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“Oh but they took it way too far, I never would”. First of all, beating children doesn’t just affect their brain overtime - it affects your brain too. When you let yourself hurt someone when they do something you don’t like and to force their compliance, especially with objects that allows you to cause much more pain and damage with a lot less physical exertion, escalation is the predictable physiological response. That’s like saying “I can do heroin and not get addicted” Maybe you can, maybe you can’t, but you’re certainly playing a dangerous game that can go wrong faster than you think. When you use corporal punishment, you are rewarding your brain for committing violence against your child, that’s what you don’t want to say but it’s reinforcing for you when you hit your kid and they instantly comply and you regulated your own frustration in the process. If they stop reacting to the current level of punishment and you start adding things like stress positions or forced exercise (which also contributed to a lot of these kids deaths and are a form of violence) or more and more hits. And let’s be fucking real, you all say “I don’t hit out of anger” but you likely don’t even have the emotional intelligence to know what you feel if you’re beating children with objects. Yes, you’re gonna hit your kid more and have less control when you’re angry because that is how all humans work.

And secondly, even if we say that you would never go too far - that may be true, but how do you know the people hearing you joke about “whooping” kids won’t go too far? How do you really know what is happening in their homes behind closed doors that you are normalizing to them and to their children? You never can. Some kids are old enough to be on social media and still experiencing this, or they’re at the gatherings where you’re saying these things in real life. Imagine if someone saying “Yeah, I whoop my kids too haha” is actually whipping a toddler bloody and making them stand in stress position for hours after? And you in front of that person and in front of their victim laughed and endorsed that? How would you feel if you found out that child died like this and you laughed and agreed with the torture they were experiencing? Is that worth it? You may have made it that much harder for the victim to ask for help because now they think everyone is okay with this. You don’t know what you’re actually normalizing when you normalize violence against small, mentally and physically vulnerable children so how about we just fucking don’t since there is literally not one benefit to hitting or otherwise physically hurting children (again, forced exercise and stress positions aren’t better) over not hitting children.

When I was 5, the Family Court System had overwhelming evidence my biological father was a sociopath and a habitual abuser but they gave him unsupervised visitation anyways because Family Court always does that regardless of the child’s best interest. The psychologist hired to assess my parents with and without me described in several pages my mom as a textbook DV victim and my father as a textbook sociopath. She described how it was clear my father didn’t see me as a person and wasn’t genuinely bonded to me, she even said he has a “shallow and false personality with no true core morals or values”, is dishonest and manipulative and narcissistic, and will use lies, intimidation, and violence to get what he wants. But she was annoyed at my mom for talking too much about my safety (unlike my father who only bragged and lied about himself to inflate his ego and his “false personality” the whole time while mostly ignoring me). She also wrote that I was clearly coached by my father and was not honest or comfortable with him like I was with my mom, but she recommended 50/50 custody despite all she wrote. What a waste that stupid bitch’s degree was. And The Judge threatened my mom that they would take custody from her completely for “Parental Alienation” (even though it was my father that was well-recorded to make up outrageous slanderous lies about my mom to “alienate” us) if she tried to prove the abuse risk and protect me. I was then sex trafficked and sexually tortured for years during those weekend visitations and developed a dissociative disorder and chronic physical illnesses as a result. And that trafficking/pedo ring operated largely within a conservative christian church (not a “satanic or occult” group) which is incredibly common in local trafficking rings.

When I was 12 (actually the week before I turned 12), I disclosed that my father had sexually abused me and my mom went to CPS like she’s supposed to. And what did they do? The CPS woman and a female cop brought me into a room alone with no camera and interrogated me like I was the suspect. They asked repeatedly if I ever orgasmed during the abuse as if that has any relevance at all to The Law or consent (it doesn’t). They threatened me with time in juvie for perjury if I didn’t “admit” to lying now. They tried to guilt me saying my father could go to prison “for as long as someone who killed someone” and asked “if I really wanted that”. They asked leading questions assuming I was lying because I was angry at or rebelling against my father even telling a story about an adult woman who was cheating on her boyfriend and lied about rape when she was caught as if that’s remotely relevant to a child who can’t consent. They intentionally misstated my testimony; leaving out all the details I gave them then saying I gave no details, replacing words I used with more positive words (ex. I said “groped” and the CPS worked said “caressed”), and even gaslighting me pretending I described a completely different act than I clearly just did.

