- 6 months ago
Annelle Blackwell never expected her life to change at 2 A.M. when two strangers stood over her bed and whispered, “Easy way or hard way.” She was dragged into a car, flown across the country, and placed into a wilderness program she never agreed to. What followed were years inside the troubled-teen industry—strip searches, restraints, humiliation, and trauma that shaped her entire life.
This is Annelle’s journey through loss, survival, and reclaiming her voice. A powerful story of resilience, truth, and the fight to expose a system built on silence.
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 Annelle Blackwell on her socials:
TikTok: @annelle.rrp
Facebook: Annelle Blackwell
🌅 FOLLOW US 🌅
Facebook ➮ https://tinyurl.com/UnfilteredFB
Tiktok ➮ https://tinyurl.com/UnfilteredTT
Snapchat ➮ https://tinyurl.com/UnfilteredSN
This is Annelle’s journey through loss, survival, and reclaiming her voice. A powerful story of resilience, truth, and the fight to expose a system built on silence.
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 Annelle Blackwell on her socials:
TikTok: @annelle.rrp
Facebook: Annelle Blackwell
🌅 FOLLOW US 🌅
Facebook ➮ https://tinyurl.com/UnfilteredFB
Tiktok ➮ https://tinyurl.com/UnfilteredTT
Snapchat ➮ https://tinyurl.com/UnfilteredSN
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NewsTranscript
00:00I woke up in the middle of the night to two people in my room.
00:03They said, we can do this the easy way or the hard way.
00:06And I started screaming because I thought that I was getting kidnapped.
00:10They take me out and they don't tell me, like, we get to the airport.
00:15They don't tell me where we're going.
00:17They have a plane ticket all ready for me.
00:20And they said, your mom paid for this.
00:26My name's Annelle Blackwell, and I went knocking on the doors of my abusers.
00:31I was born in North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and my parents were state workers.
00:37I was a daddy's girl, so my dad and I were really close.
00:40He taught me how to play softball.
00:42He would take me to bookstores and go and have coffee and things like that with him.
00:48By 1999, my parents separated.
00:50When they separated, I was 14, about to be 15, and I was left with my mom.
00:57And my mom and I were just not very close.
00:59So I started sneaking out, you know, started sneaking out of the house and just being a bit of a
01:04rebel.
01:05And so when I started experimenting with cigarettes and weed and all that, she just did not know what to
01:12do.
01:13By 14 years old, she put me in my first mental institution.
01:17January of 2001, I had not seen my dad in six months.
01:22I knew that my dad had an issue with sex abuse.
01:25It was very well known.
01:27That night, like, we took pictures together, and that was the first time that we had taken pictures together.
01:32So I walked in there, and his chair had gone back against the mantle.
01:39And so I was like, well, look at you.
01:41You know, you're, uh, I was like, look at you.
01:43You flipped over.
01:45And, but he, he was silent.
01:47So I was like, let me help you.
01:48And so I pushed down on the recliner, and he didn't try to move or anything like that.
01:53I stood there for about, I don't know, it must have been seconds, but it felt like minutes because, you
01:59know, time gets distorted whenever there's something wrong.
02:02And so I went over to the phone, and I said, I was like, Dad, if you don't get up,
02:10I'm calling 911.
02:12And so I got 1-843 dialed because I was going to call my mom.
02:17And I hung up, and I called 911.
02:21And I was just a kid.
02:24And so when they said, 911, what's your emergency?
02:29I said, I think my dad's dead.
02:31So it must have been just a couple of minutes later, the police started coming in.
02:37And I was just, like, beating him.
02:40And I was like, look, you've got the cops here.
02:43Like, get up.
02:45Get up.
02:45And I expected for him to wake up.
02:48So eventually, the police had to carry me out.
02:52And so I took off running.
02:54And they were trying to get him out of the chair.
02:56And I just jumped on him and was just desperate for him to wake up because I got my dad
03:06back for one day only to lose him again forever.
03:10My dad tried really hard to protect me because he knew that mom would send me away.
03:18I quit going to school.
03:19I was not doing anything that I was supposed to do.
03:23Just, you know, there was not an understanding of PTSD at the time.
03:29This is 2001.
