Spring Break
Local author shares horrors of reform school upbringing
Ulriksen was held against her will in a Baptist reform school for a year as a teenager
Chloe Brunello
Issue date: 11/6/08 Section: News
Ulriksen came to find that there were girls from many different walks of life. Some had eating disorders and were force-fed as humiliation, some were pregnant and some had psychological disorders, such as schizophrenia, and were deprived of their lithium. All diseases were seen as works of the devil and did not call for medication as a remedy, but instead utilized prayer and blame.
There were countless rules that were strictly enforced at the all-girls school. Pants and shorts or skirts with a hemline above the knee were unheard of. All sources of the media were filtered out, so far as making sure that the girls did not utter one syllable about movies, actors, TV shows or the like. Friendship was frowned upon, and animosity was praised.
Ulriksen was forced to trade in her pants for a skirt, her make-up for a bare face, her individuality for dehumanization and her personal items for communal ones, such as razors.
Like a hallucination with a twist similar to George Orwell's 1984, Ulriksen was deemed voiceless and unclean.
There was never a possibility for escape with an electric and barbed wire fence, which was compounded by a sensory alarm system and intercom that would be set off whenever a girl put her foot on the ground to leave her bed at night. Even if it was possible to get out of bed to leave the dorms, there was always a guard watching the doors.
The hope of speaking to her parents was ripped out of her grasp when Ulriksen found out that all mail coming and leaving the school was monitored. Faculty would scratch out anything that they didn't want the parents or children to see.
If a child attempted to inform their parents of the atrocities, faculty members would manipulate the letter by saying the child wasn't ready to come home, and the parents would believe it.
Ulriksen and her counterparts were continuously verbally abused by staff members. The worst of the verbal abuse, Ulriksen said, stemmed from the misogynistic preacher who ran the school.
There were countless rules that were strictly enforced at the all-girls school. Pants and shorts or skirts with a hemline above the knee were unheard of. All sources of the media were filtered out, so far as making sure that the girls did not utter one syllable about movies, actors, TV shows or the like. Friendship was frowned upon, and animosity was praised.
Ulriksen was forced to trade in her pants for a skirt, her make-up for a bare face, her individuality for dehumanization and her personal items for communal ones, such as razors.
Like a hallucination with a twist similar to George Orwell's 1984, Ulriksen was deemed voiceless and unclean.
There was never a possibility for escape with an electric and barbed wire fence, which was compounded by a sensory alarm system and intercom that would be set off whenever a girl put her foot on the ground to leave her bed at night. Even if it was possible to get out of bed to leave the dorms, there was always a guard watching the doors.
The hope of speaking to her parents was ripped out of her grasp when Ulriksen found out that all mail coming and leaving the school was monitored. Faculty would scratch out anything that they didn't want the parents or children to see.
If a child attempted to inform their parents of the atrocities, faculty members would manipulate the letter by saying the child wasn't ready to come home, and the parents would believe it.
Ulriksen and her counterparts were continuously verbally abused by staff members. The worst of the verbal abuse, Ulriksen said, stemmed from the misogynistic preacher who ran the school.
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