My "Misery Horrors"
by Yvonne (Kincaid) Fava

Hi guys...this was the paper on MP that I wrote when I was in college (2004).  Some of you have asked about MP and this is the easiest way to explain...

Misery Horrors

        This is a paper on the place called Mountain Park in Misery (Missouri) that has left adults 10+ years later still to suffer from nightmares and PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and such like.  My experience with this behavior modification boarding school began in October, 1994, almost 10 years ago, after my parents sent me there to get me away from the friends I had that they did not approve of.
        This paper was going to serve as an information tool to enlighten at least one more person in the world of the atrocities that take place there.  But fortunately, as of the end of May, 2004, Mountain Park and their sister school in Florida, Palm Lane, finally closed their doors for the last time. 
        Some of the various headlines read: Murder at Mountain Park, 3 Being Held in Boarding School Death, Takeover Plot Cited in Killing at School, Officer Investigates School Where Teen was Slain, No trespassing, Several Students Leave Academy, Schools for Troubled Spring Up Around U.S., Students Planned Cult Says Sheriff, Youth Gets Life in School Murder and Reform Schools Find A Haven Here.
        Mountain Park was well built and tidy.  Their strict routines and discipline governed our lives.  The campus was in a very secluded location in Patterson, Missouri.  Mountain Park began in 1987 when owners, Bob and Betty Wills, left the state of Mississippi after some of the students at the boarding school they ran there, Bethesda, were taken away from them under state insight due to court order because of paddling pregnant young girls and detaining a 19-year-old against her will.  They refused the state regulation that Mississippi began to require of them and fled to Missouri, bought property and named their new school Mountain Park Baptist Church and Boarding Academy.
        During my stay and before the murder of Will Futrelle, there was on average, 30 boys and 200 girls.  The girls and boys had no contact with each other.  The boys were allowed to look at us but we were forbidden to even glance their way.  The boys lived in a two-story rustic-wood building that looked like a farmhouse with a large porch.  Their bunk beds were on the second floor in an open room.  There was no fence around their dorm.
        Up the hill, the girls had a two-story brick dormitory that had interior connections to the office, school and the dining hall.  We had (at one time) five different large open rooms with bunk beds for the 200 girls.  Some girls had mattresses on beds and some had to put their mattresses on the floor to sleep.  After the murder of one student by two other students in 1996, we eventually went down to four dorms as parents started taking their children away from the school.  Our walls were covered in flowered wallpaper and our sinks and counters as we called them included about five sinks in a line with a large mirror above them.  Our beds had to be neatly made and tucked in every day so that they were all uniform.  Most of our beds had some type of stuffed animal or something that brought some happiness to us atop them.  When I arrived at Mountain Park, the bathrooms did not have stalls in them.  It was just a large room with five toilets open for everyone to see.  It was still a few months after I was there before they put stalls in them, but still no doors.
        Some of the staff lived in houses nearby and some actually lived in apartments in the same building as the girls dormitories.
        The windows in our dorms (the few we had most of them in the hallway) were made of thick unbreakable, not able to be seen through, glass blocks. We had two courtyards one with basketball goals and one with a swimming pool which were surrounded by high barbed wire.  We were locked in so, the only way in and out of the girls dorm was with a key.
        When we were taken there, we were made to take a shower while the staff or other students took our clothes and sent them back home if they believed the clothes were ungodly.  We were made to put lice lotion on us and drink worm medicine.  All new students were placed on orientation where they could not be more than an arms length away from their orientation guide.  This typically lasted two to three months.  Communication with their parents was not allowed until after the third week of schooling had been completed.  Then every two weeks after that, the student was allowed a phone call from their parent.  Incoming and outgoing mail was screened.  Our schedule was very rigid and strict consisting of Bible reading in the morning, standing in line for meals with our Bibles in hand, cleaning, school, lunch, school, more cleaning, showers, dinner, Bible study, cleaning and bed.  Our education consisted of  PACEs and Videos.  Our punishments included swats, lines and privileges taken away (such as snacks, our movie night which was Friday, going outside, communicating with others).
        The tactics used by Mountain Park to try to turn rebellious teenagers around were thought control, humiliation, degradation and punishment.  They hide behind a front of so called Christianity while in all truthfulness, they are a cult.  Once a staff member left from there to pursue other career opportunities, etc., they were never welcome to come back or even allowed to speak to the ones that were still there.
        They encouraged racism and hostility amongst the students.  They encouraged male students to beat and ridicule other male students who misbehaved.  One of the girls had shampoo that doubled as a body wash.  She got out of the shower one day and the Shower Monitor (we had exactly 10 minutes to take a shower so they appointed one of the students Shower Monitor to monitor our time; sometimes we got to take hot showers and sometimes we had to take cold showers) noticed that the bag with the bar of soap in it was dry.  She was immediately taken to Mama's (Betty Wills) office.  She tried to explain that she could use it as both but they just laughed at her.  Debbie Gerhardt (the owners' daughter she was in her 40s at the time) told her if she would not wash herself, then she (Debbie) would do it for her.  The girl told her that she did wash and Debbie told her that she was lying.  She got her first set of 10 swats that day.  Then Debbie proceeded to take her back to the dorm where she made her get back in the shower and WATCHED her shower again. Debbie told her she had bruises from the paddle and that it was a good thing because maybe whenever she sat down, she would remember that she would get punished for lying.  To top all of this off, she also had to wear a necklace with a soap box as a jewel and carry around the baby chair which was a step stool they gave to the students they felt were acting like babies and made them carry and sit in them wherever they went.  She had to do this for at least a month.
        Another student was pushed in the pool by Debbie after the staff found out she was lying about not being able to swim.  Then Debbie told all the girls to splash their legs in the pool while she had another girl race her doing laps in the pool.
        In 2004, Jordan Blair was awarded $20,000.00 in a lawsuit after staff member, Bo Gerhardt (son of Debbie Gerhardt), pushed him up against a sink in the boys dorm.
        On June 26, 1987, the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment became effective, and was ratified by 20 nations at that time.  The US signed it in 1990 but it obviously does not uphold this treaty.  Article 1 states torture can be defined as physical and/or mental.  Our torture was mainly mental but some do have medical problems and did receive bruises from the swats they received.
        Some have said, "They took away everything and anything that you once believed were important to you, down to your ability to express your emotions who you are and how you feel".
        "You come out of Mountain Park confused and lost", one person said, "because you dont know anything anymore".
        Mountain Park has been praised by pleased families and damned by former students and government officials at the same time.  For past students, Mountain Park is a sinister ditch we cannot ascend out of.  Our stories are constant with one another and are oftentimes backed up by court documents and news reports chronicling more than two decades of the school.  We call ourselves survivors.  We keep in touch mainly through means of the internet.
        This place took three years of my life.  I was 15 years old when I was sent there and 18 years old when I graduated and got to leave.  Still, today, I have nightmares from that place they have locked me in again and I can't get out or they have my children and I am not allowed to see them or get them back.  Remembering how to interact with the real world was a struggle.  I could not look a male in the eyes, I thought it was weird to see a school bus driving down the road and I could not make decisions on my own and still struggle with that issue today.
        Thank God this place is closed but there are other schools just like it that have stemmed from a man by the name of Lester Roloff.  The most horrifying thing is that not even those closest to us can fully understand what we endured during our stay at Mountain Park.  These are my Misery Horrors.