Article contributed by Yakira Goldsberry
When you read a memoir, it’s almost like the author is inviting you inside their mind, inside their life, and showing you glimpses of what made them the person they are today. Reading Stolen by Elizabeth Gilpin was more like living the events of her past right along with her. The moment I picked up this heartbreaking and eye-opening memoir, I couldn’t put it down.
Throughout the novel, Gilpin lays out all of the dark secrets of “therapeutic” boarding schools and exposes the horrors that go on behind closed doors. Labelled as a “troubled” and “dangerous” teen, Gilpin’s parents have her kidnapped in the middle of the night and dropped off at a camp where she spends the next few months stripped of her own name, tramping through the wilderness, and threatened at every turn with being sent to what is called “lockdown”. After being ridiculed, shamed, and betrayed, Gilpin is finally able to graduate and move on to a boarding school, where even more horrors unfurl.
At the school, the students are put through “workshops” that involve emotional and psychological manipulation and abuse. As Gilpin described each one, of how the teachers treated the students, I was both heartbroken and disgusted that something like that was allowed to happen. Things like forcing them to run until they dropped from sheer exhaustion, sitting them in a circle and forcing them to divulge their deepest, darkest secrets, and forcing them to yell insults and slurs at one another. There were several instances where I had to put the book down because I would get so worked up over what the teachers put the kids through. Every moment that Gilpin didn’t give up, every moment that Gilpin decided the school wouldn’t break her, I cheered her on, revelling in her fierceness and determination to see those days through and maintain what little freedom she had.
Every raw emotion, every feeling of guilt and sadness and anger, I could feel. Gilpin’s emotions jump off the page, weaving more depth into the story than if it had been told more like an autobiography than like a diary. I sympathised greatly with Gilpin through every single page as she outlined the desperation and betrayal she felt towards her parents. Gilpin is incredibly strong to have survived all of what she went through and equally strong to pick herself back up again after spiralling and choosing to tell her story. Telling others of, and acknowledging, the dark things of your past can be extremely painful, but I’m proud of Gilpin for taking the leap and choosing to let the world know of the horrid system that almost killed her.
This book stayed with me long after I finished reading. The story is simultaneously heartbreaking and encouraging. There are so many other things I could discuss in this review but can’t for the sake of spoilers, but this is not a story I will forget in a long, long time. I will say though, that while the book doesn’t have a trigger warning (I think the description itself works as one) there are a few I’ll mention now—there are mentions of mental, physical, sexual, and drug abuse, as well as psychological torture and manipulation, so just a fair warning for anyone who wishes to read the book.
Overall, I give Stolen a 10/10 for its raw, powerful, and moving message, and for the sheer bravery of Gilpin for taking a stand and telling her truth. This is definitely an important story that will open the eyes of many and bring to light the ugly truth of therapeutic boarding schools and the twisted systems that keep them running.
Stolen is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore, as of July 20th 2021.
Will you be picking up Stolen? Tell us in the comments below!
Synopsis | Goodreads
A gripping chronicle of psychological manipulation and abuse at a “therapeutic” boarding school for troubled teens, and how one young woman fought to heal in the aftermath.
At fifteen, Elizabeth Gilpin was an honor student, a state-ranked swimmer and a rising soccer star, but behind closed doors her undiagnosed depression was wreaking havoc on her life. Growing angrier by the day, she began skipping practices and drinking to excess. At a loss, her parents turned to an educational consultant who suggested Elizabeth be enrolled in a behavioral modification program. That recommendation would change her life forever.
The nightmare began when she was abducted from her bed in the middle of the night by hired professionals and dropped off deep in the woods of Appalachia. Living with no real shelter was only the beginning of her ordeal: she was strip-searched, force-fed, her name was changed to a number and every moment was a test of physical survival.
After three brutal months, Elizabeth was transferred to a boarding school in Southern Virginia that in reality functioned more like a prison. Its curriculum revolved around a perverse form of group therapy where students were psychologically abused and humiliated. Finally, at seventeen, Elizabeth convinced them she was rehabilitated enough to “graduate” and was released.
In this eye-opening and unflinching book, Elizabeth recalls the horrors she endured, the friends she lost to suicide and addiction, and—years later—how she was finally able to pick up the pieces of her life and reclaim her identity.
