When I was 17 I went to one of ATI's training centers in Oklahoma City. ATI has several training centers, each for a different program. They have one for training young men in search and rescue, one for young women to learn to care for patients as CNAs, one is a college, one is for LITs (leaders in training) aka "The Rebels", headquarters, and several others. Note that women were not allowed to train at the search and rescue program, and men were not trained to care for patients. The training center where I went was for a program called Character First!
I will admit, this was my choice. My parents didn't "send" me, I wanted to go. When all you know is being homeschooled and immersed in ATI, you want to be like your friends. That's how cults work and how easily people are able to get so trapped without even seeing it happen. To me, this was my "normal".
I had become convinced that the teachings of ATI were the way life should be. I agreed with them that there was no reason that young adults should waste their most valuable years by sitting in classes at college and should instead be out on mission trips or something that would help them "store up treasures in Heaven". Plus, I was a girl. I was going to find myself a preacher boy and pop out a baker's dozen of his babies. I didn't need college to do that.
At many of the ATI seminars there were Children's Institutes, which was basically the children's version of the adult seminar. I thought that being part of the team of people who got to travel around the country and lead the CI's was the greatest thing in the world. They all seemed so happy and perfect. You couldn't apply to be on this team. You couldn't ask to be part of it. You had to be "discovered". You got on the team by being noticed by one of the ATI staff and standing out as someone who would make a difference. Most of the team told me that they had been discovered after working with Character First! (CF!). I finished my homeschooling a year early and graduated in Spring of '05. That Fall I was off to CF! I was set on being outstanding and getting a spot on the CI team! Spoiler alert: You don't get asked to be on the team and used by God if that is your intention. Apparently going into it with a confident attitude vs one of humility gets you nowhere.
CF! Is a program that is taught in public schools. In theory, it's pretty good. It teaches kids about things like obedience, attentiveness, responsibility, loyalty, kindness, etc. (there are 49 character qualities). The teams of CF! leaders would go to classes and teach lessons with songs, skits, and crafts. The kids loved it, for the most part. The kids had a hard time understanding why we dressed like prairie people. I shared in their confusion.
I arrived in Oklahoma very excited. I would spend the next 3 months there, showing the staff how ready I was to be part of their team and be all about the ATI life. My father flew down with me and brought me to the training center, because I had never been away on my own before. I wanted my mother to bring me, but that wouldn't work because women shouldn't travel alone. I had a room on the 8th floor which was the girls only floor. The boys lived on the 3rd floor. There were a few floors of classrooms, and some of apartments where the families who were in charge of the training center lived. The building used to be a hotel, and it was fairly nice. I met the other young adults who were on the Fall semester CF! team, I believe there were only 3 or 4 guys and 20-something girls. There were also a few people who were only there for a week who were going to learn the program and take it home to use at their churches or youth groups.
It did not take long at all for my excitement to fade. I had a roommate. Roommate and I did not hit it off. I was a Baptist and she was a Calvinist. Not as bad as putting an atheist with a priest, but it wasn't pretty. Both of us were very much set in our ways, we fought, and we did it a lot.
If you wanted to pay less for your semester at CF!, you could sign up for chores. I think all but one of us signed up for chores. They ranged from laundry, cooking, vacuuming, polishing the brass in the lobby, bathrooms, and standard upkeep. Chores weren't awful and were usually done in groups. However, there was not a limit on them, such as a set number of hours a day or an assigned task. My favorite chore was laundry, and now when I watch Orange is the new black, where the very religious girl who says things such as "There ain't no room for gays on the rapture bus!" is part of the laundry team, it if feels a bit like déjà vu.
I did not fit in well with the rest of the team at all. I was already an EMT and was very comfortable with being around guys and working with them. This did not go over well at all and I ended up in trouble with our leaders often. We had to attend etiquette classes, and I was the only girl who was willing to shake hands with the boys. Most of the other girls had made vows never to touch a man before marriage, and seeing as I had not yet become strong enough in my faith to make that commitment, I had to be the shaker of the hands. Of course, this made me their version of a harlot. When you were in trouble, you were given a "heart check". This is similar to a time-out for an adult. You were sent to your room with your Bible and you had to read and pray until you saw what sin you were allowing to take over your heart. Sometimes if your offense was severe enough you were given food and water and a leader was posted outside of your door to make sure you didn't sneak out. That happened to me a few times.
