This podcast is intended for mature audiences only and may contain content that could be triggering. Please listen with discretion. I want you to truly understand how Stephanie's experiences shaped every decision she made, not just as a young teen, but. Throughout the decades that followed, you might find yourself asking, how could she make that choice or wonder? How can she laugh while recounting such painful memories?
After spending countless hours with Stephanie, I've come to understand something. Laughter is survival, and sometimes. Repeated mistakes stem from never having had someone to guide, nurture, or offer a safe space to grow. We ended episode three. Was Stephanie running away to her abuser's house where she hid in the backseat of their car on the floor. This is where her dad found her.
Stephanie chose to hide in the most dangerous place, but it was better than staying in a home where she felt unsafe. I was terrified that I was. About to get destroyed by my parents. Yeah. They never asked me if I was okay. They just were so worried about me being a good enough Christian. And so sitting there as an adult made me feel so sad for that 13-year-old because I didn't deserve that. You know? Nobody does. I couldn't speak. I wouldn't speak. They kept wanting me to speak.
They were yelling at me. I was. Angry and terrified all at the same time. I was angry at myself for being so stupid is how it felt. I just shut. I had just literally just shut down. I could not use words. I couldn't answer any of their questions because words wouldn't even come outta my mouth. I know my dad thinks I was just glaring at them, but like everything inside of me just shut down.
My dad saying that he would slap that look off my face and I didn't even know what he was talking about 'cause I wasn't in the, I wasn't with them. Mm-hmm. I could just hear them, but I was somewhere inside of myself and completely closed off. It's like I wasn't there anymore. I, um, I wanted so badly to disappear, you know? It was literally like I had a mental shutdown at that point. And, um, I was scared to death ages six and a half to 14.
Stephanie endured relentless emotional, psychological, spiritual, and physical abuse at the hands of those who should have protected her. She suffered abuse from her uncle being repeatedly raped by neighbor boys down the street, and she incurred months of isolation. And perhaps the most devastating part, she carried it all alone. Her parents enforced a rigid belief. Living a godly life is all you need. It was a threat to, um, their role in it was all about them still. Mm-hmm.
And it was all about God. And that's why I said, when my dad took that first church when I was around seven things never were the same. So I was just put in a car, um, and I didn't realize there was a trunk in the back of this car that held my belongings. Okay. A trunk meaning a wood box with a key. Basically, yeah, those ones that you could buy, they had the, um, almost like the brass edging on 'em, you know, just little, little tiny trunk.
And, uh, the trunk was in the trunk and I was in the backseat, and I. I, I just remember, I, there was no conversation. We were just driving and driving, um, what felt like at least three hours to me. Later on I looked, I'm, I am pretty sure it's a seven and a half hour drive from where we were. Um, so it was a long drive for no communication. And then they just, you had no idea where you were going? No idea. I don't remember anything about that drive other than looking out the window.
I remember a few times thinking if I opened the door dropped and rolled and ran, maybe I would survive. I thought we were taking a trip and I was about to, I. You know, get more of Jesus put in me or something like, whatever my parents needed to do to make me a better Christian. I think I was still frozen. What felt like maybe three hours I realized was seven and a half hours. Mm-hmm. You know, it is. It was a long drive.
I mean, once we drive up to these iron gates, this long drive into the farm, the little white houses and chapel. I still had no idea what was happening. And we pull up to this, it, it's, it's off the beaten path. It's in a private drive area, um, private address. Hmm. There's this exposure of just this land with a white chapel and a few little white houses and a barn. Looked like I had arrived at the Quaker Village. You know, I mean, did you know first of all that there was a trunk in the trunk?
No. Okay. I didn't even know where I was going. I didn't even know I was being sent away. I remember we went in the chapel and I sat down in the one of the chapel pews, and I guess my parents were talking to administration or whatever, and after that I ended up. Realizing I had a trunk, um, that they helped me take into my new place of, you know, living with a twin bed and another girl in the room who I didn't know. I was still very confused.
The last thing on my mind that I was gonna be left somewhere. Um, I, I just, I had no idea what was going on. You have no idea. Yeah. You're shy where you are. Yeah. You can't talk to anyone, so that's not a great welcome. You don't have any information, like you don't know where you are. You don't know why you're there. You don't know how long you're gonna be in this place and your parents are gone and you have no way to contact them. Um, we didn't have access to phones.