03:30So seven months later, on September 1st of 2001, I woke up in the middle of the night to two
03:37people in my room.
03:38They said, we can do this the easy way or the hard way.
03:42And I started screaming because I thought that I was getting kidnapped.
03:45And so I'm screaming for mom, I'm screaming for my brother, and nobody's coming.
03:51They take me out and they don't tell me, like, we get to the airport.
03:57They don't tell me where we're going.
03:59They have a plane ticket all ready for me.
04:02And they said, your mom paid for this.
04:03I went to Round Rock, Texas, to a program called On Track, which is a wilderness program.
04:10These places, these places, if you even step out of line for a second, they will restrain children.
04:20And not in a way that is even safe.
04:24Because a year after I left, this place ended up killing a kid.
04:27Also, they have your parents write you a letter, it's called an impact letter, of all of the ways that
04:33you have hurt them.
04:35I will never forget that my impact letter was 14 pages long about how much my mom hated me.
04:42In October, sometime, I had been at Laurel Ridge for well over a month.
04:47The same people who came to kidnap me out of my bed came back to Laurel Ridge to pick me
04:52up, to take me to the Family Foundation School in Hancock, New York.
04:56I was excited to get to this place, okay?
04:59Because, like, it wasn't a mental institution.
05:01It was a co-ed boarding school.
05:03And, like, who hasn't seen cool things about, you know, a boy and girl boarding school in New York?
05:10When I get there, first of all, there are these, like, really creepy statues that are around.
05:15It's like, and these kids look like robots.
05:20At an intake for a new student, they take the new student into the locker room.
05:24And they get, so you have two students there and one staff.
05:30And you get fully searched, like, strip searched.
05:35You get, they put lice, uh, lice shampoo in your hair.
05:39Like, even if you don't have lice, you get deloused.
05:41And they go through all of your stuff.
05:43And anything that identifies a person, anything that identified me as a person, they threw it out.
05:49So they assign you a buddy, a buddy when you first get there.
05:54This is the person who is responsible for telling you all the rules, for making sure that you follow all
05:59of the rules.
05:59You cannot be anywhere alone.
06:01So after my intake, I go to lunch and I go to my, to family seven, which is my family.
06:07It's about 12 to 15 girls, about 30 boys, 25 to 30 boys.
06:13And the family leaders there are Susan Runge.
06:17And at the time it was her husband, Bob Runge, but it would come to be Jan Cheripko.
06:22When I get to lunch, there are, I remember tapping a boy and asking him to pass the ketchup.
06:29And it looked like I had just, like, I had just done the worst thing in the world by touching
06:35him.
06:35And I was like, he goes, you can't touch me.
06:38And I was like, don't flatter yourself, I just want the ketchup.
06:42Well, then they knock on the table.
06:45So I hear this knock on the table and it's like, they were like, hey, you know, so it's time
06:50to get topics started.
06:52Oh, what the freaking table topic?
06:54What's the, what's the topic?
06:55They call this kid up to the table and it's a boy.
07:00I'd never seen him before in my life.
07:02This is the first time I've ever seen this kid.
07:04They start saying, hey, so-and-so, I heard you broke the commitment.
07:07And, you know, it came to my attention that you broke the commitment last night.
07:10Without context, I had no idea what the commitment was.
07:13So they start talking about how this is the, however number of times he's broken the commitment in the last,
07:21you know, he needs to take responsibility for it.
07:23He needs to take his inventory.
07:24When the staff gets done talking, hands just go up in the air.
07:29And it's a bunch of kids who want to tell this kid that he's creepy, he's skeevy, he's going to
07:36be a pissed.
07:37Like, just these awful things they were saying to this child.
07:41I was like, what is going on?
07:43And then they said, you know, so at the conclusion of all of this, after he has just gotten everything
07:50handed to him unfairly, they say, you're going in the corner.
07:54When somebody's put in the corner, you actually have to sit and face the corner.
08:00During my time at the Family Foundation School, I was in the corner for 14 months, 14 entire months.
08:07The abuse that happened at that facility, it was in every way that you can think.
08:13Now, I personally did not go through sexual abuse.
08:16I know several people who did, and we'll get to that in just a minute.
08:19So Paul Gere was our choral director.
