When I was 15 I had been experimenting with pills and weed. While weed itself is not bad, they both worried my grandma and aunt along with me being a very private person.
So when I was 15 I woke up at 4:30 in the morning with 4 guys around my bed. 2 of them grabbed my arms and one grabbed my feet and held them together while the 4th one tied them together with cotton ginning zip ties. While they're doing this my grandma and aunt are standing behind them saying "We're only doing this because we love you." in which all I replied was "Yeah right.". I do know they love me though.
They put me in the backseat between 2 guys and we headed to Vanduser, Missouri. I'd rather not say my state but I live a few states away from Missouri.
When we got there they shaved my head, fed me some pizza, and explained a few things to me.
They said I had a crew leader. I wasn't allowed to be more than 5 feet from him for more than 5 seconds, literally. This included sleeping (bunk beds, in which I slept on the top in case I tried to run), eating, walking, using the bathroom, he stood outside of the showers while I cleaned up, etc.
There were 5 crew leaders and 30 students total (crew leaders are students). Students were distributed to crew leaders for supervision, 5 students to each crew leader. You get levels when you're in the boys home. You have a "beginner" level that you start out with, when you get off of this "beginner" level, you're then allowed to walk more than 5 feet from your crew leader and you're then allowed to talk to the other students.
When you're on the "beginner" level you can't leave your crew leader and you're not allowed to acknowledge that any of the other 25 students exist. The only people you're even allowed to make eye contact with is staff and crew leaders.
If you get in trouble you get "complaints". If you got 4 complaints within a week then you'd be put on restrictions. This meant you couldn't get seconds on food, no condiments like mayonnaise, cheese, and whatnot, and other petty bullshit that I didn't care about. If you got 6 complaints within a week then you got put on CET which stands for Character Enhancement Training. Which is just a shitload of workouts. If I described it on here it just wouldn't match how difficult it really was.. We'd start each workout with 1,000 jumping jacks and that was the easiest thing we did. They'd take us out onto a concrete slab with no shade at 2 in the afternoon and we'd do these workouts until 5:30 with only a long enough break to drink some water.
If you had to use the bathroom you had to do 200 pushups BEFORE you went. If you used the bathroom in your pants you had to do the 200 pushups anyways, and continue workouts like normal.
I never got off of the beginner level, I was never allowed to talk to the 25 students and forced to stare at the floor in fear I would make eye contact with someone and get in trouble.
Someone stormed out of the bathroom one time saying "Look at this, this is disgusting!" and I glanced and immediately looked down because I knew I fucked up and that's when my crew leader said "I saw that." and wrote me a complaint for "Indirect contact".
Physical abuse happened occasionally too...unnecessarily. Not to me, but I witnessed it on several accounts and have heard crew leaders brag about how they took down past students.
If you sang or referred to any other music besides gospel, you would get a "rocking out" complaint. Which is literally what they called it. I remember asking about that 'Jesus Take the Wheel' song and getting a "rocking out" complaint because "it has sinful beats".
When you wake up, you make your bed and stand in line for count. You then pray. I was called on to pray a few times in the morning only because I was LITERALLY THE ONLY PERSON there who was not religious and I refused to pretend I was. I'd read the bible and sing when they made me, but they knew I didn't believe in any of it and I made sure they knew.
Then we'd get dressed in our school uniforms and sit in a circle for bible reading. Then we'd read our bibles (I just blankly stared at mine) as we stood in line for breakfast. We'd do our chores and then we'd go upstairs for school. Our curriculum was ACE which stands for Accelerated Christian Education. I learned many valuable things from this curriculum such as how the reason Christians killed so many Native Americans in the past is because they didn't realize they had a soul at the time (I'm not bullshitting, this was really in the curriculum). Or how much the science part of it put down evolution so much...I guess their god is not capable of creating evolution 
Before we started our school work though, we pledged allegiance to the Christian flag, we'd pledge allegiance to the American flag, and then we'd sit down to memorize 3 verses in our assigned bible chapter until you finished the whole chapter, in which case you'd have to memorize the whole chapter. After memorizing these, you'd recite them to the teacher. Failure to do so would mean missing out on the Christian movie and snack on Friday and instead would sit in a corner memorizing the chapter you forgot until the movie was over and then you'd recite it correctly this time.