After that, the CPS worker refused to investigate my case and the other witnesses of which there were multiple adults willing to talk them. She just did nothing until the case dropped. My father talked to her, I don’t know what he offered her if anything, but she simply took his word and didn’t talk to anyone else or consider the physical evidence from the rape kit I had to endure. When my mom asked why she would do that she said she didn’t believe me because I swore (I said “What the fuck am I going to do now” to myself at the END of this interrogation AFTER she said explicitly she didn’t believe me). When my mom emphasized that I may have to go back to the abuser because of this and that’s what I was upset about, she said “Oh, he said he wouldn’t make her have visitation”. He said that. And abusers are so famously honest. That cunt’s facebook page is full of Christian Bullshit of course.

Here are some personal examples of this:

I didn't want to take a new medication they prescribed me because they hadn't discussed it with my dad yet (I was 17, but my dad knows more about medications and about our family history of addiction). I told them I would take my meds once my dad said he agreed with them. They told me they would document me not taking my meds and said it "could come up during treatment plans" which were monthly meetings about our progress and were the only meetings that concluded if you could leave the facility or not.

I have extremely picky eating (most foods make me nauseous, gag, or cause severe pain). Because of this, I barely ate a lot of the food they offered, especially because they refused to give me dairy free food despite me having a doctor's order for a no-dairy diet. When I didn't eat at least 25% of my meal, they would document it and discuss it in the treatment plan meetings saying that I wasn't participating in treatment. Thus, lengthening my stay.

When I would walk out of a group therapy sessions when in distress, they would document it and tell me that i HAD to attend all group therapy sessions for the whole length. This happened on various occasions, each time I had left due to having a panic attack, meltdown, or similar state. On the one time I forced myself to stay in a session while overwhelmed, I ended up yelling at someone to shut up (they were constantly saying bigoted things even tho I asked them to stop. they also did this out of group therapy) and threw a marker at them while I was actively panicking. I was them punished for this despite telling staff I couldn't handle to stay when in distress and put on unit restriction (i couldn't leave the unit AT ALL, not even for meals or for recreation time. All meals were brought to me, meaning i couldn't pick foods i could eat and wasn't allowed utensils). I stayed on unit restriction for 4 days and was delayed discharge.

Another patient didn't want to take their meds because it made them feel sick (i believe they said it was making some of their psychotic symptoms worse as well. I'm not certain as this was around 2 years ago) and the staff tried to force them to take it. They ended up having a panic attack and were restrained by staff for "resisting" (they were on the floor crying) and were forcefully given a sedative. While fighting back against being restrained and sedated, they punched the staff member. They ended up being punished for this by being put in the "quiet room" which was a white room with no furniture where you were supposed to just sit on the floor until you "calmed down enough" to be let out. She never got medical treatment for the bruising on her hand from punching back nor whatever other injuries she may have gotten during the event. She was forced to stay in the quiet room for at least 2 hours and couldn't leave.

These stories are from 3 of the 5 psych wards I have been to.

Patients are given little to no autonomy in their own treatment or how the staff treats them. The moment we try to make our own decisions on our treatment, we are seen as noncompliant and they act like we don't know what is good for us because we are mentally ill.

What's sad is half of these were a result of medical neglect and abuse. We get punished for acting out against the abuse the facility puts us through.

Before anyone recommends lawsuits, please remember that those are expensive and inaccessible to most people, especially those who are mentally ill.

One of those facilities has been under multiple lawsuits and is still running, so they didn't exactly do anything.

created my very first zine about my personal experiences being in and out of the carceral psychiatric system. printable version under the cut: