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Testimony recalls teen's tragic
death
October 11, 2007
By Jo-Ann Moriarty
WASHINGTON - A father from East
Longmeadow whose eighth-grade son committed suicide at a private
residential school helped to paint a grim landscape yesterday of
facilities across the country that are suppose to treat troubled
teens.
Critics said the programs are
frequently run by untrained employees who think their mandate is to
whip minors into shape as though they were in boot camp.
Ryan C. Lewis had just turned 14
when he hanged himself seven days into his 90-day stay at Alldredge
Academy in Davis, W.Va., where he was enrolled in the "Therapeutic
Wilderness Program," at a cost of almost $23,000 in 2001.
His case was included in a report
released yesterday by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
The report was issued to U.S. Rep.
George Miller, D-Calif., chairman of the House Education and Labor
Committee, who held an investigative hearing yesterday about
residential treatments for teenagers which appear to have no uniform
oversight by a government agency.
The Alldredge Academy was licensed
by the state of West Virginia at the time of his death, the report
said.
According to Miller, there are
estimated to be tens of thousands of children enrolled in private
residential treatment programs - often called boot camps, wilderness
camps and behavior modification facilities - around the country. A
weak patchwork of state regulations governs the operation of these
programs, he said.
The chairman is holding hearings to
lay the case for federal oversight if necessary.
Greg Kutz, the managing director of
the Government Accountability Office, Forensic Audits and Special
Investigations, told the House panel that between 1990 and 2007,
there have been thousands of allegations of child abuse at private
residential treatments.
The report examined in detail 10
cases of child abuse and neglect that resulted in death between 1990
and 2004, including the suicide of Ryan Lewis, the son of Paul and
Diana Lewis, of East Longmeadow. Paul Lewis testified before the
committee yesterday.
The coupled placed their son, who
had a history of depression, into the residential treatment program
because it featured the things their son liked, the outdoors and
camping and hiking, Lewis said.
They were looking for a place and a
setting where he could regroup, finish his eighth-grade year, spend
time with peers in the outdoors and receive psychiatric services.
They called every day to ask about
Ryan and were told he was "just fine," Lewis said. On the seventh
day at the program, he said, the school's owner called and said that
"Ryan had hung himself. He told us that there was no indication that
Ryan was in trouble, it caught them all completely by surprise and
there was nothing they could have done."
But the parents learned through the
other students, journals the staff kept, through their son's
journal, and by a state trooper that they were not given the truth.
Their 14-year-old cut himself with a program-issued knife four times
on the night of the suicide and asked that the staff take the knife
away from him "before I hurt myself anymore."
"I can't take it anymore," Lewis
said his son had pleaded on the night of his death. "I want to call
my mom and I want to go home," Lewis said, haltingly.
Val H. Christensen, CEO of
Alldredge's parent company, Solacium, told The Republican yesterday
that residential treatment programs for teenagers was a "cottage
industry" more like "mom and pop" operations than a big industry. He
said he was the new owner of Alldredge and that only 10 of the 90
workers employed in 2001 remained.
Last year the center agreed to pay
$1.2 million to the East Longmeadow couple because of Ryan's death.
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