Garland is out of the country again, back in Costa Rica.
CONTENT WARNING - abuse, trauma, manipulation
new content -
www.lettertocolingarland.org/?fbclid=IwAR2bucKTqmhyMhzcH3GFXbJIlF_HKNGdMhzB_zVdjH2ZNsjIDwAuzKhqIv4
Most Recent Co-Leader Comes Forward
Posted Dec. 5, 2018
My name is Sabrina. I am Colin Garland’s most recent co-leader, and I am a survivor of his abuse.
I grew up dreaming about Africa, and I shared that dream with anyone who would listen. I wanted to see wildlife in the wildest places. I started saving money to go when I was twelve years old, and by the time Raven Adventures fell into my lap, I had already been twice before. I was born in love with it.
I was handed a pamphlet for a trip to South Africa that, later on, neither Colin or his then co-leader claimed to remember sending out. I put down my deposit that same day. When weather delayed my flight to New York, I nearly missed my connection to South Africa, driving from Michigan to JFK to make it. I embraced the feeling that I was supposed to be on that trip for a reason.
It was the summer of 2014. Colin was 53. I was 20. I was stunned by the beauty of South Africa, and Colin struck me as an amazing leader who was living the life of my dreams. From the first day, I was sold on Raven Adventures.
Colin told us stories about working hard to achieve his goals, describing himself as underestimated and all the more motivated for it. He had walked with cheetahs and been chased by rhinos. He was incredibly knowledgeable. That Colin didn’t have an advanced degree encouraged me; I felt bored and trapped at school, and textbooks were not where I wanted to explore my passion for wildlife. I didn’t feel that anyone at home truly understood why Africa was so important to me, and right away I felt that I could relate to Colin.
Some of Colin’s stories were about his magical experiences in Australia, and his co-leader at the time said that our group was special to hear them. She said that he did not share those stories with just anyone.
At the end of the trip I told Colin and his co-leader that we would be traveling together again in the future, but I didn’t feel that I had made a unique impression on Colin. I was captivated by his stories, but I had no reason to think that he had noticed.
When Colin was interested in keeping in touch after the trip, I was surprised and happy to. A few months later he offered me a volunteer internship that would begin the summer of 2015, and I became even more convinced that the original trip had been serendipitous. Colin agreed that it was. He told me that depending on my performance, I might become a co-leader.
I felt like I had hit the jackpot. My peers were beginning the arduous search for entry-level positions in competitive STEM fields, and this experienced professional had picked me out as someone who could do as good of a job as he could.
Between being offered the internship in October 2014, and attending the internship in August 2015, Colin’s description of what it would consist of evolved. Raven Adventures would be my first "job" out of college, and I had a limited professional frame of reference and did not recognize this as suspicious. I viewed Colin as a credible professional. I knew that fieldwork could be unpredictable and wanted to show that I could be flexible.
Colin told me, among other things, that he had a long-term wild dog project established and that I would be collaring elephants by bush plane. I later learned that by this point, Colin had already been expelled from the wild dog project and the wildlife center where it was based. We never once, throughout the approximately two-month internship, encountered anyone conducting elephant research.
Colin began to introduce the concept of "coming into your power" and using your energy to serve the world at large and accomplish your own goals. I was encouraged to agree to participate, but it sounded abstract, and I had no clue what that meant. When I asked, Colin sidestepped the question. He offered colorful but uninformative statements about energy and the power of women.
This is where the abuse began.
Many abusive relationships start out like a dream come true, as mine did. I’ve since learned that a uniquely intense and idyllic beginning is an integral part of the cycle of abuse. Colin remembered details that I felt were unlikely for a man to notice about me. If I mentioned in passing that I wanted something, weeks later he might surprise me with it as a gift. He remembered even fleeting insecurities that I might mention and asked careful questions to understand them. My words felt like they carried a weight and importance that I had never imagined they would to him.
Colin’s victims, and any young women who meet him in the future, should be aware of red flags that are indicative of the start of the cycle of abuse. I’ve outlined a few that I experienced with Colin here.
Claiming that the target is special and unique and the relationship moving quickly. This is an integral part of grooming, when an abuser prepares his victim to comply with future abuse by treating them with grandiose attention and affection. Colin showed an intense amount of interest in me that developed over an extremely short period of time – within weeks of getting to know me he was making declarations that he had "never met anyone like me" and that we had "already met in a past life". Colin introduced me to a friend of his who agreed that our relationship had spanned many lifetimes and encouraged me to see sexual healing as a widespread, legitimate practice.
