How Four Siblings Left A Toxic Family Environment

Unfiltered Stories

In today's episode of Unfiltered Stories, we have the honor of listening to Sabrina Young's personal journey. Adopted as an infant, Sabrina faced significant challenges growing up in a home environment that was far from nurturing. From a young age, she had to navigate a complex relationship with her adoptive mother, who treated Sabrina and her siblings in ways that no child should ever experience.   Despite the hardships she faced, Sabrina has shown remarkable courage and resilience in her healing journey. Through therapy and speaking out about her experiences, she is shedding light on the often-overlooked challenges that can arise within the adoption process. Join us as we listen to Sabrina's story with empathy and learn from her powerful insights.   #unfilteredstories #survivorstories   Thank you for watching Unfiltered Stories! We offer a platform for our guests to speak openly about their life stories and journeys, shedding light on the challenges they faced and the resilience they've shown.  Our mission is to raise awareness about survivors by delving into their stories, exploring the impact of their experiences, and how they've managed to heal and rebuild their lives.  By sharing these stories, we aim to break the silence surrounding those challenging memories and create a compassionate environment.   Find Tiffany Kuntz on her socials:  TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tiffanylynnkuntz?lang=en   Make sure you hit the 🛎️ BELL ICON 🛎️ to get notifications every time we post new episodes, and don't forget to SUBSCRIBE by clicking this link:  ➮ https://tinyurl.com/USsub   🌅 FOLLOW US 🌅  Facebook ➮ https://tinyurl.com/UnfilteredFB  Tiktok ➮ https://tinyurl.com/UnfilteredTT  Snapchat ➮ https://tinyurl.com/UnfilteredSN

Transcript

00:00My name is Sabrina Young, and I'm a survivor of the troubled teen industry, and I'm also a survivor

00:05of adoption abuse. So I was three months old when I was adopted, and I was adopted in Jacksonville,

00:12Florida from the Children's Home Society. I share three adoptive siblings that are not

00:18biologically related to me, but they are biologically related to each other. For 11 and a

00:23half years, I endured abuse, torture, neglect, racism, and mistreatment. My adoptive mother was

00:32very cruel and sadistic. We had to ask permission to drink. We had to ask permission to eat. We were

00:37not allowed to come out of our rooms. So if it was Saturday morning and she slept in till two

00:42o'clock,

00:43you stayed in your room. She used to make us sleep in the bathtub as punishment. No blanket,

00:48no pillow. She would wake us up by spraying cold water in our faces. When I was nine years old,

00:54she waterboarded me with a two liter bottle of ginger ale on our kitchen table because I drank

00:59a glass of it without her permission. Oftentimes when children's services were called and they came

01:06out to our house to investigate, she had a heads up or a warning. So then she would prep us

01:11like,

01:11this is what you say when they ask, what bruise is this from? So we would lie and say it's

01:16from our bike

01:16or we fell because she would brainwash us and say, well, no one's going to want you.

01:21Nobody wants little children anymore. You're too old to be readopted. You'll get stuck in foster care

01:27and would tell us all kinds of horror stories to keep us to be quiet. There were times where

01:32she would make me sleep in the hallway. She would call me racial slurs. She would often threaten to

01:38take me back to the children's home and trade me for a white child. There were times where she would

01:43take us out to restaurants and she would eat food in front of us and we would sit there with

01:47nothing.

01:48I was around nine years old when we developed cancer and I was sent to live with a friend of

01:55the family named, and while I was living with her, I was molested when I was 10 years old by

02:00one of her

02:01adoptive children. When I told them what had happened, she called me to come pick me up and it was

02:06never

02:06discussed again. It was just swept underneath the rug. I started wetting the bed at night and she rubbed my

02:12face in the urine-soaked sheets because she caught me trying to change my bed in the middle of the

02:18night.

02:18She called me Peapot and made me go to school smelling like urine. The next day after that, I get

02:24sent to

02:25another aunt's house and I lived with her for maybe a couple months. My sister was sent to a girl's

02:31home

02:31first. Well, she was sent to go live with our aunt first while I was living with her and then

02:35our aunt sent her

02:37away to a girl's home in Florida called Charity Haven. A few months later, I come home. My aunt sits

02:43me down on the couch and goes, I'm going to send you to a boarding school. And I'm like, yes,

02:47Hogwarts,

02:47right? It was nothing like it. It was a cult. I was told that I was going to be there

02:51with my sister.

