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

During her year at Victory Christian Academy, Ulriksen endured stints in a dark closet used for solitary confinement, suffered constant verbal abuse, and was monitored day and night through intercom systems and floor traps. She had no privacy and no rights, and the outside world lay beyond the electric fence surrounding the compound. As a privately owned, unlicensed reform school, there were no inspections of the facility by state authorities, no requirements for staff training, and no oversight by the Department of Education. It was a place where girls who weren't broken before emerged hollow and dispirited. Now she's committed to combating other unlicensed reform schools and preventing her arch-nemesis, Mike Palmer (preacher, owner and operator of Victory) from opening more of them. And along the way, she's written a compelling book about her year at Victory. Told from the perspective of Ulriksen at age 16, it's as straightforward and concise as it is gut-wrenching.
-Willamette Week, Portland, Oregon

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

I can't thank you enough for sharing your story with the world. Perhaps if I read this book before sending my son then I would have made alternate choices. Your book definitely resonated truths from my son's experiences. At the time of his admission, he was on drugs, drinking most days, not attending school, and not coming home during the day. He was basically sleeping here and eating, and of course asking for money constantly. He was getting arrested for minor infractions. As a single mom in the military, I felt limited in options. Several law enforcement friends agreed that juvenile detention would just allow him to learn new tricks, not rehabilitate.

I sought out a tough love group, which there was a mother there who used Agape Boarding School. I even had him put in a foster home after one arrest just so they could order therapy. I then sent him to live with his Godfather, but that too would soon turn to outright disobedience. He was admitted to the hospital during that time for cutting and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, oppositional defiance, questionable conduct disorder and Borderline personality disorder. After three hospitalizations and yet another run away attempt, we thought our choices were exhausted. We called Agape and we sent him there for a year.

You and Austin shared a lot of similar experiences as I played the typical Christian mom who thought it was the best choice for him. Now I realize long term psychiatric treatment should have been the best choice. Agape didn't want him on psych meds, and assured me they would contact me if they felt he should be removed from the program and return to medical treatment. Of course, that never happened. I let him come home after a year, but less than six months later he was caught stealing guns from a neighbor, to use the money for he and his girlfriend. I placed him back in Agape and he would have stayed there until 18 if not for his suicide attempt. Agape was not even going to tell me about it, but when I found out, I removed him from there and took him to Oregon.

Similar to your story, we opted for a GED instead of him being behind in school with little chance for success. Shortly after, he moved out of the house and spent part of his 17th year homeless and on drugs, but refused to come home and live because of basic rules. We even did an intervention at one time with no success. Coming off of drugs had to be Austin's choice and with the help of a great girlfriend, he became clean during his 18th year. We finally started reconnecting and had much to celebrate during his 19th year, vacationing together in Vegas.

I think the advice you gave at the end of the book is exceptional and right on target. I would gladly recommend your book to anyone with troubled teens. So many times as parents, we want to protect our children, and in desperation believe the words of Christian practitioners as the best options. I knew the Baptists were more radical in their opinions, but I thought it would do him good. What I didn't expect were the lack of trained teachers and counseling staff, but worst of all their belief that mental health disorders are simply a lack in faith. As a practicing Christian, I think this belief to be utterly false. Mental Health needs to be taken seriously by the medical and religious community and appropriate treatment involves medication, therapy, proper sleep, exercise, and diet, as well as meditation practice.

My son's mental health was controlled the first year because of the strict schedule and physical labor, but it was not enough to sustain him. He was hospitalized three more times after his first release to include one actual suicide attempt, one attempt at Agape, and one more hospitalization after his second release. I'm proud to say that he recognizes his illness and always calls during a depressive crisis. I'm able to help him through it or help him seek treatment. One of the most amazing things was hearing "I love you, too" in the last year. I know that life is difficult when both the mother and son are bipolar and have BPD, but we understand each other so much better. When I had to be hospitalized last summmer, he was my major supporter and called every day. I'm happy that his crash and burn years were short lived and he's maturing every day.
- Lisa Marie McKeown, Albany, Oregon

Reform at Victory: A Survivor’s Story is the gripping true story of a sixteen year old girl’s incarceration in a locked-down all-girl fundamentalist Christian reform school. Author Michele Ulriksen was a fairly typical mildly-rebellious southern California adolescent (cool clothes, partying, experimenting with alcohol) in 1986. And she didn’t want to go to church. Her parents had difficult adolescences themselves, and they converted to fundamentalist Christianity when the author was a young girl.