Indicating that he would do anything for the target. This reinforces grooming and is meant to convey to the target that they are so special that their abuser will go to any lengths for them – even if they never follow through. Colin made outlandish claims which he could not support with any clear plan, such as that he intended to pay my student loans in full. This was despite my insistence that my loans were not his responsibility, and also despite his claims that he generates no excess income from his trips. When asked, he was unable to explain how this would actually be possible.
Developing trust while identifying vulnerability. Colin encourages his targets to disclose their vulnerabilities to him early on. In my case, this process began through the "sharing circles" that Colin facilitates on his trips. During my internship he showed particular interest in learning everything he could about me. Colin’s victims have noticed that he pays particular attention to insecurities, past trauma, long-term illnesses, and family issues, searching even if none are immediately apparent. Throughout the internship Colin encouraged me to disclose any past sexual trauma to him – even after I told him that I had none. Under the impression that Colin and I were genuinely connecting, I divulged stories that Colin later used to manipulate me. There are likely women still out there who, like I once did, feel bound to Colin by the intimate stories they shared with him.
Alienation and isolation. Colin invited me to move into his home and volunteer full-time with his companies. He is very good at framing this as a generous offer, and for a long time, that was how I saw it. Ultimately, Colin creates financial dependency and isolates the victim from their support networks. By the time I was having doubts about Colin, had quit volunteering for his companies and was refusing to run new trips, I still felt so isolated in my experience that I did not leave. I felt that no one could understand me like Colin did and that I could never make enough sense of my situation to explain it. Colin insisted that he never meant for me to feel this way, yet he suggested that my friends were unlikely to relate to me anymore and was unhappy when I visited home. As part of a larger pattern, these behaviors are alarming.
Throughout my internship, Colin coerced me into sexual "ceremonies" that were designed to wear away and violate my boundaries. Colin assessed my resistance to his behavior as "very unusual" and claimed this indicated a larger, hidden problem within me that had nothing to do with him. He claimed that many people facilitated sexual healing privately, in workshops, at healing centers, and cited online sources, media, and people within his own circle to reassure me that he had not made up the concept himself. He assured me that our relationship, mainly his involving a former student in his sexual ceremonies, was not typical for him.
Colin contrasted his sexual pressure with shows of generosity, treating me to fancy hotels and weeks in expensive national parks. I oscillated between feeling intensely grateful and intensely uncomfortable, even afraid. I had never experienced anything like my trip with Colin and rapidly felt close to him.
I shared the emotional details of my life with Colin, including managing a chronic illness that deeply affected my quality of life. I had seen dozens of doctors, all of whom had sent me away without answers. Colin claimed that he understood me, sharing with me his struggle against cancer. He told me that my cooperation in his ceremonies could alleviate my suffering, and that ceremony had cured his cancer. Colin rewarded me with infatuation when I was cooperative and was cold and unresponsive when I resisted him sexually or was not enthusiastic enough.
Colin theorized that my illness was psychosomatic and claimed that the fastest way to heal would be by "pushing my edge", which he explained as exposing myself to situations I did not want to be in and things I did not want to do. In the instances when I confronted him about ignoring my boundaries or pressuring me, he insisted that I was "sabotaging" my own healing. He suggested that I was throwing away an amazing opportunity, that he was just trying to help me, and I was pushing it away. My resistance, he said, demonstrated a psychological and spiritual shortcoming that would hold me back in life if I continued to refuse to address it.
Colin encouraged me to think of ceremony as something totally separate not just from the rest of our life, but even from the feelings that he claimed to be developing for me. Publicly he referred to me as his student. In private, he told me that he had come to see me differently.
Colin seemed amazed by me – except when I questioned his ceremonies. Dispersed within the abuse were emotional discussions about my potential in the world. I had never experienced anything like Colin’s totally unwavering belief in me. It felt so unconditional that I hardly noticed as Colin introduced conditions, one by one.
Yet I became frustrated that none of what Colin had suggested was possible through ceremony seemed to be happening. I grew increasingly skeptical. Colin called this proof of my "demons" and warned me that doubt could kill magic. Still, I didn’t seek any outside perspectives. I was embarrassed and thought no one would understand. I was also afraid of what their understanding might suggest.
I was told that I was the "most hateful person" who Colin had ever attempted to heal. He told me that he was here to help me process my experience, but only if I agreed to do it "productively" – naturally, he would be deciding what constituted a "productive" train of thought and what did not.
I made no connection between how Colin treated me and how he managed his trips. From my perspective, he appeared to be a genuine and competent leader. The sharing circles seemed to add legitimate meaning to his programs, rarely reaching the level of depth that had drawn me in as a student. I believed him when he said that his ceremonies were part of our personal life that in no way involved the trips.
