My name is Max Rosenberg and I am survivor of residential treatment
 centers in Utah. This is my story. Some details will be missing
 because I have spent the last 6 years trying to forget them.

In the summer of 2006 I was having problems at home. Me and my parents
 fought all the time, and I was having issues at school the year
 before. My parents didn't know what to do with me, so they decided to
 send me to what they called bording school in Salt Lake City Ut.

I arrived at Gateway Academy in September of 2006 not knowing what to
 expect, and immediatly realized this was far from a normal bording
 school. I was told I would start on orientation phase and I wasn't
 allowed to talk to anyone who wasn't a staff member or on a high
 enough phase. The school aspect was hardly school at all, we had two 1
 hour classes a day, and spent the rest of our day focusing on our
 "treatment". I didnt make it very far in my treatment there. After 3
 weeks of resfusing to conform to their program I was escorted and told
 I would be taken to a wilderness program.

After driving for what seemed like a day we finally made it to base
 camp at 2nd Nature Duschene. I was rushed into a room with a strange
 old man and immediatly told to get completely naked. He then engaged
 in prison tactics. Asking me to lift my genitals, and bend over and
 cough. I felt pretty violated, it almost felt like the old man got off
 on stuff like that. Afterward I recieved a checkup and tetnis shots,
 and was told I'd be transported to group 7.

My experiance at 2nd Nature I guess could be considered a positive one.
 I spent about a month and a half there, and it was here where I
 realized how I had to face this whole journey. I learned what the
 other kids called "fake it til you make it". No one who was there
 wanted to be there, but we realized if we didn't atleast pretend to
 want to help ourselves it would only screw us in the long run. After
 working the program for awhile, I was finally told I would be going to
 Logan River Academy.

The second I arrived Logan River Academy I knew I had entered hell. I
 was greeted in the foyer by an immense man named Travis, I'm pretty
 sure he was on a heavy regiment of hgh and children's tears becuse he
 couldn't even put his arms down straight. He took me upstairs to DEVO
 to process me. I was taken into a room and strip searched and asked
 questions. After that was all over I had all my clothes confiscated
 and replaced with sweatpants and a sweatshirt. I was told I'd be put
 on suicide watch as a precaution and would have to stay up in DEVO for
 a couple days.

Those couple days in DEVO really put the fear in me. It wasn't even one
 day before I saw my first taste of abuse. There was a tiny kid,
 couldnt have more than 100 lbs, up there who tried to run away a
 couple days before. They had him in isolation and he wasnt allowed to
 talk to anyone. After hearing "Devo Structure" which meant no one
 could talk, this kid started running his mouth. Not even 15 seconds
 later travis and 2 other ex marines or usu football players or
 whatever they were, were on top of this kid. It was hard to watch. All
 I heard was "Please stop, get off me you fucking bastards I cant
 breath" as they held this kid down and repeatadly smashed his head off
 the ground. It went on for a bit. I just sat up there, watched, and
 prayed I would get out of DEVO as soon as possible and never have to
 go up there again.

After a couple days I got my wish. I was no longer deemed a suicide
 threat and I was taken to my final home, group 3. When I got there I
 met the kids who would basically become my brothers for the next 9
 months. Most of the kids there were great kids and definitely did not
 deserve what was happening to them. I learned the ins and the outs of
 the program pretty quickly. They force a level system on you, which
 was pretty much set up to brainwash kids. levels 1 through 8. The
 further you progressed the more privledges you recieved. Like once you
 got to level 4 you could go on trips, movies, fast food places like
 that. A staff member actually got fired for taking kids to see
 Apocolypto, but that's a different story. By using this system though
 you can effectively break a kid down. By level 3  you've pretty much
 given up all hope that you will be removed by your parents. At that
 point they start trying to mold you into a completely different
 person. They tell you, that you don't need anything that you had
 before you got there, and that the program will teach you the
 structure needed to live a happy life. "What a complete load of
 crap, How the hell is someone else gonna tell me how to be happy" is
 what I thought, but on the outside I acted like I was buying into
 their lies. That was the only way to survive and come out still the
 same person. That was my ticket out.

I hated Logan River and looking back I still hate Logan River. I find
 it disgusting how they manipulate families. Like if you ever tried to
 tell your parents about any abuses going on, they would tell your
 parents you were lying or trying to manipulate the situation. One time
 I was in DEVO serving a minor infraction which was a class II for I
 think swearing, and this kid stood up during structure and started
 yelling at the staff. A staff member got up and punched him in the
 face. The kid strated bleeding all over the place and was forced into
 isolation. The next day I had a phone call with my parents and
 therapist, Matt Erickson. I tried to tell my parents what happened the
 day before in DEVO, but Matt jumped in before I could finish and said
 I was lying and this meeting would be ending because I tried to
 manipulate. The whole situation made me feel helpless, I felt like I
 had 0 control and it made me very depressed.

Of all the abuse and manipulation I witnessed perpertrated by Logan
 River none was worse than what I witnessed in July of 2007. That month
 a girl who I will allow to remain nameless returned after being
 released about 6 months before. Logan River didnt solve what her
 parents deemed to be her problems, so they sent her back, or maybe it
 was her plan idk. Not too long after she got there she engaged in
 sexual acts with one of the staff members, Wesley. Aparently they
 talked on Myspace for months before, but who knows. Anyway everbody at
 LRA soon found out what happened, and the response was despicable. We
 were told that talking about it would be grounds for a Class IV for
 program corruption and we would have to spend a month in DEVO. The
 worst part of the whole ordeal was how they dealt with the staff
 member. While the girl recieved a class IV and was sitting in DEVO,
 Wes still had his job, and the only repurcussion he recieved was being
 banned from the girls floors. Talk about fucking disguting. There are
 no other words to describe the foul cover up by Logan River.

The memories I recieved from Logan River Academy have scarred me for
 life. I've spent the last 6 years of my life trying to hide from my
 past. Wishing it could have gone a different way. Since Logan River my
 life has been the opposite of happy. I graduated from high school In
 2010 and dropped out of college in 2011. I spent an entire year
 homeless, drinking and doing drugs trying to figure out what was wrong
 with me. Maybe I was just making excuses, but either way I knew I had
 a negative impact from RTCs. In the past 6 months I've begun to
 embrace what happened to me in Utah. You can never change your past,
 but you can always use it as a lesson to move forward. That's why in
 the future I plan to advocate against Behavioral Modification
 Programs, and maybe go into psychology. The more people learn about
 the coruption of this industry, the more people will be saved from
 going through what I did.

Sincerely,

Max