02:53Little did I know that my sister had been sent away to their sister facility in Alice, Texas.

02:58So Charity Haven and Victory Acres were ran by a husband and wife duo and we were forced to call

03:04them

03:04mama hen and papa hen. The majority of my time spent at Charity Haven was in a little cell,

03:11like a little room. And on the door, it said a praying girl will quit sinning and a sinning girl

03:17would quit praying. The room had carpet from wall to floor with a little pew bench against the wall

03:23that was attached. And there was a tiny little closet with a retractable rod. Now at this point

03:28in time, I did not know that the rod was attractable. And I was so upset and depressed

03:35and felt so low and worthless that nobody wants me. My biological mother didn't want me. My adoptive

03:43mother didn't want me. I'm stuck in this room. I'm going to kill myself. So I took my shirt off,

03:49tied it and tried to hang myself at 11 years old. Well, it didn't work and I fell and they

03:56heard the

03:56big kaboom. So they came in to see what was going on. And next thing I knew, they came at

04:02me with

04:02Bibles and they were praying over me and was trying to give me an exorcism because they said I was

04:08demon possessed. The first thing that happens when you go to this program is you're given a sheet of

04:15rules and you're hooked up with a buddy and you're not allowed to talk to anybody. You have to ask

04:21permission to speak. I remember while being in this room, you were, I was put on a punishment called

04:28red shirt. And with red shirt is, is you wear a red shirt, obviously. And that was all you were

04:33allowed to wear. You were not given the privilege to use certain toiletries such as razors, body wash,

04:41perfume, deodorant, shampoo, conditioner. You had to wash your entire body, even your hair with a bar

04:48of dial gold. So few days later, I remember them coming in after I tried to kill myself and I

04:56was

04:57told to get in this van. I did with about 20 other girls and I had no idea where we

05:03were going. I had

05:04no shoes on, just socks and they put shackles on my feet. And I'm like, why would they think I

05:09was

05:09going to run away? I'd never ran away before. We drove for what seemed like forever. And we ended up

05:15in Loosedale, Mississippi. And I remember going down this clay dirt road and I see these boys

05:21marching and cadence with white t-shirts and black boots and camo pants. And I'm like, okay,

05:31they're just trying to scare me, right? They're not really going to leave me here at military school.

05:36I'm 11 years old. I'm about 86 pounds. I was met with the drill instructor and the director of the

05:43program. They were screaming in my face, yelling at me. I was instructed to do a bunch of different

05:48calisthenics. I stayed at this program for a little over a year. I ran away once from the program when

05:55I was 12 years old because there was an older girl there who was 16 who used me as her

06:01human punching

06:01bag. And oftentimes they would pair the students up and make them fight almost like fight club. There

06:07was a boxing ring and they would watch for sport. I witnessed several boys being drowned in the pond.

06:14I witnessed several girls being drowned and resuscitated and they would use smelly salt or cold water to

06:22wake you back up. I got so sick and tired of this girl beating on me. Then I ran away

06:27through the woods

06:28and I'm thinking, okay, I need to go to Walmart. I need to get some clothes, some regular clothes because

06:34we wore military style uniforms. I need to blend in with the general public and I see the Bethel van

06:40pulling up to Walmart. So I hide in a ditch. A car comes beside me and an old man rolls

06:45down the

06:45window and he goes, do you need some help? Are you from that group home? And I said, I am.

06:49And I was

06:50reluctant to get in the vehicle with them because you know, it's a stranger and can I trust this person?

06:55I said, I need to go to the police station. He's like, I'll help you. So I trusted him, got

07:01in the vehicle,

07:02he locks the door, takes me back to Bethel. I received licks that day with a paddle and I was

07:09locked in the director's home in his personal home in a closet. His children would open the door

07:14and would taunt me and make fun of me and call me names. One day I get called to the

07:20director's house

07:21and he goes, you have 10 minutes to pack up your stuff. You're going home. And I was in complete

07:25shock as I was running to the dorm to pack up my stuff. My adopted father pulls up in a

07:31vehicle. He told me, are you ready to go home? That was the nickname he had given me when I

07:36was

07:36little. And I said, yes, sir. Got my stuff, got in the car. And it didn't seem real until I

07:43seen the

07:44welcome to Florida sign. I was only home for about three months. I turned 13 and my adoptive mother

07:50passes away. A week after my adoptive mother passes away, I come home, my aunt's there, my dad,

07:56and they have my stuff packed. And they're like, you're going back to Bethel. I'm like, why? I didn't

