I was a student/prisoner of Mountain Park from January 5, 1992 until July 23, 1994. I’ll never forget those dates as long as I live. I was sent there directly from New Bethany Home for Girls in Louisiana after that home shut down temporarily due to child abuse. Originally, I was sent away as a way to keep me quiet. My mother’s husband was 15 years older than she was, and married her because he liked young girls. My mother was looking for a status symbol, a husband to help her identify herself, and chose to ignore the obvious. To this day I don’t know if she has ever believed me when I have told her time and again what happened when she would be at work or elsewhere and he was home alone with me. At 14, I finally chose to speak out, seeking help through local DHS agencies and even trying to reach my pastor for help. My mother told me I was just being selfish and trying to make her miserable. She asked me, “Why can’t you just let me be happy for once?” After one especially bad fight at home, I ran away to a friend’s house and asked his parents for help. My mother and her husband found me and stuck me in the local youth shelter while they decided what to do. On August 21, 1991, I was told we were going on a family vacation to New Orleans. I was picked up from the youth shelter and driven to New Bethany. I was there for 6 months before it was discovered that the pastor/owner was molesting several of the other girls. Instead of bringing me home, my mother took the advice of child abusers and took me directly to Mountain Park instead. I was not given a choice, I was not given a trial, I was not given a voice at all. My mother and her husband didn’t want me at home anymore and sent me there to get rid of me. I am from a small town in Oklahoma; I had never been in trouble. I had been an honor student. I had never been to a party, never smoked or drank or done drugs; I’d never even been on a date. There was no logical reason that I should have been in a school for troubled teens. My mother claimed to everyone at home that I was in danger and that if I hadn’t been sent away I would have ended up on drugs or pregnant within a year. For the life of me I don’t understand how she could have told such lies and not felt any remorse. She told the same pack of lies to my family for so long that even today I feel intimidated by my own family members. Mountain Park was nobody’s answer. Yes, there were some girls and probably boys as well who were there and needed some sort of help. Mountain Park simply was not that help. The school was run by some backwards hillbillies from Mississippi who believed that belittling someone and breaking them down into nothing and then using cult tactics to brainwash them into their way of thinking was going to help us in the long run. The low self-esteem I suffered from as a child of abuse at home was nothing compared to the worthlessness I felt under the abuse of the owners and staff of Mountain Park. It was common place for a staff member to call you out in front of your peers and simply go off on a tirade of your personal shortcomings and berate and belittle you until they felt like stopping. During the teen years, when a child’s self-esteem and self worth are formed and they are beginning to find their place in the world and shape who they will become, these people took it upon themselves to make us feel worthless, and told us repeatedly that we were nothing and that our parents sent us there because they no longer wanted us. We were told that any problems our families went through were because we were not good enough, because we were evil. One speech given by Betty Wills stands out to me in particular. I had only been at the school for about six months and she came into the school room unexpectedly and stood before the girls. Someone had obviously come to her to speak of a similar situation to the one I went through before I came in. She told us “I don’t want to know about your past. If your dad or someone sexually abused you, I don’t want to hear about it. That’s something private and personal that you should never tell anyone. I would be embarrassed for you to tell me something like that. Keep your mouths shut.” How dare this woman? If a child has had their innocence stolen from them by someone, they have every right to speak out. As a person in authority over them, she had a duty to speak out for the child who came to her in confidence. The rules were unwritten. The staff members could simply walk up to you at will and point out something you were doing or wearing or saying that they didn’t like and decide it wasn’t allowed. Years later, I was shown a copy of a parent/student handbook that the parents were given. The students had no idea they even existed. The rules in there were never told to us, simply made up as they went along, and changed rapidly, based on their ever changing “convictions”. My only visit home during my almost three years there,
I had been home for Christmas when I was 15. New Years Day 1993, I had
been home with my stepthing while my mom was
at work. His favorite pass-time was to sit around in the living room
naked, watching tv and playing with himself while I was home, and leering
at me when I'd walk by going between my room and the kitchen. Of course
I was uncomfortable, I was a teenage girl! He was 50, and looked 60!
