G4 Diaries
A firsthand account at a Teen Wilderness Therapy Program in Utah
A True and Accurate Story (Part 1)
Boogeyman
Imagine…Three bodybuilder-sized men enter your childhood bedroom at 3 o’clock in the morning. You attempt to fight off the big scary men but two of them grab you and take your hands pushing down on your wrists, so your fingers are pointing at the ground yelling “DO NOT RESIST!” Once you surrender to the pain and collapse, your body is picked up and you are slung over their shoulder. You are carried out of your home and tossed into the back of an already-running Suburban car, like a sack of potatoes.
You scream and cry out for your parents, but they are nowhere to be seen.
The big scary men tell you that your parents gave them full guardianship custody of you, and you have no legal rights.
Each and every one of us thought we were being kidnapped and possibly going to die that night.
Squat and Cough
Previously, I was an avid traveler, leaving the country often to represent the United States as an athlete-so I loved flying and traveling. I had been to the Las Vegas airport before, so I recognized the giant casino that just so happened to have an airport. After a miserable flight to Las Vegas from Columbus Ohio, our adventure did not stop here. The next stop was Saint George, Utah. I still didn’t know what was going on or where I was being taken but I was very confused when we arrived at the warehouse. The scary big men led me into an office that smelled like barf and feet, and I was zip tied while I was told to wait.
Could I have run and called for help? Could I have run and called my parents? My hands were tied.
I dozed off in the office from all the exhaustion, crying, pleading, bargaining, and then I awoke to “Hey you! Remove all clothes, turn around, squat, cough while spreading butt cheeks.” Excuse me?
I was restrained again for not complying. Zip Ties still on.
Once I complied, I was given 2 beige cargo pants, 2 undergarments, 1 pair of socks, vans, 4 t-shirts and no bra and told to get changed quickly. I asked for feminine products and was told no. They called this warehouse Second Nature “basecamp.” Before I left “base” I was verbally and physically reprimanded because I had stolen toilet paper supplies.
” Eugine Goddard will be notified of this occurrence.” Eugine who? I asked.
All my inquiries were ignored and would continue to be.
Sit Still, Dammit
After putting on my new outfit that I would wear for the next six months, I was put back into another car; each time being blindfolded with a bandanna that would become what we called ‘pee rag’ so I couldn’t see where we were going, and my driver spoke Spanish; laughing and talking the whole way. I was once again zip tied, as punishment for my toilet paper stealing spree and dressed like the characters from the ‘HOLES’ movie… and looking back now…it is truly no wonder why parents shielded their children away from me when we walked into the Urgent care.
I looked like a criminal.
Outside the urgent care, they had a beautiful collection of daylilies that reminded me of my mom's garden, and I started crying as we made our way through the sliding doors. I was ashamed of myself. I had clearly done something to deserve this. This was no longer a kidnapping situation. I had done something… but I didn’t know what. The driver then proceeded to tell the receptionist that he was my ‘transporter’ and we were here to get my physical done. People in the waiting area lobby were staring at me while shifting in their seats, clearly uncomfortable with my presence.
I felt like a giant cockroach.
The attending physician didn’t check my heartbeat. He didn’t take my blood pressure, and he didn’t ask me any prior medical history questions. In the privacy of the doctor and the Spanish speaking driver; they cut my zip ties off and I was instructed to lay down on that awful wrinkly parchment paper. The doctor lifted up my shirt and started pressing on my belly, rubbing my hip and then he moved to my lower groin area. I started screaming and flailing in an attempt to escape. The last thing I saw was the doctor holding a needle and then everything went black.
When I came to, I was back in the car, and it was awfully bumpy, and it was nighttime. I couldn’t see any artificial city lights. Only miles of mountains, dirt and cactus that the car headlights picked up. You know in movies where people driveway far out to commit heinous crimes in the wild remote? That’s where we were. My head was throbbing and pulsating. I finally realized I didn’t have a blindfold on and my hands were free, weird huh?
The man said something in Spanish and the only word I could pick up on was ‘backcountry.’
The First Hike
I didn’t know what backcountry was, but I knew I didn’t like it. I was handed a backpack twice the size of my size and it weighed as if someone put rocks in it just for fun. The Spanish speaking man said, ‘Good Luck!” and drove away.