I mean, even writing letters wasn't always accessible, so it was just complete abandonment at that point when your parents left the farm. Stephanie describes being blindly dropped off at her ninth home and sixth school. It was called Gateway Farm for Girls, and it was located in New Boston, Texas. They called themselves the Christian Children's Home claiming to restore hope and provide healing to risk children.
It placed promising a stable, loving environment so children could reach their God-given potential. The catch was it was supposed to be a home for rebellious teenagers, or teenagers in need. Um, and obviously it was Christian based. Only thing I know is that it was just supposed to be for rebellious teenagers, and I think because they had more of an evangelical stance, it did draw in. More of the kids like myself that came from Evangelical Christian Homes.
Stephanie shares her story to show that hope exists even in a life full of trauma. That's why it's so jarring that gateway claimed to restore hope and heal at risk children because in reality, untrained individuals diagnosed, punished and conditioned girls through religious extremism. Not through true healing. Been closed down and records have been sealed, so it's really hard to get any information.
I recently started reading a lot of, uh, reviews online from that place, uh, on Reddit and Yelp, even like, things like that, and found that. The, the girls that went there, even at their ages now, like in our forties, are still very traumatized from being there. Um, a lot of things that I see was, um, abandonment, um, you know, not getting proper help, obviously hard labor. Um, it's across the board a very same, you know, very same experience for most of us. I ended up getting assigned.
To another girl and the trunk sat at the end of the bed. Uh, 'cause we didn't put things in like dressers or anything. We literally just lived out of our trunks. I felt like it was a very isolated property. And they're usually like eight of us in a little house with a dorm mom is what they called them. And. I couldn't talk to anyone other than that girl and the staff, it was like an isolation period.
You have no idea where you are, why, why you're there and all of a sudden you can't even talk to anybody except the person you're with. And then your parents are gone. And I just remember opening the trunk and it was like none of my belongings. It was all, wow, that's so crazy. Just new things like new pants. And I was excited about some of those 'cause my mom had. Purchased these, you know, acid washed jeans. You guys, it was the early nineties. And I was like, these are cool.
And that was kind of like fun looking through there. And uh, and then I realized that was, that was it. Like we moved around from dorm to dorm in that way. We carried our trunk to the next house or the next room. We were never in a place for very long. I don't remember any emotion except just feeling confused and I, I think that was part of the thing. You, you are the center in a new environment. You have no idea. Yeah. Where you are.
Yeah. You can't talk to anyone, so that's not a great welcome. You don't have any information, like you don't know where you are. You don't know why you're there. You don't know how long you're gonna be in this place and your parents are gone and you have no way to contact them. Um, we didn't have access to phones. I mean, even writing letters wasn't always accessible, so it was just complete abandonment. At that point when your parents left the farm, gateway promised hope and healing.
But what did that really mean? What does hope look like for a girl? Abandoned cut off from the world and denied the simple act of writing a letter. What does healing mean when there's no professional training, no psychological support, and no safety for a child who has already endured so much. They would only take rebellious girls that needed, you know, Jesus. It was like teenage rebellion, I think, from fundamentalist Christianity.
That overflowed into us acting out as teenagers that landed us all in this place. Mm-hmm. Um, rebellion could literally mean like talking back to your parents, you know, or questioning something when honestly we were probably being. Somewhat normal teenagers that had problems and needed help. You go there thinking you're just this horrible kid. I do remember this thinking like, I am so bad. I'm in a girl's home. You know what I mean?
And then you start talking to other girls, and we all felt that way. It's like we were so rebellious. Everything was controlled. You don't really have time to make friends. I don't really remember a lot of the girls' names. You know, just a handful. You're having to adhere to a complete schedule from sunup to sundown. You're in chapel every morning, and so you get up. Of course, you know, beds had to be like, you know, bounce a penny off of 'em. You have, God, our showers were timed.
I think it was like a three minute shower. Um, it was difficult. No, no, to say the least, seriously, it must have been insane 'cause you couldn't do your hair. You're a teenager. You can't try to make yourself look pretty for the day or whatever you wanted to do. Oh, no. No, there was none of that. You eat your breakfast altogether. Everybody had different chores, um, within the home, like, and it rotated every week.
