As I am sure you can imagine, in the process of writing these books, we spoke to a lot of different people involved in different aspects of this program. We have collected a number of the stories they told us about the Island here. When the stories came from a Guardian, we included their book name. A lot of this was origionally collected for a short stories book we were working on, but descided not to write.
You are a Union Brother, so I will share this with you, just keep my name out of it.
Back in the late 1990’s I worked as the head lighting tech for <show>. We did a stint in Central and South America. We had a week-long break, and I was invited to join the band and some of the producers on a boat trip to a legal brothel.
The producers were really excited, this place had only been around a few years, but it was known for having high-quality young white prostitutes, and those were hard to come by down there. We rented a yacht and headed to the island brothel. We landed at a dock and we were met by a woman. She had this binder of girls to select from. Must have been over 100 girls in that binder. It was divided up by hair color, eye color and age. They had prostitutes from 12 to 24 in that binder.
On the last page was a menu of things we could do with or to the girls, and how many charms or beads each thing cost. I remember that beads were $100 each and charms were $1,000 each. We had to give the girls a bead or charms for different sexual acts. Blow jobs and hand jobs cost 2 beads each. Anal or vaginal sex was a charm. Then you could get really freaky. Whips, chains, choking, they had a price for everything. For 10 charms, you could do whatever the fuck you want to them, and that’s what the producers did, 10 charms for each of the 9 girls for the night.
The producers picked young girls, and even paid extra for a 15-year-old red-headed virgin that wasn’t yet broken in and would struggle. For most of the night, we enjoyed the food and the girls’ company. Then we retired to the bedrooms of the yacht. The redhead fought the producer, but he dragged her in.
For me, the sex was really good, she was so driven and so energetic, well, the sex was fantastic. In the morning, we all came out for breakfast. The redhead had two black eyes and other marks all over her, but she was now very obedient with that leash around her neck.
Not long before lunch, girls in these white uniforms came to collect the girls. It was so odd, they didn’t walk, they marched as they left. We then cruised back to the port where we rented the boat and continued our tour.
I was staff in the early 90s. This was probably the weirdest situation I ever saw on the Island.
We had a crop of new Missionaries that included an 18-year-old named Robin. Robin was on the island for a 3-month summer stint. Robin did the training and was working as staff for the Obedience classes, driving the drivers.
The end of August, Robin was to go home on the plane to start college. We got a notice from the Bishop that oversaw the Island that I never saw before or after. Robin’s parents were having a fight with the Church and Robin was going to pay the price for that.
When the next batch of girls arrived, instead of letting Robin board the plane to go home, we were to put Robin in with them and she was to start the program as a girl. Robin’s bags were packed, she was ready to go. I had 3 of the maintenance staff take her. Bag over her head, cuffs and shackles.
She was put into intake with the other new arrivals. Robin fought and screamed right through the intake process. Intake, and especially the diuretics, broke Robin, like it does most girls.
Robin got put in Bunk 12. She lost her baptized status. The girls of Bunk 12 recognized her, I know her first few months were particularly tough, the girls gave her no quarter. Robin spent 3 years in Bunk 12. As I understand it, she was only allowed to go home when her parents ate enough crow.
I can try to expand on this, but you guys do better with words than I do.
When I was in bunk, way before I became a Guardian, my bunk mother kept a notebook with all of her notes, kind of like a diary. I would steal pages from her notebook and burn them in the wood stove. What I didn’t know was that she was keeping the records for some of the staff training. I burned a whole years worth of religious training records.
She got into so much trouble for having lost the records. No one ever knew it was me.
-Susan
As a girl, sometimes you need more than fingers. It wasn’t uncommon to use a plunger handle or even a stick.
So, before the Guardians, I was on the masonry crew a lot. We were really good at working with stone. In the woods behind Bunk 14, we had this boulder formation. One of them was almost perfect. We had a wall building job right outside Bunk 14.
Every day at lunch, I would take a hammer and chisel with me and shape this particular rock. It took me a little over two weeks, and two more weeks of rubbing it down with other stones, but I was able to shape it perfectly.
Let’s just say it really fit the bill!
-Kate
Merry Christmas.
I hope I’m not bothering you, but you might like this story. I think it’s the best Christmas story from my teenage years.
For two years, we had a girl named Julie on the island that wasn’t allergic to poison ivy. She could roll in the stuff and never even get an itch. She was a short-timer, only there for 18 months or so. After her first year, she managed to get a gig in Chow Hut and Chow Hall.
