I'm going to tell you about something that happened to me as a kid.

I was kidnapped two months after I turned 14 years old.

It happened this way.

Two big men came into my room in the middle of the night,

got me up from bed.

I was confused, groggy, of course I was terrified.

My father stood behind them.

I remember he looked impossibly small next to the men.

He stood there apologizing, trying to calm me down.

The two men ordered me to get dressed and informed me that they had been hired to take me to Oregon.

Then, no more than five minutes after making their appearance, they took me by the arms

and led me out of the house. These two men were escorts, employees of an agency whose job it is

to snatch up children at the behest of their parents and take them to places they do not want to go.

I ended up at a wilderness program in the Oregon Desert. I had a rough time. Two months later,

I was taken to the Monarch School in Montana. I kept wondering why. How did I get here?

The reasons I had been given were these. I'd been in some trouble around age 12, part of a group of

kids who had been busted for property damage and vandalism

in an abandoned building.

I was on probation.

My probation officer despised me.

My first day at the Monarch School was surreal.

I was searched, had my remaining possessions taken from me, was assigned a bunk bed in a cabin

...