I had a million questions, but I knew I would be ignored.
A woman started walking towards me, headlamp on, a backpack and she was quite dirty. She said her name was Cara and explained she was staff and offered no sign of friendliness. She instructed me to follow her. We walked. And walked. And walked. When we finally stopped, she told me to put down my pack, unload everything and start setting up my shelter. ‘My shelter?’
I pulled out a meter long rope and tarp in my hands, cuts and blood oozing from my legs from the hike and she left me alone in the Utah desert. But only for about 50 seconds when she came back and called me stupid for not knowing how to set up a Bat frame shelter.
If you’re thinking this was my chance to run and call for help; it certainly was not. I was next to tarantula holes, wild cows and rattlesnakes and bugs I still don’t know the names of.
Cara yells at me “Pants and shoes NOW.” ‘My pants and shoes…??’
I fell asleep on a red ant hill that swarmed my face while I got my beauty sleep and awoke to people yelling in the distance. My eyes were swollen. I could barely see. My legs hurt. My body ached and I cursed in my head that my legs and feet would have been fine from the bites if Cara hadn't taken my fucking pants and shoes.
For 6 months I had to give strangers my pants and shoes at night.
Earth Phase
You finally meet your fellow clients…. well not exactly.
The program wants to protect their ‘clients’ identity so no first or last names were allowed. I was called number 9.
For a week you sit outside ‘the group’ on something called earth phase. Your days consist of eating stale tortilla wraps and a jar of peanut butter…you are instructed to ration the proportions because all of us girls had ‘impulse control’ all the while staff told your parents you were being defiant refusing to eat. Not true. You’d get so hungry after hiking in the Utah heat you wanted to eat the dirt and cactuses.
On Earth phase, the group is not allowed to talk to you, acknowledge you or look at you and if you do either of those things, staff gives them or you an earshot. An earshot means you sit outside the group alone on mute and hike alone with two staff tag teaming you.
An ‘earshot’ could be days. It all depended on the staffs’ mood.
For a week to two weeks, you are forcibly mute while on earth phase. My earth phase earshot punishment for talking was cleaning out a Home Depot bucket called ‘shit bucket’ with my bare hands and having to carry it on my pack filled with feces, away from the group.
After two weeks of being mute, I internally accepted The wilderness of Utah as my new home, my new family was called g4 and my name was number nine.
I also accepted the rules.
You learned to play the programs’ game so you could eat, talk and survive.
You weren’t allowed to know what day of the week it was, the time of day, or try and get a glimpse of yourself in a reflection. You have to ask permission to fill up your water bottle from a blue dirty gas tank looking thing called a Bluey. If you have to go to the bathroom…there’s a Home Depot orange bucket with a tarp in front of it and you are watched by male and female adults while counting out loud. You had to hike, or you’d be threatened with never seeing your family for years or be restrained.
You are finally told this is a program for girls who have been sexually assaulted.
You’re then told some girls do not leave for a year; it all depends how you behave.
My parents were told by the program director and Erkis Consulting that I was going to roast marshmallows with fellow sexually- abused girls. My parents didn’t know I was handling human feces and carrying it around while hiking 5–10 miles a day with little to no food.
Welcome to Second Nature Wilderness Therapy.
G4
You’re officially a member of g4!!!
B&R, G&0. Bear Bags, Earshot, TNT, kicking a Sump, Torts, Surfy, Reflection Time, Magic Number, One Up, One Down, Sitting Group, Standing Group, P Tarp, Sound Off, Linner, Div, Busting, and Mulan become your new vocabulary.
Your first day actually in the group means everyone gathers around you and you are the center of attention but for all the wrong reasons. You cannot talk or interrupt while they read a letter from your parents stating why they sent you there; but you realize it doesn’t sound anything like your parents. They don’t speak that way. . .
‘So, I’m here because of sexual abuse done by a coach…. that makes no sense.’
Your parents confront your abuse from a perspective of blame, shame and disgust that the program had them tactfully write.