And so you had to do all those chores and these are all times, and then we all go to chapel. I. Where we get our first dose of Christianity for the day. A lot of the times we would have to wear all white to church. So it, and of course like dresses, pantyhose, you know, the whole bit. It's just like, look forward and then you leave. I dreaded it because it was such a performance. Mm. They would wait for us, everybody would be seated.
And then when marches into the first three rows, and because there were men or boys at these churches, we were not allowed to turn around or look. And if we did, that was immediately gonna be like hardly labor or isolation. So it was like you were, you were afraid to even look side to side with your eyes. It was like living in an alternate, um, reality. Mm-hmm. Like, it didn't feel real.
So, so after chapel, we walk over to the school, there was a program they used called a CE, which was, um, a paste, you know, self-paced curriculum for school. This was like pack, literally packets. Got it. It's like a paper packet. Algebra one. You didn't have a teacher.
There was one like dorm mom basically walking around and it was like you were in a weird cubicle, so the sides of it came beyond your head, so you couldn't see from side to side, and you literally were just staring at the wall whole time. If you needed assistance, you would have to raise your hand, wait for this lady to come over that had no skillset in teaching to see if they could help you. And there was no speaking all day.
Other than that, we sent our cubicles for a whole school day from like nine to three facing a wall. And then after that we go change our clothes to be able to work. So you kind of had to be choosy with which clothes you were gonna get dirty because you didn't have many. So yeah, wondering. Um, so then we work the property. A lot of times there was another chapel service in the evening or scripture memorization, things like that. It was a sunup to sun sundown situation.
You have a merit and demerit system. Um, there's so much like cleaning and labor, things like that. Then everything you did wrong, and I mean wrong by like if they check the lip inside of ECR and it had a little dust on it that was a demerit, which could get you hard labor on the weekends and hard labor was dicking ditches, laying pipe, like just uh, I mean anything they could think of. We just worked that whole entire farm. I didn't mind working the farm. It was at least an escape in that way.
Mm-hmm. Like sometimes I would get to, you know, be on the big brush hog tractor and mow and I, you know, those kinds of things ended up being kind of the fun things there. It was almost a privilege to get to do those things versus digging a ditch. And during hard labor, I mean, you guys, this is, it was a Texas heat. Um, there was water and food restriction. Like if you needed water, it was not accessible and food was the same way.
All the food was locked away and you had group meals and there's not like snack times, you know, you didn't have access to anything. And then on the weekends, if you didn't have demerits. Then you got to, um, do things like ride horses. Uh, we had one door mom that had these old musicals, and so we get to watch old musicals sometimes. And uh, but if you had demerits, then you were digging ditches and, you know, stuff like that.
I was on isolation quite a few times, which was another punishment where you couldn't talk to anybody for like two weeks. So complete silent treatment and you had to like, once again, do hard labor. You were still with everyone. You just could not speak to anyone. And if they talk to you, I mean, they were gonna end up getting on isolation too. So it was very well guarded. It was more of a cult-like church. Mm-hmm. And you don't go to, um, professional, you know mm-hmm. People to get help.
You go to a Christian counselor who is not licensed, it's just another member of the church. Or you end up in situations like the girl's home where. Also there were not licensed therapists, and if they were, they were brainwashed with, you know, fundamentalist beliefs. Anyway, our form of therapy, there were deliverance ceremonies, and so every now and then you would get pulled in. By the administrator, her name was June.
I wanted to interview June Bernard Ashworth, the woman behind Gateway, to ask about the school's teachings and their so-called restoration methods, but I found her obituary instead. She passed an April, 2021. Her obituary listed several biblical studies she authored, but I couldn't find a single one. What I did find were blog posts from former students, women still unable to obtain their student records. Each one suffering from PTSD, each one.
Speaking of spiritual abuse, many recall June Bernard Ashworth personally diagnosing them as Demonically schizophrenic. But according to the American Psychiatric Association, that diagnosis doesn't exist. So if these girls weren't receiving medical treatment or legitimate therapy, what exactly were they being subjected to? And you would go into a deliverance ceremony, which means that you were full of demons. And you had to start naming those demons.
