“You should probably eat something, girl” Cody said to me as we sat in a dark booth at the back of the Denny’s. He was a big man, stalky in build just like Horsehair, except that he had kind eyes. On the ride over to the restaurant, after we’d left my parents house, he sat next to me in the Jeep and looked at me with a strange expression of compassion while I cried…some kind of understanding between the two of us was there, I could feel it.
“I can’t eat” I mumbled.
“What? You really really should eat. You’re not going to get any food for 5 more days! Just eat Alli, you need to..” he started. Horsehair interrupted him with a slam of his fist on the table.
“Don’t say anything else. We’re transporting her. Thats it. Don’t make friends. Just shut up, Cody” Horsehair grumbled at us. “You” he said, pointing at me. “EAT.”
I didn’t eat. I’d just been taken out of my bed at 5 am by 3 strangers, thrown in a Jeep while my parents stood by the back door, not making eye contact with me. They didn’t say goodbye. They couldn’t. They were crying, too. We all were.
After we left the restaurant, I found out that we were heading up to central Utah to a place called Escalanté, also known as Base Camp. I was told that there were other “master manipulators, sluts, indigents, druggies and liars” waiting for us to arrive so that we could get to tee-pee camp by nightfall. We listened to Tracy Chapman on the way there.
You got a fast car
But is it fast enough so we can fly away
We gotta make a decision
We leave tonight or live and die this way
Those words echoed through my entire body as I listened. Suddenly I thought about the reason my parents found it fit to send me there…well, one of the reasons. I was dating a boy named Eddie, he wasn’t LDS, he wasn’t a “good” kid. He was normal. He had issues. I mothered him. I was his best friend. We were inseperable. This caused problems at my house. I wished for him to find me. I started imagining him pulling up in a car, pulling me out of this Jeep and driving us to somewhere else, somewhere nobody could find us.
The Jeep stopped at a clearing in the middle of nowhere. It was 25° and the ground was covered with snow. The moon was so bright it made the whiteness seem like a million diamonds covering the silent earth. It was then I realized I was still wearing my denim shorts, Keds and a t-shirt.
Someone started throwing ponchos at us that we were told to lay out flat. Then went on the military issue wool blanket, layed out. Then, a single water bottle. That was it. We rolled them up, clumsily, and started our hike into the cold, toward the teepee in the distance. We could see a fire inside, and when we got there, we layed down on the hay next to it. They t0ld us in no uncertain terms to keep quiet and go to sleep. We all sat there, staring into the dark. Strangers only moments before, and somehow now bonded as bone. 12 of us, still but children. All of us silent. All of us lost.
Suzy Says:
May 11th, 2005 at 11:17 amVisit Suzy
Thank you for sharing your story. Thank you so much. We are the same age, and I remember hearing about those “camps.”
Larry Says:
August 27th, 2005 at 8:15 pmVisit Larry
I have a friend who’s son was sent to one of the Boot Camps in the late 80s. He was repeatedly sodomized by the staff, as well as other students,Prostituted to local contractors, Beaten when he refused to do assigned tasks, stripped and humiliated (they would make the other students urinate on him and throw feces at him) and otherwise tortured during the four and a half months that he was there. To this day, he has not spoken to his mother, who admitted him without his father’s knowledge (his parents were divorced). It took four and a half months of legal battles for his father to secure his release, and permanent custody. Once the boy was finally returned home, the father entered into a lawsuit against the particular camp, which filed bankruptcy to avoid paying the multi million dollar decision. The camp system has permanently scarred more teens than all the child molesters of the last 20 years. The people responsible for the operation of the camps, including the staff, should all be behind bars and tortured in the same ways that the children were tortured!
lexi Says:
September 20th, 2006 at 3:36 amVisit lexi
i wouldnt agree with what you said about these camps have scarring more children than child molesters over the last 20 years, but i will agree that what has happened here is an outrage.
i was sent to a military school when i was 16 and many similar things happened there… in fact, they were shut down because of these very things fairly recently. i found out later that the school told parents that their children would send letters “lying” to them about what was going on and cautioned them not to believe us.
im still mad about it… i havent really talked about it and i don’t think about it, that is until i came across this blog. hopefully, reading this can help me and others to heal our own wounds, and help the author heal her wounds too. im 24 now, but when i read this i feel like im 16 again.