Humiliation and blame were a common theme. One girl was assaulted by her uncle, and they made her write a letter to him apologizing for everything she put him through. Another girl was raped, and she had to build a shrine for him and pretend to kiss him to show that she forgave him. Another girl said she was gay. She had to sit with male staff and slowly lick a banana because they told her she was confused, and this was therapy she needed.
I don’t think this part was intentionally a part of the programs’ therapeutic tactics, I just think the staff just wanted to add something entertaining into the boring abyss of the Utah desert.
One girl had to eat four dried cow poop patties.
One girl had to chug water until the staff told her to stop.
Another girl had to sleep in a tree.
Another member had to grab tarantulas from their tarantula holes.
Another member had to stick fingers down her throat over and over until she threw up and we had to watch.
Cup Line
Every morning, we were awakened by staff yelling “GOOD MORNING GGGGG 44444. CAN I GET A ROLLING SOUND OFFFFFFF.” Followed by us having to yell at the top of our voices in our numerical order.
“ONE…. WORKING … .2 WORKING” ….so on and so forth numerically.
You’d scream as loud as you could your number and what you were doing.
You had 2 minutes to get your shelter down, your stuff into your pack and get it to the pack line.
Staff would hand out pants and shoes in a standing circle. You’d then walk to camp together and in silence. Then you brush your teeth, which was a stick or your finger. The toothbrush they gave you was so cheap the bristles fell off altogether after a few uses.
You weren’t allowed to call out another toothbrush until you earned it. None of us earned a toothbrush. We either used our fingers or figured out a swish & spit combination.
Then we’d have to get ready for breakfast. Breakfast was raw oatmeal, and the staff had dried milk, we called p-milk. If you got your pack-on-pack line on time, you were allowed to have p milk and water. If you didn’t, you couldn’t have water or p milk. You had to eat raw oats. You grew to like it both with and without water.
Cup line meant there was a mangy rug about the size of a bathmat and our cups were these tiny metal cups with our numbers etched in them with a knife staff used. You had to put your cup on the designated number.
If you put it in the wrong spot, you didn’t eat. If you over poured your own cup, you didn’t eat because you were selfish. If you didn’t want to eat, you were restrained.
So, if you didn’t want to eat; you were restrained. If you did want to eat but made a mistake you weren’t allowed to eat. Makes sense right?
Following breakfast, we had duties and leaving no trace was top priority. If you needed to relieve bodily fluids after meals, you were given a magic number. You’d keep asking “Is my magic number up?” Sometimes it’d be something like ‘flying saucer pig toes.’ This was to ensure we learned how to control ourselves and not be selfish. While we waited for our magic numbers to be up we had to complete other camp chores that usually ended in scrapes and cuts. Staff would tell our parents we were self-harming. They left out the parts where we were digging holes called a sump…with a coffee container that had jagged edges. From there, we’d get our water bottles filled up and get ready to hike. We hiked every day. Oftentimes, we ran out of water so we would have to wait for days until transport would bring out more water- in between the wait we would hike. The program told our parents we were being rebellious, acting out and we were refusing to drink water.
After long hikes, it didn’t matter what time we made it to our next camp spot, we would have to set up our homebase. Homebase is where we lived and it was a big tarp that took half a day to completely set up. We had to use our water bottle weighted down with rocks literally flinging these bottles tied to the rope up and over trees. Utah trees are nothing like Ohio trees. A few other girls would be on the other side to catch the bottles to tie down the rope. We always set up camp. If our water broke, we were shit out of luck and had to wait until Paul decided we could call out another water bottle. We would use our pee rag bandana to hold the water bottle together when they broke. They would write to our parents that our group was ‘self-sabotaging.
Hunger Games
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Games were part of our therapy and the rewards for us was food and the rewards for staff was money or watching us girls turn against each other. Another common tactic. They could dangle food or incentives in front of us knowing we were so deprived of love, kindness and food that we would absolutely do anything we could to get either of those hoping we would turn on one another and hurt one another. They used to call us little savages and laugh.
Get the gorp, capture the pee rag, splat and run, vagina Hands, guess the smell, who laid the surfy and volleyball were weekly therapeutic games.
