Laine was born in Birmingham Alabama in 1981, and grew up in the Pacific Northwest, spending summers in the South making things with her grandmother - a quilter, dollmaker, and ceramicist. At 11 she began life study at the Portland Art Museum, then self study through a treasured, inherited Art Instruction School mail correspondence degree program. Both practices were cut short in her early teens.
At 14, Laine was taken in the middle of the night by strangers to North Idaho, where she spent her formative years in CEDU’s system of group homes and wilderness programs. CEDU, originating from the cult Synanon, practiced pseudopsychology, around-the-clock thought reform and behavior modification on children. Restricting access to the world, education, and bodily autonomy, this inhumane environment reframed life into black & white morality using ritualistic behaviors in an isolated place. Laine’s identity went through a complete erasure, and reformation, during this time. Exploring this sense of one’s shifting self within a moving world and the secret worlds we create to survive in the world outside ourselves, continues to thread through all of her pieces. Despite harsh conditions inherent to the program and the Idaho wilderness, time in the natural world provided her with an immediate respite and sense of wonder. Wild open spaces, how we feel in them, and our connection to the creatures that move through them, remains a lasting influence on her work.
Laine returned to Portland, Oregon at the age of 18 to study life drawing at Pacific Northwest College of Art, before moving to NY to attend Pratt Institute. Laine earned her BFA in painting from Pratt Institute in 2003, after spending 2 years studying sculpture and one semester in Lucca, Italy, on a Gilman travel and study grant learning about pigments and the sculptural qualities of paint.
Laine is a SF Bay Area Artadia Award Finalist, Community Foundation Sonoma Awardee, and a recipient of a Chalk Hill Residency Fellowship. Her work has been exhibited widely in solo and group exhibitions, including at the Sonoma Valley Museum and more recently, at the Di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art. Her work is included in the permanent collections of The Oliver Ranch and the Denver Health Medical Center, and has appeared in Luxe Magazine, House Beautiful, Sonoma Magazine, and San Francisco Magazine.
Working within disability shapes Laine’s studio practice. Living with Lupus, ME/CFS, POTS, and CPTSD means that there is a delicate balance between rest and activity. Laine focuses on a limited series of oils and commissions every 1-2 years, alongside the creation of scrolls, books, textiles and paintings on paper.
Laine lives and works in Northern California with her husband, son, and their pug, Bernie.
What is the TTI, The SICAA ACT & #ISeeYouSurvivor movement?
I am a survivor of the “Troubled” Teen -or- Teen Treatment Industry (TTI).
This means I am also a survivor of ritual, institutional, physical, and sexual child abuse, kidnapping, benefits and labor trafficking, involuntary incarceration, medical neglect, and thought reform/brainwashing.
My advocacy work focuses on telling my story, raising awareness about institutional child abuse within congregate care, promoting community based care, and aiding in the passage of legislation that protects youth.
It doesn’t matter that the program that held me is closed due to lawsuits for RICO, neglect, abuse, and fraud - because hundreds more have popped up in its place. Many employ the same people who abused me. These people continue to walk free without any restrictions on their ability to work with children.
There are currently no regulations that prevent someone who was fired, accused, issued a citation, or investigated for abusing a child at a private facility, from being employed in the same role, in a different facility or state.
States fail to enforce their own laws. It’s common for social services or child welfare to issue serious citations, and for that state’s legal apparatus not to enforce the law, investigate, or close the program down. TTI facilities are extremely profitable, often supporting an entire towns economy, particularly in Utah, Montana, and N. Idaho.
Once in this system not only do kids find nothing but abuse, but they become victims of benefit and labor trafficking. Designed to hold children as long as possible for profit, this can and often does include extended custody past the age of 18. Children become inventory items tied to state IDEA dollars, foster dollars, and health insurance benefit dollars, even though they receive little to no legitimate medical care or specialized education based on their disability.
These children are also relied upon to provide the necessary labor to operate their own incarceration, which can include building their own housing in unsafe environments, being put to work on a working ranch with out pay, sent out to solicit for donations, or being put in a ‘junior staff’ role where they are responsible for other children.
There are currently hundreds of thousands of children institutionalized in the TTI. Most people are not aware that children in congregate care systems, have less rights than an adult convicted of a heinous crime like child abuse. The rights we assume we have, wether it be the right to a phone call, access to law enforcement or legal help, medical care, or even the ability to talk, sing, smile, or be touched are all things that these children are put in the impossible position of having to earn or never receive.
Some children never make it out. Daniel Yuen, Blake Pursley, and John Inman vanished from CEDU as children and remain missing.
Placed in the TTI as a ward of the state, Cornelius Fredericks was 16 when he threw a sandwhich in a cafeteria. For this age-appropriate behavior, he was tackled and restrained for 12 minutes, resulting in his death.
Of the children that are fortunate enough to make it out of this system, there is an epidemic of CPTSD, physical disability, and suicide.
It’s important to note that most youth sent into the TTI are far from troubled. These vulnerable children are sent away for a myriad of reasons. Disabled, neurodivergent, foster kids with no placement, depressed or having attempted suicide, kids with high achieving parents who are aren’t satisfied with their kids B+, children of blended families with a step parent who prefers no preexisting children, LGBTQIA+ children sent away for conversion, adoptees, the list goes on.
Those sent into the system are not the only victims. The TTI destroys families.
Parents are victimized, particularly when they turn to professional educational consultants, believing they are buying the best treatment available for their special needs child. Hard earned college funds that will never be replaced, get depleted to play for what the parent’s are told is a school, only to find out later that their child was abused and didn’t even get a high school education. Educational consultants receive kick backs for each child they refer, giving them a gross financial incentive to send children into the TTI.
Inspired by the courage of fellow survivors in the #ISeeYouSurvivor movements, I shared my testimonial with #IGotOut.org about my time at CEDU Rocky Mountain Academy, Ascent, and the process of being kidnapped by transport agents.
Despite how painful it is to recount what happened in these facilities, thousands of survivors have bravely come forward to share their experiences in support of the The Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act (SICAA), to support the bill, click on this link.
To read more testimonials, and to learn about the survivor led movement seeking the exposure of injustice and legislative reform, please visit Unsilenced.org.
HBO’s new series, Teen Torture Inc, is a great resource in terms of providing insight into the history of the Teen Treatment Industry.
#Unsilenced #ISeeYouSurvivor #UnitedWithOneVoice #KidsOverProfit #LetsTalkAboutIt #ThinkOfUs #IGotOut