i spent 989 days in provo canyon school, i saw the best and worst of that school, im proud to say that i am a survivor, i remember everyday i was there better then i remember my own life now , im 25 yrs old now i was sent there at age 14 and only released at 17 because i was set to graduate a year early and my father could not keep me there, my school district was set to stop payment on graduation day, my father did not want me to return home , i was given 2 options- graduate highschool and join the military , or i would be discharged before graduation, so i could not emancipate myself, and the hope of my father was to enroll me in cottonwood missouri (another-like facility)in MO but his plan was unsuccessful and i was discharged to a foster home or "boys ranch" as they called it untill 17yrs and 9 months when i was a legal adult in MO,,,,from being hunted down at 14 in southern ca and shackled by bounty hunters and escorted by plane at john wayne airport to salt lake where i was then escorted by 2 new men (polyneasions) and handcuffed to a seatbelt, for my arrival at PCS , i spent my first 30 days in an observation room in a place called investment,,,the things i saw in this place were horrible,,, i saw kids try and kill themselves more times then i could remember , i saw desperate kids try and run over and over again, i saw desperate kids beat staff half to death with toilet lids, i saw vast degrees of child abuse from physical, to mental and definately emotional,,, i was a victim many times myself,,, i even contacted a child advocate while i was there to investigate the schools neglegents when it came to allowing me contact with my family, i was severely punished for this ,the advocate was denied access to me only to find out that my rights were infact being violated by the school regarding this matter,, the school has a system for reporting a grivence matter with staff but to my knowlege greivences were not dealt with and if a counselor found out you wrote a report on them they would make life hard on you, i was told upon entering provo that i had to finish the program to leave, it was a lie, i finished the program 8 times 5 times more then any student in school history, after 2 and a half yrs me and 2 other students came up with an escape plan ,,these 2 students were the best friends i had at the school, nic long(RIP) and bobby fisher,,, fortunately for me i was trapped in math class when the plan took off , unfortunately for them they escaped and and stole a car and got into a highspeed chase with the counselors, loosing controll and flipping the vehical, they hit a tree,,,, my 2 best friends in the world at that moment were taken from me,, nic died almost immeadiately, and bobby was sent to jail for neglegent homicide , i never saw my best friends again , for months afterward all the staff constantly insulted my friends for there ignorance, when i shed tears at the blatent disrespect of my friends i was rideculed for being weak,, i even rememeber one point when CPS,(child protective services)was investigating the school,, we were instructed by staff to keep our mouths shut during interviews,,,since leaving provo ive found sadley that life at provo was still ofton times better then my own,,i am filled with mixed emotions on that school, i learned there what i was made of , i mastered my skills in basketball,and education, while learning how to communicate with authority, had my father let me graduate from there iwould have graduated validictorian of my class with a 3.71 acummilative GPA and had a chance to go to college, but because i wasnt allowed to attend school the last week i was there as per my fathers request, and a so called "discharge attitude" i could not finish my wood work project i still stand 1 unit short of my highschool credit, i have no diploma though i had straight A's and attended all 4 yrs of high school,,,,,i tryed everything to stay and graduate, i gave them 20 million reasons to extend me so i could graduate, 3 yrs of straightening up my life to be released the same way i came in, with nothing ,,i got no where in life by going there for 3 yrs,,,, since leaving provo i was inspired by the tradgedies i endured and im now a singer songwriter with a blossoming career, no thanks to the issues i have,,, i found out later that the therapist there are nothing more then socialworkers trying to complete there hours to become therapist, i was there for 3 yrs without seeing a dentist when i was supposed to be getting braces i now have horribly crooked teeth,, i have a hole in my eardrum, because i was never taken to an ear doctor to finish patching the hole, witch was being done before my admission,,,,since leaving provo i have been diagnosed and now recieve,disability for paranoid schizophrenia and post traumatic stress disorder, both issues i belive stem from the abuse i recieved there and constant testing of new medications that were experimental, because i didnt have med insurance ,,,

Wow, Jesse, thank you for sharing this. Sometimes I feel like no one in the world gets how I feel when I start remembering PCS, and then a read an account like yours, and it's hard, because it's emotional, but it also makes me feel less alone. I'm so sorry about what happened to your friends- it's devastating. I was at the Orem campus in 1999. The PCS staff were so mean, just so brutally, unnecessarily mean to all the kids. I'm 24 now and for almost a decade now I've been having these horrible recurring nightmares where I get sent back again- because this happens all the time: kids get sent back to PCS to start the indefinite "program" all over again. I keep having these dreams. I put off going to bed because I'm afraid I'll have this nightmare-- It's just such soul-crushing place. It's like you have to constantly think about every thing you do, think, say, your body language, facial expressions, sentence structure, glances, timing, etc. 24/7. That's the **** program. It has nothing to do with rehabilitation and everything to do with presentation... ability to put-on confidence and charm while some poor kid howls while she gets her teeth pushed into the floor. It's Apathy School. I regret all the times I acted like nothing was happening when a kid was getting dial 9'd. I really feel guilty about it. I'm still realizing both the uniqueness and the utter wrongness of the experience--