The people at this boys home specifically believed animals had no soul. There was a wounded bird that they fed a dog while it was alive just so they could watch the dog play with it.
I was forced to work in chicken factory farms. I was the guy that shoveled the 3 feet of shit that these creatures were walking on before they went to get slaughtered. The female chickens all had their back bones showing from the males mounting them so much. They would walk around dead chickens and a good number of them were on the verge of death themselves. They were miserable and angry, it was one of the most heartbreaking things I've seen in my life.
The students I was working with would torture the chickens and I wasn't allowed to look at them or say anything. There was one time they hit a chicken as hard as they could across the head with a shovel and it just ran around screaming in pain so I held it down with my foot and slit its head off with my shovel to put it out of its misery, at which point its lifeless body just sat their twitching and gushing out blood on my boots while my crew leader talked shit to me for it.
After seeing those chickens, I realized it could be much worse. I couldn't imagine being those creatures and facing/watching so much torture on a day to day basis. I just couldn't imagine it.
There are many reasons for me being vegetarian but this was definitely the main one. I know what it felt like to be inside of that boys home and I know how angry I felt at the donations the place was getting for what they were contributing towards. And all of this was supposed to be done out of "love"....but what those chickens were going through had no boundaries and was done for no other reason than "food" and profits and I refuse to be a part of it. Every living being deserves respect whether it's about to be eaten or not. The way they're treated is so disrespectful and repulsive to say the least. It's an embarrassment to humanity.
The boys home was called Anchor Academy. There's a topic about it here:
http://jjie.org/tough-love-or-abuse-inside-the-anchor-home-for-boys/107197/
I went when Dennis McElwrath ran it (he still does).
Now, I know these Christians are VERY extreme. My experiences with them are not why I'm against Christianity. While they were very ignorant in their methods, they made valid points on the general belief of Christianity. They use the King James Bible and some of the basic beliefs are, no matter how good of a person you are, if you do not accept Jesus into your heart then you will spend an eternity in hell. I do not believe this. If you're an absolutely terrible person but a week before your death you truly accepted Jesus into your heart and turned over a new leaf then you'll go to heaven. I do not believe this. Another is that you cannot accept Jesus into your heart simply for the fact that you are scared to go to hell, you have to truly accept him.
So one night while I was laying in my bunk bed and crying because I wasn't sure if I'd spend an eternity in a lake of fire, I realized that no matter how many facts they throw at me, if they are correct, then I refuse to accept Jesus as my savior because that isn't a god worth worshiping in my eyes. I learned that I'm biased on this logic and that if I did accept Jesus into my heart it would be for no other reason than fear of hell, and therefore I am incapable of becoming a Christian.
I've become much more grounded on my beliefs since leaving that place (I was in there for 6 months but I was supposed to be there for a year and a half). I was lost the first few years...the world was a really strange place when I came back to it. I couldn't look anyone in the eyes, I didn't know how to talk to people, I didn't know what was ok to talk about, I was in an extremely awkward state of mind. But as the years have gone by (I'm 21 now) I've gathered a lot of knowledge from the experience. For that, I am grateful that I went. For what they have done and (possibly?) continue to do, I hope they pay.
I mentioned my MAIN reason for being vegetarian (I've been vegetarian for 3 years). There are other reasons. My body accepts this diet extremely well (I want to go vegan soon), it makes me feel good to stick with something, after a year of being vegetarian I genuinely stopped enjoying the smell of meat and lost all interest in it completely, it makes me stand out (egotistical but I'm just being honest about my reasons), but the most important one as mentioned previously is that I believe these animals deserve our respect and I think that as long as they're being tortured and abused like this then it's disrespectful to eat even cruelty-free animals.
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