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After coming out of her own boot camp experience, years later it’s difficult for Rachael Spinelli Moyers to believe that she did all those things to her own family.
Eight years have passed since Rachael was actually discovered to be living with a group of homeless young adults on the streets of Omaha at the tender age of 15. These were the times when she struggled with drugs, groups of troubled teenagers, and running away from home over and over again. This was also when her parents, Chris and Sherry Spinelli made a decision to stop her detrimental behavior before she fell even farther down the spiral. To really take an effect on her, they knew that they had to make a drastic decision. Rachael had to spend 18 months in Tranquility Bay, found all the way in Jamaica. The sound of the facility may seem like a vacation spot but it actually is for troubled teens, mostly coming from the middle and upper class. It’s owned by the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools which is based in Utah.
"We did our research. We knew what kind of place it was. And we knew it was our last hope," said Sherry Spinelli about Tranquility Bay.
Rachael is now 24 years old and a wife and mother herself, but remembers how Tranquility Bay wasn’t exactly what you would call peaceful.
"It was very rough. They would verbally break you down, tell you how bad you were ... it would get pounded into you. But the staff never stepped out of boundaries, never got physically abusive," she said.
Moyers remarked that harsher punishment was not used for simple cases but in those wherein the person involved was a danger to herself or those around her. "If you refuse to obey the rules, you generally end up in 'worksheets,' which is a room with chairs set up in rows, and you are made to listen to tapes from the collection of 'The World's 100 Greatest Books' and 'The World's 100 Greatest People.'"
The program saved Moyers life because in her words "I was doing things as a teen that I was lucky I didn't get killed."
As the years passed, Moyers was able to get in touch with numerous girls from Tranquility Bay. "Everyone had different experiences," said Moyers. Even as a number of them may have bitter memories of the place, most of them admitted “it did the job.” |
