Founders Testimony

Moxx, the founder of Project Silent No More

My name is Moxx, and I am a survivor of the Troubled Teen Industry.

When I was 13, an incident occurred that changed my life. In response, my therapist recommended that I be sent to a residential treatment center (RTC). Two days later, I was put on a plane to California and placed in Sovereign Health.

At first, I noticed a few red flags, but nothing that seemed extreme. That changed quickly. The facility was in complete disarray—staff were quitting left and right, patients were allowed to physically fight with no intervention, and the building itself was falling apart, with mold, busted pipes, and numerous health and safety violations.

I was denied medical care for a bilateral ear infection, left to suffer in pain. Eventually, the state got involved. Caseworkers interviewed all of us individually, giving us a brief moment of hope. But that hope was crushed when Dr. Majeski, the head doctor, locked us in the cafeteria and screamed at us, telling us that reporting the abuse would only harm our treatment and our futures. In an effort to silence us, they tried to bribe us with food and unauthorized outings, but we knew the truth.

The facility was eventually shut down, but it didn’t end there—the CEO simply opened a new facility under a different name, in the same location, continuing the cycle of abuse.

At 16, I was sent to another TTI facility: Meridell Achievement Center. This time, it was even worse. I was dehumanized, belittled, and brainwashed. The staff thrived on provoking patients, pushing us to our breaking points, pitting us against each other so we would lash out in anger and frustration.

Communication with my family was stripped from me. I was barred from calling home because I tried to tell them what was really happening. Every aspect of our lives was controlled. We couldn’t even use certain words or talk about harmless topics like hair dye or social media.

The rules were suffocating:

• No talking in rooms.

• No speaking without permission.

• No approaching staff without permission.

• No looking at the opposite sex—if a unit of the opposite gender passed by, we had to physically turn away and look at the ground.

• No calling each other "friend."

• No comforting or consoling our peers when they wer in distress.

• No eating more or less than the staff approved, even if you were very hungry.

• No talking during education hours.

• No communication with anyone other than immediate family, and all calls were closely monitored by a staff within arms length. (If they didnt like what you were saying, they would hang up your call.

  to name a few of the rules.

The punishments were even worse. If you were on punishment, you couldn’t talk to or even look at other patients. You had to sit in silence, working from pre-approved workbooks from the moment you woke up until lights out. If you were particularly unlucky, the whole unit would be put on a Community Rebuild where the whole unit sat in silence all day writing essays that the staff assignes us each hour. Bathroom breaks were not allowed, neither was school or trips to the cafeteria.

Eventually, I was able to convey the severity of my situation to my mother, and she pulled me from the program—but the damage was already done.

That is why I started Project Silent No More. To bring closure to myself, to give a voice to those who have been silenced, and to fight for the reform that youth psychiatric care so desperately needs. No child should ever endure what I did.

The days of silence are over.