Archive | November 2013
30/11/2013  

185. Academy at Swift River

Academy at Swift River was planned to be a copy of Mouth Bachelor Academy in Oregon (Later closed by the authorities) which was a kind of development of the program they used at CEDU in California and Idaho.

But the program ran into problems with employees and students from the very start and the entire system was redone. Over the time the owners expanded the program so they could house more students in order to increase profit. In the end it became a kind of warehouse with little place for the needs of the individual students. There were cases of runaways. When the economy went down and more important modern methods were invented to handle at-risk teens at home the program shut down during 2013.

It didn’t sound like a fun program to be in when it started, it didn’t sound like a fun place to be as a teenager later. Fortunately it is now closed.

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25/11/2013  

184. Three Springs New Dominion Maryland

A kind of private juvenile hall called Three Springs New Dominion Maryland had problems with the security. Teenagers from the program escaped and worried the residents in the area due to use of untrained and lowpaid employees.

The owners of the program promised to do something about it but security and trained employees cost. Because it was all about profit the program closed in the end.

It couldn’t have been fun to be sent to this program as a teenager.

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20/11/2013  

183. Edgemeade – Raymond A. Rogers Jr. School

Dangerous restraint holds, deaths is nothing to be around but in the asylums of past decades it was often the case. Edgemeade – Raymond A. Rogers Jr. School was one os such places and a teenagers died there according to articles.

It didn’t sound like a fun place to be as a teenager.

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15/11/2013  

182. New Horizons for Young Women

New Horizons for Young Women was a wilderness program being operated in Maine. It opened in 2001 and closed down around 2008 when the dangers of wilderness programs had become known to the general public resulting in a period of reduction of profit. It was run by the daughter of a superannuated television host who was sent to the teen prison called CEDU (See an earlier post in our California or Idaho section).

It does not sound fair to drag teenagers out in the wilderness as a program manager just because the program manager had a terrible experience as a teenager. The wilderness in Maine during the winter can be a very unpleasant place to be so it doesn’t sound like a fun place to be as a teenager. Fortunately the program is clsoed and the program manager is busy getting drunk according to various media sources.

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10/11/2013  

181. Ironwood Maine

The private teen-prison Ironwood located in Maine was founded in 2006 with help from former employees who used to work for Turn-about Ranch in Escalante in Utah known for it tough approach throughout the world. Students from United Kingdom and Germany had been sent to Turn-about. In most cases the teenagers reversed to their old behaviors within months with one exception. The international known model Jemma Henley based her future career on the teachings learned in Utah.

Ironwood do use a level system where teenagers are placed at cabin without modern heating system. Maine can be very cold during the winter so for teenagers coming from as far away as Florida who is used to live in another climate it is close to abuse.

The family who is running the facility are very into horse breeding and is most likely using the operation of a troubled teen program to finance their expensive hobby.

In 2014 Ex-police chief who was working at the facility was arrested.

In 2018 a court took place where a student who had left Ironwood Maine was charged with planning a high-school shoot up at his old school which might had some part in his banishment to Ironwood Maine.

In 2021 questions were raised about the qualifications of the employees. On Reddit it was documented:

RED FLAG: Matthew Hendry, LCPC. Clinical Director, Therapist His counseling degree is from the University of Phoenix, a for-profit college known for its mostly poor quality of instruction. He was involved in the Troubled Teen Industry in Utah, serving as a clinical director there. He doesn’t name the school, so one must assume it’s a questionable place.

Nicole Thibodeau has an extreme left wing background. Form the web site,

I received my Masters of Social Work (MSW) degree with a certification in Applied Arts and Social Justice from the University of New England in Portland, Maine.

For two years, she worked at an organization that promotes quack cancer therapies, including Reiki, the Patrick Dempsey Center for Hope and Healing in Lewiston, ME.

