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The Sheppards

'I have never seen such cruel people'

Theodore ‘Teddy’ Nichols, as many Kurn Hattin alumni from his era will tell you, had a good heart. For 7 years he was mercilessly persecuted and relentlessy bullied (as Teddy himself publicly declares) by his peers. Teddy was required by Kurn Hattin administration to live in dorms with children younger than himself in order to ameliorate the unrelenting bullying to which he was subject daily. Human nature, being what it is, might appear to dictate that Teddy would have withdrawn from the world, become resentful of his fellow man – or child. Teddy’s heart directed him otherwise. He sublimated the trauma he endured daily at Kurn Hattin Homes to help other children by applying his harsh experiences at to protect the younger and more vulnerable children from enduring what he had suffered. If there is one emblematic example of overcoming mans inhumanity to man at Kurn Hattin – it is Teddy Nichols.

In his own words and in his own way, Teddy publicly shares some of his life at Kurn Hattin Homes for Children:

I was a witness for a Case against Kurn Hattin as a teen (while attending the Putney School with Timmy Powers) and did tell of the things certain staff did... I was the kid that was badly picked on for 7 years. It was so hard i counted backwards from 850 days left to go right up to graduation. Having spent from 1966 to 1973 i was abuse by staff members personally... I hated them that hurt me ... some bad people where abusing us behind their backs and we did not know how to deal with it. We had a very hard time with a few. Dickey cottage had the Shepards that were very cruel. Anyone getting into trouble had to do excersizes for hours. If you pjs dropped you would be dropped for touching them. We would get tons of head nuggies. There also has been some child abuse but I can understand why that is keeped down.

Kurn Hattin survivor testimony before the Vermont Senate Committees on Judiciary, Health and Welfare and Education: The 1960s were particularly brutal on the boys’ side of campus. We’ve listened to so many horrific, and quite similar, recollections of abuse from over 10 survivors abused at KH in the 1960s perpetrated by two separate Executive Directors, multiple House Parents, teachers and staff members. One set of House Parents in Dickey Cottage tormented young boys, molesting and sexually assaulting them in the cottage and elsewhere on campus, such as the locker room. These same House Parents beat the boys until they “saw stars,” slamming one boy’s head into the porcelain toilet resulting in loss of consciousness, kicking them across the room with a metal toe boot, breaking bones, punching a boy so hard his face slammed into a metal hook/nail breaking his nose, kicking another down 2 flights of stairs, forcing tortuous exercise with their pants down, requiring excessive chores for hours leaving children injured, making children re-eat their own vomit, putting dirty or urine filled clothes in the boys’ mouths...

Well, the houseparents at Dickie where a bunch... 1966 - 1969. Very abusive. Kicking seemed to be the husband thing. I watch one kid (Michael Crowley) go flying into a shoe box and the nail ripped his nose right open. He kick a kid in front of me in 2nd grade cause he had to go pee during our punishment excersises. He couldnt keep his pjs up and they fell to the floor. When went to pick them up Mr Shepard scream leave them down. So for several minutes he keep trying to keep his arms straight out while butt naked. He then let out a 'I got to pee'. No response from the staff by now his arms so tired and his albows nearly touching his sides he pees. Mr Shepard sees it and kicks Tim so hard that he flew into the air ..and made him come back to clean it up. Poor kid was only 6 years old. Now that's abuse and i could tell much more. Getting knocked side the head is nothing. Sure wish we could go after the Shepards i have never seen such cruel people an to think they even adopted a baby there.

Michael J. Kirkey, one of four brother to attend Kurn Hattin Homes for Children during a known and documented and particularly brutal period during the late sixties discloses his personal experiences at the Vermont Approved Independent School:

Um, wow.. never thought I'd see this day. It's taken many many years of therapy to come here. To discuss KHH. Kurn Hattin is my.. um.. stressful? No, um.. its my catastrophic life experience. I don’t want to overwhelm anyone, myself included. When I think of what happened to me, myself & i.. um, uh, I, cry every time!! I am I guess a big thick bad-ass Viking looking dude.. that cries, when.. i.. think back.