If you had to leave a group of girls or something and be like, oh, I'm going to a deliverance ceremony. And it was like, oh, good luck. You know, everybody, it was like normal. Everybody knew it was normal. Even if you're still kind of faking your way through it, it still feels like something's wrong with you because you, you really do feel like something's inside of you that needs to come out. And when you're raised evangelical, you do believe in demons. Oh yeah. Inside of you.
Would you land dead in. Think I really kind of, even though I faked it, I hope I did get anything bad outta me. Did you have this type of thought? Oh, absolutely. I'm like, I hope whatever is bad in me is out because I just, I had from birth, my mom made me feel like something inside of me was bad. Wow. And so it's like, please, for the love of God, let's get this thing out of me. You would usually be in the room with three adults. One was June, and then there were two other female adults.
And you would be sitting in a chair and you had to make sure you were sitting up straight feet on the floor. One person would be at your feet holding them down. One person would be by your arms, just in case. You know, the demon came out, it was violent. I don't know. And then June would be in front of you. They would start praying for you. And then they would say demon speak, you know, things like that.
And you would stay in that room for hours getting prayed for, lay it on of hands like yelled at until you, that demon was named. And so you get tired 'cause you're gonna sit there until you come up with some demon. How long? I don't remember.
I just remember sometimes it was like you were in there for a few hours on a few occasions during Deliverances where I would all of a sudden start grabbing the chair really tight and kind of making my H shake and getting really rigid and saying one, oh Lord, this is so embarrassing. But one, one was like, it's the demon thrasher. Thrasher's coming out. Oh my gosh.
And, um, the reason I chose Thrasher at the time was because I loved skateboarding and Thrasher was a skateboard brand, but I knew they wouldn't know that. But, um, so then June proceeds to call the demon of Thrasher out that's causing all these rebellious tendencies and, you know, hell like behavior to come out of me. And then you would just relax your body like, oh, thank you so much, you've released this demon. Uh, it, it was insane.
Like. I would they hug you and give you any physical attention? I don't remember afterwards. Okay. I mean, it was like you couldn't get outta that room fast enough and it was always like a little room. I mean, you were isolated. Yeah. It's like you would tell in like, um, and this happened a few times and I did perform like the same types of behavior every time where I finally just, I just couldn't take anymore and would name something. Sure. Like who wouldn't.
Yeah. Even one time she'd asked me, like, if you were. Anything. If you could be anything right now, what is your body telling you? And I was like, oh God, you know, like I'm supposed to be talking to a demon inside of me. And I was like, I'm a fly a fly on the wall so I can see everything. I'm like, I remember, this is crazy. Walking out of that thinking, this is the stupidest answer, not getting proper help, obviously hard labor.
Um, it's across the board a very same, you know, very same experience for most of us. There was one comment I. Saw where they were like, oh, I wrapped that up in a little black box and never opened it again. So they caused a lot of, um, trauma and PTSD and then they'd send you back out into the world with no coping skills. Was less skills. I don't remember getting new clothes. And we had a trunk and that was it.
What the girls and I would do is some of us would end up trading clothes and that way we did feel like we were wearing something different. Okay. Um, some of us even traded shoes. I traded some boots that I had for a cool pair of Doc Martins 'cause I never had them. And then later on traded those for another pair, you know, 'cause you're trying to get new stuff. And then I was like, man, I should have cut those dock marks. But yeah, so I mean we had like, I guess our own little bartering system.
Yeah. Just. Because clothes were, I mean, God, we were teens. That was a fun thing. One of the girls was taking French and I was taking sign language, and we both tried to teach each other a little bit of what we had learned. If you had another girl that needed. Help and assistance and you were better at it. 'cause I knew one girl that was really good at like, um, I think it was math, like little genius and she would help tutor some of the other girls that needed help.
Okay. Good. So we just started sticking together. Because there's no hotline. You can call and say, I don't know how to do algebra. You know, I do remember having a crush on a girl while I was out there. Her name was this long red hair, and she'd rock across the field and I thought I was gonna get struck by lightning because I had, you know, like thoughts of her being so pretty, you know? Mm-hmm.
We're not talking about sexual thoughts, just thoughts of like feeling this weird crush of like, oh my gosh, she's so pretty. I think they were all worried about any of us. Being gay already. So we had been warned that if we thought about another girl or if we masturbated or anything like that, that God would tell June and then June would have to put us through a deliverance. Plus she would have hard labor and demerits. As I dug deeper, I found stories eerily similar to Stephanie's.
