Karin Schroeder

Review of United Methodist Family Servic...

I was placed in UMFS's residential services in the...

I was placed in UMFS's residential services in the mid 1980s at 16. I was raised in an extremely abusive home environment, with sexual (which I repressed and the family admits they hid even while I was in UMFS), physical and emotional/verbal abuse. My now deceased mother I believe had an undiagnosed Personality Disorder, and her personal doctor later agreed with me.

I did learn important fundamentals while in UMFS and yes, it was tough. The biggest problem is that they taught me personal responsibility, encouraged me to do my best and a lot of useful skills I still use, but then they stuck me back in my abusive home where none of these skills were useful. Indeed, having these skills just gave my parents more reason to call me a failure when I couldn't meet their unreasonable expectations and thus abuse me more.

Now I am 48 years old, diagnosed with severe PTSD from severe childhood abuse, and my mother died in March of 2017. I still live with my abusive father, I'm on disability. I'm getting ready to move out.

My complaint? UMFS failed me. They taught me plenty of useful skills, useful if you're living in a healthy environment. These skills can actually be harmful however, if you are living in an abusive environment, as I was and have been the majority of my life.

UMFS failed me by improving my life and teaching me how to cope, then returning me to my abusive family and unreasonably expecting that I would be able to maintain the same level of success and achievement in that environment. I simply could not.

Only now, after my mother has died, am I finally doing the things I should have done at 20 years old. I'm returning to college this Spring and trying to finish a degree. All things I likely could have done at 20 if UMFS hadn't failed me and returned me to an abusive home environment.

I know they helped a lot of the girls I was in there with, and they went on to become very successful. But for me that doesn't matter, what matters to me is that they gave me back to my abusers and I suffered for it.

(fwiw: I wasn't kicked out of the program, I actually did successfully graduate from UMFS after 11 months)