GORP- was a mixture of peanuts, M&Ms, dried banana chips and raisins that we all craved. Staff would hide a baggie, and we would spend hours finding it. Capture the pee rag was just like capturing the flag with our pee rags and the rules were a little bit rigged. We could tackle, hit, wrestle our opposing team. I learned years later that staff made monetary bets on which team would win.
Who laid the surfy- was just a way to get us girls to accuse one another of something we didn’t do, and staff would watch their plan of us blaming one another and hating each other; unfold.
Laying a surfy was a big no out there with the whole leave-no-trace. Laying a surfy meant you took a dump somewhere that isn’t shit bucket. On long grueling hikes we had to guess who the culprit of the crime and never knowing till years later that it was staff who had done the deed.
Guess the smell was my least favorite game. We had to guess what this roadkill smell was for a few weeks. Turns out, it was a girl who had passed away. They told her parents she had run away. I learned this information years later.
If you didn’t want to play the games you would be written up, forced outside the group, put on mute, have your food cut in rations and your parents were told you were misbehaving. We all complied and played their fucking games.
Busting
‘Busting’ was our way of making fire. You learned how to make your own set from ripping branches off the juniper trees and sage bushes that worked as some of the best ‘spindles.’ After about a month or two you figure it out since you have to do it daily. You would finally get a flame and be so excited. The next goal was a 6 second ember and all of us wanted this because you got a pound of M&Ms. Being so deprived of sugar for months… we all wanted it.
When I got my M&Ms, of course I chowed down like I had never eaten before. I ate the whole bag in a matter of minutes. I got so sick from the override of sugar, I started throwing up everything including water. Staff wrote to my parents that I clearly had impulse issues and control management issues. A few days of dry heaving, throwing up food and water, I was told ‘this is what happens when you are greedy and selfish.’ I believed you Paul. Looking back, we all believed Paul because he was the main therapist with years of clinical psychology, degrees out the wazoo, he had a Santa Clause-like structure and spoke with a tone that could put you in a trance and oh, he had a PHD. He was a doctor. Most people believe a doctor over a 16-year-old child.
Men In black
I know this particular story happened shortly after the fourth of July. That was the only official day staff told us the actual date and our group was given a watermelon to celebrate the fourth… but a girl kept getting sick and refused to hike… which meant punishment for the whole group which meant no watermelon.
Staff got us in our usual standing circle and told us people would be visiting us.
People!!! REAL PEOPLE!!!??
Staff also gave us baggies FILLED with food. The first time our bear bags were packed with food. We started babbling, almost laughing and almost smiling.
We were all so brainwashed by this point you just did what you were told and stopped questioning why staff did x,y or z. You were just happy for the break in monotony.
We didn’t see any cars. We didn’t hear them coming when men dressed in black suits started walking towards us. They had ear pieces in. They had fancy black shoes. They were stacked physically. They didn’t even sweat out in that heat! They wore sunglasses so you couldn’t see where their eyes were and we couldn’t even see our reflections in them.
One by one we were plucked from the group to speak to them. I had a million things to tell them, but the staff were watching. I knew what would happen when they left. I knew they weren’t there to rescue us.
I may have been brainwashed by the program, but I still knew deep down that adults did not help children.
I was on autopilot. “I’m here because of depression stemming from a sexual abuse from my diving coach.” I told them what I was trained for four months to do. Play their game.
I learned about two years ago that those men were the FBI when I was given a notice that a criminal and civil lawsuit was taking place involving wilderness therapy programs.
The FBI had transportation ready and helicopters to get us out of there. All it took was us saying they hurt us. They didn’t feed us. They had us physically hurt each other. They had us do unimaginable things. I also learned that there were other girl groups out there. And boys groups. Nobody said a word to these FBI men. None of us said a damn word.
H2 Oh no
We ran out of water for three days. Staff had to go around and check our pulses with a stopwatch. On the fourth day without water, I think God sent us some kind of natural miracle because of a bad storm coming in. We had dealt with storms but this one was supposed to be really bad. Staff was worried. Panicked. Cara was sitting talking on a walkie talkie conversing back and forth about 60 mile an hour winds, hail storm, rain storm; a big electrical storm was coming.
We weren’t thinking about our safety and what was to come, we just thought ‘YAY, we don’t have to hike!!’
