Rosemont Treatment Center
The Oregonian, August 27, 2014
A Southeast Portland school that has housed and taught troubled teenage girls since 1902 has closed its doors.
Rosemont Treatment Center, a 27-bed facility that provides mental health counseling, substance abuse treatment and schooling is terminating its contract with Oregon Youth Authority and the Department of Human Services due to a chronic lack of funding.
Girls in the program have been sent to foster care, the custody of family members or other treatment facilities….Continue reading at OregonLive.com
Help? No. This place wanted us to be compliant, unquestioning followers, and placed us in the “time out rooms” or in an isolation room if we persisted in any undesirable behavior. There was a “6 inch rule,” meaning no one was allowed to come within 6 inches of anyone else, which meant the only way to get any human contact was to act up to a point where you had to be physically restrained. Hurting girls locked up with no hugs ever ever ever. Nobody was interested in helping me, no matter how much I begged and talked and pleaded. My therapist wanted me to, uh, consider the fact that I didn’t speak up about my father’s abuse earlier… And tried to tell me I was being brainwashed by my mother because I didn’t completely hate either of my parents. My request to work with a different therapist were not even considered, I was consistently told every problem I was having with the institution was my own fault. They only wanted us all to follow all the rules. Finding out Rosemont closed is one of the happiest pieces of news in my entire life.
I was placed in Rosemont as a young rebelious girl. I lived there in like 1983. I still remember this place.
I was placed here in 2011 and I can most definitely say that it was not “helpful”. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that it was actually quite a traumatizing experience.
First of all, the bars on the windows didn’t exactly scream “home”. I was not allowed outside for the first 4 months of living there. I don’t mean outside the facility, I mean outside as in actually outside.
The isolation rooms were plywood screwed to the wall to make a small make-shift room, which was fine if you wanted to be alone. But being sent to seclusion is entirely different.
Seclusion is a punishment where you are thrown into a concrete room with a bright LED light. The only openings being a think steel door that locks and a small 6 square inch window with chicken wire covered with a curtain through which they observe you. While placing you in seclusion, they remove your sweater and belt, leaving you to freeze against the concrete with no source of warmth other than yourself.
I remember watching as a thirteen year old girl tried to walk away from an activity. The staff told her she had to stay. She was having a panic attack and rather than support her need to feel safe, they dragged her (and yes, I mean that quite literally) to seclusion while she begged to not be placed in that rook and said she was sorry repeatedly, only for the staff to put her in seclusion anyway.
Making any sort of close friendship with the other residents automatically leads them to believe that the two individuals should be separated and restricted from seeing each other at all.
No aspect of your life is private. Not even letters or phone calls.
The showers were stained from mold and rarely cleaned.
The therapists were less than therapeutic. Mine told me that it was my fault that I was sexually abused, that I should have taken precautions to protect myself and said no to my abuser (I was 12). My request to change therapists was denied.
Don’t make Rosemont seem like it was more than what it really was: another place that not just failed to better our lives, but somewhere that left us scarred for life.
I was the girl who apparently started the riot.That made them move from north east portland and I can tell you that this place was screwed up from the Beginning, this is like aprison.Sexual and abuse verbal and physical were all around Has had a heart on for me ever since .. should have stared a class action suit