The day before she flew home was the day of the staff Christmas party. Julie snuck in a bunch of poison ivy into Chow Hut and laced almost every dish she worked on with bits of poison ivy.
No one figured out it was her until after she was home, so she got away with it.
-Susan
What I remember most about Christmas on the island was that first Christmas Father Fred was on the island and he let us all sing Christmas carols. Girls, Guardians, Sisters, and Brothers, we all sang together. Really a magical moment.
-Tonya
My first Christmas on the Island, I happened to find a broken piece of glass that looked like a star. It was such a risk, but I made myself a Charlie Brown Christmas tree, with that piece of glass as the star of the tree. It was discovered by my bunk parents about a week before Christmas. Instead of being upset and getting in trouble for it, they called it a “Christmas miracle” and we had it in our bunk for a week. We all decorated it with our rubbing stones. It reminded me of Christmas back home.
-Laura
I got to the island in December. Christmas was always the big holiday for my family. As we got closer and closer to Christmas, it got harder and harder for me. Sister Rachel was widely known to be one of the harshest sisters on the island, a “stop crying before I give you something to cry about” type of Sister.
A few days before Christmas, I just lost it, I broke down in hysterical tears. Sister Rachel wasn’t with her bunk. When she saw me, she took me by the arm and dragged me towards the office. I figured I was in for an office punishment. Instead, she walked me past the office, across the staff fence line, and over to a bench that was out of sight. She sat down and sat me next to her and just hugged me and held me until I had calmed down.
She told me not to tell anyone what she did (staff were not allowed to hug girls at that time) and then returned me to my bunk. The oddest thing was that she gave me full points for the two periods she had me for.
-Meghan
I worked for a year on the maintenance crew from 1989 to 1990. We definately saw the girls as far less than humans, more like wild animals. I was an avid paintballer and I brought my paintball gun with me. I don't know what started it, but my crew happened upon a girl from one of the bunks beating the shit out of a Sister. My crew boss was dating that Sister. We pulled the girl off the Sister and ended up stringing the girl up naked to the branch of a tree by her wrists. Part of her punishment was that we all used her for target practice until we ran out of ammo. At the time, it was like a party game. That mob mentality absolutely took over. We all cheered whenever we landed an especially painful hit and she screamed, or when we hit the high point zones (tits, crotch, ass). But that was the mentality of the place, and I didn't have the life experiance to object or stop it when I was 19.
I was a Missionary staff member from 1988 to 1990. For most of us young women, saving young girls was our first choice option. Until we got there. For most of the guys, it wasn't, so they ended up in maintenance. The guys who were bunk parents were usually the ones who chose it as a top 3.
Before going to the Island, we had training sessions for it. They drilled into us that this was the girls' last and best hope, that if we couldn't save them, no one could. They talked a lot about how nothing else had worked, and while it may seem harsh, it was far better than the life they were headed toward. They were the bad girls, and we had to do what was needed to save them.
Now, we were all about 18 when we went. Wide-eyed, idealistic, and with hormones raging. We had two or so Sisters for every Brother. And we were strongly encouraged to find mates. I think it was easier for those assigned as Bunk parents, a lot of those Brothers and Sisters ended up pairing off.
I don't know how it was on the male side, but on the female side, we had workshops about dating and finding our soul mates right from the start. Every week we had classes on courting guys when it was so competitive. Basically, they told us to be subserviant and to put out to find a guy. In Staff Group, we often talked about what guys were available and they would give us inside information on what they liked to help us court them. We even had all of these dating events to try and help us pair off. Like, Saturday nights we had the lottery, where an available Brother and Sister were selected from a pair of bowls and sent on a date. One Sunday a month we had the Staff ice cream social. We had the Sadie Hawkings dances, where the guys had to say yes to the first girl that asked them out, the church pairing and other such events.
I met my husband on the Island. We met during an ice cream social. Hormones and chemistry were a big part of it, but we also wanted to go home, and it was well-known that if you got married and pregnant you could end your assignment in as little as 6 months. When you are looking at 3 years before going home, that's a huge incentive to get married and have a baby. And we did. We got married about 3 months after that first date, and I was 7 months pregnant when we went home.
On the flip side of the coin, I know that if a program girl got pregnant, the guy was looking at jail time. My husband told me that in the male staff groups, this was discussed a lot, as well as that the program girls were dirty, and you didn't know what STD's they had.