08:01do anything wrong. Like, why am I being sent back? Well, I didn't know it at the time, but my

08:07adopted

08:08father had tried to kill himself over death. And so he was being sent away to a mental institution

08:18and my aunt just didn't want the responsibility of taking care of me. And so they sent me back to

08:25Bethel. This time I did everything I could to get kicked out of these programs. Like you think I'm a

08:31bad kid? I'm going to show you a bad kid. And so I did. And I bucked the system. I

08:38wouldn't do what I

08:38was told. And then I met a girl named and we became best friends. And she encouraged me to work

08:47the

08:47program. Like things would be so much easier for you if you would just do what they say. But I

08:52had

08:52an alternative motive. So I worked the program all the way to get level up, to get what was called

08:59on

08:59night watch. And night watch is where a few girls would stay up in the middle of the night,

09:03or a few guys would stay up in the middle of the night in their dorm, and they would make

09:06sure no

09:07one ran away. What did I do? I had the keys and I ran away. Ran away with two older

09:12girls. One was 15,

09:13one was 16. And we walked for like what seemed like hours from Petal, Mississippi to the nearby

09:19town Hattiesburg. And we stopped at a laundromat to take a break because we were so exhausted,

09:26no water, just walking. And I fell asleep. And when I woken up, the girls had ditched me. And I

09:33was so

09:33scared. And I didn't know where to go that I actually called the program. I know they come pick me

09:40up.

09:40And so they picked me up. I was literally forced to put my nose in the corner for three weeks.

09:45I would

09:46stand there all day long. And I was only let out probably maybe once or twice a day to go

09:51to the

09:52bathroom and you had to stand back in at the wall. When you ate your meals, you had to stand

09:56there with

09:57your tray and eat your food. I remember they dragged me and put me in an isolation room. This room

10:02was

10:02cement block with a metal bed. And it had like a very thin mattress, no blanket, no pillow. And there

10:09was a

10:09speaker in the ceiling. And once again, they would play these preaching sermons by the director of

10:14the Rebecca home and other evangelical preachers and some Christian music. And they would just play

10:19it on repeat and repeat, repeat. I remember being directed to go or called out of the room and was

10:25called into the director's office. And he goes, he read a letter that I had written to my family.

10:30I wrote a will because I thought I was going to die in these programs. And I said, I'm going

10:35to die in

10:35these programs. I made my will and I sent it and surprisingly they mailed it out. And I got a

10:40nasty

10:41letter back from my aunt and from my cousins telling me what a horrible kid I was and that I

10:47was ungrateful

10:48and that I was making up stories about my mother abusing me. And he told me that you have no

10:55home to go

10:56go to. So you might as well just get with the program. So the director would often make fun of

11:03the

11:03fact that I was biracial. He would call me baby. And I was forced to pick cotton as a form

11:11of

11:11humiliation for 12 hours. When I refused to do it, he said, do you know what we do to your

11:18kind down

11:18here? So I get taken out of the room. I'm talking to the director. He tells me I have no

11:25home to go

11:25back to. I get put back in the room. And the next day I was told, hey, Sabrina, you're going

11:31to go with

11:31us to the boys location. We're going to pick up supplies. So we make our way to the boys program

11:38and we pull up to the director's home and I get out of the van and I see from my

11:46previous program

11:47standing there with three girls. That's the same program that my sister got shut down. Oftentimes

11:54these programs, when they get shut down, they relocate to a new state with lenient laws and they

12:00rebrand and they reopen. Bethel was kicking me out and was literally sending me back to the program I

12:06originally came from. So I was there for three to four months. A couple of girls ran away. Children's

12:13services comes in. They interview us, investigate us. I stay with a family from the church that we were

12:19going to. And I remember having to go talk to children's services workers. And the next thing I

12:27knew, the woman I was staying with said, I'm so sorry, but your aunt is coming to get you. I

12:33remember

12:33my aunt again coming to pick me up and I'm driving in the vehicle with her. And she goes, you

12:39better be

12:40good or you're going to come home, which made no sense to me. Like, why can't I come home now?