Karen Hansen, LPC-C went to Lesley University, Cambridge, MA, for both her undergraduate and graduate degrees. Lesley University is known for being easy to get into, where 75% of all applicants are admitted and will accept students with mediocre high school records. . It’s, known for poor quality education–its high rate of failure on professional licensure exams (teachers, mental health counsellors, social workers) From Lesley University’s website, “…our legacy of educating mental health practitioners with a curriculum grounded in social justice…” One of its nicknames is New Age U. The politics here are extreme left. If you are not into New Age Spirituality, don’t go here.

RED FLAG: KNOWN QUACK Katharine Davis, Naturopaths. ALL NATUROPATHS ARE QUACKS. DO NOT SEND YOUR TEEN TO A PLACE THAT EMPLOYS KNOWN QUACKS. They are NOT doctors. She is certified in Quantum Neurological Reset Therapy is a form of quackery. Here is a link to an article by Stephen Novella, MD, a Yale Medical School neurologist, on the Science Based Medicine Blog, thoroughly debunking this: https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/quantum-neurology/

Questionable teachers:

Kathy Harriman went to Houghton College, a tiny, fundamentalist, evangelical college in New York’s Southern Tier. There’s evidence that she holds fundamentalist Christian beliefs, given that she homeschooled all five children in an area where homeschooling is rare. She does not say what colleges her children eventually went to or graduated from. Her degree is in Elementary Education and German. She is not qualified to be a secondary school teacher in the State of Maine.

The State of Maine does not have a mechanism where interested members of the public can verify the licensure status of teachers. The State of Maine does not require that private school teachers be licensed. However, I expect that teachers at private schools have a current license, even if that license is from another state. I expect that teachers in private schools be licensable in the state they’re working in.

Ironwood does not sound like a fun place to be sent to for a teenager.

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Update 2022

A parent wrote on Yelp:

I am a parent who sent his troubled son to Ironwood approximately 11 years ago. I write this as a warning to whomever might be considering sending their child to any juvenile Detention center based school. I sent my son as a “shock based” treatment. At that point I would have sold everything I have for his well being. I believe I had found it when I first saw the website of ironwood. I say this as I understand  depth of despair. Seeing that well marketed website seemed to be the answer. I would advise anyone to seek out all other avenues before sending them to ironwood or any similar program. My son spoke of abuses and less than than therapeutic employees and practices during his tenure. Those were waived off by me as he returned. This was a natural as I believed what I needed to believe .. that it helped. i am not convinced at this point. My point here for all to read is simple. These programs are a pay to graduate kind of limited program, one size fits all if you will. My advice would be to not lose that child from the home no matter how hard the moment is. once trust is lost it will not return. This applies both to my family and my suspicions of these programs as I read further into them … Jeff

Jeffrey F.

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The feedback on Yelp

05/11/2013  

180. Home of James Roberts and Natalia Petrova, Fairfax, Virginia

It cannot be fun being a teenager living by these parents. Any slip-ups and the teenager are sent half way around the world to a country she had little knowledge about and language she no longer spoke. The daughter acted out as any normal teenager would do when she was brought up believing that a certain man was her father only to discover at age 12 that she had been lied to.

Well, it seems that her birth-mother has decided to create a new family and in this puzzle there is no room for the daughter. What if the half-siblings in a couple of years also act out? Will they also be kicked out of the home to some kind of remote location?

We urge the Department of Social Services in Fairfax, Virginia to take a close look at this household and remove the half-siblings from their home and put them into foster care. No child should be forced to live an entire upbringing in fear of being exiled like the daughter did.

And we have another plea. It is time for all other countries – not only Russia – to stop adoptions to parents in the United States. It is not right for parents in the United States to dump their unwanted children at the expenses of citizens in the native land the children come from. When you take on the responsibilities of being a parent, this responsibility lasts until the child is an adult.

Mr. James Roberts and his wife Natalia Petrova (Roberts) cheated the tax-payers in two countries. First they let the taxpayers in Chantilly pay for their daughter’s education and when they wanted to start over with new children, the taxpayers in Berdsk had to start paying from there. It is not fair!! The only way to stop this situation is to send the daughter back so she can finish her high school in Virginia. A happy family life cannot be guaranteed but the daughter would have a future in a land where she knows the culture well.

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