Who is Annabella Rockwell? Pharma heiress says mom hired deprogrammer to help her unlearn woke ideologies
MANHATTAN, NEW YORK: An heiress to a Manhattan pharmaceutical company said that her mother Melinda had to pay $300 per day for a deprogrammer to help her unlearn the woke ideologies that she had been "brainwashed" with at a Massachusetts college for women. Annabella Rockwell, 29, a 2015 graduate of Mount Holyoke in Western Massachusetts, claimed that this was the cause of her drinking and brief estrangement from her mother, who once hurled a vase at her. Rockwell claimed she was raised in a "traditional" home and had thought of herself as open-minded until enrolling in the exclusive school that charges $60,000 a year for history studies.
The politics student, however, claimed that the all-women's school had "totally indoctrinated" her into believing she was a victim of patriarchal oppression. She told New York Post, "This professor tells me about the patriarchy. I barely knew what the word meant. I didn’t know what she was talking about. I wasn’t someone that into feminism. I just knew that I felt I had always been free to do what I wanted. I never experienced sexism." She added, "But I was told there’s the patriarchy and you don’t even understand it’s been working against you your whole life. You’ve been oppressed and you didn’t even know it. Now you have to fight it. And I just went down this deep rabbit hole."
READ MORE
Rockwell eventually assumed that all white men were sexist. She said, "I saw everything through the lens of oppression and bias and victimhood. I came to the school as someone who saw everyone equally. I left looking for injustice wherever I could and automatically assuming that all white men were sexist." A significant rift between her and her mother resulted from that rabbit hole, which she fell into after enrolling in a Gender Studies class in her junior year.
Her "manifesto," in which she claimed her mother treated her like a "wind-up toy," was one of the many things she felt compelled to teach her about the reality of the world, as reported by Daily Mail. She also claimed in her post-graduation manifesto that her mother Melina, whom she had once regarded as her best friend, had never loved her. "My thoughts were no longer my own," she said to the Post. "I left school very anxious, very nervous, very depressed and sad." Her teachers, according to her, "encouraged alienation" from parents and "even offered their homes to stay in." The ex-professional figure skater told the publication, "They’d say, like, don’t go see them, come stay with us for the holiday. Most of my classmates believed all this stuff, too. If you didn’t you were ostracized."
Along with the alleged indoctrination, Rockwell claimed that the freshman ceremonies were harsh and that there was a significant drinking culture on campus. According to the student newspaper Mount Holyoke News, some freshmen even got the MoHo Chop, which for some is just an initiation process and for others is a "radical assertion of their LGBT identities." She informed the Post that Rockwell, who was raised on the Upper East Side, did not take part in this rite. It was "the entire culture there revolved around hating men and being a lesbian," according to conservative commentator Laura Loomer, also 29.
In 2011, Loomer spent one semester there before quitting due to claimed bullying. Another student who chose to remain anonymous posted on Holyoke Confessional during her brief time at the school that "I Hate Laura Loomer." The "sister schools," which include Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Smith, Radcliffe, Vassar, and Wellesley, are also "designed to be these elite institutions for women at a time when places like Harvard just took men. But they’re no longer places for ideas and debate and a well-rounded education," as cited by Daily Mail.
Speaking to New York Post Loomer said, "They’re centers for indoctrination. If you send your kid there you’re signing them up to hate the patriarchy and white people and the founding stock of our country. It’s a bastardization of higher education for the sake of weaponizing naïve young women for the sake of advancing a toxic agenda."
Melinda hired a $ 300-a-day deprogrammer and Scott Williams, Rockwell's former tennis coach, to help her go against the indoctrination that, in her words, took the sparkle out of her "bubbly breath of fresh air" daughter. Rockwell's stay at the school, according to her, was "no different than if she'd been taken away by the Moonies or the Children of God."
Melinda told the Post that her daughter was "no longer the Annabella I'd known all her life." The older Rockwell understood it would be difficult to un-brainwash the young grad and that it would take up to seven years. Melinda told Post, "'It was like walking a tightrope,' Melina told the Post. 'I couldn’t push too hard or I’d lose her, but if I let go I felt I might not see her again. It was as bad as trying to get a child off the streets who’s on heroin. [Professors and older students] tell the students they are special — it’s like they are anointed — then they tell them how oppressed they are and what victims they are and how they have to go out in the world and be activists to stop the oppression."
The former student, who now works as a fundraiser for PragerU, a conservative video organization that champions conservative ideas, thanks her mother for being patient. "If my mom had not kept harping at me and not given up I know where I would be right now," she said to the Post. She added, "Mount Holyoke met its match in my mother. If it wasn’t for her, I’d probably be living in Massachusetts, working for some super-progressive politician, hanging out with people I had nothing in common with except ideology and drinking all the time. And I’d be miserable."