Reform At Victory - Praise and Reviews for the Book

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Michele Ulriksen's story is a compelling personal story that also contains a pointed political message. Ms. Ulriksen exposes the damage that can be done by those whose religious mantles cover up abusive ideologies and anti-therapeutic methods. I hope this account will impel parents who want help for 'troubled teens' to learn much more about their options and compel legislators to carefully examine all requests for funding of 'faith based' childrens' services before doling out tax dollars to support them.
- Barry W. Lynn, Author and Executive Director of Americans United for the Separation of Church & State

Throughout Reform at Victory, our guide takes us from one scenario to another, providing pertinent background information and the occasional follow-up story of girls that come and go throughout the book. We get a nice touch of the author's often humorous, sometimes sarcastic point of view of this cult-like madness she came to know as reality, for an entire year. We empathize with her and the others living under a legalistic cloud of authority, rules, rules and more rules. It's as though we must; we too are cooped up in this prison...Whether you're a parent wondering what to do with your troubled teen, a survivor of brainwashing and spiritual abuse or just someone looking for an interesting and riveting story, Reform at Victory offers one survivor's perspective. It raises larger questions of our beliefs, and circumstances that exist within religious context, as it must(see full review at the end of this page).
- Crallspace

Reform at Victory reads like a prison memoir, filled with dangerous secrets, informers, late night escape attempts and heartwarming friendships formed against the backdrop of an incredibly harsh and oppressive environment. At its core, it is about a confused teenage girl who is confronted with questions many of us fail to answer until we are well into middle age, if ever. Michele wants to believe in a higher power and live a Christian life, but God is intangible, invisible. Like many sixteen-year-old girls, things like tanning, boys and dreams of MTV rock singers are much more real and immediate. As you read, you are inspired to ask the same wrenching, unanswerable questions of yourself that Michele wrestles with inside her head. She could never utter them aloud, the intercoms are listening.
- The Alchemist, October 28, 2008. Corvallis, Oregon

Reform at Victory is a compelling coming-of-age story of one girl’s horrifying experience in a ‘Christian’ ‘reform school.’ Michele Ulriksen vividly captures adolescent life in a program aimed at stamping out any trace of individuality and spirit. If you want to understand how ‘tough love’ hurts teens, this book is a must-read.
- Maia Szalavitz, Author, "Help At Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids"

Michele’s personal account can help us to better recognize the very painful injuries that are being inflicted upon youth and families, and our society as a whole, by the present day phenomenon of institutional abuse in alternative residential treatment.
- Dr. Allison Pinto, Clinical Psychologist at University of South Florida

Child abuse masquerading as religion is a very real and serious problem. Reform at Victory sheds light on an issue that is largely ignored by our society...The typical survivor of these reform schools and programs like them really struggle in life… The abuse causes them to have very low self-esteem. They feel "lost" because their year(s) of isolation in the program have left them unprepared to deal with life beyond the walls of the facility. Drug and alcohol abuse is common. Many survivors have little or no contact with their families. They have trouble holding steady jobs. Stable intimate relationships are rare. As adults, many victims need professional counseling and a diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is not uncommon.
- Shelby Earnshaw, Director of ISAC;International Survivor’s Action Committee, www.isaccorp.org

Michele Ulriksen's Reform at Victory provides an emotional and shockingly candid portrayal of life in what passes for a Christian reform school, but amounts to a religious jail designed to brainwash its inmates. Her startling memoir chronicles her own experience as a 16-year-old whose sneaking out of the house lands her in a place where physical and emotional abuse is rampant and where she is denied even the most basic rights that most prisoners enjoy, as well as the after-the-fact impact of such incarceration. This is a must read for those who have survived these "schools," for parents considering placing a rebellious teen in such a setting, for mental health professionals who must deal with the fallout, and for government officials - and all the rest of us - who clearly need to take a more active role in curbing the abuses that are so commonplace in these facilities.
- Linden Gross, Author and Writing Coach

Michele Ulriksen's first person account of her experience inside an unregulated reform school is important because is shows the public what really goes on behind closed doors that outsiders to these programs don't see. Reading a book like Reform At Victory may be the only way a parent, who is considering placement of their toubled teen in a facility such as this one, will see what life is like inside a locked-down unlicensed alternative treatment facility.
- Mollye Barrows, Anchor/Reporter of SECRETS IN THE SCHOOLHOUSE, WEAR-TV, Pensacola, Florida

Ulriksen's harrowing story brings to light the mentally and physically abusive treatment used in many fundamentalist reform schools, operating under the guise of Christian values and a rehabilitative environment.
- The Commuter, October 29, 2008. Albany, Oregon

I recently had the opportunity to spend most of my day wrapped up in a book. This is a rare treat that I wish I could do more often, just get lost in a book and add to the brain, take on a new or sharpened understanding of any given topic. On Tuesday, I spent the day at Victory Christian Academy in the Ramona, California desert with teenage Michele Ulriksen, her dorm mates and the dreaded authorities in a Fundamental Baptist boarding school, lock-down facility. Reform at Victory was my ticket to this place, and my good friend Michele was the guide as she retrospected experiences and realizations she had back in the late 80s at this fenced-in facility of wayward or unwanted girls.

