Inner Harbour

I am 10 years old and after I read the comments I would not go even if you paid me to go. I suggest you straighten up or you will run out of business sooner or later trust me I may only be 10 years old but I know allot about business. more

I was there for 11 months (left for two weeks and then had a tourettes attack and had to comeback) from third grade to fourth. I was eight years old and so I go and am told that I'll love it and I'll have ""fun with nature"". Now this was 7 years ago but it is a problem that this happened. They had a nurse that used medicine to put me to sleep and then raped me. All I did everyday was from then on until about a year ago was try to think about killing her. The charges got dismissed and then they fired her but the facility is still up and running like it never happened. I'm in high school now, but if there is one thing I can say, DON'T DO THAT. YOU'LL PUT YOUR CHILD IN DANGER. The staff are dishonest and you have to go to ""time out"" for language but freedom of speech is in the release you and your parents sign. You can write a ""three by five"" to discuss violation of rights but guess where that goes, straight to the main building. As the other man said, you have to ask permission to do anything and you have no freedoms. They take you on outings which are trips off campus to like a community football game, but if you aren't perfect on the outings, you've just gotten the whole group a good lecture and you've gotten in a lot of trouble. ""YOU DIDN'T ASK TO GO TO THE BATHROOM SO YOU'RE ON ELOPEMENT PRECAUTION"" One time a staff member told everyone to sit down and he lectured us then he let one kid that was random and actually not on the best behavior the whole 3 months he'd been there and he stood up and bounced a ball. His excuse, ""I give all of you special treatment"" I had a staff named Mr. Riley and he did an army bed test, you had to have your bed made good enough to where he could flip a coin on it and he would not see any indents in the covers from the coin. All they had there were big bulky black guys that could slam an 8 year old on his face with the help of four other guys. They were prejudice against the kids of the unit and actually had a north side and a south side divided by a wall. One night a couple guys on south side acted up and they all were forced into ""booty juice"" and going to sleep at 8:00. That's illegal in all of the states for him not to be acting up and that still happen. more

I can't recall if where I went was Dorsett or Flat Shoals, and for some reason they don't seem to have an address on their website. I was at Inner Harbour for a couple of months in the fall of 2000. The attitude of the staff toward the adolescents didn't seem particularly understanding or empathetic. I can kind of understand the purpose behind rigid rules and structure - you couldn't go to dinner without lining up at a column and going through this whole song-and-dance, and you couldn't enter or exit your own freaking room without asking a staff for permission - but it crossed the line from possibly helpful to simply absurd and overbearing. More like boot camp than an open, nurturing environment. The person who managed my case wasn't understanding at all, though I can't remember her name - a thin black woman with short hair. The educational instruction was done by a big black Christian lady who didn't hesitate to share (read: impose) her beliefs on us, so it was a good thing I was a Christian at the time. However, while I was there they planned on taking patients on a field trip to sign ""Love in Every Language"" in front of some people, but they held that field trip over our heads like it was the key to our salvation with the way they kept threatening not to take us. The bedroom doors had to be open at all times, but at night they would loudly play music in the main lounge and it was always Dido - that should be grounds alone to make the place more of a torture facility than a therapeutic environment. Okay, I kid, but it was awful. The staff would also talk VERY loud and laugh at night when patients were trying to sleep, and like I said, we couldn't close our doors. Pros: Good group family therapy and day program Cons: Absurdly strict residential environment - more like boot camp than nurturing home. Power-tripping staff. more