When dry lightning began, staff put us in our spots and gave us plastic shovels so we could start digging trenches around our shelters because the storm was going to be really bad. We got to digging. I have never seen nature sound, look and yell the way she did that night.
I alternated between sitting on my butt with my feet touching the ground so that if I got electrocuted, the energy would pass through.
I was so thirsty that in between atomic bomb sounding booms, wind gusts and rain that cut your skin, that I found a way where I could drink my trench water and maintain sitting in case I got struck. This storm went on for almost two days. We just waited to be struck by lightning and when we tried telling our parents about this crazy storm, they never knew because our letters were never sent.
Run Forrest Run
Shortly after the FBI was out there giving us a swell visit, Second Nature became Evoke Entrada, for legal purposes. We were given new clothes with Evoke embedded and we thought we were well behaved girls and deserved new clothes!
I myself was somewhat excited about the new t-shirts and cargo pants but I was getting to the point of being fed up with Second Nature or Evoke or whatever they wanted to call themselves. It didn’t change our reality of daily torment and believing you weren’t leaving for years…because some girls didn’t leave at all.
Nighttime rolled around and without hesitation, I got out of my sleeping bag at night and started running. I had never run so fast in my entire life. I ran. And ran. And ran. Until my body physically could not run anymore. I had cactus stuck in my feet, legs and butt, arms and face. I could feel blood running down my legs as I ran.
I climbed up on the red rock mountains and found a spot to breathe. I stared at the desert. It was the first time I realized how beautiful it was. You could see the whole milky way galaxy. The moon lit up so bright and it seemed so close, it seemed like you could poke it. I counted a ton of shooting stars and made as many wishes as I could.
I could finally breathe and noticed how crisp and fresh the air was. Every animal that was stirring had its own little purpose just minding its own business. Surviving. Living. Being.
I wasn’t afraid of the rattlesnakes, the wild cows, mountain lions, bugs, or being in the wilderness completely alone. I was more scared in g4.
I decided I was far enough away from the staff that even if they started searching, I was so far back in the red rock mountains and boulders I would still have some freedom to myself.
Eventually, I fell asleep, and I woke up with blisters on my mouth, sun burnt under my eyes, my legs, and no saliva in my mouth.
I took my socks off since they were wet from the heat that day already and climbed down from the rock and continued on my way. I ran in intervals of walking to running to spare my energy. Repeating this day and night; sometimes traveling at night because it was cooler.
The only fear I felt was thinking the staff was going to catch up with me.
I kept hearing staff and Paul's voice saying I was selfish in my head. I had impulse control issues. I was defiant. I was the problem because of the abuse that was done to me.
I really did consider just living out here and figuring it out. Maybe even following the stars until I reached the artificial light and ran it into a town. My favorite book growing up was Hatchet by Gary Paulson so I figured I would rely on that book to survive out here.
During my attempted escape, I befriended a tarantula. I named it Fleetwood, since I liked Fleetwood Mac. He/she accompanied me for a few days and then I decided I didn’t want to steal a creature from their home like it had been done to me; the brief company was nice.
I walked through snow, heat, and water in my underoos and socks.
I walked through the mountains, grass mountains and red rock mountains.
I was walking at night one time and heard a noise. I knew that noise. It was Spanish man's truck. Well shoot, they found me! I did not run when he pulled up. The Spanish speaking man didn’t try to grab me. He offered me Cheetos. Blue Gatorade. Even a bagel. A fucking bagel? But boy I was hungry. He and I exchanged some words. After a while of going back and forth I decided the last thing my parents needed was to know their kid is literally somewhere ‘lost’ in the desert. I walked towards him and got tackled by body builder 1 and 2. I was like ‘Hey guys, good seeing you too.’ What happened after this I cannot bring myself to discuss.
I asked my parents if they knew I had run away, years later.
Nobody told them I was missing for 8 days. I traveled a total of 41 miles.
Write Legibly
Every week one girl was assigned to write a letter to our parents.
We each were allowed 2 lines worth of words to say something to our parents.
At first, you’re excited. Then, you stop saying anything all together or you make up something happy- go lucky because you know you can’t tell the truth.
Staff, Paul and the administrators read everything like crackhead hawks.