I will share with you a list of some of my offenses.
-I sat down at a dining table where only boys were seated so far. The rule was that a boy and girl could never sit alone together. There always had to be a 2-1 ratio. A boy could sit at a table where girls were seated, but a girl could not sit at a table where only boys were sitting thus far. You were also required to leave an empty chair between a boy and girl, unless you were siblings.
-I was assigned to teach with a boy as my partner one week. He was a jerk, very full of himself, and had no justified reason to think so highly of himself. As our teaching day grew closer, I told him that I had been working on lesson plans and wanted to go over them with him. He ignored me and later sent his sister (who was a leader) to tell me that when teaching with a boy, I was to let him do the lesson and my job was to agree with everything he taught, "just as God had designed, for the man to have rule over the woman". I was given a heart check for approaching him to talk about lessons, because he said I was flirting and trying to trick him into spending time with him.
-While cleaning the bathrooms, I was caught humming a song from a worldly movie. I believe it was The Little Mermaid. Of course, she was rebellious and if that was the spirit that I let control my heart, I would need to be broken.
-While sitting in the dining room, one of the boys threw a small chocolate bar to me. I threw one back. I was given a heart check because I threw a Hershey kiss, which could give him the wrong idea and lead him to have impure thoughts. First of all, he started it and didn't get a heart check. Second of all, he was 19 and had a pulse (I assume so anyway, we never got closer than our six inch cushion because we had to leave room for Jesus), I promise that my gift of chocolate was not the spark of his first impure thought. This was my second flirtation offense and I was no longer allowed to vacuum the 3rd floor.
-On one of our bimonthly trips to walmart I bought tampons. These were taken away from me when the leaders went through my bags because tampons would steal my virginity. I tried to point out that I had used them before, so technically these wouldn't be taking my virginity, but I got the Romans 1 lecture about not continuing in sin. Clearly the devil sticks that I had been placing inside my body was the reason that grace was not abounding in my life.
-Some girls got in trouble for standing on the ledges outside the windows, which was something they did a lot because it was "wild and daring", but I didn't see the appeal. I figured if I walked out there, I'd have a way-to-easy method of ending this awful time there early.
-We all had to memorize Psalm 37. I am very good at memorizing and being quite dramatic and animated helps me with my process. I actually still know it all. I was excited that I had finished memorizing before the set time frame. This backfired though because I was being prideful about my skills instead of having a humble spirit and deflecting praise to God for putting a hedge of protection around my brain from Satan so that I could fill my mind with scripture. I couldn't freakin win.
After the first week of training, some of the less strict people were leaving and I was so sad. The only friends I made were in that group. One of the guys was really nice and we snuck into the stairway to hug each other goodbye. The hug was worth the chance of a heart check. One moment of swooning in 3 months is not a lot if you ask me.
I learned that the leaders had full control of my life for the next 3 months. They could ask you to stop whatever you were doing so that you could do more chores, get an extra lesson assignment, lead a Bible study, be lectured about something, etc. We had an hour of free time each day, but that time wasn't safe. I was so tired. I figured out that the only time the leaders were not allowed to bother you and you were safe was during meals. There were 3 time rotations of each meal. If you were in the dining room, you had to be eating. So, I began eating 12 meals a day. I gained 50 pounds in 3 months. It was worth it just to be left alone.
Roommate and I also got heart checks together sometimes. It wasn't a secret that we didn't like each other. We ended up realizing that the religion fight was petty and we were WAY better off forming an alliance. Kind of how The Parent Trap played out. We figured out that if we got in a fight, we would get a heart check together, and not get a leader posted outside the door. Not having a leader outside was key because they would check on you. If we got a heart check together, we could take a nap.
