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After a teen's death, a wilderness
therapy program heads to court
October 10, 2007
By Elizabeth Neff and Jacob Santini
The death of 14-year-old Ian August
last year during a wilderness therapy program in Utah renewed
discussion over the benefits and risks of such programs. Five
children have died in Utah in wilderness therapy programs.
Mark Wardle, operator of Skyline
Journey, says the
wilderness therapy program acted properly in the case
of Ian August, who died on a hike, and that he will
fight state efforts to close the operation. "It is important
to me to keep helping kids. Losing Ian was like losing
a little brother." (Jeremy Harmon/The Salt Lake Tribune)
Editor's note: This article on
Ian August ran in The Salt Lake Tribune July 14, 2003.
FILLMORE -- As Ian August and a
band of teens hiked over the steep hills that make up the Sawtooth
Mountain area one year ago, Millard County prosecutor Brent Berkley
was inside his air-conditioned Delta home. Suffering through a
searing heat wave that gripped Utah that weekend, Berkley didn't
want to go outside.
"I was in my house and I was
dying," he recalls. "It was just dry. We hadn't had any rain, and it
had been hot for, like, two weeks before that. It was just awful."
Arriving at his office the
following Monday, Berkley was surprised to learn a program promising
to turn around so-called troubled youths had the teens trekking
across the high-desert mountains to the west. He was even more
shocked when the Millard County Sheriff's Office said an obese,
14-year-old boy from Austin, Texas, had mustered the strength to
reach the top of one of those hills, stopped, sat down and baked to
death as rescuers tried in vain to reach the site in time.
"My first thought was 'What were
they doing out there in the first place?' " Berkley says. He was not
the only one wondering why. "The area out there -- it's an arid,
desolate place," said Millard County sheriff's Sgt. James Masner.
"It's extremely hot, both day and night. We didn't even know
the program was functioning out there."
As Berkley was being briefed on the
case in Fillmore, one owner of the wilderness therapy program in
which Ian died -- Skyline Journey -- sat down at a conference room
table in St. George to give his version of events.
Surrounded by state regulators and
owners of Utah's eight other wilderness programs, Mark Wardle blamed
the tragedy on the response of the sheriff's rescue team. The crews,
he said, wasted time by not following his directions, turning what
Wardle said was a 40-minute drive from Delta into a two-hour trip.
"We're not a bunch of bumbling idiots out here, abusing kids,"
Wardle said. "When we say, 'This is where we're at,' this is where
we are at."
The comment made Millard County
Sheriff Ed Phillips livid. Phillips said the ambulance dispatched
from Delta traveled 70 miles to reach the scene, nearly half of
those miles on gravel and graded dirt roads. The crew had to
backtrack because of Wardle's confusion about the best way to reach
Ian.
Rescuers split into two groups, one
following Wardle's directions to a road that proved impassable and
the other hiking to Ian with a handheld GPS unit. The hikers reached
him first and, on their arrival, pronounced him dead.
A medical helicopter never reached
the scene -- something Phillips blames on a malfunctioning GPS unit
in an ambulance giving directions. The helicopter also ran low on
fuel and the pilot was forced to make a gas run to Richfield.
The investigation: Although
shocked, Berkley still thought the death might have been accidental.
His opinion would change as the Sheriff's Office investigation
proceeded.
Each passing day, Sheriff Phillips
became more convinced that Ian's death was preventable. Ian stopped
hiking at 11:30 a.m., but Wardle did not contact the Sheriff's
Office until 1:30 p.m. -- over an hour after his staff radioed him
that Ian wouldn't hike.
"The whistle had been blown and
rescue should have been called," Phillips says today. But even by
the time Wardle called 9-1-1, only an immediate ice bath might have
saved Ian.
Within days of the teen's death,
the state licensing investigator charged with overseeing the
program, Kelly Husbands, determined that field counselors on the
hike with Ian had done nothing wrong.