Ok! Our house parents were James and Caroline Sheppard. I peed the bed. My punishment was to be put into the box that the TV came in. Then they would put the top back on. Mr. Sheppard would have the kids walk around it, hitting it, singing, London Bridge Is Falling Down and um.. pocket full of posies, we all fall down?? There were a few of those kid rhymes he made the kids sing. The best part of that. Was that there were hand holds on the sides of the box. And every Sunday I had to go in the box for peeing my bed.. Ha ha, Ha ha. Uhm, Dickey Cottage got the TV just before my brothers and I got there. That was the box I was in.

ANYWAY, we had one channel to watch once a week. Sunday nights. While most kids got to watch Disney, I was put in the box so I wouldn't be able to watch Disney. But! I could see the TV in the next room from the finger holes. Ha ha ha! Um.. yeah the show was called "The adventures of Rob Roy" it was original first hand Disney. Mr. Sheppard never found out. Oh god, it would've been worse. But that wasn't the worse of it, ya know, beatings, forced corporal punishment. Lots of fun.

Here’s the kicker to me. The very day after we were abandoned by our mom. But the next morning, we were in line to walk in the bathroom. Mrs. Sheppard told us all to be very very quiet.. because Mr. Sheppard is a grumpy bear in the mornings so shhhh. Well, my little 5 yr old mind said self, I know what Mr. Sheppard needs. A nice big smile.. I guess he was around the corner waiting to ambush us kids. I come in sight of him walking towards him. Then I let loose the sweetest little boy smile that I could muster mister.. and, he hauls off and punches me in the side of my head. I thought I'd grown wings for a second. My very first concussion. My first time flying indoors.. well, I didn’t really fly.. I more or less went skidding on the floor and hit the wall. So it was SQUEEEK..THUD. HE USED TO KICK ME REALLY really hard.. that's when i literally flew from one side of the room to the other, look ma, no wings.. ha ha..... Oh my god, look at the time.

Wow, my mouth runneth over. We were there from 1966 to 1969. My three brothers and I. Ok, I should go. I don’t have a lot of time left. I would like to buy a mobile camper and go see my family. Or just travel and see the sights. Everybody knows what's going on. It's going to get a lot worse. This the calm before the storm. ... Vermont Senate Kurn Hattin Hearings

Torture of Children

'To instill fear and despair'

Forced exercise and stress positions are torture when inflicted upon young vulnerable isolated children.

Torturers use methods that leave no scars, but are painful and create long-term physical and psychological injuries. The use of stress positions is one of these torture methods. These positions force an individual into a painful physical position, such as forced standing, awkward sitting positions or suspension of the body for prolonged periods of time.

Stress and duress torture techniques may sound innocuous. But the Washington Times reported that some of the most feared forms of torture cited by survivors of the North Korean gulag were surprisingly mundane:

Guards would force inmates to stand perfectly still for hours at a time, or make them perform exhausting repetitive exercises such as standing up and sitting down until they collapsed from fatigue.

Stress and duress interrogation techniques were invented for only one purpose - to cause pain, distress and humiliation, without physical scars. Cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment (CIDT) is treatment of persons which is contrary to human rights or dignity, but is not classified as torture. It is forbidden by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the United Nations Convention against Torture and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. A distinction between torture and CIDT is maintained from a legal point of view, but medical and psychological studies have found that it does not exist from the psychological point of view. People subjected to CIDT will experience the same consequences as survivors of torture.

In the public release of a top secret document, the CIA defines the purpose of stress positions: To instill fear and despair and to cause humiliation or insult. The Equality and Human Rights Commission defines degrading treatment as undignified and humiliating treatment. Whether treatment is considered degrading is dependent on several factors, including the duration of the pain and duress; physical and mental effects on the victim; and the victim's age, sex, and vulnerabilities.

Torture is often associated with physical scars. But torturers have perfected ways of inflicting severe pain without ever leaving a mark: forced nakedness and sexual humiliation, stress positions, sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation. From a medical and psychological perspective, these abuses constitute torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.