Because I gained so much weight, I was banned from sugar. There was a small store in the lobby and they weren't allowed to sell me snacks with sugar or caffeine.
Roommate and I ended up writing to our mothers to help out with this. My mother sent us the food we liked and her mother sent us tampons. It felt like prison, we had to get stuff from the outside. We also covered for each other. She didn't tell that I had a cell phone if I let her use it to call her secret boyfriend. We weren't allowed to watch TV, so Roommate and I used to act out scenes from movies to keep ourselves entertained.
When I say I hated it there, this is an understatement. Since we were teaching in public schools, we couldn't talk about God or the Bible. I knew that this was a rule, and I complied because that is the way the world works. We were allowed to talk about God if a child asked us a question. I got in trouble for phrasing my answer "Well, I believe..." Instead of presenting it as just pure fact. We taught Bible clubs after school in some of the low income housing projects. I didn't like those because I was never allowed to teach any classes. I was assigned to sit amongst the kids and pray silently for the devil not to disturb the class. The leaders told me that I wasn't allowed to teach because I didn't seem like my heart was pure and they didn't want any children led astray. What pure hypocrisy is that?! It didn't go over well when I asked them if having so much judgement in their hearts made them better used by God than I was. If a child had any questions, I was to direct them to one of the "approved soul winners" because they didn't trust that I was able to "lead someone to salvation", even though I had been "soul winning" with my church hundreds of times.
Each day that school started, no matter what school we went to, everyone had to say the Pledge of Allegiance, sing the national anthem, AND the state song, which (I kid you not) is Oklahoma! I knew the song and as you can guess, I was in trouble for that because Oklahoma! Is a worldly movie because it has that girl in it who "cain't say no".
I also was not allowed to teach for a few days because it was Humility week and pride is the opposite of humility. In my lesson I said that some forms of pride are good, such as being proud to be an American, or proud of a child for doing the right thing. Nope! Apparently that is also a sin!
I no longer wanted to be on the traveling CI team. All I wanted was to leave that place. I did end up making friends. Not many, but some. One girl I know has also since left the ATI cult and likes my blog so far. I knew she was ok, she wore eye liner.
A few of the girls would talk to me when we walked during our free time. So many of them had been terribly abused and wanted to stay at the training center so they didn't have to go home. Some of them planned on staying as long as possible and working with kids there since they could never have any of their own. I asked why they couldn't have children and none of the answers were medical. In fact, many of them had never even been to an Obgyn. They had been raped by either their brothers or boys in their churches and were truly convinced that they were now unfit for marriage because they were no longer pure. Some when they were as young as 5. If I tried to tell them that the things that happened to them were not their fault, they would tell me "that is a lie that the world tells you". They believed that they had to have tempted these boys in some way and gave them urges that they could not control. I was told I would never understand. I only have a sister. I had no brothers who I could tempt. "Being raped is just part of growing up this way, you are just one of the lucky ones who didn't have it happen." I really, really hope that since then these women have gotten the help that they need and no longer think that they are worthless. Recently it has come out that there were sexual assaults happening at almost every training center, with many of them coming from the founder himself. None of my ATI friends were surprised by this news.
The best thing that happened to me during my time there was acquiring lice. A few other girls got it as well. Roommate managed to avoid the bugs setting up camp on her head. Instead of doing chores, I had to get my hair picked through every day which took about 2 hours because my hair looks very much like Merida's from Brave.
The 3 months I spent there made me see that this was not a way that anyone should spend their life. I was glad that I was not someone who they would want for the traveling CI team, and I never wanted to be part of anything ATI ever again. I know that many of my current friends who have spent time at any of the training centers agree, and the one in OK was known as the most lenient of all the training centers. I can't even imagine what it was like at the others.
We all heard about the rebellious spirit of the girl who escaped from the center in Illinois. That girl is one of my best friends and I am so proud of her! That's right, proud. As I write this, with my stethoscope resting around my neck, my heart check is just fine. Although, I could go for a secret nap right about now.
To be continued...
