Tag Archive | Utah
14/05/2023  

944. Vista Dimple Dell Canyon

In 2022 the center was reported to be about to close. The media spoke of numerous complaints concerning the treatment of the patients.

Reviews are not that positive. Here are some testimonies from former patients:

Nobody should EVER go through the abuse kids are put through here. Every single day since the day I was released from this prison atmosphere two years ago I have to deal with the trauma I have from this place. Not only was I not allowed to speak (a basic human right) for weeks at a time (once for leaving a bottle of shampoo in the shower on accident), but staff forced kids to turn on each other and bash each other in group settings. I will never be the same person and left the program with lifetime resent towards my parents and countless mental health issues.

Kristen on Google

I am about a year and a half out from this program and have had time think about the six months i spent there. I still have a lot to work through and am currently working on with my current therapist. I feel as if I can confidently say that Vista Sage shattered my trust in the therapist client relationship for a while along with my confidence to succeed. I would highly recommend finding other places ( preferably in the woods ) for your children if you don’t want them to resent you for the rest of their lives. This place is a breeding ground for people to get rich off the backs of kids that are just trying to get by. Very Disappointing and I hope more people come out about their experience.

Celeste on Google

I attended this place in 2018. When I got there, instantly I knew that this place was not going to benefit my mental health. The staff basically makes it known that snitching on other students and betraying their trust, would further your treatment. If I did anything wrong, their solution was to not allow me to speak, or anyone to speak to me for a week. Not too sure how that is supposed to do anything other than make the child feel alone and desperate. I had multiple staff/ therapists tell me I was never going to change if I decided to leave when I turned 18. One of the therapist, who wasn’t even assigned to me, made it a point to have everyone gather in a group and literally shame me for everything I did infront of me. Not to mention they tried to hide from the parents the fact that staff were sneaking vapes in for the kids. This place is truly disgusting to the core. It’s because of places like this that breaking code silence exists. I hope everyone who went here is recovering from the trauma I know most of us still deal with. I honestly wish I could write a whole book on how horrible Vista Sage is.

Anna on Google

It does not sound like a fun place to be as a teenager.

Sources:

05/03/2023  

934. WinGate Wilderness Therapy

WinGate Wilderness Therapy is located in Kanab, Utah. The operate on public land in parts of Utah. The teenagers detained at the wilderness program are sent to the program by their parents. Some reportedly transported by the programs in handcuffs and shackles.

During their detention in the program the teenagers are evaluated and if they fit the need random so-called treatment facilities claim to be able to fix, they are referred to those facilities when their stay at the wilderness program come to an end. Sometime referral fees are exchanged with these facilities as reward for a good profitable diagnosis.

The safety of the teenagers while partipating in the program can be at risk. One student got injuries when he was forced to participate in rock climbing which he had no training in. Over the years teenagers have died partipating in such programs. However, we have not found cases of death among the teenagers who have been detained at Wingate – yet.

It cannot be fun to be there as a teenager.

Sources:

29/01/2023  

929. Roost Services

Roost Services is a group home located in American Fork in Utah.

The target group is people with developmental disabilities. In 2021 it attracted attention from the media when it lost an 11-year-old boy 9 days before the boy was found dead in a hot car.

The facility was placed under extra supervision but it safe to say that it cannot be fun to be there as a child.

Sources:

22/01/2023  

928. Maple Lake Academy

Maple Lake Academy is located in Spanish Fork, Utah

They have both a department for girls and one for boys. Complaints have been brought on Reddit regarding lack of willingness to bring children who are ill to doctor or hospital.

The facility has been given a warning after employees acted unprofessional.

January 2022 this policy resulted in the death of a girl according to the authorities. Other complaints have been brought on Reddit and the website of BreakingCodeSilence. Later in 2022 the authorities moved to have the facility closed.

It cannot be fun to be there as a teenager.

