went to eva carlston and got pulled my 82nd day. i cant imagine how horrible it would be to go through. You needed to make 10000 points by 5 pm every day.do the math. I am doing deep trauma work in therapy just to work through ECA. Im an adult now in my mid 20s, doing well in life, and happy, thanks to the years of therapy Ive been through to resolve the trauma and PTSD I gained while at ECA. I speak from my own experience and as someone in college studying psychology. My ridiculous plan was to jump off the balcony and injure myself so I could go to the hospital and get out of there. Cat's Story. Individual therapy helps students discover new ways to understand their difficulties and develop new skills for successfully addressing those difficulties. If you are LGBTQ and need support, call the Trevor Project Hotline 1-866-488-7386, If you are having suicidal thoughts, call toll free 1-800-273-8255 or text HOME to 741741, If you are a child being abused or know of a child being abused call toll free 1-800-422-4453. Therapists are in and out, and staff are fired if they show empathy or sympathy to the girls. At Eva Carlston Academy, we believe that our long-term mental health is well served by knowing how to have fun! so I had to come up with three options, disadvantages and advantages. Eva Carlston Academy reviews ways to helps teens find their unique place in the world, find their guiding passions, and achieve a sense . If you want to learn more or to make a formal complaint about your experience, or your child's experience, you can reach them by calling: 801/538-4242. They earn their money by selling kids to the highest bidder. throwing desks, screaming, throwing a vacuum at someone, throwing pots and pans and telling people to shut up when that is not her place. I was in a juvenile detention center before ECA and I can honestly say I got treated better there and had more rights. We are now college students and are working on an article about how platforms like this subreddit and #BreakingCodeSilence are impacting how survivors, their parents, program staff, and the general public understands the TTI. It's just an overwhelming amount of carelessness when it comes to taking care of kids that you're supposed to take care of. Spokespeople for Spring Ridge and Eva Carlston declined to comment on these specific incidents. In February 2021, Hilton spoke out in support of the bill. They were treated like criminals and the worst was always assumed about their actions. It was shameful and miserable. When their treatment model is, and has always been, based on aggressive behavior modification which results in punitive and humiliating punishment and abuse, reform can only take us so far., The ultimate goal, Hilton says, should be to implement increased oversight and regulation, reporting procedures, and training for frontline staff so the programs that are abusive will reveal themselves and states can make educated recommendations to intervene for the safety of children., We want children to be protected and safe. they constantly left me and went into the other room and sometimes even got mad at me for not following me even though I didnt know they were leaving me and it was there fucking job to watch me not my job to follow them around. I would get sick and throw up all the time because I would be stuffing my face with food when I was full, she remembers. okay so in school you could get consequences for getting below a 70% on a quiz / test. I have seen many girls, including myself, graduate and very quickly relapse into old, or even new and more severe, behaviors. In fact, if you refuse to eat or take too much food, you can be punished. There was a lot of shame-based stuff there., Rae also describes attending group therapy sessions known as feedback that involved anywhere from 10 to 70 students. We were given no choice with regards to the daily workout; we were forced to participate in the preselected program or we would receive negative consequences. Eva Carlston Academy is a drug rehab facility in Salt Lake City, Utah. its like a weird subtraction system that I never got on and it never made sense to me. Your readers and viewers can hear directly from some of our students and parents by visiting our Spring Ridge Academy YouTube Channel., Neither Rae nor Hubbells stories are outliers many former residents of Troubled Teen programs report similar experiences with questionable therapy techniques, some of which are reminiscent of Synanons The Game. However, this particular implementation of the model is punitive and had a corrosive effect on our daughter. Thank you for loving your daughter enough to see the harm, to believe her, and to stand up for her. After I got my parents to come visit me for 3 days after not seeing them for 5 months. Courtney did not respond to Refinery29s request for comment. im sure the more classically rebellious teens had it far worse they were the ones who got restrained, and that was horrible enough to witness. This is a punishment based program, to an extreme. so I told my closed friend about the delusions and then it eventually got spread across the house and everyone was treating me like I was crazy which I was already treating myself like that. Ive seen a lot of girls come in and out, never got better, only worse. Whatever therapeutic benefit there was, was trumped by the emotional abuse and cruel treatment as mentioned above. they rated her every night like she was a yelp review. Often you would then be late to wherever you were going, which resulted in you receiving a minimum negative consequence of -5000. A handful of family teachers were abusive and used shame and humiliation in addition to an extreme focus on negative consequences. Family therapy helps the student, and all family members, learn effective ways to interact, resolve conflicts, and heal. According to one survivor, if you didnt make enough points in one day (generally either 10,000 or 5,000 depending on level in the program), you had to sit in a silent room working on essays such as the importance of managing anxiety and the importance of accepting no or making what were essential pro and cons lists on dealing with inane situations. There arent very many good ones out there if any. Not everyone loses so much weight because metabolisms vary. After a while I just plugged my ears and tried to sleep and this one staff started singing right next to me and tapping her foot on the wall to try and get a rise out of me so I put a pillow over my head and she left me a lone. It is NO safe have. okay so all in all. They are silenced as they are abused. at the end of Eva I had severe issues with food. Over a year ago, I willingly came into this program depressed, anxious, and suffering from an eating disorder and dissociative identity disorder (the latter was, at the time, undiagnosed) no behavioral problems. I went to this residential treatment center for adolescent girls called Eva Carlston and if you dont want to read the rest of this post just DONT EVEN THINK ABOUT GOING THERE! It's so important that these reviews are seen by parents and caregivers who are considering residential treatment and are willing to do the research, I hope you also leave reviews elsewhere, this issue needs as much attention as possible to prevent further harm. so you got 250 points for doing your room chore, house chore, and workout. I don't know anyone who can live on 1 cup of cereal and a dozen raspberries. Being told every single day that doing your best isnt enough and you will never be enough takes a toll. They tried to tell me that my parents were going to disown me if I tried to sign myself out and that I would have to live in a homeless shelter where I would probably get raped(no shit though SLC had a nasty homeless population) and that I had been lied to all along about turning 18 and being able to sign myself out. We were stuck in the house every single day expect for maybe a couple hours on saturday and like an hour on friday.
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