My Dad told me many times to leave - and I wish I had listened.
FullCircle Program Survivor: 2020 - 2021
I joined the group after 14 months in a RTC (Residential Treatment Center) program. I was brought in by a childhood friend and at first I loved it. There was a whole bunch of people telling me they loved me and giving me cigs and nicotine. They all seemed so happy and like they actually enjoyed their life and I wanted that after being sad for so long.
At first it was good but then they kept trying to control every single thing about my life. Who I was talking to, what I would wear, how long I should do this and that. When I decided to join the Group my parents initially hated it. My dad told me many times to leave - and I wished I had listened.
I watched kids put frogs in water bottles at camp out and spin them around, they would stab them, throw them in the fire, skip them like rocks or just straight up kill them for fun. The head of the Program knew about this and knew which kids were doing it, and none of the staff did anything about it.
Another one was "fun felonies." The Group would destroy property and trespass. They almost took out power to a whole city once during tire rolling. Those are big things that parents need to watch out for. There are also some more subtle things, like the slut shaming and victim blaming.
I knew multiple girls in the program who were harassed or sexually assaulted, and they were the ones punished - not the boys who did it to them.
There was a lot of weird sex stuff. Staff would ask weird questions about specific details and also shame specific things in regards to those details. I was “forced” (I use that word for lack of a better term) to share my life story with people that I was uncomfortable with and I was force to share uncomfortable and traumatic things to people and in meetings.
Luckily when I left, I had my parents support. But I lost all of my social support and “friends” that I had in the Group. It was isolating but freeing just for the fact that I felt like I could breathe finally.
I was diagnosed with BPD after leaving the Group and was finally able to get the help that I needed. I will do everything I can to make sure nobody ever goes through what I went through or watched my friends go through.
