A Survivor's Story, The Begening

It was 2000 when I was admitted to Island View Residential Treatment Center in Utah. I was 15 years old and fresh out of a wilderness program that I actually would recomend. My first two days there were spent isolated on the unit. The fourth of July was my first day off the unit. The next morning, I was falsely accused of having carved a heart in to a mirror on Gold Team's unit. I had done it, according to the ones doing the accusing, because I had gone in to the bathroom alone while the team was on bathroom buddies, a fact that I was never informed of. Further incriminating evidence, in their eyes, was the fact that I had a nightshirt with a heart on it and had drawn hearts on my little comment box that hung outside my room.

For three days, the entire team was held in the group room. At first, it was nothing but a barage of insults and false accusations made against me by both staff and residents. I was accused of lying over and over again, even when I was in tears, swearing my innocence. After the first day, we were not allowed to speak for any reason. Staff claimed that it was to make the guilty party (supposedly me) confess. We ate our food, usually cold by the time we got it, from styrafoam containers. Each night, we were sent to bed in total silence. When the staff finally realized that they were not going to get the confession that they wanted, they let us leave the room. However, for the next two months, we were not allowed to be in the bathroom without at least two other residents or a staff member present. To this day, I can not help but over react when I am falsely accused - or believe that I am being falsely accused - of something, or when I am accused of lying.

Also for those months, I had to live with the stigma of being the girl who vandalized Island View property and lied about it within her first days there. Each week during the major group session (I can't remember the name of it), I was attacked by the same three or four girls via their "helpful" slips. They were seen as being leaders because they were "helping" the new girl face her "issues", while I was seen as a lier, amongst other things. Approximately five months in to my stay, two months after the girl who had really done it had been released to go home, a girl who was still there recived a letter from this girl - I'll call her M. This letter not only stated, but gloated about, the fact that M had been the one to carve the heart in to the mirror and that she had accused me so that she could get away with it and still be allowed to go home. Even once knowledge of M's actions reached staff, no one ever apologized to me.

And that's just part of what I went through in my first few months there.