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I was there. Around 89-91ish? I dont know the exact dates. I was in and out of places all of my teenage years. I know that Nothing compares to you played a lot on the radio when I was there at some point.
I remember Regina the most. I hated her. She was always so ready to threaten and fullfill those threats. I remember asking one time if I could skip group, I just had a headache & didn't want to go. It was an evening group, after dnner, I wanted to just lay down. I tried to just skip out by staying in my room & laying in bed. Regina sauntered in & smugly asked if I thought I would rebel tonight. I just said I wanted to lay down, I didn't feel great and needed alone time. She gave it to me. By way of quiet room. I spent a lot of time there. I remembered I also had a room facing the parking lot. I can't quite remember my doctors name, I can't think why, who knows, he had a balding head and a beard. I think he wore brown suits a lot, like most therapists did in the late 80's early 90's. I guess they felt it made them look theraputic? He wasn't the mean one in my mind, in fact, I only saw or heard from him once a week. It was the regular staff, mostly Regina, she was 9 feet tall and built like hulk hogan. At least it seemed like it at the time. She had salt & pepper hair with some white in the front, cut short and angry looking, no softness in it at all. All the pieces just looked like little edges you want to smooth and blend in pixilated video games. Everything about her was sharp and hard, her nose, her little pursed lips, even her angry little eyes. I have a hard time remembering peoples names, but not hers. I remember Regina.
There were two young brothers there, it seemed so strange that they were there, nothing the matter with them, the older brother was sort of sad, the younger, just really scared to be there, but, honestly, the only thing going on, was their parents were divorcing..so, you lock up both your kids?! I remember I felt really bad for the younger brother, he was so small. I remember I felt really protective of him around the staff. I also remember there was a girl who was across the hall from me who had been there a long time. She had found a staple and inserted it into her vein in her arm & I thought she might die. I ended up telling staff, I told her I had to , because I was scared & I wanted her to be ok. She ened up needing to have surgery. They actually didn't believe me when I told them. She had to PROOVE it was in her arm. What if she jsut said "f" it I'm just not going to bother & went to sleep & died?! That was of COURSE Regina demanding proof that she was in danger. Rather than be concerned for her.
When I first got there we were in the big building. I actually still have pictures of my room in there and my polaroid of my intake photo, as well as one bad polaroid of me on halloween in badly done zombie make up that you can't see because the flash washed it out. A few months in, we all moved to the "new" building, next door. It was a smaller building that looked more house like than building like. We were all instructed to pack up our belongings and carry them over. It had a caged yard area, not that we ever got to use it. We rarely went outside, so jsut getting to walk from the big building to the new building was exciting. I was lucky and had a single room in the old building, but, was glad Katie was going to be my roommate in the new building. On our walk over, we of course all tried to look across and get a peek at what was rumored to be the "nude beach" across the pond (probably untrue, but, we all tried to look anyway) we also picked up as many random ciggerette butts as we could get our little fingers on. We got in the new building and Katie and I found fresh razor blades in our room, kindly forgotten there by the carpet installers, which we promptly began mutilating ourselves with then hid for later use. I remember there was also the kid from Jersey, Mikey. I always giggled when he said three, because it sounded like "tree" so I would ask him to say it all the time. Mikey was my little love interest while I was there and I was heartbroken to leave him behind when I left because I knew I would likely never see him again. It was not a social media time & who knew what facility we would be in next time the insurance renewed its timeframe for inpatient again. it seemed you got so much time for inpatient each year and outpatient, and that just so happened to be exactly how sick you were. Weird.
It felt good to find this thread. I was looking up an old group home for I don't know why & then happened to think of this place. I googled it and found the facebook, which led me here. It's relieving and validating to hear that I am not the only one to feel anger about how my voice was taken in that place. My words were empty & every thought was considered invalid. I was thrown into quiet rooms and rolled into mats & watched people I cared about have it done to them for unreasonable things by people who should have probably been getting help themselves. It was so validating to read through posts of other people saying, those things mattered.
