This week a newspaper local to upstate New York, the Finger Lakes Times, released a three part series acknowledging the injustices that occurred on the campus of Freedom Village USA. This Independent Fundamentalist Baptist organization thrived in the troubled teen industry by existing on the edge of a remote part of Seneca lake for nearly forty years. It was forced to shutdown in their New York location after their third bankruptcy notice was denied in 2019.
The Times depicts the history, abusive environment, and current allegations through the insight of three individual survivors. The first follows the life of Sheri, who entered the program at age 15, graduated to staff, and become the only nurse at the Village during the early 2000s. She describes the cultish nature of the work conditions and the mental health impacts after leaving the program. Sheri recently spoke out about her experience on the Jolly Bridge Burner podcast (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6m7P9jiPzTc&t=6075) alongside two other We Warned Them team members. We are happy to see her in the advocacy communities and support her sharing perspective on the industry!
The second part focuses on Shannon, specifically regarding their struggles and discrimination surrounding gender. Similar to many private, religious sectors in the troubled teen industry, they fostered a culture of rape through strict gender roles, fear, shame, and a lack of accountability from the people with power. There are currently four sexual assault cases still open in New York State. Due to CoVid-19 and delayed responses from the Freedom Village owner, Fletcher Brothers, many of these cases have been pushed back. We stand with survivors who are using the law to gain justice, and hope the state can too.
The final part of series follows the story of Jaz, one of the founders here at the We Warned Them campaign! She prefers to stay out of the spotlight, but once in awhile she opens her heart publicly and we are proud to share her story. The piece details some of her personal experiences before, during, and after her time at the Village. She points out the dangerous cultural norm of keeping a vow of secrecy surrounding abuse. Disrupting this narrative by calling out injustice ,is an intraocular part of her mission. She began her online advocacy by helping administer, The Freedom Village truth page on Facebook, which, unlike other pages, has no tolerance policy for racism. When Freedom Village was forced to shut its doors in New York, they planned to relocate to South Carolina. Enraged and determined, Jaz and other survivors including WWT team members Gabriel Gonzalez and Josh Cook gathered testimonies and organized a town hall meeting to educate community members on the prospect of having an abusive home in their neighborhood. This inspired members to vote against the opening of another Freedom Village in cooperation with Hannah Grace Homes. The power of these stories were picked up by local media in South Carolina, and ultimately led to the official shutdown of Freedom Village.
The We Warned Them Campaign would like to thank The Finger Lakes Times for paying to homage to more survivor stories and contributing to the documentation of abuse that occurred for decades, silently, in this region of New York.
You can find direct links to all three parts here:
Margaret is an artist and activist originally from Rochester, NY. She is passionate about educating her own community on social injustices that often occur silently, which led to her investigation of Freedom Village, a Troubled Teen Industry Program that had been running in upstate NY for over 40 years. This spiraled into her creating 6-part audio documentary about the facilities and it's connection to TTI. She know serves as a campaign coordinator for WWT and lives on the road with her partner, Maggie.
Thanks for your blog, nice to read. Do not stop.