I am no book reviewer. I am barely a book READER. My limited time prohibits the opportunities to sit down with a book, but having read the first three chapters some time ago, and given that I know and care very much about the author, I've been awaiting this. I myself was sent to a boarding school my 8th grade year where Fundamentalist ideals were smeared into my reality, though it was not as traumatic as the content of Reform at Victory. This personal connection adds to my interest in the topic.

The book describes the experience of a usual rebellious teenager who gets tricked by her parents into going to a remote facility for troubled girls, run by Fundamentalists hung up on the fire and rage the Bible has to offer. The leader is an angry, homely and crass man who rules the facility with an iron, judgmental fist. Crazy, sporadic rules become, fire and brimstone is heaved from the pulpit while Christ's love is conserved, the girls are punished by having to write lines and being put in solitary confinement, and they are forbidden to be. They are made to feel like garbage through misogynistic, ranting sermons, belittlement and peer insult sessions known as rap sessions. No questions are to be asked of these ever-present scriptures, which of course, can mean whatever certain people want them to. Throughout Reform at Victory, our guide takes us from one scenario to another, providing pertinent background information and the occasional follow-up story of girls that come and go throughout the book. We get a nice touch of the author's often humorous, sometimes sarcastic point of view of this cult-like madness she came to know as reality, for an entire year. We empathize with her and the others living under a legalistic cloud of authority, rules, rules and more rules. It's as though we must; we too are cooped up in this prison.

For as we take in Michele's experience, it's like we are in that drab, depressing, mind control school in the middle of the desert, ourselves perhaps wearing culottes or some conservative, out of style garb. While reading, I often remembered back to my experience at Victory Homes and the questions I would ask, similar to or exactly the author's observations. When you are placed somewhere that obsesses over a certain constraint of religion, your mind changes. You begin to believe differently, whether you're in lockstep or not. Michele conformed while she was locked up and even got saved; but her coerced salvation didn't last beyond the electric fence of the facility, or beyond the awareness that any alternative would make her life there worse. Her long-awaited departure took me back to my last day at Victory Homes in Amberg, WI, even though our experiences were much different. I think it was the excitement, the feeling of the anticipated and finally-arrived freedom that I could relate to.

The book concludes with a brief overlook of life after lockdown. It's understood that places like this, places that suffocate our human desires and experience, do not leave us wanting more. Michele fell into worse circumstances afterward, with a renewed, more grown-up desire to rebel with drugs, alcohol, the works. And this facility was all caught up on the sin of girls wearing pants; some people just don't get it.

Whether you're a parent wondering what to do with your troubled teen, a survivor of brainwashing and spiritual abuse or just someone looking for an interesting and riveting story, Reform at Victory offers one survivor's perspective. It raises larger questions of our beliefs, and circumstances that exist within religious context, as it must.
- Crallspace

Reform at Victory is author Michele Ulriksen's first hand account of her incarceration in an evangelical Christian reform school as a teenager. Her story is a powerful indictment of the anti freedom, ultra conservative Christian faction in this country. Yet Michele's harrowing account also reveals that, even under the onslaught of religious nonsense, propaganda and emotional abuse, one can still find hope and light through free thought and reason.

Michele's book reads almost like a diary as she details her shock and disbelief that her own parents would place her under the complete control of this Christian reform school; a fenced, isolated compound, completely outside the scrutiny of law enforcement and governmental oversight. Here girls like Michele are stripped of their dignity, individuality and self esteem at an age when young women are their most vulnerable.

Michele's coping shows a remarkable level of maturity for someone her age. The rooms are bugged so the staff can eavesdrop on private conversations, confidences are betrayed, and there is no privacy; not even in the bathrooms. Yet Michele reveals to the reader the only vestige of freedom available to her - her personal thoughts. Often she wrestles with herself, praying to God, asking Him to help her learn to conform. Yet she thinks, how can a just and merciful God allow such cruelty to be perpetrated? Forced to read the Bible for hours upon end, Michele finds the words tortuously in contradiction to the conditions she and the other girls are forced to endure.

The frightening truth is that other such Christian reform schools still exist, something that true Christians and non-believes should both deeply fear and condemn.
- Robert Neary, Skeptical Media, Corvallis, Oregon