My name is Charlotte I was there too it’s was so so bad all the blood they took from us rolling us up in mats intell u can’t breathe are sticking u with needles of drugs to make u go to sleep are not being able to sleep at all cause the night staff would touch the girls
I thought I was the only one who was abused horribly at Golden valley in 1982/83. I'm 53 now and am on ssi. I have ptsd . Panic attacks and night terrors. I reached out to a great lawyer. If your interested please contact me. You need peace as much as I do. Shannonberthelsen@gmail.com
I was there in 1978. I was a "patient" of Doctor Corman. My mom had me, a long haired effeminate child who liked to read and hated sports. (and was autistic spectrum but didn't know it yet. So I was abused and victimized pretty badly by the kids in Richfield. My mother was divorced and had a very active sex life. Her two kids just got in the way. My brother had the sense to stay away at his friends on weekends, and be an acceptable son when he was home So when Doctor Corman gave her an out to get rid of her failure "son", she packed me off to Golden Valley.
I was there the summer of 1978. I was 13. Three days in they put me in with a guy who pissed on everything. The floor, the clothes, my bed, his bed. Then the kids decided I was "gay" and the beatings started. I got out of pissy guys room, and the guys in the next room didn't want the "gay" kid, so all my stuff started getting destroyed, and they would **** in my shampoo and put food and toothpaste in my hair while I slept. And if the staff turned around for even a minute I got gut punched or groin punched hard. You learned to keep staff in eyesight at all times. Once, a girl about 16 was kicking the crap out of a girl about eight and I was horrified, I kicked the 16 year old in the ass so hard she stopped and turned around and split my lip so badly I had to go to the hospital. Three guesses who got blamed and who got the extended "quiet room" stay?
They beatings and abuse got so bad, I finally said something offhand about jumping out the window and escaping. So I was stuffed with Benadryl till I was incoherent, shackled spread eagle to the bed for an entire day and just left alone to the tender mercies of anybody who just walked by. The next two months were just a pill stupor. I didn't even care if I got hit anymore. I only got out because my mom was a nurse, and she got pulled for the nursing pool at the facility, and even she saw how nuts it was. "You saw more of the doctor at home than you do here" (She didn't tell them her kid was there so she could get the check)
The organized group think was so bad once in "music therapy" we all had to vote for the song that best represented us as teens. Being 1978, half of us picked "Flaming Youth" by Kiss, the other half picked an Earth Wind and Fire song I didn't know. The EWAF crowd got the majority, and they went around the group and made us all talk about how that song represented us. A song I didn't even know. I said "It does not represent me" I don't even know it!" I was told "the majority voted for it So it did represent me!" so when I couldn't tell them what they wanted to hear, back in the bare concrete "quiet room" for the day. The lesson was, say what they want to hear, agree with everything they said no matter how out to lunch or else.
The chief inmate of this ****hole "The coolest kid" my last week there took me aside and literally taught me how to stop getting bullied, and pretty much taught me a new personalty (and I didn't understand yet, but drove me back in the closet for another 20+ years.) by the time I came out I couldn't bear to be touched (I still can barely stand it) and if anybody hit me I'd just beat them with anything that came into reach, books, desks, chairs, anything. I'd go into survival mode, I wasn't much more than a wild animal. Part of my problem was a was a "trans kid" and there was no words for it then" so I learned to be a leathery badass with a hairspring temper so nobody would be able to hurt me again. The next 20+ years of my life was the act I learned so I'd survive "treatment"
Finally it was 1999 and I was home with a g*n in my mouth before I finally got help. I transitioned a year later. They had me so afraid of mental health care I'd run from any help and support for two decades. The thing that would have changed my life when I was 13 but had zero chance of happening finally happened when I was 36. Bu the things they did do me gave me a life of PTSD and chronic anxiety. I'm still an emotional wreck who can barely stand to be touched, constantly afraid of random beatings, a deep distrust of authority, and I'd sooner die than EVER set foot in a locked ward. Thank for destroying my life Doctor Corman.
]
When I first got there, my roommate told me some horror stories about things that happened there before. I think she mentioned a boy chained to a bed, and somebody pulling a knife on someone else. Plus I talked to another former patient later,
I was chained to the bed but that was 1978. I'd hate to think anybody spent YEARS there,
I was there in 1978. I was a "patient" of Doctor Corman. My mom had me, a long haired effeminate child who liked to read and hated sports. (and was autistic spectrum but didn't know it yet. So I was abused and victimized pretty badly by the kids in Richfield. My mother was divorced and had a very active sex life. Her two kids just got in the way. My brother had the sense to stay away at his friends on weekends, and be an acceptable son when he was home So when Doctor Corman gave her an out to get rid of her failure "son", she packed me off to Golden Valley.
