Please keep up with your blog entries, with or without comments available, they are compelling reading and it’s important people know what happened on these “camps”. And it’s obviously important to you that you tell the world what happened, so keep it up.

I’ve almost taken comments down before, I may just do that. This is for me, not anyone else…well except now for Catherine Sutton who lost her daughter there right after I left. Now that she’s seen this blog and has responded, I feel like I’ve done what I was supposed to do. Doubters, go elsewhere. Her daughter died, and she knows that I was there and that I speak the truth. Thats all that matters.

I am an avid reader but this is the first time I’ve commented. I came across this website through a website I frequent called http://www.ontheemmis.com It’s a website for survivors of a rehab that was actually a cult.

Anyways, I would like to say that I admire your strength and courage for even making it through your program and even for putting this out there for everybody to read. I am even more shocked and saddened as I continue reading it. I am truly sorry for everything you had to go through but you have come out of it a strong and amazing woman. Good luck you to and I’ll continue reading.

Britt

Catherine,

I’ve been praying for something, someone…you’re it.

Also, this is an excellent entry. You are truly a very talented writer… I could almost feel the cold.
I keep thinking about how in Titanic Leo Dicaprio said that a cold like that feels like a thousand knives stabbing you all over your body. Or how I hate it when I wash my hands and the water in the sink is way coler than I expected it to be. I cant even begin to imagine how horrible that must have been and how strong all of you were to survive it.

After reading your stor I have a sudden appreciation for life that I never had before… thank you.

(ps: Sorry if this comment is posted more than once, I keep trying to submit it and my computer flips out)

As I said, and I meant it, I am here for you!
I believe that some things happen for a reason. I received an email from the Mother of a 15 year old boy who visited your site. She wrote me a very nice letter and told me of your site. Since that day I have been feeling that our meeting at this time was supposed to happen. I can’t explain it. I just know what I feel.

Email me personally if you want.

Sincerely,
Catherine
msmemfund@hotmail.com

I think I might need you right now.

Allison.

i worked at HopeCenter for Youth - a now defunct company out of Houston and based in Groveton and Applesprings.

amanda sue

I am having major symptoms right now!! I will be fine. It’s just this is still a nightmare that I would love to wake up from. One day I am the Mother of 8 children and the next day a National Advocate for Children Rights.

Murdock is the person Gayle palmer SOLD while she used my LDS affiliation to sell this man to me for my daughter. He was the field person Gayle said was six months into the Church and had a dynamic testimony of the LDS Church. “The kids love him,” she said!

After Michelle’s death………Murdock disappeared. I was told he went to Japan. We never did get to depose him like we did the others involved.

The Mother of Jon McMahon, a former Challenger survivor, learned of Michelle’s death. She told me that her son Jon was in Challenger back in 1989 and that Murdock, (Mad Dog Murdock) she said was his nick name, abused her son. Jon’s Mother said her son Jon was made to take his pants off and sit near a tree at the bottom of a hill. Jon’s Mother said a Dog was tied to the tree and that Jon was told if he moved the Dog would attack him. Jon’s Mother also said that rocks were thrown at Jon and these rocks hit him in the scrotum, leaving bruises.

Murdock is ONE of the “survival experts” I was SOLD by you know who!

Jon’s Mother is the one who tried to get Utah Health and Human Services “licensing specialist,” to take action, “before someone dies,” she said.

Jon’s Mother sent me a tape called “The Reporter,” showing kids being taken by force into the Challenger program. Everytime I would view this tape and hear the kids in the Van say, “This should be against the law,” my heart would ache for them. These kids are right! This should be against the law!

Don’t trust the state who hands out the licenses to these stupid people. They care more about the MONEY that is brought into the state than the health and safety of the children being herded in like cattle. They also have more faith in the good ole’ boys and girls they hand a license to than they do the children who are falling helplessly into their clutches.

When Michelle died Utah had 11 programs, but not the money or manpower to monitor ONE! Get the picture? It’s a gold mine for perpetrators!

I am here for you. If there is anything I can say or do to help you, I will.

Sincerely,

Mother of Michelle
Catherine Sutton

Did you work at Woodside Trails?

for a year i worked at a reformative wilderness camp here in texas as a counselor. i felt like we really “lived on the edge” because we slept outside and cooked our food outside. we used the bathroom in latrines. we used physical force to restrain unruly “clients.” none of our “roughing it” came close to what you went through!

some of your stuff sounds far-fetched, and the heart of a person would never want to believe that a human could be that cruel to another person.