Over time, the nature of Colin’s battle against cancer began to evolve. Initially, he had been unwavering in his claims that ceremony had cured his cancer. Now, he began to emphasize that healing was actually gradual. His miraculous recovery had taken years, apparently, before he had even noticed a change. He insisted that I should be patient.
Victims are often asked to explain why they stayed with their abuser and are usually unable to in a way that makes any rational sense. I couldn’t either. I believed that Colin was genuinely trying to help me, and that he had poured time, energy, and resources into me.
Despite telling me initially that I could "cut cords," i.e., end my ongoing sexual healing at any time, Colin was resistant to the idea in practice and unhappy when I decided that was what I wanted. I noticed a change in Colin’s behavior immediately afterward. He became aloof, as if he couldn’t remember who had invited me on his trips and wasn’t sure why I was still around. He seemed bored of me but denied it when I asked. I sensed that Colin no longer felt "connected" to me. I suspect that if nothing had changed, maybe I would have left then. But it was at that point that Colin finally offered for me to co-lead my first trip.
My struggles felt validated. I loved leading the trips. I felt that I was making a positive difference, and participants who followed up afterward told me that I was. From my perspective, Colin treated participants on the trips that I was co-leading appropriately and with respect. My relationship with participants ended once the trips were over, at most exchanging a few emails. Several got in touch with Colin for letters of recommendation, but he seemed to maintain a professional distance. I never knew him to keep in touch with the participants of my trips, and he never seemed excessively interested in any of them.
The trips were the part of my life that made absolute, unshakable sense, even when – especially when – I could not make sense of Colin.
I began cultivating a "normal" relationship with Colin, one that didn’t involve his ceremonies. He stopped calling me his student. Colin told me that he could not imagine having a relationship like we had with anyone else my age – I was especially mature, he said. I viewed the way Colin had followed up with me and pursued me on my internship as unique, something that neither of us had been expecting.
It was only a few short months after "cutting cords" that Laura Quinn published her original open letter, and Colin immediately began to minimize the importance of what he had previously claimed were life-changing ceremonies. He insisted now that what he had always wanted was a strictly normal, romantic relationship with me. I panicked at Laura’s letter and what it meant for my experience with ceremony.
The Exposing Colin Garland Facebook page was published, and in private, Colin countered their claims that his ceremonies were fake. He began to stress the high regard in which he claimed to hold my thoughts, values and contributions. Colin told me that if I stayed, he would do everything possible to "protect" me from the humiliation that would follow a group of strangers exposing my involvement in his ceremonies. He encouraged my fear that Laura Quinn and her supporters would not respect my story or my privacy, and that I should not risk any communication with them.
I couldn’t read Laura’s letter without shaking, but my distress was punctured with the relief that Colin seemed to be back to his "old" self – he was attentive and charismatic again, the same man who had promised me a dazzling internship in Africa and had been so deeply interested in me. Colin said that he was concerned for my mental health regarding Laura’s letter, and wanted to help me process my experiences with him safely. Laura Quinn was confused, he said, but he knew that I was tough and open-minded.
On some level, I felt that Colin was finally realizing my worth. But I didn’t think of it in those terms back then. All that I was completely sure of was that Colin and I were connecting again.
Colin showered me with affection. He shared with me stories of how misunderstood he had been in the past. He emphasized what a good fit we were for each other. I was no longer the most hateful person he had ever attempted to heal, but a valued equal, a critical thinker, a scientist with a rich career ahead of her. Colin seemed to regret the sexual pressure that he had subjected me to. In writing, he named specific incidents and spoke as if they had been innocent mistakes that he felt "horrible" about now. I assumed they were out of character for Colin and looked past them.
Inevitably, I began to get uncomfortable with the idea that I had somehow proved myself. I noticed that Colin’s actions even months before totally contradicted what he was telling me now. His previous claims that he and I had a greater purpose, that we were creating some kind of magic, seemed to have died out. I was still totally desensitized to what had happened but for bouts of panic, where I would demand explanations from Colin. But ceremonies were now "small beans" and Colin told me that I needed to move on.
I wanted to believe him. Yet I recognized Laura’s feelings as outlined in her letter not only as valid, but in some ways similar to how I remembered feeling not all that long ago. These now unimportant ceremonies had supposedly been deeply meaningful to Colin – conveniently, only when he was coercing me into participating.
I led several more trips and saw no reflection of our personal conflicts in how he led them. I still trusted him and never doubted that his programs were safe. I believed that any harm he had done to me had not been intentional, and though I was not convinced anymore that Colin’s ceremonies actually worked, I was wholeheartedly convinced that he believed they did.
