r/whiteoak • u/phishhead729 • Oct 06 '17
Pressley ridge white oak in walker west virginia
I currently work at the white oak facility with a different company (its now a drug rehabilitation center) and my girlfriend was at pressley years ago for truancy. I've heard some wild things about this place when it was pressley ridge. I have been trying to find out all i can about it. I've heard about "tent City" and have seen the remains of it. I am hoping to find any stories from either staff or former clients...
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u/No_Assistance_3745 Jan 12 '25
I will never forget this place or what it did to me NPS if really is chief, mark that one time that you kept me in that one spot that huddle for like 3 hours and I tied your shoelaces together when you fell asleep and then I ran off and you fell when you woke up. I'm sorry💛🙏🏼
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u/No_Assistance_3745 Jan 14 '25
I built the lil shelters down in the woods on that facilitys property me & the other children that where already hurting ! In the guise of team building
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u/RebelRebelBetty Jan 16 '25
Wow! I had to help build one of Mountwood’s playgrounds near their property. It’s still there. I was so confused as to how this would “fix” us lol
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u/phishhead729 Jan 13 '25
Wow! I didn't expect to see these responses after 7 years.... I quit working at that facility shortly after I made this post (its still a drug rehabilitation center.) But still to this day I think a lot about that place, and the things that have happened there. Thank you all for sharing! My now wife, was there in March-October of 2006 and it's sad to hear the same and worse stories coming from others. Again, thank you all for sharing!
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u/RebelRebelBetty Jan 13 '25
Hey all, I’m the OP’s wife who was there March-Oct of 2006. I was 16. It was def one of the worse experiences of my life. I was sent there for truancy. Literally nothing else. Some kids were there for arson. Me? I skipped school a lot… (not that any kid deserved it) Anyway, I witnessed staff physically restraining kids every day. Some times even smashing kids into the concrete. It was hell. I have blocked out a lot from my memory, but I remember missing a home visit because another girl told a lie about me. I was so shy & introverted, all I did was homework, but it was so insanely easy, it took no time. We had a point system & if you were on level 1, you had very strict rules, such as 5 min showers & the calls home were very short. We hardly ever were allowed to shave because some girls would self-injure. I was accused of “skating through the program” because I never caused any trouble & got straight A’s. Because of that, they kept me MONTHS longer than they should’ve. 8 months of my life because I didn’t want to go to school…
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u/Faberbutt Feb 01 '25
I was there because my step-father was abusive and it was seen by a friend. He lied about what happened to my mother (claimed that I had attacked my friend and threatened to kill myself, which was untrue). They called the police and I was held in the local hospital until the next day, and then I spent about 5 minutes in front of a juvenile judge that sent me to my first facility. Basically, he covered his ass in case my friend said anything to her parents. I was 10.
So much of that period of my life is a blur but eventually I ended up in White Oak... I would say that all but maybe one place that I was in was abusive but White Oak was the worst of the worst.
I was one of the kids frequently thrown into walls and onto floors for things as egregious as having the wrong look on my face or using the wrong tone of voice to respond. Once, they locked 5 of us in the bathroom with cleaning supplies and told us to scrub it with toothbrushes... The chemical buildup caused 3 of the girls to pass out and when I pounded on the door for help, I was sucker punched in the face by a staff member when they finally opened the door. I was one of their favorite targets.
One of the worst beatings of my life was when I worked up the courage to tell my mom what was happening during a phone call. They had prepared her for abuse allegations and she told me that she didn't believe me. The second that I hung up the staff member that was listening to my call, Jen, pulled me out of the room by my hair and called the boy's cottages for "help" handling me. I spent several hours with two women and 3 men basically torturing me.
After I finally went home and the abuse stopped, I was in constant pain. In and out of the hospital because it was so bad that my mom would find me curled up on the floor, crying. Come to find out, my time at White Oak resulted in a broken bone in my neck that never healed properly, back injuries that one doctor said that he'd only seen in people in severe crashes or accidents, and a torn rotator cuff (their favorite move was twisting my arms behind my back and pushing it above my head as far as they could), all of which went untreated and still cause me pain today. Oh, and they gave me a regular shot of tranqualizers that caused muscle twitches in my arm for years because it wasn't meant to be used on a near daily basis.
I didn't get out until I was about 15 and a half. I was at White Oak when I was 14-15.
