We keep thinking that children being abused by Christian institution is something that was prevalent in the past. To be sure, when religious institutions were in control, it was a damn epidemic. But that’s not to say that there are still major abuses that are happening even in this modern, highly connected world.

For instance, take the Miracle Meadows School in Virginia. It was founded in the 1980’s, selling itself as an educational institute for troubled teens, run by Seventh Day Adventists. Judging by how it operated, it sounded more like Shawshank prison than a school:

I was on a what I thought was a family weekend away, headed home. Until I arrived at a big tan building instead. When we got there, I was dragged out of the car by a really tall man and lady. I cried and screamed for my mom , dad and brother to help me. The staff told them to drive off. As I kicked and screamed for “what felt like forever ”, I watched them drive off. I was wrestled to the ground and placed in handcuffs. From there I knew that this was it. I was stuck.

Their education techniques involved basically physically breaking kids down and mistreating them on a continual basis:

If you look at the videos for MMS it looks like a quaint little place in West Virginia, run by Christians. What they did not show was the staff waking us up in the middle of the night to run laps until we threw up, or being locked in isolation for weeks while copying down “social rules,” and memorizing many verses, or entire chapters, of the Bible. We were digging ditches for hours then told to fill them back in. Digging the feces-covered rocks out of the sewer, and wheeling them a mile up the road.

They just lost a lawsuit for over 100 million dollars which detailed horrible sexual and physical abuse. This was after losing another lawsuit from another group of victims for roughly 52 million. Attorneys said that there were countless victims, and that like in most cases of abuse, only a small minority of victims were willing to come forward about it. The list of accusations is truly harrowing:

The latest suit included allegations that some students became pregnant after being raped and were given abortions. Some children ranging in age from 7 to 12 were infected with sexually transmitted diseases after being assaulted by staff members, the suit claimed.

I mean how young can these victims get? Is there a limit to this kind of depravity? This institution operated for almost 40 years, spreading misery, STI’s, and mental scaring troubled teens that needed love, and received misery. How many more of these kinds of institutions are hiding in plain sight even today?