12:44What are

12:44you talking about? Little did I know she was taking me back to Charity Haven, the first program I was

12:51in, in Milton, Florida. I was there at Charity Haven for a few weeks. And I remember waking up in

12:58the

12:59middle of the night to four girls singing beside my bed and the director of that program with handcuffs

13:05and shackles saying, you can do this the easy way or the hard way, which I had already knew exactly

13:12what

13:12was going to go down. So I said, I'll take the easy way. And I get in the van. We

13:17drive from

13:18Milton, Florida to Devil's Elbow, Missouri to thanks to Calvary Boys Academy. And I remember

13:26seeing the sign and I said, why are we at a boys school? And I was told you're not allowed

13:30to speak

13:31unless spoken to. He did not have a place for us to stay in. So we were staying in a

13:37big, huge trailer

13:38on that boy's property until he was able to purchase land and property in the state of Florida

13:45for our new program that they renamed New Beginnings Girls Academy. While I was at the New Beginnings

13:53Girls Academy, I was not allowed to shower for three months, even while I was ministrating. I was forced

13:58to stay awake at the end of my bunk bed from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. and was

14:02only permitted to sleep for one

14:03hour a day for three months straight. I was put on half portions, which means that your food intake

14:08was cut down. I wasn't allowed to brush my teeth. The bed that I slept on had nothing but a

14:14piece of

14:14plastic over it. I wasn't allowed a blanket or a pillow because he said he didn't want me stinking

14:19up the mattress. When I finally got to the point where I could not even wipe myself from not being

14:26able

14:27to shower because of the blood clots, I went to him and I said, I need to take a shower.

14:32Please let me

14:33shower. I can't even wipe myself. It hurts when I pee. And he said, I spoke to my wife and

14:38she says

14:38that doesn't happen. Well, that pissed me off. So I stole someone's shampoo and conditioner and decided

14:44to shower. And I said, you're going to have to drag me out. And they did. And then they beat

14:48me.

14:48I was dragged out of the shower by my hair, pulled into the director's home where they proceeded to

14:55shine a flashlight in my eye, said I was demon possessed. They dumped a half a bottle of Dawn dish

15:00soap

15:01down my throat until I vomited. I was forced to clean that soapy bile vomit up. He had four to

15:06five

15:07other girls singing Christian songs to drown my screams out because he did not want me waking up

15:13his teenage daughter that was asleep in the home. And I was 14 at this time. The next day after

15:19this

15:20happened, I got my sheets back, got my clothing back. I was allowed to shower. And then I was told

15:26to

15:26go to one of the trailers that was on the property. And there was a lady from children's services.

15:31And I already knew, oh, they're hiding the evidence of abuse. That's why I was allowed to shower. The

15:37lady says, did they abuse you? And I already know the game by now. So I was like, no, like

15:42they're

15:42asking me right in front of the people that ran the program was standing right there. The CPS worker

15:48asked me, do you have any family? I told her pretty much, you know, my adopted mom died. I don't

15:54know

15:54where my dad is. He's in a nursing home. I don't know where my adopted siblings are. And so she

16:00said,

16:00do you have anywhere to go? And I was like, no. And I remember a program called Reclamation Ranch.

16:06And I was like, send me there. Those girls look happy. Little did I know it was the same

16:10different toilet. That was my last program that I went to. So that was my fifth program. My last program.

16:18I went to that program when I was 15 years old and I stayed there until three months before I

16:24graduated high school. That program, I was instructed to carry logs from point A to point B,

16:31drop them, pick them back up for hours and hours at a time. I was forced to hold other girls

16:37down

16:37while they were getting punished and beaten. So I graduated high school December 9th of 2004.

16:44I moved to Ohio. I meet a boy. Boy meets girl. Girl gets pregnant. And so I became pregnant when

16:51I was 18

16:52years old. I am happily married to that same man. And I have two children now by him. We've been

16:57together for 20 years. I decided three years ago to start going to therapy. And I was diagnosed with

17:04complex PTSD from the programs. And with that, I found the courage to write my book and advocate for

17:13survivors in the troubled teen industry. So I've been advocating for the past three years. I had no

17:19actual real life skills. Pretty much the only thing I knew how to do was cook, clean and be an

17:24obedient

17:24housewife. That's all I knew how to do. I didn't know how to think for myself. I didn't know how

17:29to

17:30sell a job application. I didn't know what taxes were. I didn't know how to say no to other people

17:35because I was always taught to be obedient. A lot of that has changed in me and I'm more outspoken.

