"Gage girls" recall atmosphere of fear

Last updated 6/13/2000 at Noon

Rachel Zimmerman remembers Royal Haven Equestrian Center for Girls as a virtual prison, run on fear.

Royal Haven operators Steven Gage and Karen Lee were arrested on June 2 after a months-long investigation by Oregon State Police. Gage faces 45 charges of rape and sexual abuse and Lee faces seven charges of criminal mistreatment.

Zimmerman, now 20, lived under the care of Gage and Lee for about nine months in 1997 before running away during a visit with her family in Chicago, Illinois.

The girl was a self-described high-risk runaway, fleeing from what she describes as a "very abusive" alcoholic mother in the spring of 1997. Zimmerman said she was on the road in Wyoming when she was picked up by police. Her mother bought her a plane ticket to Portland, with the understanding that Rachel would meet a friend there.

But when the girl got to the airport in Portland, she was accosted by "two huge guys," she said, and was handcuffed and brought to Central Oregon to the Gage home.

"I knew what was going on the minute I got there," Zimmerman told The Nugget.

The credo seemed to be, Zimmerman said: "Be afraid of everyone. No one is your friend. You're nothing. You don't even have a reason to exist. And we're going to make you a better person.

"If none of the girls are friends or trust each other, then Karen and Steve have all the control," she said.

Detective Tom Kipp of the Oregon State Police said that other girls have described that kind of atmosphere.

"Some of the reports are that it was almost a kind of cutthroat mentality," Kipp said. "It was suggested that they watch each other and that they tell on each other."

Privileges -- choice of food, better living quarters, supervisory roles -- were rationed out to girls who toed the line. Punishments were meted out for any infraction.

Girls tried hard to avoid displeasing Gage and Lee.

"They had this hold on you," said former Gage girl Peggy Sowell. "I was afraid of them, but I wanted to please them, too."

Sowell lived at Royal Haven for two years and had a child while there. She said Gage and Lee pressured her to give the child up to them for adoption.

Sowell recalled being yelled at and humiliated by Gage and Lee if she did anything wrong.

"They'd ridicule me for my faults in front of the whole house," she said. "They didn't nurture me at all; they didn't make me feel better about myself or anything in my past."

Zimmerman said the girls truly feared that Gage and Lee controlled their future and that they could be shipped off to another home in a foreign country where they had no rights or sent to a grueling wilderness program.

Kipp confirmed that the girls "believed that Steve (Gage) and Karen Lee had legal authority over them... They took the threat of being sent to a wilderness program -- and Steve Gage and Karen Lee's ability to do that -- very seriously."

"Even when I was pregnant, they threatened me with wilderness," Sowell said.

That specter was frightening to the Gage girls, according to Sowell, because some girls had been through such programs and described them as harrowing.

The girls were expected to work hard, buck hay, train and clean up after horses, build fence and pull weeds.

According to Zimmerman, working conditions were not safe and injuries went unreported.

"Most girls didn't mention if they had gotten hurt," she said. "You were more likely to get into trouble. I remember getting yelled at for being bitten on the shoulder by a stallion. The horse had grabbed me and picked me up off the ground then threw me down.

"I had also gotten a rusty nail in a fence pole dug into my shoulder," she recalled. "I have a half-inch scar on my shoulder now from that."

The girls' living quarters may not have been safe either.

"There was no fire escape plan," Zimmerman said. "Girls living in the basement of the house (four) had only one escape out of there as the side door was padlocked. There was a front door and a side door to the house. The trailers had two doors, one in the front and one in the back."

Life could be unpleasant for girls who were put on punishment detail.

"There was like an acre of horse manure," Zimmerman recalled. "You got a little bucket and a shovel and you filled it up and walked across that whole acre and dumped it. That was one of the punishments."

Zimmerman admits that she worked the system.

"After 2-1/2 to 3 months, I was one of the top girls," she said.

Being a "top girl" entailed an assignment to "break" a rebellious girl, Zimmerman said.

In the late fall of 1997, a girl refused to shovel any more manure. Zimmerman picked her up and carried her across the pasture and forced her to tell Karen Lee that she wasn't going to do the work. Then, Zimmerman said, she and Gage picked the girl up and threw her in a pond.

Zimmerman said she did a lot of things to other girls that she regrets, "things I can't believe I would do to somebody else just to not get punished."

The charges against Gage center around alleged sexual activity with some of the girls. Zimmerman reported only one incident where Gage made sexual advances toward her.

As a "top girl" Zimmerman sometimes was assigned to "stay up late and watch the new girls. He (Gage) would sleep on the couch," she said.

Gage would sometimes ask for or offer back rubs to the girls who were staying up as monitors, Zimmerman said.

"He always wanted to talk about my sexual activity," Zimmerman said.

One night, she said, he gave her a back rub and touched her inappropriately.

"It only happened once and after that I stopped just talking to him," she said.

Zimmerman had no knowledge of the incidents that led to two rape charges against Gage and other charges of unlawful sexual penetration and first degree sexual abuse. She said none of the girls ever told her about any sexual activity with Gage.

"We were just so scared to tell each other about anything," she said.

Zimmerman attended Sisters High School, which she described as "probably one of the worst experiences of my life."

"Gage girls" were known throughout the student population for not being allowed to interact with or even talk to other students. Zimmerman felt discriminated against.

"People didn't like you just because you were a Gage girl," she said. "Some people would talk to you just to get you in trouble."

School officials have reported that the Gage girls did well in school, got good grades and did not create discipline problems.

She noted that she and others could not participate on the school's basketball team because Gage and Lee didn't want them talking to other girls and they would not allow the girls to take a physical.

In fact, Zimmerman said, Gage and Lee took one girl off thyroid medication and denied medication to at least one other girl.

According to an Oregon State Police statement, criminal mistreatment charges against Gage and Lee stemmed from failure "to allow access to medical assistance for some of the girls when treatment was necessary."

Zimmerman fell from grace as a "top girl" -- though she said she never rebelled or acted out.

"They took all my privileges away," she said, and she spent a lot of time on manure detail.

However, at Christmas time, she was allowed to leave Royal Haven to return to Chicago to visit her mother.

"I played it like I didn't want to go home," she said.

Zimmerman says she told Gage she wanted to stay at Royal Haven even after she graduated.

But when she got to Chicago, she ran away from her mother's home and stayed with a friend who was attending college, never leaving the apartment for three months.

Zimmerman said it took awhile to learn that she could function without being constantly told what to do.

The 20-year-old is doing well now, living in New Orleans with a good job with a telecommunications company.

She has largely put her experience at Royal Haven behind her, but she said she is dedicated to getting such homes shut down or regulated by government authorities.

"I'm so lucky," she said. "I didn't just get screwed into being totally brainwashed and ruining the rest of my life."

Sowell is living in Texas with her son Michael, who turns two next month. She said she deals with her experience at Royal Haven every day. She believes that the experience made her stronger, in a kind of negative reinforcement.

"I couldn't just sit in the corner and cry," she said. "If I did that, I'd get in trouble, too. I just put on a smiley face and knew I was going to get home some day.

"That made me tougher."

Author Bio

Jim Cornelius, Editor in Chief

Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.