I was there the summer of 1978. I was 13. Three days in they put me in with a guy who pissed on everything. The floor, the clothes, my bed, his bed. Then the kids decided I was "gay" and the beatings started. I got out of pissy guys room, and the guys in the next room didn't want the "gay" kid, so all my stuff started getting destroyed, and they would **** in my shampoo and put food and toothpaste in my hair while I slept. And if the staff turned around for even a minute I got gut punched or groin punched hard. You learned to keep staff in eyesight at all times. Once, a girl about 16 was kicking the crap out of a girl about eight and I was horrified, I kicked the 16 year old in the ass so hard she stopped and turned around and split my lip so badly I had to go to the hospital. Three guesses who got blamed and who got the extended "quiet room" stay?
They beatings and abuse got so bad, I finally said something offhand about jumping out the window and escaping. So I was stuffed with Benadryl till I was incoherent, shackled spread eagle to the bed for an entire day and just left alone to the tender mercies of anybody who just walked by. The next two months were just a pill stupor. I didn't even care if I got hit anymore. I only got out because my mom was a nurse, and she got pulled for the nursing pool at the facility, and even she saw how nuts it was. "You saw more of the doctor at home than you do here" (She didn't tell them her kid was there so she could get the check)
The organized group think was so bad once in "music therapy" we all had to vote for the song that best represented us as teens. Being 1978, half of us picked "Flaming Youth" by Kiss, the other half picked an Earth Wind and Fire song I didn't know. The EWAF crowd got the majority, and they went around the group and made us all talk about how that song represented us. A song I didn't even know. I said "It does not represent me" I don't even know it!" I was told "the majority voted for it So it did represent me!" so when I couldn't tell them what they wanted to hear, back in the bare concrete "quiet room" for the day. The lesson was, say what they want to hear, agree with everything they said no matter how out to lunch or else.
The chief inmate of this ****hole "The coolest kid" my last week there took me aside and literally taught me how to stop getting bullied, and pretty much taught me a new personalty (and I didn't understand yet, but drove me back in the closet for another 20+ years.) by the time I came out I couldn't bear to be touched (I still can barely stand it) and if anybody hit me I'd just beat them with anything that came into reach, books, desks, chairs, anything. I'd go into survival mode, I wasn't much more than a wild animal. Part of my problem was a was a "trans kid" and there was no words for it then" so I learned to be a leathery badass with a hairspring temper so nobody would be able to hurt me again. The next 20+ years of my life was the act I learned so I'd survive "treatment"
Finally it was 1999 and I was home with a g*n in my mouth before I finally got help. I transitioned a year later. They had me so afraid of mental health care I'd run from any help and support for two decades. The thing that would have changed my life when I was 13 but had zero chance of happening finally happened when I was 36. Bu the things they did do me gave me a life of PTSD and chronic anxiety. I'm still an emotional wreck who can barely stand to be touched, constantly afraid of random beatings, a deep distrust of authority, and I'd sooner die than EVER set foot in a locked ward. Thank for destroying my life Doctor Corman.
Bumping this thread to keep it current. I wasn't a patient of this hospital, but spent my latter teens years in facilities that resemble all the experiences posted here, during the same era. I once posted about it on another forum and all the replies were that it sounded far-fetched and nobody believed me, because 'things like that don't happen anymore'. I once told somebody a little bit about it and he said it sounded like a 'personal holocaust'. That was the last time I bothered to tell anyone about it. This all happened to me in the early 1990s.
By the time I was 18 and aged out of the system I'd been kept drugged out of my mind, was administered shock therapy, physically and sexually abused by other patients and staff, put into an isolated padded cell for weeks at a time with limited hygiene, kept indoors for over a month at a time, witnessed other kids stabbing or cutting themselves, attempted suicide twice, and cost my parents and the state hundreds of thousands of dollars for "treatment".
This thread has always been painful for me to read, and I decided to add to it this time.
Man I was in this horrible place about 10 years old in 1985 or 1986… horrible trauma, forced injections of god knows what, physical, emotional and sexual abuse, locked up in padded room in a heavy jail like mattress with staff sitting on me feeling like I was taking my last breath. Sent off to Bar None Boys Ranch in Anoka where continued abuse happened… we should be compensated for the experiences, experiments, the sexual abuse, extreme emotional trauma. Nope we were unwanted, uncared for, a part of society to throw away and they did everything under the sun to experiment… what a fallen world
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