Days later, licensing Director Ken
Stettler dispatched a supervisor to reinvestigate the case -- a
common safeguard Stettler says he takes in high-profile cases. At
the time, Utah prohibited wilderness programs such as Skyline's from
hiking in temperatures above 95 degrees, but the initial efforts of
Husbands and the supervisor to pin down the exact temperature at the
scene failed.
When their three-week investigation
ended, Husbands wrote in his final report that "there is no credible
evidence or statement that indicates that Skyline Journey was out of
compliance with Office of Licensing rules or their own policies in
the death of Ian August. There is also no evidence that Ian was
abused or that his needs were not met by the staff in the field."
But what the rescue team found as
it arrived in the west desert alarmed Berkley. As the team passed
the intersection of Marjum Canyon and Long Ridge Reservoir roads
(just east of where Ian died) shortly after 2 p.m. -- 2 1/2 hours
after Ian had stopped hiking that day -- a thermometer measuring
outside temperatures registered 110 degrees.
As the crew drew closer to the
scene, the gauge hit 106 degrees. Wardle disputes sheriff's findings
that the temperature was above 95 degrees while Ian was hiking.
But Berkley says he is convinced
that high temperatures, coupled with Ian's build and tendency to
overheat as noted by his mother on his program enrollment
application, should have kept the teen out of the program. "Ian was
a fat kid," Berkley says. "He pretty much ate Twinkies and played
Nintendo all day . . . and he is doing stuff that his body couldn't
handle. So that's why we figured that they shouldn't have been out
there in the first place, and if he was out there, they should have
taken a lot more care to keep him cool."
Berkley has been a prosecutor for
four years. Once, while in private practice, he defended a youth
rehabilitation program. He says Skyline Journey's employees were
undertrained, its health-screening process was inadequate and its
water supply insufficient.
He doubts that Ian, accustomed to
Austin's 540-foot elevation, had time to adjust to the 7,000-foot
altitude of the Sawtooth area. But Ian came to Utah straight from
Santa Fe, N.M., which has a similar elevation.
"Basically we just thought the
program was poorly run," Berkley says. In his opinion, Berkley
characterizes the program as "designed to take money, throw these
kids out on public lands where they don't have to pay anything for
them, feed them tuna fish sandwiches for three months and change
their lives. They caused the death of this kid [who] shouldn't have
been in the program in the first place."
Still, deciding the type of
criminal charge to file was not easy. Berkley eventually decided
Skyline's conduct was so reckless it warranted charges of
child-abuse homicide against Wardle and lead counselor Leigh Hale, a
licensed emergency medical technician who Berkley said should have
known Ian was overheating.
"It was a very difficult decision
to make because we knew it was going to be a really, really hard
case to prove," Berkley says. "It's easier to prove an intentional
homicide than it is to prove these sorts of negligent reckless
homicides because you have to convince somebody that it's more than
just an unfortunate accident, or even just simple negligence."
The state: The criminal
charges made Ken Stettler, the director of the state's Office of
Licensing, take a harder look at the case. "When the county filed
charges we said, 'Crud, there's got to be something,' " Stettler
says.
Stettler wondered whether his
investigators had been too focused on the temperature at the scene.
Once charges were filed, Stettler redirected them to refocus on
other potential violations of state rules.
A detailed timeline put together by
Stettler and his supervisor points to four alleged violations by
Skyline Journey:
* Counselors failed to recognize
Ian's symptoms and get him treatment quickly. "When they were
sitting, they were sitting in the sun," Stettler says. "So, they
weren't really cooling down."
* The program exceeded the limits
of the weakest members -- Ian and another teen, who had motor skill
problems, were lagging far behind the group.
* A Texas doctor who cleared Ian to
participate in Skyline Journey did not receive a full description of
its program.
* Ian's enrollment application was
not screened by a licensed medical professional. If that review had
been done, Stettler says, Skyline's staff would have known Ian had
"low heat tolerance and was taking medications that could have been
a factor in exposure-related illness."
With those allegations in hand,
Stettler moved to revoke Skyline Journey's license in November. That
process was put on hold pending the outcome of the criminal case
against Wardle.
