Recent survivor testimony

 Survivor testimony:

I went through hell at Hyde. Of course right when you get there your parents basically have to sign your rights away. So they can’t get sued. First of all, I wasn’t a kid that went there because there parents sent me there; I went willingly. When I visited, I thought it was a regular old prep school. I had no idea what was really going on. I wanted to get out of my old school because my friends were selling drugs and there was violence, and I wanted a healthy environment, so I thought Hyde was my way out where I could play sports and not be around so much danger.

So when I got there, I was in for a big shock. The dorms were absolutely out of control. When I mean out of control I mean fight clubs at night like real deal MMA with no gloves, beating the absolute crap out of each other. There was one time when Hyde’s champion wrestler got drunk and beat up 8 kids in my dorm…. We came in for breakfast the next morning and there were multiple kids with black eyes and bruised faces, one kid with a concussion.

I’ve gotten in 7+ fistfights at Hyde just defending myself and most of the time those kids were 3-4 years older than me. They were never held accountable because they had “character flaws” or “issues”…. 

On other occasions I have gotten the crap beaten out of me because the kid was on drugs or drunk. Then I started fighting back and then they said, “you have anger issues, or mental issues.” I was literally just surviving there. I wouldn’t tell my parents for a while because I didn’t want them to be worried. Kids were overdosing on fentanyl in the dorms. My parents realized how bad it was once they came for family weekend. The kids in my group were dealing with cocaine, alcohol and other substance abuse issues. My mom was in shock. I was lonely, depressed, sleeping all day. Instead of helping me and getting me help they gave me consequences. They made me feel like something was wrong with me and that they needed to “fix” me. 

Don’t even get me started on the faculty. Mrs. Gauld was super racist to my friends. She would come touch my friends hair who were African American, one time she said my friend looked like a thug with his new hairstyle. She would cry in school meetings, she would never be on campus always visiting other schools while the main campus was falling apart. Not a single one of the teachers had a degree in psychology but they were running therapy sessions every day?

I’ve watched students assault teachers. One kid had bashed a kid’s head in with a hot sauce bottle and it cracked the kid’s head open, but he didn’t get kicked out and then he started threatening me.

Kids would walk around with knives and pretend they were in gangs. The amount of drugs moving through Hyde was ridiculous and when they caught the kids they would just be on work crew for a few days and that’s it. I would barely get any sleep because at night I would hear kids fighting and screaming, getting slammed against walls.

It was terrible being around those kids, as well as the faculty. They would let literally any kid that wanted to come into the school because they were so desperate for money.

I attended their summer program so that I would be able to get more financial aid. They made the whole program go to eustis “for fun”, which is their wilderness program. We get there and all we are able to eat are salami on pita breads and we all have to poop in the same wood box. I was hungry, tired and wanted to leave. Our second night there, a kid got so tired of it he ran away in the middle of the night. I was woken up by helicopters and rangers running around our campsite to go find him. He had ran miles away in the middle of the wilderness in Maine and was found staying in someone’s campsite. He was a super nice kid and all he wanted to do was go home. It was a nightmare. I thought I was in a movie.

Some kids at Eustis wouldn’t get the medication they were prescribed because the staff would just refuse to give it to them. So the kids would act out or do stuff on purpose to get kicked out. It was really messed up.

They refused to let me call my mom, even to just say hi. I was so alone. When I told her what had happened she didn’t believe me. There were so many things that were so traumatic. That school needs to be shut down. Someone I know still goes there for basketball. He doesn’t understand how bad it is and what’s even going on there because he’s been in America for a year and a half.

The way they get money is because the Irvings went there, a multibillion dollar family that owns Irving oil. They donate tons of money to the school and visit every once in a while.

Also Hyde gets money from sending kids to Eustis. The school can choose when a kid goes to Eustis and then charge the kids parents extreme amounts of money without even their consent.

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This survivor attended Hyde School during the past several years. 

#iseeyousurvivor #BreakingCodeSilence #troubledteenindustry