08:22Paul, everybody knew that Paul was a monster.
08:27So Family 7 is here on the third floor.
08:30Family 6 was right underneath.
08:32There would be times in Family 7 where Susan would literally send us down the stairs to see if Paul's
08:40family was okay.
08:41He would talk about having a cheeseburger in one hand and motivating in the other.
08:47Literally telling children this story.
08:50I got on Paul's good side because I could sing.
08:52So I stayed on Paul's good side for the duration of my time there.
08:58But I knew what he was capable of.
09:00So, I went down to Family 2.
09:03Family 2 was run by Mike Lissico and Roxy Lissico.
09:06And Mike and Roxy were known to be savage.
09:10I will never forget the day that I left.
09:13I had made a vow with myself that if Mike Lissico were to treat me the same way that I
09:18had seen him treat these other kids, I was going to walk.
09:21Because the only way that you could leave there is if you were 18 years old, you could leave.
09:25The only thing was, it's seven miles from the nearest town.
09:29And it's in the middle of nowhere.
09:31And so, whenever I left, I will never forget, like, this staff member, Pam, she tried to stop me.
09:38And I was like, no way.
09:40I can't take it one more minute.
09:42I've got to go.
09:43I didn't know what to do with the nightmares.
09:45You know, it would be that Mike was chasing me in my dreams.
09:51And I could not get away from it.
09:54And that everybody was disappointed in me.
09:56And then, you know, of course, I could.
09:58I was still having dreams about my dad, like, all the time.
10:01And so, they said that I was never going to be anything, that I was going to be alone for
10:05the rest of my life.
10:06So, what did I do?
10:08Try to do it.
10:09If this is what I'm supposed to be anyway, and this is what they had drilled into me, and I
10:12believe them, that's what I'm going to do.
10:15And that's what I did.
10:16That was a lot of, a lot of, a lot of trying to escape, a lot of trying to make
10:22people accept me.
10:23And I was way too young to have, way too young and way too traumatized and alone.
10:30I was alone.
10:31A little while after I got back, I'd started babysitting this little girl.
10:36And I ended up meeting her dad.
10:39And he told me that he had had a vasectomy and all these things, you know, and, and, like, because
10:46we had started dating.
10:47So, you can imagine how surprised I was whenever, like, three weeks later I was pregnant.
10:51In fact, he had not had a vasectomy.
10:53Obviously.
10:54And, uh, also was a very abusive, horrible man who I ended up marrying.
11:02I ended up losing the first baby.
11:05I was 19 years old.
11:07I was just a baby myself.
11:09I would go on and try to numb everything.
11:13I wanted a child so bad.
11:16I wanted a person that I was going to be there no matter what.
11:21I was never going to be the kind of mother that, that would leave their child alone.
11:27And I ended up pregnant.
11:28And I was 22 years old at the time.
11:31So, at 27 weeks pregnant, I got beaten really badly in a field by my then boyfriend.
11:41He was the, you know, her father.
11:44He took my keys, threw them into the field where I couldn't find them.
11:49I remember seeing headlights coming my way because I had just, all I had done was I just, he was,
11:56you know, somewhere.
11:58And I went to go pick him up.
11:59And as soon as I woke him up, he lost it, lost it on me.
12:03And so, the next day after that happened, I had to go into my doctor's appointment.
12:09And they sent me straight to labor and delivery because I had barely any amniotic fluid.
12:16Your amniotic fluid is supposed to be at a 10.
12:19Mine was at a 1.4.
12:20So, Claire was born at 26 weeks gestation and she was one pound, five ounces.
12:26They came to me and said the very first day that she was born, they said that they needed to
12:32get me to the NICU because they had just accidentally blown her lung by putting too much pressure on it
12:40with the ventilator, which was, of course, breathing for her.
12:42And she came home after five months and, at the time, was only a little over four pounds.
12:51This kid is the absolute light of my life.
12:56She changed everything.
12:59When he, the very second that he turned his abuse to her was the second that I walked out the
13:06door and never looked back.
13:08Because it's one thing, you hit on me, you talk to me however you want to.
13:12But her, yep, man, yep.
13:15And I left.
13:16That was that.