Though some members of the community seemed outraged online, this was not reflected in the way I saw Colin received in person. Most people, he told me, clearly knew the allegations against him were bogus. He told me about how much he had tried to help Laura Quinn and how he had cared about her. He said that he regretted how Laura felt, but that she should leave his businesses out of it.
I heard nothing more about Laura Quinn or the accusations for months. In the meantime, Colin had made me an offer to sit on his Board of Directors for his nonprofit, The Global Classroom, in an interim position while he searched for someone permanent. He needed someone, he said, who he knew he could trust with the care of the property in Costa Rica, Aula Global Biological Reserve. I was someone he knew would do the right thing, he said, and act in the best interest of the rainforest no matter what, and I agreed to take the position.
I wondered if more would come from Laura Quinn, but nothing did until November 2017, when the Facebook page updated with the accounts of fourteen anonymous women.
Our relationship quickly began to unravel. I found the update disturbing and alarming, and Colin turned to devaluing traits that he had once praised in me. He spun blatant lies about his past victims to discredit them to me. He said that these women were angry about other things and they were trying to make his ceremonies look bad on purpose. He was misunderstood, and now, he said, I was starting to misunderstand him too.
We became unable to discuss our own history. Colin often insisted that I was misrepresenting his ideas, even if I repeated them back verbatim, and suggested that I had "manifested" Laura Quinn’s change of heart by being so difficult throughout his ceremonies. I tried to approach the situation logically, but Colin rarely offered a straight answer to any question. I did not recognize this as intentional deflection.
The Facebook page was claiming that Colin’s co-leaders were brainwashed, and reading this, I believed that the page had already discredited me. Colin discouraged me from reaching out and I believed that anything I said would be disregarded by the community. Though Colin and his victims were diametrically opposed, I felt that they both agreed that I couldn’t understand my own experience. From both Colin and his accusers, I heard the same message: You are crazy, you do not remember what happened to you, and we do not believe you. I felt like the only person on the planet who knew that I was sane.
Colin insisted that by holding him accountable for his behavior towards me, I was making him feel just as bad as he had made me feel and was therefore just as guilty as he was. Colin seemed to think that describing ceremony as abusive was an overreaction, and I finally sought an outside perspective through an abuse hotline chat. I was told that my situation did not constitute an emergency and took this to mean that Colin was right – without having been threatened with physical violence, our relationship did not count as abusive. I was overreacting.
Though in my experience co-leading with Colin he had appeared to treat participants respectfully, with the update I no longer felt that I could guarantee that this had always been the case or always would be. Fifteen days after the updated allegations were published, I quit volunteering for Raven Adventures and refused to co-lead any further trips. Colin refused to run them without my cooperation, and so they simply stopped.
Colin berated me throughout my time on his Board, but I made excuses for him, telling myself that he didn’t realize how he was treating me. Eventually I realized that Colin had chosen me for the position not for my potential, but because he had wanted to maintain control without being listed as a member.
I resigned from The Global Classroom’s Board after just over four months but had already been issued a legally binding permit that required me to be present on Colin’s property in Costa Rica from March until May. I knew that our relationship was fast falling apart but was still certain that it had been meaningful to him. I was embarrassed at how bad things had gotten and obsessed over coming across as though nothing was wrong.
Throughout the season, Colin’s emotional abuse worsened. He told me that if I broke up with him he would abandon the project we were in the midst of entirely, throwing away the work myself and other volunteers had put into it over the course of several years. Colin threatened to professionally slander me if I did not conduct our research using methods he preferred, telling me that only he was invested enough to deserve an opinion.
He began to change the content of stories he had already told. Previously Colin had bragged about my memory, which he had claimed to be impressed by. Now that I was keeping track of his evolving stories, he called my memory into question.
This is known as gaslighting – which is the act of using lies, denial, and contradictions to disorient the victim and create an environment where victim doubts their own perceptions and memories. I began journaling to keep track of Colin’s claims and our arguments. Colin belittled my journaling, telling me that any therapist would think it was "so sad" that I had used my time this way. He told me that I was not as "innocent" as I "pretended" to be and that he knew that I "had a past" but refused to elaborate on these claims when asked what he meant.
With his permission, I even recorded several of our arguments on my phone, thinking that this would help us communicate more clearly. He went on to deny what was said on one such recording literally while it was being played back to him.
