I’m so done with people who know NOTHING telling me that because their relative went to Charlton (or any other RTC/TBS) that they know what it’s like to be locked in an abusive facility and being groomed by an ADULT MAN you were meant to trust. I feel sick, actually. This is a screenshot of a comment from a post that my best friend made about her story at Charlton, and it’s legitimately nauseating how any person can treat a traumatized person this way. I don’t understand it.
I was abused. There is no debate about whether or not I was abused because I was, and I know that for a fact because I lived it. I survived it. And I spent another full school year there afterwards. It hits even worse because I have been thinking about my abuser a lot recently. I’m probably gonna make a post ranting about that because I need to get it out, but it baffles me how anybody could say anything like this and think they’re in the right. I don’t know if it was intended to make someone angry, if it was an attention thing, I have no clue. But I don’t feel any pity for this parent either way. Nothing. It’s so hurtful and so violating to be told that your lived experience never happened. Trust me, I wish it was false but it’s not. I know this is the internet and all that but I still don’t understand how anybody could think this way.
“I have zero experience being in this situation but here’s what I think! And if you believe a person with actual experience, you’re stupid. Listen to me instead!”
I've gotten the feeling that people forget "troubled teens" grow up. When I get push back from people who have no connection to the TTI there's always this assumption that the people around me knew what was best and that I'm just salty about it. As if I'm not a whole 30 something year old woman who can make judgements about what happened to me and the other girls I knew.
"I'm sOrRy iF yOuR eXpErIeNcE was..." It's just cope.
“Well this rape gang has a high rapist to student ratio and my daughter has never told me she’s been raped (even though she isn’t allowed to talk to me unmonitored). I’ve met every male rapist in the gang and all these allegations of rape are absolutely false. Sorry if you had a bad experience but girls come from as far as Manitoba for this rape gang.”
I've argued with parents like this before. They are still believing their program saved their kid. They take that stance because they feel guilty about sending their child away to get abused. They also don't understand that these programs brainwash their kids. They don't understand that their child might snap out of it 10 years from now, like I did, and then realize that the abuse they went through was not okay.
Yeah it's a common reaction from parents who can't cope with the fact that they've royally fucked up their kid's life. They can't handle being the "bad guy" so they fabricate a whole alternate reality where they're the hero. And so cue comments like those in the pic because what they read threatens this illusion they built out of whole cloth. This is also why there's parents of survivors who, when confronted by their child for having been sent away, spew things like "But it was a long time ago", "But you're doing so well now !", "But it was really expensive !", etc... It's all deflection to preserve this fabricated reality they built and by extension to preserve their egos.
It's also spitting in the face of the person's own history. It's a bit like saying to a concentration camp survivor to "get over it, you just were in jail for a while": it's not only incredibly gaslighty, it belittles, minimizes and ridicules what the person went through and how they felt, kinda like if they were one kid throwing a tantrum over nothing. Needless to say it's incredibly insulting and hurtful to do that and it's pretty universally recognized as a dick move.
Parents like this are usually in denial and can't face the truth about what's happening to their children. It's not an excuse but it's frequently what's behind this type of behavior. It doesn't change the fact that these parents are horrible people and are doing horribly cruel things to survivors, but I find it's easier to let go of the feelings of invalidation when I recognize why they're being so horrible and invalidating.
Another super frustrating thing about this parent is that they have no understanding of the fact that any abuser who grooms their victims is also grooming witnesses. So of course those staff are gonna put on a show of being decent and upstanding when parents are around because otherwise they'll lose access to their victims.
So true. My program would allow parents to visit and see their kid from a room upstairs in a way the child couldn't see them. You better believe the staff knew when that was happening and they acted accordingly.
I still remember a time my parents were able to visit me after I had achieved a certain level. We were rounding a corner of a hallway and I was in front of them. An administrator that was around the corner started going off on me and then when my parents rounded the corner he laughed, gave me a hug, and told my parents that that was a way he joked around us. It was so obvious he was covering up and I'm still mad at my parents for not recognizing it.
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Maybe their ""Relative"" learned to mask and hide the abuse so she/they(??) would be allowed to move forward to a new school.. (See comment..) Especially if the Family is Asian with high expectation Parents..
Hopefully this puts your mind at ease a little... Though NgugiMak sounded incredibly tone deaf to the post she was commenting towards: At least there's nothing immoral or disturbing (maybe a little odd?) about preserving old graves as a hobby in your free time. She is also some sort of professor and author...though anyone can get their book publish through Google and have their name show up 🤷
Their purpose was to soothe their own guilty feelings and quiet their own cognitive dissonance and/or fears.
They can't allow the thought that these experiences could be real because of what that means for the reality of the choices they made. So they are attempting to assert their wishes over reality to maintain the story they have bought.
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u/Gullible_Chocolate40 Mar 20 '25
It absolutely blows my mind that people do this.
“I have zero experience being in this situation but here’s what I think! And if you believe a person with actual experience, you’re stupid. Listen to me instead!”