One former student was punished until she produced a written list of demons supposedly inside her a list. June Bernard Ashworth demanded before anointing her with oil and praying to cast them out. Reading these accounts, it became clear. When extreme religious beliefs are forced upon vulnerable children, what's called deliverance, can quickly become something else entirely. Privileges were like getting to go off property to June's June, beautiful house, um, and getting to clean her house.
Wow. And I remember she would make me a sandwich and because our food was kind of nasty at the farm. Just remember thinking like, oh wow, this is the best sandwich I've ever had. And it would just be me and I'd be out there just cleaning her house all day. Um, she had these French chandeliers and stuff. I mean, we were, we operated that farm, there's no doubt about it. I mean, I was on hardly labor a lot. But I always tried not to be because I wanted to ride horses.
I ended up, uh, getting to play the piano quite a bit and when they would have like graduations, because some people would graduate from school early while they were in the program because a CE was a self-paced. Okay. And so we would have graduation ceremonies for them in the chapel, and I was the one that played the, the ceremony march. I between the piano and the horses. I think that was my life saver out there.
And so eventually you start talking to other girls as you're there a little longer. 'cause you get off isolation and realize that some girls have been there six months. Some girls have been there two years. Some girls have never seen their parents again. I looked into Texas laws specifically on religious leaders providing counseling and diagnosis. The reality is troubling. No formal training or licensure is required under ministerial duties.
They can legally counsel children without any background in psychology or mental health. Our parents were told not to question. So it wasn't just a brainwashing of us. Mm-hmm. I think it was also a control of the parental units as well. Mm-hmm. And they just trusted because they wanted us so badly to be better Christian girls and they trusted this Christian, you know, program. It was expensive and they. They take money, you know, from these parents. And there's also a brainwashing to parents.
You know, the parents are not supposed to question the process, so I don't think they realized what was going on. I don't think letters were ever, ever sent out if we complained about anything. I mean that they read our stuff, you know, coming in and out and, um, I don't remember if I got letters. I. If I did, it was very few, um, or they weren't actually given to me. I don't know.
So it's, it's not like we had the opportunity to say, I'm in prison and I've got a tear up the front of my shin that probably needs stitches, but I can't go to the doctor and you I, because these things are happening. People couldn't even get medical care out there. So it would've been rebellion. Yeah. There was no way I was going to complain. Right.
Because in these situations, you're on isolation so much just in regular daily life because of the way the schedule was that if you got put on isolation for two weeks and couldn't talk to anybody, I mean, that was extremely harmful to your mind. So they didn't physically beat you or. No. Did you have any negative sexual encounter or anything like that there? No. Okay. That is one thing.
I know that there was one of the sister locations that I do believe there were accusations of that happening, but at our location that was uh, fortunately not the case. There was no physical abuse and there was no sexual abuse, even though life was not good at home, and I'd been abandoned there. Abandonment still feels bad. And you're also missing out on so much of life, like your parents, your siblings, your family, everybody goes on. Mm-hmm.
And they're living experience things outside of this place. I mean, at first I didn't play the system. And then there's that point where like, I am never gonna get outta here and. I'm never gonna see my family again. I like, yeah, you had just been brainwashed and you just started adhering to the program so you could get out. You're not learning anything. You're not doing better. Then there's that point where you're like, I am never gonna get out of here and I'm never gonna see my family again.
I, you're just trying to get out and then you're collectively playing the system. And so there was something a little bit kind of fun about that, um, because we all knew it. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Who's gonna get out first? Yeah. You know what I mean? It was that kind of feeling. Who's escaping? So I started adhering to the program. Okay. You start trying to be good. They came and visited once, and I remember it must've been around Christmas time and we ended up.
I think it was like, I was six months into the program and we ended up staying in a hotel in New Boston. We had a Christmas tree and there were, you know, gifts everywhere. I think it was like my brother or something had a shrinky dink mm-hmm. For Christmas. Oh yeah. I love those. And I do remember us all making shrinky, dinks, you know, together, but. It was a really good feeling to, you know, just be a part of a family I hadn't seen in six months.
