This is a gripping four-part series with three videos, three sets of photos, a timeline and a diagram that detail the story of the New Bethany Home for Girls in Arcadia, Louisiana, a private Christian boarding school, and the girls who were imprisoned and sexually abused there. The story focuses on one woman, Jennifer Halter. Here's a part of the story:
Each woman seated in Room 723 had a story she had tried to forget in the blur of adulthood and marriage and childbirth and divorce. Each had sought in her own way to shove the remembrances of New Bethany into corners of life where they wouldn't require tending. Some of them had battled drug or alcohol dependence. Two attempted suicide. One terminated a pregnancy, convinced she was incapable of mothering without repeating the abuse she had endured. Several found themselves involved in more abusive relationships. Most struggled with intimacy.
Halter's life was no exception. She married soon after leaving New Bethany, but says it was a volatile relationship that ended after 17 years. She maintains regular communication with only one of her five children, her 19-year-old daughter, the one she calls "my strength." Her twin boys, age 14, are in the care of a relative in Louisiana. She has seen them once in seven years and says she misses them daily. Her oldest son, 17, is estranged. She worries about him, but doesn't know where he is. Her youngest, a baby named Veagas, was born premature and lived less than two hours outside her body before he died.
She still struggles to forgive her mother for delivering her to New Bethany.
http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2014/04/to_new_bethany_and_back_one_wo.html
And here's a behind-the-scenes look at the story: How two Times-Picayune journalists reported 'The Long Road' series on sex abuse
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