One time we had all written letters to our parents about how miserable, how hungry, lonely, sad we were, and we wanted to go home. We tried telling them a girl broke her foot, and she still had to hike with zero medical treatment. Her bone was sticking out of her leg.
When we tried telling our families what was going on our letters were never delivered and we spent 3 days analyzing how manipulative, cunning, disrespectful we were. Staff gave us highlighters and had to mark where we were lying and being manipulative and self-sabotaging and gas lighting our parents.
If you question, why we didn’t say anything…we tried. There is no way to communicate the truth with our families. There was no way around it.
It didn’t help that the program did it to our parents as well. Paul and staff made sure their letters were written the way they wanted it. Any dialect was controlled and punished on top of being so deeply brainwashed into believing we were these terrible, awful, manipulative, bad kids.
Finances
In order for your child to receive this state-of-the-art top therapy, your parents pay a few thousand dollars up front. From there, individual therapy with Paul totals 2 to 4 thousand dollars. A week could cost $20,000. See where I’m going with this. Not every family had the means to pay this, but the program convinced them to flush their life’s savings and take out mortgages on their homes, so their child received the proper therapy.
Group therapy cost anywhere to 5–10 thousand dollars per session and since we were together 24/7; the program could bill your parents any time they liked. Group therapy was watching staff eat their food while we were not allowed to eat to teach us about intuitive eating. Group therapy was watching staff tell a girl to hit a tree over and over with a stick and then tell us she has a rage problem or watching a member be put on silent for two weeks only writing down words…group therapy was not being able to use our arms or having to hang up our bloody pants during times of the month because we had ‘no respect for ourselves’…yet being provided no female hygiene products. Group therapy was staff smashing our belongings and telling Paul that we all broke them ourselves being defiant.
Group therapy for me was drawing turkey basters in the sand with a stick.
Why I don’t blame my parents
This is part 1 of my unforgettable story, enduring six months at one of the finest billion-dollar Troubled Teen industry programs. Operating, surrounded and protected by directors with PHDs and master's degrees, the success stories are rare, and the survivor stories are hundreds; now becoming thousands with Paris Hilton at the forefront of facilitating and enacting programs to be shut down and legally liable.
The program told my parents that I was going to roast marshmallows with fellow sexually abused teenage girls and it would be a healing process and therapy, which is what I needed and deserved to help me move forward. My parents were told I would be there for a few weeks' maximum.
For the first three weeks, everyone did alright because our insurance covered the costs. Once our deductible had been reached, our families were told we were self-sabotaging, being defiant, not eating, harming ourselves, being difficult, being manipulative and acting out, meaning we had to stay, and our parents had to pay more money, every day.
Paul Goddard, Erkis Consulting and staff convinced our parents We HAD to stay there because if we returned home, we would die.
Past clients such as myself get a lot of backlashes when coming forward because the words ‘Troubled Teen Wilderness Therapy’ inherently makes anyone believe that us teenagers MUST have done something to be sent there in the first place right?
A program designed this way of course profits billions of dollars a year preying on parental instincts and capitalizing on their fear while their children are starved, mentally tormented, humiliated, neglected and physically broken down.
If the pamphlet said ‘Your child will hike all day, touch human feces, eat beans and rice, poop in a Home Depot bucket and be called by the number 9” no parent would allow their child here.
The strategic therapeutic marketing behind these programs generates a few million a year and a whole book could be written about just that alone.
If this doesn’t sound like a corrupt and cult-like scam to you that needs to be shut down and brought to light, then I don’t know what to tell you.
They say monsters live under your bed.
False. The monsters I met when I was 16 and 17 years old in 2014 and 2015 had PHDs that profited off of family pain.
The monsters I met were parents who were well educated lawyers allow a banned government Olympic committee coach… coach their child.
Monsters take the form of being a prominent family in the Columbus, Ohio real estate and gold business providing housing and a job to a tier 3 sex offender.
There are always powerful rich people lurking in our communities, protecting monsters and especially the new trend is lurking in the therapy, business awaiting a family to capitalizing on child sexual abuse.
This is just one story out of the many and all it takes is sharing your story to expose the corruption and cruelty that takes place.