Sources:

08/01/2023  

926.  Daniel’s Academy

The academy is located near Heber City in Utah. Reviews are mixed and the management has changed. A review based on a recently stay states:

I haven’t been a student here since may of 2020, however, while i was there many things occurred. an extremely  high ranking staff member was caught molesting/sexually abusing a child and her mother at a nearby roller skating rink. other things that occurred were that employees that actually help are near- completely ignored. this facility is completely profit based, and contrary to advertisement, we had very little outside interaction. the head of the school, Jay Williams, is very condescending and regardless of whether student’s complaints are serious and valid, ignores it using DBT and CBT as an excuse, telling them to just deal with it. usually understaffed, many staff go mad with power and punish students they find in opposition to their beliefs and decisions, regardless of whether they are right. staff ignore important rules and vigorously enforce ones that make little sense. students leave with more phycological damage than they came in with. recreational therapy. most times. we had to earn any and all privileges, and sometimes had to restrain students who were attacking others because staff did nothing. think twice between sending your child here or applying for a job

Chris B.

In the media the facility is mentioned in relationship with a police investigation into a case where an employee accidentally shot a student with a pellet gun and tried to cover it up by giving a student a magazine which for strange reasons is illegal to give to minors in that state.

It seems that it is not fun to be there when even litterature teenagers in other countries read normally can be read in that state and it cannot be fun to be shot by a pellet gun either.

Sources:

07/08/2022  

904. ViewPoint Center

The ViewPoint Center is located in Syracuse, Utah. On the address a facility mentioned in this block named Island View RTC was located. Bad feedback from patients and parents made the operation of this facility difficult so it shut down and this new facility was started employing many of the employees who worked at the previous facility.

Was it all an effort to escape the poor reviews on the Internet and the newspaper articles about the suicide of one of the teenagers? Many believe so.

The treatment approach seem to have been changed very little.

Also the poor reviews and bad feedback continues to this day. One of these sounded:

I flew my daughter from the East Coast to participate in ViewPoint’s program with a belief they would compassionately and expertly assess her mental health in order to make recommendations for optimal future care. I do not recommend their program.

I withdrew her from ViewPoint during the third week, though wish she had never been admitted.

We hired a consultant in an effort to match her to a residential program, one that would address depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation in a gentle and structured manner. Having a short deadline as she was coming from an emergency department, we had little time to locate a solid program who had space and was not constricted by covid regulations.

Pre-admission, I was advised by our consultant that ViewPoint typically did not have “behavior kids” and that most patients were depressed, anxious with suicidal ideation. His perception fell far from reality, as confirmed by physical fights that erupted among patients as well as counselors confirming to me that they often DO have “behavior kids” and that the consultant was misinformed.

My daughter has panic attacks, feeling unable to breathe, terrified. She felt trapped at ViewPoint and began hitting her forehead on the walls when the emotions consumed her, choosing this release over panic attacks – which were more frightening to her. She chose pain and anger over fearfulness and temporary suffocation of a panic attack. Several of these episodes occurred and no one advised me. I was also not advised that she was physically carried into a concrete isolation room and left for hours so that she could “cool off”.

During the three weeks of admission, she was never once allowed outside. At ViewPoint, it is a “privilege” the kids must earn. Under whose directorship are children deprived of sunshine and outside air? Even inmates are allowed the basic right of being human.

It is not an exaggeration that children for whom safety is a concern are put on a cot in the hallway, saturated in typical fluorescent lights of a hallway, to sleep because “they do not have the staff to otherwise watch them.” Again, this treatment was imposed on my daughter without informing me of their actions.

The longer she was there, the more worried she became that her attacks of being overwhelmed would create a negative stigma of her being a “bad kid” and her question was, “Then, how will they treat me?”.

My daughter continues her journey with medication, DBT therapy, psychiatric care, social support and academic structure from the safety of home. In addition to the challenges of depression and anxiety, her therapy now also includes a focus on PTSD of her residential psychiatric experience. She has nightmares and flashbacks.

ViewPoint likely falls within their legal rights of behaving in this manner. Or do they? Where is the line? Their actions would rightly precipitate removal of children from their program if their actions were shared with parents. I can tell you that I received only a trickle of information during the supervised 15 minute video call that I had with her once a week.

ViewPoint crossed the line of primum non nocere. First do no harm.

It does sound like a review which could have been written when the facility was named Island View. It does not sound like a fun place to be as a teenager.

Sources:

19/12/2021  

871. Telos Academy

Telos Academy is located in Orem, Utah. Beside Telos Academy there is also Telos U for older teenagers.

