TRIGGER WARNING: This thread contains upsetting topics related to the Troubled teen industry.

When I was 12 years old, I was taken from my house in the middle of the night by people my parents hired to kidnap me. They drove me from Washington to Idaho and dropped me off at BlueFire Wilderness Therapy. Yesterday was the 3-year anniversary of that happening, and I want to talk about it. I don’t know if anyone will read this, but if it helps even one person, I think it’s worth it.

Transport

The conditions when I was transported were horrible. I wasn’t allowed to lie down the whole time, I couldn’t have my phone, and I didn’t get any food at all. I needed to use the bathroom once, and one of the transporters had to stand in the stall and watch me the entire time. There were two really buff men in the car and an old woman, and it was honestly terrifying. Also, it literally happened on my best friend’s birthday, which just made it worse.

Arriving

When I got there, it was over 100 degrees, and they put me in baggy black pants, a thick long-sleeve shirt, fuzzy socks, and boots that were too small for me. The second I got into my group, someone three years older than me started hitting on me, and another kid ended up having a panic attack and passing out.

Dangerous patients

On one of my first nights, someone completely lost it, and we all had to hide in our tents. They were throwing 5-gallon water jugs at our tents and screaming, threatening to kill us and themselves. It was honestly terrifying. They ended up running off, and the staff had to chase them, leaving me and everyone else in the group completely unsupervised.

Inadequate healthcare

I have scars all over my body from my time at BlueFire, and none of them are self-inflicted. I got scraped by rocks, shards of metal, and other stuff. I also got extremely close to being bitten by a rattlesnake multiple times. There was a kid in my group who had frequent seizures and heart issues because of the heat and overexertion. All the staff did was tell us to stay away from them while they were passed out for long amounts of time. Once we had to walk for hours carrying their unconscious body to the nearest road, only to realize we forgot their medical records back at the campsite.

Staff

There was a shift lead (the one who gave us meds in the morning) and another staff member working under them. If the shift lead was a man and we got injured, we had to show him the injury, even if it was on our chest or upper thighs as well as let him treat it. It felt really unsafe, especially because if staff decided to hurt us or cover for each other, it nobody would believe us.
There were two staff once where the shadow staff clearly had a crush on the shift lead and was glazing literally everything he did, and I’m honestly just glad he wasn’t a creep because I know she would have let it slide. The male staff also had to do “tick checks” every night, which meant looking down our shirts and reaching under our waistbands. As someone who has been SA'd in the past, this was horrifying, and I feel really lucky that nothing worse happened during those checks. (Also, neither me nor anyone in my group ever even saw a tick the whole time we were there, for whatever that’s worth.)

Hygiene

We were only allowed to shower and wash our clothes once every other week, and the showers were only 6 minutes long. We only had a few pairs of underwear, and if we were lucky, we got a porta potty at our campsite. (A lot of the time it was completely trashed, though.) I saw rats in the toilet pit more than once, and one time the entire thing was filled to the brim with diarrhea, and there were so many maggots covering the inside that you literally couldn’t see anything past them. We didn’t have deodorant, and we weren’t allowed to have tampons because someone had gotten toxic shock before from leaving one in for over a month.

Therapy

I had a hyperfixation, and instead of helping me with it or even letting me keep it, my therapist would punish me for it. He said I couldn’t leave until I stopped liking it because I “needed to stay in the present.” I had a plushie from that hyperfixation, and it was honestly the only thing keeping me going. He ended up taking it away halfway through my stay because he thought it was hurting my recovery (it wasn’t). There also wasn’t much actual therapy happening every day—we were mostly just living out in the desert. My therapist didn't let me send letters to my family for the first few weeks because he said I was "angry" and would "blow things out of proportion," (AKA tell my parents about the things I was being subjected to and put the program under a bad light). Eventually I became so desperate to talk to my family that I was fine with lying and making everything look good.

Running away

I ran away with my friend while I was there, and we got caught by the police around 24 hours later. BlueFire seemed to care more about how it made them look than why we ran or if we were okay. We didn’t get any medical checks after or anything—we just got brought back, yelled at, and put under surveillance. I honestly think the only reason I was there for 4 months and not longer was because they were worried I’d try to run again. After BlueFire, I got sent to a residential treatment program for a year that was filled with pedos, but that’s a whole other story.

Climate

It was almost always 90 degrees or hotter, and like I said earlier, we had to wear long sleeves, thick socks, and baggy black pants all day, and if we showed any parts of our arms or legs we would be punished. There were times it was so hot that it was legally forbidden to be outside, so we had to build tarp shelters and wait it out under them—which was hard because the ground was super rocky and there were no trees to hang the tarps from. We still had to hike for hours in that heat with 50+ pounds on our backs and carrying a 5-gallon jug of water. I got so many bad sunburns that I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if I end up with skin cancer someday. And the worst part is we either had nothing to treat the burns or the stuff we had was expired.

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That’s it from me and my story. Thank you so much for reading, and I really hope this helped someone. My time in wilderness and just the troubled teen industry in general was deeply traumatic, and I still have nightmares and recurring flashbacks to this day. I hope everyone who’s been through something like this is doing okay now and healing, and my heart goes out to anyone still stuck in places like that.

peace ^^