Twenty-two years after her experience at the Victory Christian Academy in Ramona, Calif., Michele Ulriksen was compelled to write about her experience there.

At age 39, Ulriksen suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and still has nightmares about the place that she calls Victory.

Her memoir, "Reform at Victory," was written to inform the public about the dangers of unlicensed facilities, she said.

Michael Palmer and his wife, Patty, were banned from running any unlicensed facility in California in 1992 following an investigation into their Victory Christian Academy when officials determined the facility had health, fire and safety hazards.

Ulriksen spoke about her time at Victory in telephone and e-mail interviews with The Messenger.

Several of her allegations are backed up by California court documents.

Ulriksen was sent by her parents to Victory as a 16-year-old girl who was experimenting with alcohol and sneaking out of the house at night.

Her parents told her they were taking her to the San Diego Wild Animal Park. Instead, she said, she was taken to a remote facility with a 12-foot-high locked and electronically operated fence surrounding the grounds.

Girls at Victory were not allowed to speak or look at the other girls during their first month at the facility, except for a girl designated as her buddy, Ulriksen said.

Ulriksen, who spent a year at Victory, described this as part of the breaking down process.

"I felt like a freak, almost 17 and being led around a compound like a dog on a leash for a month," she said. "They take your voice away for a month. This is how they start to break you down."

Punishment usually came in the form of demerits, writing 1,000 or more lines at at time, or being locked in a small closet called the Get Right Room. Fitted with a deadbolt lock and a peephole, Ulriksen said the girls were locked up as long as one day to several weeks. While they were locked in the room, Ulriksen said they were forced to listen to religious tapes.

"I remember having nightmares while I was writing the book. I would have nightmares about the Get Right Room," she said. "I still get weird in small spaces ."

She said all mail and phone calls at Victory were censored. Calls home were forbidden during the first three months. Girls were not allowed to wear pants and couldn't listen to music or watch television. Girls were not allowed to see doctors or dentists, she said.

Meanwhile, Palmer's sermons, which were delivered several times a day, nearly always turned into criticisms of the girls, she said.

"Palmer called us whoremongers and we were told we would never make anything of ourselves," she said. "He told us our parents didn't love us."

Ulriksen's survival tool was to conform.

"If you conformed they would treat you OK. I knew that if I didn't get saved it would be hell for me," she said. "Then you get brainwashed into doing whatever they ask. There is no other choice."

Ulriksen said Palmer's version of Christianity is dangerous.

"Palmer failed to teach love, but instead focused on hell, fire, brimstone," she said. "It was a very poor representation of the true teachings of Jesus Christ. He damaged a lot of young women, and parents got duped too."

Perhaps the most traumatic experience for Ulriksen was trying to return to school following her stint at Victory.

"After I got out of Victory, I tried to enroll in my senior year of high school. My mother and I were told that the year I did at Victory did not count, my credits were deemed useless, and I was doing sixth- and seventh-grade work as a 17 year old at Victory. My parents were paying $400 a month for me to be verbally abused, fed powdered milk and grits, and to be taught a sixth-grade level education by people unqualified to teach anything."

After failing every placement test she took to finish high school, she eventually obtained her GED.

Now raising her own teenage daughter, Ulriksen said she is moving on with her life.

"I am in a good place right now," she said. "I realize that my parents loved me and they were only doing what they thought was best. I don't even blame Mike Palmer anymore. I feel sorry for him."

Contact Abigail McWilliam at (515) 573-2141 or amcwilliam@messengernews.net