With hours to myself in the rainforest, I asked what Colin was bringing to my life. I couldn’t think of a single good thing except "love", which I could no longer actually define. I recognized that I still felt bound to Colin but had no respect for his behavior and was no longer impressed by him. Other people seemed to be engaged in healthy, supportive relationships and I couldn’t come up with any reasons why that wasn’t possible for me, too. I had to ask myself what I honestly deserved. The answer was definitely better than this.
At the end of the season, I told Colin that I would be flying home to Michigan. He told me that he did not know why I thought that I needed to go home and that I actually would not be leaving the country at all. Instead, he would be taking me on a vacation. I told him that I would not be going. He said that I was "ruining" things and offered to drive me into town, only if I would promise that I would not use the internet to communicate with anyone while we were there. I refused, so he refused to take me into town. The argument came to a head when Colin told me that even if he did choose to drive me, I still had no money, and couldn’t afford a ticket without his credit card anyway.
Colin left on a hike. I walked an hour and a half before being picked up by the reserve caretaker and driven the rest of the way to town, where I bought my ticket.
I went home to Michigan. I drove back to Massachusetts to collect my things and move out. Colin and I broke up. I left, rationalized my time with Colin as purely emotionally abusive, and largely ignored any memories of ceremony. I rejected the idea, though their stories echoed mine, that I could be anything like Laura Quinn or the anonymous women who supported her. I bought a journal and wrote quotes about forgiveness in it. I saw a therapist and left out all the important things (P.S. – this is not how effective therapy works).
I told myself that Colin had really loved me and that we had both tried our best. I felt that I had no claim to the word "survivor" without bruises, and admitting to being a victim would mean accepting that after years of hard work and emotional investment, Colin had accrued zero respect for me as a worker or a person. I convinced myself not only that I was healing, but simultaneously that I really had nothing to heal from. I hadn’t yet learned that denial sometimes pretends to be strength.
Everyone felt like a threat to me. I didn’t want to meet new people, but I didn’t want to be alone. I needed to be with my people, make them laugh, annoy them, watch bad TV, offer stupid one-liners, and tell the same tired stories and laugh like we’d never heard that one before. I needed everyone to treat me exactly how they always had. If that changed, what would be left? Where would I pretend to still be me? What would happen if I realized that I was just pretending?
I saw strangers with their friends or their partners. They all seemed so connected, and I knew I would never be like them again. I had fleeting thoughts of going back to Massachusetts, just so I could feel known by someone. I lived with the fear that Colin was right – that no one would ever understand me like he did. I feared that people would truly see me just as much as I feared never being truly seen again.
Meanwhile, Colin and I stayed in touch. As the summer wore on, our emails became less frequent. At first Colin seemed committed to winning me back. But so much had transpired that it was nearly impossible for us to have a lighthearted conversation for long. In writing, we argued about ceremony.
When the HuffPost article was published, I felt both validated and beyond devastated. The article included women that I had asked about directly, who Colin had outright claimed he had never spoken to outside of the context of a trip. For me, the article was pivotal not because it was proof that Colin’s ceremonies, companies, and stories were bogus – but because it was proof that he had always known they were. All the time I had spent "fixing" things he had spent breaking them on purpose.
I wrote to Colin last on September 24th, 2018, in regard to the publication of the HuffPost article. I have not heard from him since.
Until that point, I had never understood how anyone could fear Colin. But I learned. For me it wasn’t a physical fear. It was visceral. It was almost like a fear of the unknown, except worse, because everything had already happened, and I still didn’t know what any of it was. It was the memory of Colin and I pigging out on junk food, watching some police drama on TV. The criminal in question was a man who had been happily married for years, with two kids who he treated well. The twist was that he had a secret apartment where he had been holding women hostage. I looked at Colin in awe and said: "How can you live with someone for years and not even know them?"
It was less a fear of Colin and more like one of all the cruel possibilities in the world that I had never even suspected. Anyone, I thought, could be capable of anything, no matter who you thought they were. It was the deepest, darkest sense of betrayal.
I now believe that Colin’s transformation after Laura’s letter had nothing to do with me. I believe that Colin chose to break his pattern of pursuing female students intentionally to keep me in the dark, convince me that I was special, and provide me with "proof" that Laura Quinn was making unfounded assumptions about his intentions. Colin’s pattern depends on his victims never learning any more than he intends for them to learn, and – if they do – that they feel so embarrassed they don’t dare admit it. Maybe not even to themselves.
I didn’t leave Colin until June of 2018. He won’t read my letter, but this letter is not for him. It’s for you. It’s for survivors of Colin’s abuse, potential future victims, and for any women who have gone through similar experiences. Maybe you’re reading it now the same way I once read other women’s stories, trying to put together a puzzle I didn't know I was in.