And everything seemed so happy and I seemed okay because I was working the program and I was doing my best on that trip because if you do really well, maybe you get sent home. Sometimes we wouldn't know 'cause they wouldn't come back. And so if you, if they didn't realize they were gonna get to leave, they were just gone and. I thought that could happen to me. Maybe this is my chance. I'm outta here.
And so once again, it's, it's literally like all over again a feeling of abandonment and a feeling of worthlessness. And sometimes it just like, you know, a parents would just ask their kids, just ask them what's wrong or what's going on, and being receptive to the answer no matter what it is, you know, it could cause. So much less pain in a child's life, you know? Yeah. Question, right? Because you don't know what the answer is gonna be. You don't. You might not like it.
Yeah. To ask you that question would make them look at themselves, right? They never wanted to know the answers to anything. They just wanted us to be the perfect God-fearing children that they imagined they would have. I guess, I don't know. A lot of the comments that I see from the girls online that were in the same, you know. Program, same timeframe.
Some of them obviously have had children since then, and that's one thing I see constantly is like, I would never send my child to a program like this. Why in the world wouldn't you get professional help if your child's cutting, if your child's become anorexic, if your child's lashing out, why would you just send them away? Especially to a place that you're not questioning what they're doing with your child?
I mean, I, that's the part of me that gets really frustrated with the fundamentalist religion side of our family is that. Why if you have a teen that's having issues, why was it so easy for you to just take that teen and get rid of them and put them in a place where they're getting no help? They're literally just working. They working and working, and then getting demons cast out of them, and then.
Playing a program to get sent back home to where you've gotta be a perfect child, at least for a little while, so they know it worked. Mm-hmm. So you don't get sent away again, because then once you get back home, it's this constant fear of like, I could literally be sent away at any moment. Yeah. Like you never, ever have security. I didn't have security before because I was holding on to so many things and I had parents that.
Did not give me coping skills and God was the only way anything was ever gonna work in our lives. And then I go to this place where you have to learn to mask your behaviors and mask, you know, and be people pleasing to get out, just to go back to a place to still be. The good girl they want you to be so you don't get put back in that place. It's real fucked up and I I, to this day, I cannot live with a trunk and a house because it's just such a bad memory for me next time on just one person.
I wanted my dad to be proud of me. Those words, simple but powerful, explain so much of what came next for Stephanie. A forced testimony full of lies, a man who became her worst nightmare. What happens when trauma is rewritten into something it never was? And when the truth finally surfaces, what does survival really look like? Stephanie Untangles the story she was forced to tell and replaces it with her real testimony.
Listen to just one person on Spotify, apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Visit just one person podcast.com for more information. On this episode, at 14, Stephanie is set to Gateway Farm for girls, a Christian reform school where strict discipline, hard labor, and religious indoctrination. Replace care and support cutoff from the world. She endures emotional and psychological control, including deliverance. Ceremonies meant to cast out demons as she unpacks her trauma.
Stephanie reflects on the lasting scars of. Abandonment and the fear of being sent away again, and how survival meant learning to play the system. If you or someone you know has experienced sexual assault, abuse, or harassment, you can call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE and this. Is available 24 7. You can also chat online at hotline dot RAIN n.org. Rain services are confidential, free and available to anyone in need.
If you or someone you know is affected by child abuse or need support, you can call the Child Help National Child Abuse Hotline. It's 1 804 a child and also available 24 7. You can also text four Hope to 7 4 1 7 4 1, and if you know someone that is contemplating suicide, you can also chat online at 9 8 8 lifeline.org. They are also available 24 7. Please note resources are available and we have them list. On our website at www.justonepersonpodcast.com.
Just one person is produced by J one P Productions executive, produced by me, Lisa Blum, and lead producer and story editor, Carrie Caulfield Sound, designed by Alejandro Ramez. And a special thanks to sound designer, Amita Ra. A special thanks to voice actor Scott McKinley portraying Stephanie's dad, our heartfelt thank you to Stephanie's partner, Melissa Weaver, and my wife Julie Leski for being a part of the podcast team.
Also to Stephanie's three close friends, Krista, Anisa, and Becks for participating in this series. Music for this podcast is from Epidemic Sound and Sound, Stripe. Original music recorded and performed by our first season's guest, Stephanie Michelle. And the Michelle Michelle Band. I'm the preacher, hollowed out.