Courtesy
Roseanne Barr‘s daughter Jenny Pentland is opening up for the first time about the five traumatic years she spent in and out of various facilities for troubled teens in the ’80s and ’90s.
“I was locked up,” Pentland says in the latest issue of PEOPLE. Between the ages of 13 and 18, she was sent to a series of reform schools, psychiatric institutions and a wilderness boot camp in response to “acting out” that she attributes in part to the pressures of her mother’s sudden Roseanne fame.
In her new memoir, This Will Be Funny Later which is out Jan. 18, Pentland, 45, details being placed by her mother and father, Bill Pentland, in various facilities upon the recommendation of education and behavioral experts.
“I was getting bad grades, and I was mouthy, cutting my arms and smoking cigarettes,” she says. “Just depressed.” (Her older sister Jessica had already been sent to a psychiatric hospital in Los Angeles after stealing Barr’s car for a joyride, according to Pentland.)
“I think there was a fear of us spiraling out of control,” Pentland says.
Courtesy
Want to get the biggest stories from PEOPLE every weekday? Subscribe to our new podcast, PEOPLE Every Day, to get the essential celebrity, entertainment and human interest news stories Monday through Friday.
Pentland, who struggled with PTSD years later, says she witnessed or experienced emotional or physical abuse at several of the places she was sent to (all now closed or under new ownership). But she says “the worst abuse I feel I suffered was having my free will removed — the lack of freedom.”
Now happily married to husband Jeff, and a mom to five sons, Eitan, 21, Cosmo, 16, Otis, 14, Buster, 12, and Ezra, 18 months, Pentland — who says she has a good relationship with both of her parents — is speaking out in the hopes of raising awareness about problematic programs geared to troubled teens.
“These places are still out there and I want it to stop,” she says. “I don’t think about what I’ve lost anymore. I think about what other people are losing right now or what they’re going to lose if it doesn’t change.”
For more on Pentland’s story, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE on newsstands Friday.