The feedback from the students are not that positive. One student wrote:

I initially arrived at Telos Academy in late August fresh out of OpenSky wilderness. Some wilderness context: I was one of the most obedient students at the wilderness I went to, earning the highest promotion called "East" for the good work I did in supporting others and demonstrating good work that I did, I think they told me less than 10% of students make it to "East"


Context: I am an East Asian male who experienced childhood abuse and trauma, and also received lots of racial bullying in elementary school through high school. Something about me being good at bringing attention to myself and not standing up for myself made me a prime target for lots of bullying. I was at Telos to learn how to handle my trauma and to process it in a healthy way, and to also work on severe anxiety/depression.

My time at Telos was very bad.

How they handled COVID:

I spent a total of around 30 days quarantining in my room because of the constant COVID outbreaks, keep in mind the program costs around $10k/month, meaning my parents paid $10k for me to sit in a room and jack off all day. Everyone refused to wear masks, and many of the staff refused with the justification that they already had it or didn't care if they contracted it with no consideration for others. I was one of the <8 students that accepted wearing a mask, and I constantly washed my hands all the time and requested hand sanitizer. The organization of students there is divided into "apartments" with 8 students in each apartment, and 8 apartments on campus. I think my second month there, 5/8 of my apartment contracted COVID-19. They were immediately brought to an external campus to quarantine. The criteria for the students who contracted COVID-19 to return back to the normal campus was to be fever-free for 2 or 3 days and didn't require a negative test to return to campus, this made is so there were lots of people still with COVID in their system coughing without a mask and running around the campus. When I questioned these precations, they said it was what the Telos "nurse" said, and when I questioned the nurse's credentials, I found out they have never even gone to nursing school. This lack of covid precautions made it so there was a never-ending cycle of apartments catching covid. I think there were around 4-5 COVID outbreaks in my 4 months at Telos.

One time I was walking around the kitchen cleaning our apartment and one of my roommates came up to me, lowered his mask, and coughed on my face. A staff watched and just told him to stop. That was it. This student then did it again sometime later, and has also spat in my face right next to staff.

Racism at Telos:

At my apartment at Telos, there was a culture of freestyling where someone would lay a beat down and people would take turns freestyling. In a lot of the freestyles, they would call me a "chink" or a "gook" in front of my face. There were also a lot of anti-Semitic lyrics. The staff every time would just stand and listen, and sometimes giggle. The staff would only intervene if someone said something overtly sexual ("gay" rap bars) like eating/sucking cock or something. My theory is since all of the staff are Mormon (only like a few weren't) and aren't exposed to sexual topics found more motivation to stop sexual remarks than racist remarks. I remember peers in my apartment also teaching one another different slurs to call me. I vividly remember one of them teaching a slur to another one while giggling and looking at me while a staff was sitting on the same couch. My breaking point was when all 8 of us were in a circle along with 3 staff after a meeting and we started a freestyle. Someone said "u/trubledteen" is a chink", twice as he was standing next to me. I sternly looked him in the eye and told him not to say it. Then I sat there hoping that staff would intervene, however, he just continued to say "u/trubledteen" is a chink" multiple times, breaking me and I threw a punch at his gut and I got in trouble. A week later, another student said I couldn't touch the lunch meats in the refrigerator as I was making a sandwich because he didn't want my "dirty Taiwanese hands" to touch them, and told me that this is America and not Taiwan. That remark hit me hard. This was worse because I was known as the "clean" and germaphobe person in our apartment.

Another instance was when a guy in my apartment was bragging about his tennis matches back at home and how if his opponent was Asian, he would call them a chink, and everyone listening laughed and staff were right next to us.

One thing I liked to do there was to play basketball with people. Whenever we chose teams, I was always chosen last, and I knew it was because I wasn't the best, but for some reason, they had to say it was because I was Asian, again the staff were nearby or even participating in the game, and would giggle at these remarks.

A constant phrase that I heard since the first month there was "we hate Asians" or "I hate Asians" or "you are the Asian invasion" or "we don't like Asians around here" (they would always say these phrases straight-faced non-jokingly), peers would also start mocking how Chinese people talked and create their own slurs from it.

Once I moved up the phase at Telos and got more privileges, I was around peers with phones. I remember one roommate would record me on Snapchat and say "I hate Asians" while doing the squinty eye thing (He did this multiple times), in the living room of our apartment. Keep in mind there was staff sitting across from us.

Every time I walked to the fridge, someone would ask if I was getting soy sauce or rice.