Depriving a person of normal sleep for prolonged periods can be achieved by using stress positions. The effects of sleep deprivation include taking longer to respond to stimuli, attention deficits, decreases in short-term memory, speech impairments, uncontrolled repetition of words or actions, and inflexible thinking. Symptoms may appear after one night of total sleep deprivation or after only a few nights of sleep restriction.

Forced nakedness creates a power differential, stripping the victims of their identity, inducing immediate shame and creating an environment where the threat of sexual and physical assault is always present. The effects of sexual humiliation, including forced nakedness, include posttraumatic stress disorder and major depression. Victims often suffer flashbacks or nightmares about their experiences. The shame, grief and fear felt by survivors are very difficult feelings to overcome.

The main factor of torture is not the resulting pain itself but an individual’s perception of pain. A child immediately distinguishes between aversive or painful stimuli that occur naturally (bone growth), are inflicted by others (corporal punishment) and those inflicted by himself (competitive sport). A young child’s response to the effect of pain is determined by his perception of the cause of the pain. Stress positions and forced exercise can encourage a child to see himself as the cause of his own pain, leaving lifelong psychological scars.

Children subject to torture in the context of child abuse suffer a severe combined type of child abuse including extreme physical and psychological maltreatment. Torture goes beyond simple polyvictimization in that it includes an increased severity of both physical and psychological maltreatment. It involves intense humiliation and terrorization. Common characteristics of child torture may involve multiple abusive physical injuries, deprivation of essential needs, and denigration or dehumanizing the child. Torture is often found to have been perpetrated over a period of time with the knowledge and/or acquiescence of other caregivers and peers. As the level of violence and control increased, perpetrators increased the isolation of the victims.

Polyvictimization refers to the experience of multiple types of violence or victimization such as sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, torture, neglect, bullying, and exposure to peer or school violence versus multiple episodes of the same kind of victimization. Research reveals that the impact of polyvictimization is more powerful than even multiple events of a single type of victimization. Children exposed to such traumatic events may suffer from traumatic stress and develop reactions that persist and affect their daily lives long after the trauma has ended.

Torture is different from other forms of child abuse, but it currently lacks medical definitional criteria. As opposed to torture, the majority of commonly recognized physically abusive acts result from a caregiver’s episodic unchecked anger or loss of self-control. Torture is usually prolonged or repeated and includes acts designed to establish the perpetrator’s domination and control over the child’s psyche, actions and access to the necessities of life. Although torture has been described in the context of politically motivated abuse and dictatorial regimes, the torture of children within an institutional context has received little attention.

Child torture includes a combination of two or more of the cruel and inhuman treatments for protracted periods of time, or a single extended incident, which would cause prolonged physical pain, emotional distress, bodily injury, or death:

• binding or restraining the child,

• repeatedly physically or sexually abusing the child,

• exposing the child to extreme temperatures without adequate clothing,

• locking the child in closets or other small spaces,

• forcing the child to consume urine or excrement, or

• forcing a child into stress positions or regimens intended to break the child's will resulting in prolonged suffering.

• psychological abuse such as isolation, intimidation, emotional maltreatment, terrorizing, spurning, or deprivation.

The dynamic of psychological and physical cruelty used to control a child is similar to the dynamic often observed in intimate partner violence. Perpetrators of child torture exercised extreme control over their child victims, inflicting repetitive pain and suffering on these children and dehumanizing them. Denial of necessities, including access to food, water, toilet, and sleep are frequently utilized as punishment by perpetrators.

Abusers typically demonstrate little or no remorse for their actions. Many transfer blame for their actions onto others and most perpetrators blame their victims for precipitating the abuse or causing abuse to be necessary. Perpetrators utilize a framework of necessary discipline and corporal punishment to justify their abusive acts. Some perpetrators see it as a religious or academic duty to discipline children harshly. Women figure much more prominently as perpetrators of torture than in other forms of physical abuse. ... "Kurn Hattin was Hell on Earth and impossible to escape"