17:42I have been working in the field of DODD, which is Department of Developmental Disabilities. I am a

17:50caretaker. I take care of people who have developmental disabilities and autism. I've been doing that for

17:54the past 14 years. And with that, I've learned about advocacy, which has helped me transition into

18:00being able to be an advocate for individuals who are still in programs like I was. Adoption is trauma

18:07within itself. Experts have said that it is trauma within itself. The separation from child and the

18:13mother is trauma. So every adoptee in its life has experienced trauma in one form of another. Imagine

18:21living in a world where you're the only person that you know you're related to. It sucks. I don't look

18:27like my mother. I don't look like my father. I don't fit in. I was a transracial adoptee. So I

18:34was the only

18:35person of color in my family and that was rough. And then not to mention having a mother who adopted

18:41a biracial child and then would sit there and call them racial slurs. So later on in life, I find

18:48both

18:48sides of my biological family when I was 30 years old. I take this ancestry DNA test. I find my

18:55biological

18:56mother and then I find my sisters. And then three years after that, I find my biological father and he

19:03leaves a voicemail on my phone after getting in touch with another relative that we matched with.

19:08And they were like, Hey, is this your kid? I think this might be your kid. And then he was

19:12like,

19:13you know what? I did in the eighties have a relationship with a black woman and she was

19:18pregnant, but that baby died. My adoptive mother ran off, put me up for adoption, came back to

19:25Jacksonville. When my dad saw her, she said, I gave, or she didn't say anything about giving me up.

19:32He said, where's the baby? She says, I had a little girl. I buried her in Georgia. She died from

19:38heart

19:38complications. So this entire time, my dad thought I was dead. And that hurt knowing that I could have

19:46had a completely different life raised by family who wanted me. Um, I didn't also know it at the time

19:52until later on that when my biological mother moved back from Florida to Louisville, Kentucky,

19:57her relatives were asking, where's the baby? And she goes, I gave her up for adoption. Well, my name

20:03had been changed from Renisha Renee to Sabrina. My adoptive mother had four children that she all put

20:11up for adoption. The eldest was named Renisha Renee and she was given to an aunt and she died when

20:17she

20:18was seven years old. Then she had my brother put him up for adoption. Then she had my sister,

20:24a relative took her in. Then she had me and put me up for adoption. She named me after the

20:29dead sister.

20:30So when I went to go meet my biological mother and I asked her, what, what did you name me?

20:36Cause I

20:36noticed I was adopted when I was three months old. I surely had to have a different name. And she

20:41goes,

20:41I named you Renisha. And I'm like after the dead sister. And she's like, well, yeah. And I said,

20:46why did you name me after my dead sister? And she goes, well, I missed Renisha so much that I

20:52named

20:52you after her. And I said, well, you couldn't have missed her that much because you gave me away.

20:56And she said, well, I don't regret my decision. Three years after meeting her, she passes away.

21:03So then I find my biological father. Turns out he lives three hours away from me in Ohio.

21:09Ohio. I traveled down to Jacksonville, Florida and meet my grandma and my sister. I share a sister on

21:17my dad's side and take my kids down there. I'm going to meet the family. They bake me a cake

21:23that says,

21:23welcome home. I got to meet my sister, my nieces, my nephew, or my niece, my nephew, cousins,

21:31aunts, uncles. It was the best feeling in the world of like, finally my people, like my family.

21:38So if you're a parent and you're wanting to send your child away to the troubled teen industry,

21:42the first thing that you need to do is go to the www.thetroubleteenindustry.com. There you're

21:49going to find the history of the troubled teen industry and what qualifies as a troubled teen

21:54industry program. When you go to find a program and it says clear review academy for boys,

21:59instead of reading their fancy descriptive marketing, you're going to take copy paste,

22:04clear review academy for boys, go put it in your Google search bar and put abuse allegations.

22:10Their PDFs are going to pop up. If there are any, we pretty much have done the research for you

22:16and

22:16it's out there. You can go to unsilenced.org's website. They have an archive of all the programs

22:23that we have found guilty of abuse, neglect, mistreatment. I also name over 350 different

22:34programs in the back of my book where children have died and the programs. I wrote a book about

22:40my life. It is available on Amazon. It's titled Dear Renisha because it's written in journal form to

22:47my sister Renisha. I felt like she was my guardian angel and was looking out for me and probably is

22:53the reason why I survived everything that I survived. There's a second edition coming out.

22:59I decided to change the cover work on it and use my own original artwork. I use a picture of

23:06a drawing

23:06that I love, a painting that I did of me digging a tree stump with a spoon. That was one

23:11of the

23:11punishments that they made me do at Bethel for falling asleep in class. I had to dig a huge

23:17tree stump with a silver spoon. I never got the stump out. It's probably still there to this day.

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