Her parents took her for a drive when she was 16, supposedly to visit the San Diego Wild Animal Park. In fact, they drove out into the desert, to an isolated compound surrounded by a high, barbed wire-topped fence. They had taken her to the Victory Christian Academy (VCA), an unregulated, unlicensed Christian reform school, and left her there for a year. Imagine how terrifying this was to a 16-year-old! Worse, she was dragged to the Get Right Room, a small windowless unfurnished room that was pitch black when the door was closed and locked from the outside. She was in solitary confinement! Loud Christian music, and later recorded preaching by Jerry Falwell, was played just outside the door. The desert temperature was in the triple digits. The brainwashing had begun.

The rules were endless! For 30 days, new girls could not make eye contact, or speak with, anyone but the staff and an assigned buddy who would monitor her and teach her the routine. No phone calls for 90 days (and then only a brief call from their families), no talking about boys or secular music. A long list of words (like cool and tubular) that they could not utter, no pants to be worn or even mentioned, 3-minute bathing, no privacy even when going to the toilet, no tampons, and on and on. Brother Patrick, the preacher-owner of VCA, said it best: Teens have no rights here.

The girls received no medical care from professionals, and their education was middle-school level work, with such classes as Biblical Science and Creation and Bible Studies. The facility was not state licensed; the teachers were not licensed to teach.

The purpose of VCA was fundamentalist Christian indoctrination. Bible studies, Bible reading, Bible verse memorizing, praying, and listening to preaching were part of the daily schedule. A relentless hatred of Atheists, homosexuals, liberals, and women was preached. By the time the girls left, they may not have believed in heaven, but they surely believed in hell!

The horrible treatment that is only hinted at above left the author with severe depression, subject to panic attacks, and suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, among other things. The author eventually picked herself up and moved on, but it wasn’t easy. She showed great courage and fortitude in writing this deeply-personal narrative. It is very readable, yet a very powerful, story.

Our society must not tolerate the physical, psychological, sexual, medical, and religious abuse of children. Unregulated religious reform schools need to be closed. Michele Ulriksen has shown what treatment teens can be subject to in these theocratic bastions.

Truly, as Blaise Pascal wrote: Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
- John Dearing, President, Corvallis Secular Society

I was particularly moved by how you were able to describe all the people in the scenario with a remarkable degree of compassion - not just your family, but even the people who were the worst players in the game, even Brother P. You did this without ever getting sappy or without losing the double lenses with which you were seeing this time in your life -as you experienced it then, and as you are able to reassess it now. You clearly and believably expressed your doubts and your attempts to believe, and the multiple pressures to believe, and the need to pretend to believe, all happening simultaneously. You come off as a very typical teenager, maybe more level-headed than most despite the supposedly wild behavior that freaked out your parents at the time. I got the sense that you have undergone an incredible degree of healing over the role of religion in this disaster, even since I met you. I got that sense when I saw you at the Grassroots reading, when your joy maybe could have been attributed to finishing a huge difficult project well, but it was so evident in your book. That makes it a much more powerful message, because people distrust vengeance as a motive, and anger repulses. For example, when you were describing one of Brother P's rants of a sermon on one of his obsessions about a girl's behavior or sexuality, you say: I was later to learn that there were more than 2000 verses in the Bible discussing our responsibility to care for the poor and needy, but Brother P never talked about those. Nothing could condemn him more than those lines, but it makes us pity him as well as get pissed off at him. I hope that your book gets spread far and wide. Your stories about all the other girls - even Kathy, the first one who seemed to genuinely have found her path through this place - give us a connection with all of them.
- Laurie Childers, Corvallis, Oregon

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