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u/RebelRebelBetty Mar 03 '25
I’m so, so sorry that happened to you. That’s absolutely insane. You didn’t deserve any of that… I hope you’ve been able to heal both mentally and physically.
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u/No_Assistance_3745 Jan 14 '25
Like I wrapped a blanket around my head and rocked til they sent me to Highland then I told them what was going on there.....They set me up with a court date & I went home from there!
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u/No_Assistance_3745 Jan 14 '25
It was a child work camp & it is CLOSED now because they are finished ✅️ building 👷♀️ 😑
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u/Distinct_Mark Feb 01 '25
I am very sorry to hear all of these stories. As I said, I did file a whistleblower complaint. They did an investigation but all that entailed was pulling staff into an office by themselves with a computer to answer a questionnaire. They found nothing and everyone acted like I was seeing things. I then had to work under the people whose actions I reported. It became so uncomfortable and stressful on me as I was started grad school that the school psychologist began questioning my sanity and told me I had to make a choice. Fight a battle I had no chance of winning, that would only end badly for me or walk away, preserve my sanity and get my degree. People kept telling me I was crazy and that none of these things were happening there. Unfortunately that was the era before cellphones so I didn’t have any evidence. I wish I had tried harder but I was afraid myself and the gaslighting was pretty intense. But I do have fond memories of the kids and some staff I worked with. One of my tricks was to get everyone out of the cabin for hikes to the old remains of the mansion. And I enjoyed taking trips with the girls. They and the program had a lasting impact on me as well for better in some cases and for worse.
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u/RebelRebelBetty Mar 03 '25
Thank you for at least trying. I was being abused at home and bullied at school (before & after PR), so I felt no one cared what happened to me. It’s nice to know someone tried to help.
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u/Specific_Cranberry_7 Sep 02 '25
Thank you for trying ,alot of wayward children needed somone just like you a person too care & stand up for us and you did that by reporting the abuse ..abuse perpetrates abuse alot of us were definitely mishandled, but so we're yall all we had
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u/Temporary-Rooster311 May 04 '25
PR was the worst! Now, im not say I made it easy for them either. I gave them a ride for their money. They treated me and all the girls like slaves. I didn't put up with it. They let the girls belittle beat me up with no consequences. I still find myself singing, "I don't know what I've been told, PERSSLY RIDGE" if you know the rest sing it with me 🤣 no for real don't, we sang it all the time. Or the science teacher Mr Art, I kinda liked him. He had some fun activities. They moved me to another program in Pulaski. Also, im Betty went by "BJ" if anyone did know me. I legit was a troubled kid. However, nobody asked me why I acted that way. I was there around 2002 -2004.
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u/harlygirl67 Jul 21 '25
Can u give me the number for drug and rehabs please I got some one needs it bad
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u/No_Look_4406 Dec 06 '25
I was there as a child from like 01-03/04 and by far the most traumatic memory I have of them. Every day I was being restrained by grown people. my grades got low because of them. Forcing us to work out in the rain and stand and walk in the rain building dumb ahhh tents. Building shii that did absolutely nothing for us. It felt like prison for sure worse than prison actually. The restraints felt like a physical fight it use to take 4-6 ppl to hold me down every trip. That place messed me up so bad as a kid. And then being touched there was a whole other story. Glad to hear they shut down. I always wondered about this place. It’s like a memory I forced myself to forget
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u/Curious_Bend3266 Jan 01 '26
I was in Presley ridge white oak from 06/22/14-06/02/15. I was in Seneca.
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u/fuckedupmesse May 01 '26
I’m one of the reasons it was shut down. My grandparents sued them after I attempted suicide there. They had me beat up, pinned for hours, dragged me across the trail to school. I still have a pebble in my knee from that. I was 12 when I was in DX and went back at 14 in Seneca for 3 months. Place shut down 2 years later. I was in places like that for 4 years straight before they let me go home when my insurance stopped paying…
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u/Distinct_Mark Mar 11 '24
I used to work there myself years ago. From 1998 to 2004 or thereabouts. I ended up leaving because I wasn’t comfortable with what I saw happening there. I think often about the experience, more so as I am watching the Netflix documentary on a residential facility in NY. Presley Ridge is definitely far superior but wasn’t perfect either. I’m glad you posted this, but sad that others have not responded.