I was there from 78-79 until I was moved to boon vile i lived in the house behind eddy house dont recall the name but i do remember a guy named Neal he would abuse the kid named Joshua he had mental issues.It was over all good experiences Girls like Tina made it fun and Kathy had a brother named Philip. Saturday nights were the best Barbecue and drinks with adults since I was 16 at the time.

I was there, I was 9 or 10 when I got there. I don’t remember any of the kids names, I was known as John-Eric, they gave me that name. My real name at that time was Eric Sturgis. I was there the day they slaughtered the pigs, the hill we side to slid down was made of shale stones, we used to find sharks teeth and petrified wood in it from time to time. I remember the class room, the new building we built, I remember getting river rocks to build the fire place, the upstairs loft with only pillows on the floor where we used to read books. I remember the barn, the road up the hill to the barn, the house at the bottom of the field from the barn, the garage next to it where we slaughtered the bunnies and chickens. I remember the dining hall, and us boys had to sleep in tents for a while because there was nowhere else for us to sleep. I remember the pond, and swing. I almost died there from a spider bite on my hand. It got very infected and they refused to take me to a doctor. One of the adults got them to take me and they did the surgery to fix it, but I only went back to get my things the doctor got me out of that place from hell and into a foster home in Scotts Valley. Right after that is when the trouble started for them and they disappeared. I remember I used to build forts out of red wood bark to hide from the adults. I have many bad memories that are coming to the surface from that place. I had a bad surgery last year, and was in a coma for 2 months, I only had a 3% chance to make it. But the surgery reduced blood flow to my organs and brain, I suffered some brain damage and organ damage but it’s all healing. The more I read and think about this place the more I remember it. There was a kid in a wheel chair, a boy that suffered from epilepsy, I remember him having many seizures. I searched on google for this place and found this forum, I don’t really want to remember it but it’s all coming back.

The reason I went to this site is in hope to connect with a member who was teacher in their school of beauty. The school was in San Francisco on Market St. it was a highly accredited school. The name of the school was called “Western Academy of Cosmetology “. The teacher went by the name of Abigail Williams. She was my introduction to the group but also instrumental in my achieving a very successful career. I owe her a debt of gratitude.
Otherwise, I did on a few occasions spend a few weekends in Boulder Creek. I never saw any untoward during my visits there.

I remember being at school late 70s also it was a girl there named Barbara she had gotten a tattoo on her hand with my initials RG are you out there

I attended CCS sometime between 76-78 when the school was still in Boulder Creek CA, my name is Alvin but back then I went by Al.

I still have a lot of resentment, anger and hatred towards all those who owned and\or operated Christ Circle School. I am surprised by reading the majority of these posts about CCS that no one really mentions any of the atrocities that I saw take place there. I personally witnessed and experienced things that could be called no less than child abuse and crimes against children!

I resided in the dorm directly across the entrance to the offices and dining hall. I can’t recall the dorms name or the names of the staff members who ran it, although one of the staff members I will never forget. He had black hair and facial hair and spoke with what I believed was an accent from somewhere back east. I believe he was in his mid to late 20’s or early 30’s. He slept in a room at the far side of the dorm and would wake everyone in my dorm around 5 or 6 in the morning for meditation in the common area before going to the dining hall for breakfast. At the age of thirteen I actually found myself in fist-fights with this prick. I believe the first time was because he came into my dorm room to wake me up for meditation and grabbed one arm and one leg of mine pulling me straight off the top bunk to fall directly to the floor landing on my back and bouncing my head off the floor. I hated that guy! Besides the physical abuse to myself I witnessed physical abuse to many others as well, including the overmedicating of a student in my dorm. The staff would dope him up to the point where he couldn’t do anything other than lay on a blanket on the grass and stare at the sky while drooling all over himself.

After being there awhile I began to hear stories about the staff. I found out that any married couple who came to work for the school had to dissolve their marriage and I thought that was a very strange requirement, they also could not cohabitate. In addition, I was told by more than one student who was responsible for cleaning my dorms staff bedroom that when they stripped the sheets from the bed they would be soiled with bodily fluids and occasional shit-stains. Other students stated they witnessed two male staff members sleeping together in that room. I thought it was odd for the staff bedroom to only have one bed for two people, ahh, then I put two and two together. I personally thought it was disgusting but to each their own as long as they kept it to themselves without involving the students, but they didn’t. I would see a student who lived in the room next to mine coming and going from the staff bedroom in the late night hours many times. Around that time I also began to hear similar stories from students in the other dorms.

I realized the scope of things after experiencing “the Saturday night dinner” where the staff would invite selected students to join them. The students would find out right before the earlier student meal that they had been selected and not to attend the earlier student dinner. At first I thought nothing of it until I was one of the ones who had been selected. The atmosphere was kinda strange. The lighting would be somewhat dimmed with an open bar for everyone. The staff would mingle with the students and encourage them to utilize the open bar, some students would end up getting extremely intoxicated! I decided that there was serious depravity going on, there was only one conclusion I could come to-some of the staff, including Arthur Hempel (or whatever his name was), were child predators taking advantage of drunk kids.

Adding these experiences together with the fact that the headmaster Arthur Hempel (or whatever his name was) liked to spank students, who for some reason or other had gotten into trouble, with their pants down, convinced me all of the staff were child predators and the ones who weren’t looked the other way. He tried that shit with me and got his office turned upside down for his troubles!

Once I had gotten a feel for things at that hell hole, including “The gospel according to Arthur” on Sundays where I had to listen to this jackass preach his own gospel while making everyone sing songs in German, I began to runaway every chance I got. Sometimes I would be gone for a week or two and others I’d make it a month or so before getting caught and returned. Then I figured out not to go back to my neighborhood when I ran.

One of the last times I ran away I had to work in the kitchen for the “Saturday Night staff dinner.” I was in the kitchen with the student they normally kept doped up and drooling, we had dishwasher duty. He happened to drop a few drinking glasses and a staff member who happened to be in the kitchen at the time walked over to him yelling and then punched him right in the stomach doubling the poor guy over. Wrong thing to do while I happened to have an extremely large knife in my hand! The end result was the other student and I were done for the night and would go back to our dorm in return for me not plunging the knife into the staff member. Once back in the dorm I instructed the other student to grab a jacket and anything else he wanted to take with him that would fit in his pockets and I broke out one of the windows in his dorm room and we took off. We headed into the woods and followed the creek all the way to the general store that was on the corner of highway 9 and the road leading to the school. After reaching the store I told the clerk what had happened and some of the things I witnessed at the school and he called the sheriff. The staff caught up to us as we stood in the parking lot waiting for the authorities to arrive and attempted to make us get in the van as they intended to take us back to the school. The clerk inside the store (I think he was the owner) came out with a handgun and informed the staff that the authorities were on their way and myself and the other student weren’t going anywhere, with that they left and went back up the road. The authorities arrived and took us both into protective custody. I ended up in a foster home in Santa Cruz for about 3-4 months fighting both the school and my parents in Superior Court trying not to have to go back to CCS but I lost and was returned one last time. As soon as I touched down on school property I took off again for the last time and never went back, thank god!! I never found out what happened to the other student but I hope he never had to go back either. From what I learned later about CCS they eventually were kicked out of Santa Cruz county then out of California and then out of the US. Also I heard something about them kidnapping some of the students when they left, just what I heard.

That took guts.

You had a marvellously strong sense of dignity/agency at such a young age.

Let's hope more survivors step out and speak out.