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Parents tell of horrors at youth
boot camps
October 11, 2007
Staff & wire reports
WASHINGTON - A Phoenix man and
other parents whose children died at boot camps for troubled youths
gave wrenching testimony before Congress on Wednesday, urging other
families to avoid enrolling teens in such programs until there is
more oversight of them.
Bob Bacon of Phoenix recounted how
his 16-year-old son, Aaron, died at a wilderness camp in Utah in the
1990s.
"We were conned by their (the
camp's) fraudulent claims and will go to our graves regretting our
gullibility," Bacon told members of a House committee. advertisement
The Government Accountability
Office, the investigative arm of Congress, also announced it has
identified thousands of allegations of abuse, some involving death,
at boot camps since the early 1990s. It cataloged 1,619 incidents of
abuse in 33 states in 2005.
"Buyer, beware," said Greg Kutz,
who led the GAO investigation. "You really don't know what you're
getting."
Kutz said the GAO closely examined
10 closed cases where juveniles died at residential treatment camps.
In half of those cases, the teens died of dehydration or heat
exhaustion. Other factors were untrained staff, inadequate food or
reckless operations, the GAO said.
Five of the 10 camps are still
operating, some in different locations or under new names.
"Ineffective program management
played a key role in most of these deaths," Kutz testified before
the House Education and Labor Committee.
Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., who
chairs the committee and requested the investigation, has sponsored
a bill designed to encourage states to enact regulations.
"This nightmare has remained an
open secret for years," Miller said in a statement. "Congress must
act, and it must act swiftly."
The death of Bacon's son was one of
the 10 cases studied by the GAO, but not the only one with an
Arizona connection. The sample cases did not include names, but some
were identifiable through news reports.
One was the death of Anthony
Haynes, 14, at the American Buffalo Soldiers boot camp in Arizona in
2001.
One of the state's most
high-profile camp deaths was that of Nicholas Contreraz, a
16-year-old Sacramento youth who died in 1998 while being subjected
to discipline at the Arizona Boys Ranch near Queen Creek.
Bob Bacon's account was among those
Wednesday that outraged House committee members.
Bacon said Aaron was sent to the
camp because of minor drug use and poor grades. The father said he
was fooled by the owners of the Utah facility into believing his son
would be well cared for.
Instead, Aaron was forced to hike
eight to 10 miles a day with inadequate nutrition and was not given
protective gear to withstand freezing temperatures, Bacon said. When
Aaron complained of severe stomach pains and asked for a doctor, his
pleas were ignored even though he had dramatically lost weight and
suffered from other serious symptoms, Bacon testified.
According to court documents, the
boy's condition was ignored for 20 days, until he collapsed. The
autopsy showed he died of an acute infection related to a perforated
ulcer.
Five camp employees pleaded guilty
to negligent homicide, and another was convicted of child abuse. All
were sentenced to probation and community service.
Kutz testified that camp employees
studied by the GAO were often poorly trained. He said kids weren't
properly fed and were exposed to dangerous conditions, their cries
for medical assistance ignored.
He said that in only one of the 10
sample cases was anyone found criminally liable and sentenced to
prison.
The residential programs, designed
to instill discipline and character, can be privately run or
state-sponsored programs and sometimes include an educational or
school-like component. They are loosely regulated by states. There
are no federal laws that define and regulate them.
The programs are marketed to
parents who are at a loss as to how to help emotionally troubled
teens, Kutz said.
Jan Moss, executive director of the
National Association of Therapeutic Schools and Programs, a trade
group, said many kids have been helped by the treatment programs.
She said the industry is taking
steps to improve, but she added, "Clearly we still have a very long
way to go."
Kutz said there is no comprehensive
nationwide data on deaths and injuries in residential treatment
programs.
Auditors found thousands of
allegations in lawsuits, Web sites and state records.
"Examples of abuse include youth
being forced to eat their own vomit, denied adequate food, being
forced to lie in urine or feces, being kicked, beaten and thrown to
the ground," Kutz said, adding that one teen was reportedly "forced
to use a toothbrush to clean a toilet, then forced to use that
toothbrush on their own teeth."
At the boot camp where Anthony
Haynes died, children were fed an apple for breakfast, a carrot for
lunch and a bowl of beans for dinner, the GAO said.
Haynes became dehydrated in
113-degree heat and vomited dirt, according to witnesses. The
program closed, and the director, Charles Long, was sentenced in
2005 to six years in prison for manslaughter.
The autopsy on Nicholas Contreraz
showed that after Boys Ranch staffers punished and humiliated the
teen for days, he suffered from a severe infection in the lining of
his lungs. Five employees were charged criminally, but all counts
were dropped. The ranch now operates under the name Canyon State
Academy.
Julie Vega, Contreraz's mother,
recently told The Arizona Republic, "I feel like he was sacrificed,
and some good things changed for the better because of him. But
nobody really paid a price for his death."
Associated Press, Gannett News
Service and Dennis Wagner of The Arizona Republic contributed to
this article.
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GAO findings
The Government Accountability
Office examined the deaths of 10 children in private programs. They
found common problems in most cases:
Ineffective management.
Untrained staff.
Inadequate nourishment.
Reckless or negligent operating
practices.
Inadequate equipment.
Boot camp deaths
Some of the cases highlighted in
the GAO report:
A 15-year-old date-rape victim
from California enrolled in a 9-week wilderness program in Utah in
1990 to build her self-confidence, her parents said. Brochures
described camp counselors as "highly trained survival experts." The
parents would later learn, however, that their daughter would be
going on the program's first wilderness trek - a five-day hike on
federal land. She collapsed and later died of dehydration.
According to the GAO, the staff
ignored her complaints and accused her of faking her illness. Police
records say the staff did not call for help because they lacked
radios. No criminal charges were filed.
A month later in Utah, a
16-year-old Florida girl struggling with drug abuse died of heat
stroke while hiking at another 9-week wilderness program. The
program brochure described "days and nights of physical and mental
stress with forced march, night hikes and limited food and water."
The state child protective services
agency ruled it was a case of child abuse. The camp was closed and
the owner placed on a state list of suspected child abusers. But the
owner was able to open other camps in other states and abroad.
In March 1994, two former employees
of that camp opened the Utah program, where 16-year-old Aaron Bacon
died.
A 15-year-old Oregon boy died at
an Oregon wilderness program in September 2000 of a severed neck
artery. The boy had refused to return to the camp site after a group
hike. Two staffers held him face down for almost 45 minutes in an
attempt to bring him under control. The death was ruled a homicide,
but a grand jury did not issue an indictment.
Roberto Reyes, 15, died of
complications from a spider bite in November 2004 at Thayer Learning
Center in Missouri, which describes itself as "a military-based
Christian boarding school." A state investigation concluded that the
staff "did not provide adequate treatment," the GAO said, but the
state does not license such programs, and no criminal charges have
been filed.
The staff tied a 20-pound sandbag
around his neck when he was too sick to exercise, the GAO said. The
family settled a civil lawsuit against Thayer for about $1 million.
The facility's owners denied wrongdoing. Messages left at the school
and with its lawyer were not returned.
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