Misty Todd

I was a teen who spent 2 years in a facility that I feel 50/50 about. I can understand the structure and why it’s there. As teenagers, some of us didn’t understand that there are major consequences for unruly behavior, some of us didn’t care. These programs were set up to help us understand that if we can’t control our own behavior and actions, someone will sure as sh** make us. The parts I didn’t like about the facility I was in was .. it was Christian based, Baptist to be more clear. No room for any other religious walks of life such as Catholics or anything else. We were required to attend church and participate, we would lose points if not. We were scored on literally everything we did from cleaning to the looks on our faces when being corrected for something. The program wasn’t exactly impossible to complete, but it was not easy by any means whatsoever. Not that it needed to be easy but there was NO room for mistakes. Just an example .. in the morning we woke up and had to clean our rooms. In each room we had a bathroom. Our house parent would come in the bathroom with a flashlight and turn off the over head light, fold the flashlight against the mirror to make sure not even a tiny particle of dust was there, and I mean that in the most literal sense. One particle of dust and u got counted off for that. That is no joke, there is dozens of us that can confirm that lol. There were some really good times that we had there as well but for some of us, it was nearly torture. Another example, if we were ever caught lying or if they even thought that we were lying .. we would get write offs (write offs or “lines” as we called them, was how we were punished) we would have to write “in order to be trusted, I need to tell all of the truth, all of the time” 1000 times. I wrote that write off more than any girl in the youth home. But again .. I’m still 50/50 on the youth home itself. Like I said, we had lots of good times. We attended public school and went on church youth trips to gulf shores or land between the lakes. The youth home would take the girls on a summer trip to the smokies every summer. So we did have fun. It was just that stinkin program and then some corruption that I won’t speak about here. But in a nutshell, us girls and 2 sets of relief staff all proved it was happening but nothing was ever done. It was swept under the rug like it never even happened.