My mom saw nothing wrong with him sitting around naked with her teenage
daughter in the house, which I've never understood. On that New Year's Day, during my visit home, I had
been sitting in their bedroom watching tv
because I didn't want to be in the living room with him while he was
naked. Several times that day he came in there to perch in the doorway
of the room and ask "Whatcha doin?"
posed with a hand on his hip like he thought he was being cute. Each
time I'd keep my eyes on the tv
and say, "Watching videos". After about 3 such times, he finally
came in the room, wedged himself between me and the tv and then plopped down on the bed behind me. Now,
they had a king-sized water bed in this room, and the tv was sitting on a cabinet, so there
was only about 4 inches between me and the tv
while I was sitting on the edge of the bed. So he had to be right in
my face to squeeze through. Earlier that week, I had wanted some roller blades
for christmas, I found a pair for $100 at walmart on sale, and
I'd gotten $50 for christmas from family members,
so I asked my mom for the other half of the money since i
had no way of saving up and had to go back to school in a few days.
She had said that I could ask her husband, and maybe I could earn the
money by helping to dig post holes in the backyard for the fence they
were putting up. He had never answered me about that until New Years
Day - 2 days before I was supposed to fly back. So when he plopped down
on the bed and started playing with himself, he looked up at me and
said, 'So.... what are you planning to do to earn that fifty bucks?" I went in my room and pushed my daybed in front of
the door, and waited for my mom to come home. He was a different person
when she was around, which attributed to her not believing me. She came
home and started packing my suitcase for my return to MP. I stood in
the doorway to my room and begged her, "Please mom, don't send
me back there, can we please talk about this?" I begged for about 5 minutes, and he walked up behind
me quietly. I didn't know he was there, and he pushed me by the back
of my head and said, "You're going back there. We don't want you
here." I ignored him and pleaded with my mom, but she just ignored
me and kept packing. He said, "Deb, get on the phone and call the
school. Tell them she's trying to run away." I was in my bedroom, nowhere near the front door, not
trying to run at all. They knew if they told them I'd tried to run away
that I would get in more trouble when I got back to the school. He sent
her out to the garage to get some ropes - the scratchy kind you use
for water skiing. They held me down and stripped me down to my bra and
underwear- his idea of course- because he said that would keep me from
trying to run away. Then they tied me to my daybed and sat on me. He
sat on my legs and my mother sat on my stomach/chest and when I screamed
for help she shoved a stuffed animal in my mouth and said, "It's
not my fault you're posessed". They called the pastor and he came to the house. He
made them give me my clothes back and then sat down and talked to me
for a few moments. Then he went in the living room to talk to my mother
and her husband. After about ten minutes with them he came back and
looked me in the eye and said, "Now tell me the truth, Angie, that
didn't really happen, did it?" I will never forgive that man. Not
only did he ignore my cry for help, he let my abusers borrow his car
and got a deacon from the church to drive with them so they could drive
me straight back to MP overnight instead of putting me on a plane the
next day in case I "tried to run again". Once I got back to the school I was branded a failure.
I had my privileges that I'd earned by being there over my year stripped
from me and was put back on "orientation" status. I had to
be within arm's length of another girl at all times for three months.
I was treated like I was one of the worst troubled kids they had there,
and yet I had done nothing wrong. I wanted help, I needed help, to get
away from my abuser, and yet I was punished for speaking out, and punished
again by the school that my abuser sent me to. The very people who profess kindness to others, who claim to live to serve Christ and use His love and teachings to reach troubled children were the tormentors who helped my abusers get away with their crimes. Now it's too late to do anything about my abusers, but I can put the truth out there by telling my story and letting others know what really happens to children who are put behind those walls. Angela
M. Landers-Collier |