User:Maryalicehickey/sandbox

Students escaping the premises of Mohawk Institute proved to be an issue, so the staff built a prison cell to hold students who tried to leave in the basement. It resembled a dark closet, and students were often left in there for days at a time. One former student, Lorna, who attended the Mohawk Institute from 1940 to 1945, recalled being given shock treatment for wetting the bed. "They used to bring in a battery—a motor of some sort or some kind of gadget, and he’d put the girl’s hand on it and it would jerk us and it would go all the way through us from end to end—it would travel. And we would do that about three times." Another former student, Dawn, recalls the sexual abuse that would occur in the boiler room in the basement. "You couldn’t hear their screams over the noise of the boiler."

Sally General, a former student who attending Mohawk Institute from ages four to thirteen, recalls having all of her hair cut off with all of the other students. They were branded "Mush Hole Baldies". Sally also remembers being locked in a dark room with her friend and being told by staff that "the rats were gonna get us". They would cry for hours not knowing why they were being punished. It wasn't until she learned English that she realized she was being punished for not knowing or speaking English. Sally was also the victim of sexual abuse. After one of the times she was assaulted, she began to bleed and went to the nurse. When she told the nurse what happened, the nurse gave her a beating, told her she was lying, and that she should never say anything like that again.

Male children at the Mohawk Institute were forced to get a circumcision and their tonsils removed.