HOWEVER, in brief defense of your experiences, there are psychological reasons why an educated and otherwise normal person would participate in this kind of torture (look up stockholm syndrome, Asch’s obedience to authority/conformity research, and Kitty Genovese, for starters.)

i am sure that these things have happened and will continue to happen unless something drastic is done. thanks for posting, and try not to be so defensive when people doubt you. it is human nature to be naive and to want to believe the best from other people. just be glad that one more person read your site and one more person became aware.

amanda sue

You and I are very close in age. I remember all the news stories about Challenger here in Texas. I’m very sorry to hear that you will soon be a single mom of 4. I, too, was a single mom until I remarried to a man who accepted me and my baggage (and the nightmares).

Anyways, I just want to tell you wthat what you are doing is a good thing mentally. My first husband raped me for 5 years as way of control….and this is what happened to you. It was a control issue by a pervert. I know it really helps to write down your feelings and to connect with others who have been through wat you’ve been through.

To the one who couldn’t believe that you can walk through an icy river and survive…it can be done. It was done over and over again by soldiers on the Batan Death March…and they survived, my great uncle was one of them.

Take care, Alli…you’re in my prayers, too.

One more thing Catherine, I linked to the Remembering Michelle site on my sidebar. I hope you don’t mind.

oh, here too:

http://www.teenadvocatesusa.homestead.com/RememberingMichelleSutton.html

Alli

Just to let you know I am an avid reader here, if not an avid commenter. Each part just blows me away and can’t help but admire your dazzling courage in writing all this.

Feel free to comment as LONG and as OFTEN as you wish to. I feel safer now knowing you’re here with me. I hope you don’t mind.

Allison

Allison:
People there are people out there who will try to shut you up. The TRUTH of what has been happening to children for decades needs to be told.

This is an unregulated industry and in many cases there are “criminal minded people” running the programs.

Please Forgive me for going on so in YOUR forum.
I just want you to know that people aren’t always who they claim to be, or SELL themselves to be.

I have to wonder who the person is who is saying that you exaggerated what happened. What is her/his agenda in saying such things.

there’s a good link that shows a section of the river from satelites.

Jeanette, its called the Escalante River because it gets pretty deep in some areas. Google it. Escalante River. Its more than a stream, but it ain’t no Mississippi. It also gets fairly deep in some areas, up to 30 feet. Either way, it was really cold.

In Illinois we call that a stream!

Honey, we did it. It was done. I didn’t exaggerate, just google the river. You’ll see what I mean. I never said we swam. I said we waded. So you’re going to tell me that in 45 degree weather with ice hanging on shady branches hanging over a dark river that we’d die from wading across cold water? What in the world would make you think you can come and question my journal entries anyway? You don’t have to tell me what cold is, either. I know.

thanks for your time though,

Alli

I know, I’m retarded because I can’t find anything about them, but bear with me; I can’t help being unable to find stuff, it’s part of my DNA. I’m the type of person who loses stuff they’re holding, while they’re still holding it.

I’m off to bed now, I hope you have (err … have had? What time is it?) a wonderful day.

Why? Because of the 50/50/50 rule. A good swimmer — a GOOD swimmer, someone with a good deal of body fat, too — has a 50% chance of surviving a 50 foot swim through 50 degree water. At freezing-water temperatures, the leg muscles tense and cramp so much that it wouldn’t be a minor problem to survive 104 crossings if you were thigh deep in it, it’d be impossible. And I do mean impossible. Not just improbable. Not just unlikely. Cold is not just a sensation. Cold water — even at 50 degrees — is deadly.

Something here is exaggerated.

Amanda

I was there from Feb of ‘89 thru Nov of ‘89. What do you mean “were you in the challenger?” Are you kidding me?

Summit Quest and Challenger overlapped, btw.

On the entry below this one, Michelle Suttons mom (the first girl to die at Summit Quest WHILE Challenger was still up and running) comments to me in detail about her situation. She knows that I am telling the truth because her daughter died there and she knows that what I speak of is true. I’m not going to give out any last names, and if you look at the top right of my profile, it says that some of the dates have been changed to protect the families of the kids who died. I will stick to my promises to protect these families and keep their lives private now that they’ve had 15 years to move on.

I’d love to answer more questions, but I have 4 children, a book I’m working on other than this one and a household to raise, not to mention I’m about to start going through a divorce. I’m sorry, but you should check on the forum, there are lots of answers there.

Allison