Joe Loya

So anyway, I was not nice to him my senior year when I went back.

But he was humble.

He knew what he did.

He accepted.

And, you know, to be honest with you, for years and years, decades, he beat himself up for that stuff.

Yeah.

So first of all, one of the worst experiences of my life, but one of the most powerful observations as a human looking at human dynamics was that first night that I get to McLaren Hall.

And it's all the kids that have been brutalized.

I'm 16, so I'm sort of at the older age of the spectrum.

Now, it's McLaren Homes where you go.

When they take you from your parents initially, they put you in this big place.

You're taken out of the home, put in county care.

And it's just this big facility where you are while you're going to court.

You got to go to court to get taken from your parents officially and all that stuff.

And then they try to place you in foster homes.

But you have to stay somewhere until you're in a foster home.

And this is where they take you.

Like, first night, this is where you go, right?

It's been closed down now because a lot of abuse occurred there and all that stuff.

So it was terrible.