13:18So, in 2014, I was two years sober and I meet this guy and, oh, he is so cute and,
13:26like, so sweet.
13:27He's got this super deep voice and he is a musician.
13:32He just kind of blazes into my life.
13:34It was genuinely one of those things where the very first time that we met, I knew that I was
13:41going to marry him.
13:42And I told people that I was going to marry him.
13:44I was like, dude, I don't know what it is, but I'm going to marry that man.
13:47I am going to marry that man.
13:48Like, he is just, oh, my God.
13:50September 2nd of 2018, a New York Times article dropped where the Family Foundation School was on the front page
13:58of the New York Times.
13:59There were staff members talking in it.
14:00There were students talking in it.
14:02There is an unbelievable number of alumni that I went to the family school with who are dead.
14:08You would not believe.
14:11More of my peers are dead than my mom's.
14:15My mom is almost 70 years old.
14:18So, it captures the attention of the New York Times.
14:20I took to Facebook and I asked staff members.
14:24I was like, you have children.
14:26How could you justify treating us like this?
14:29Like, why did you stay there?
14:32How did you go to sleep at night knowing what y'all were doing?
14:36Like, I was asking them the hard questions publicly.
14:39And I tagged all of them.
14:41Some of them actually answered.
14:42Some of them took responsibility.
14:45Some of them, like Colleen, decided to call.
14:49She was calling kids' names, calling alumni names.
14:53Like, you're just a brat.
14:54Get over it.
14:55Blah, blah, blah.
14:55And Colleen was a really bad staff member.
14:57And so, she's sitting there acting like we're freaking 16 again.
15:00Step to me.
15:01Say that to my face now, girlfriend.
15:04You know?
15:05Like, so she's sitting there being a little keyboard hero.
15:08And this ain't, you know, I ain't the one for that.
15:12For the most part, staff members have been silent about this.
15:16Probably because a lot of times they do get eaten alive.
15:19You know, if they do say something publicly about it.
15:22I've started to get DMs from staff members apologizing to me.
15:26And for me, from some staff members, that was what I wanted.
15:31I'd still been talking to students.
15:33I had still been talking to staff members.
15:34At this point, I've spoken to over 300, 400, 400 people that have to do with the family school.
15:40She goes, Paul Geer is in the back of a cop car.
15:43He's about to get indicted.
15:44So, she was like, do not say anything.
15:47Like, don't say anything on social media until I tell you, until the indictment hits.
15:52The indictment hit that afternoon.
15:53He was indicted for only, for only the students that he took across state lines to abuse.
16:02That's all that he can be held accountable for at this point.
16:05After the indictment follows a detention hearing.
16:07So, there's a detention hearing to figure out whether or not he's going to be kept in jail to wait
16:12for his trial.
16:13So, we go to the detention hearing.
16:15There are 50 people in the courtroom.
16:18And I mean, like, and 95% of them are family school students who came all the way from the
16:25Keys in Florida to, like, I came from Louisiana.
16:29And it was really crazy to be in that courtroom because, like, some of my peers, they would stand up.
16:35There were three boys, or three men.
16:38There were three men who stood up and they started chanting, shame, shame, shame.
16:46And then another one that was like, how does it feel to be on the other side of this, Paul?
16:52You know, making the comments like Paul would make to them.
16:56And he deserved every bit of it.
16:57He didn't even look in our direction.
17:00Like, karma didn't just show up.
17:02She showed up with a freaking steel bat.
17:04So, Paul is given.
17:05So, after Judge D'Agostino says everything that she's going to say about the Geneva Convention and all the things,
17:10she says that he has 27 years and three months in prison.
17:17The little version of me, like, I was sobbing the whole freaking time, you know, the whole time.
17:24Because I could not believe that a federal court had heard us.
17:30But that judge made it about every student that ever attended the Family Foundation School.
17:37It was one of the most healing things that I have done in all of this.
17:42I do, I do want people to know that they can turn their pain into power.
17:48That it is in their hands to turn it into power.
17:51It is possible.
17:51You can do it.
17:53You do not have to be miserable or live in the trauma.
17:56Healing is definitely a thing.
17:58Definitely a thing.
18:00You can do it.
18:01You can do it.
18:04You can do it.
18:04You can do it.