When we watched TV in the living room, and an Asian-American or a person of Asian descent appeared, someone would say turn that Asian shit off and switch what we were watching, or throw some other racist joke, staff would giggle.

I once overheard a student advocate for the genocide of Palestinians nonchalantly, and staff just listening and not doing anything

There were multiple students who identified with the proud boys, staff treated this like a political thing and not an objectively immoral thing.

Throughout this entire time, my therapist would tell me I was victimizing myself, and that my sexual jokes (not sexist) were bringing racist attacks toward me (makes 0 sense at all).

A few times, a few people would hit me in the back of the head and mumble under their breath "stupid Asian"

My entire time, I felt like I was treated differently because of the way I looked. I couldn't walk down the hallway of my apartment at busy times without being hit or slapped. One time I was trying to sleep and two of my roommates were clipping their nails and decided to put their trash and clipped nails under my door and treating my room like a trashcan which is why I eventually learned to keep it shut.

TLDR racist attacks and staff would giggle

Management:

Telos has a wrestling gym 1/3 the size of our entire gym that no students can use, its the CEO's private gym that he paid for with tuition

constant staff shortage (weird since they were paid 12.50/hr, maybe pay therapeutic workers more than McDonald's workers?), and inexperienced staff members. The lunch they gave us was very subpar, it was always overcooked or undercooked and many students got food poisoning including me

Telos Academy:

The academy was where students went to school, two teachers there were very bad.

For the economics class, the teacher knows nothing. she teaches tax filing wrong and doesn't teach correct information about the stock market. When I called her out on her BS she basically told me to stfu

the computer lab teacher isn't ever engaged, shes also the one that registers people for standardized tests. She forgot to sign me up one time for the ACT, giving me only 1 chance to take the test.


A lot of my problems at Telos were racist problems because I experienced slurs and discrimination like EVERY SINGLE DAY, and that overshadowed a lot of other problems I had with the program.

On January 6th, I ended up signing myself out and getting the fuck out of that place.

Such testimonies are found around the Internet painting almost the same picture.

It does not sound like a fun place to be as a teenager.

Sources:

15/08/2021  

853. Lava Heights Academy

Lava Heights Academy run by the same company who ran the now-closed Red Rock Canyon school and Mount Pleasant Academy is mentioned in an article where a mother realized that her son had run away when the police in Arizona picked him up. The facility had not reported him missing and as result of that the police were not looking for him. He could have been hurt by criminals while without adult company living in the streets.

Why did they fail? Maybe it is because the employees are not given the conditions they need.

A former employee writes:

Company pretends to care, but gets rid of good people and keeps bad ones in supervisory and management positions. Examples are they have nurses working as direct care staff.

Pros
Free meals

Cons
Management doesn’t care about people

It is clear that is the only good thing is free meals then you do not get caring employees. Employees who will speak out against management if the children placed at the facility do not the treatment set up in their treatment plan.

It cannot be a good place to be as a teenager in need of treatment.

Sources:

Update 2022

An employee was arrested charged with with rape, sexual abuse of students

Source:

Update 2023

A trial resulted in a conviction.

Former counselor at youth treatment center in Toquerville sentenced in ‘egregious’ case (KSL News)

20/07/2019  

757. Mount Pleasant Academy

2019 brought the news that Mount Pleasant Academy will close.

Before Sequel acquired its four Utah treatment centers in 2016, state investigators threatened to revoke Mount Pleasant Academy’s license after they found reports of child abuse and neglect.

Sequel tried to run the facility but low enrollment meant that it was not a good business and because running such a place is never about the welfare of children but rather about profit for the owners, Sequel will now close the facility.

It seems that a state like Oregon has taxpayers who are willing to waste their money. Like it was the case with Red Rock Canyon School, Oregon has paid for poor service for its foster children.

Based on what took place before 2016, it is safe to say that it was not a good place to be as a teenager.

Sources:

29/06/2019  

756. Renewed Hope Ranch

Whenever a child and a counselor is alone in a room at a facility like Renewed Hope Ranch, there should be some video security not only to protect the child but also the professional reputation of the counselor. It seems that a staff member at Renewed Hope Ranch in Enoch either forgot that or turned off the security system with purpose.

Now the police is investigating which is the only way because they are the only one who can determine whether criminal activity took place.

If there was a purpose by shutting off the video security it is safe to say that it could not have been fun to be there as a teenager.

Sources:

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