Teen Tells of Humiliating Treatment

Anna fought back tears as she talked about being forced to wear diapers and sleep on a cold floor with just a sheet for warmth when she was 16. The 19-year-old El Pasoan, whose real name is being withheld at her request, said she also was humiliated in front of other adolescents while she was forced to lie on the floor in October 1986, when she was a new client of KIDS of El Paso County Inc. KIDS, a controversial drug and behavioral -treatment program, closed Oct. 9 and announced plans to file for bankruptcy. Anna, whose story a state investigator believes is true, admits she started, soiling herself after losing control of her bowels because she suffered from bulimia, an eating disorder. Anna gorged herself on food, and then purged herself with laxatives. But she said that didn't justify what her host family did to her after a couple of bed-soiling accidents. Each KIDS client was placed with a host family and spent the nights in the family's home. "They yelled at me for hours," Anna said, "along with the other nine girls from the program who spent the night there. The mother said if I was going to act like a baby, I'd be treated like one. I didn't have the guts or Energy to fight. I thought, 'This is what I deserved.' And if I refused, they'd restrain me to put it on. They made me take cold showers to clean myself, then disinfect the tub. "And I'm supposed to be under psychiatric care," she said, shaking her head. Anna said the humiliation was so terrible that it "seemed almost like a dream, slow motion," The family drove her back to the center one Sunday afternoon and she was "dragged to the quiet room," a room where other girls were encouraged to push her around, she said. "A staff member got me up against the wall and slammed me up against it." She said she was pushed to the floor and held down while a male staff member came in and read her moral inventory - a. required introspective diary that clients kept - aloud to the group. ***, an investigator with the Texas Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse, said Anna's story was investigated by the commission and found to be factual. Anna finally left KIDS after almost two years, late in 1988. "My parents got sick of it all and pulled me out," she said. KIDS board Chairman *** said Friday that he didn't want to comment on Anna's case because of confidentiality and clients' rights. But he said he had seen no evidence that there was abuse at KIDS and added, "It really annoys me that the media and the general populace of El Paso would take the word of kids who have drug problems over the word of upstanding members of the community."