The program continues to operate,
but is no longer monitored by Husbands -- in part because Stettler
learned Husbands and Wardle were members of the same LDS Church ward
in Nephi. Wardle has since moved.
The prosecution: Knowing
that the charges against Wardle would be difficult to prove, Berkley
decided to bolster his case by offering a plea deal. In exchange for
her testimony against her former employer, Berkley would divert
prosecution of Hale and dismiss the charge against her in six
months.
At a Jan. 6 preliminary hearing,
Hale and five other witnesses took the stand before 4th District
Judge Donald Eyre.
First up was Maureen Frikke of the
state Medical Examiner's Office. Although not dehydrated, Ian had
overheated, she said, explaining her finding of hyperthermia.
The problem could have compounded
over the course of several days, she testified, and even at lower
temperatures than set in state regulations if the circumstances were
right.
And while Skyline maintains the
group did not hike at temperatures above 95 degrees, the teens were
exposed to high temperatures during other parts of the day.
Once in trouble, Frikke said, Ian
needed to be cooled immediately, preferably with an ice bath. The
warm water poured over Ian's head that day, she said, would not have
helped.
Next on the stand, field counselor
Matthew R. Gause gave a history of his involvement with Skyline
Journey, explaining he had no formal training as a counselor or as
an outdoor guide beyond what he had learned in Boy Scouts.
Once hired by Skyline, he had gone
through two days of book training, three days of field training and
a CPR class. Gause said nothing about Ian's behavior seemed to be
out of the ordinary and that he had felt sure the teen was faking it
that day.
"There was nothing extreme. He
wasn't flush red. There was no severe sweating. It just seemed
normal, like nothing out of the ordinary," Gause testified in court.
Hale testified Ian appeared to be
"a little bit defiant" when he stopped hiking that day.
Despite Berkley's hopes, little of
what Hale said helped his case -- and some of her testimony
conflicted with her own daily log of what happened during the days
she led the group.
For instance, Hale testified that
she made sure Ian ate all his meals because he was finicky. Hale
wrote in a duty log, however, that Ian had skipped two meals in the
days before the fatal hike.
Hale testified she did not take
Ian's temperature.
Millard County sheriff's Sgt. James
William Masner testified that despite gathering data from
surrounding weather stations, it proved nearly impossible to
determine an exact temperature where Ian had died.
Husbands took the stand last and
told Eyre that Wardle's program was better than most. The program
had adequate food and water, he said.
Husbands told the court that by his
rough estimation it would have been about 88 degrees at 12:30 p.m.
on the day Ian died. Among other things, two days after Ian died,
Husbands hung a pocket thermometer in a tree at a similar elevation.
The only rule violation he found,
Husbands testified, was a failure by Skyline Journey to provide the
doctor who performed Ian's physical exam a description of the
program.
One month after the hearing ended,
Eyre issued an eight-page ruling in which he refused to order a
trial, saying Berkley had failed to show the program had acted
recklessly.
Although Berkley mentioned during
the hearing that the state was trying to revoke the program's
license based on three other alleged violations, the judge wrote:
"Perhaps nothing in the state's allegations is more glaringly absent
than the lack of evidence that [Wardle] had failed to comply with
the state Office of Licensing regulations governing youth wilderness
programs. Indeed, the evidence presented to the court only serves to
establish that Skyline Journey took many more precautions than those
provided in similar youth programs."
In a recent interview with The Salt
Lake Tribune, Eyre said he did not think Skyline had "done things
that would put a heavy burden on these youths to the point you would
say it was reckless."
The judge cited the fact that
employees had some training, participants were given "plenty of
water," and that the group only hiked a short distance.
In his ruling, Eyre wrote the hikes
were "never of a greater distance than 1.26 miles," although
Husbands' report, introduced at the hearing, said Ian hiked about
1.4 miles of a planned three-mile hike on the day he died.
Although Ian was overweight, he did
get clearance from a doctor, Eyre said. And the state did not
provide proof of the exact temperature, the judge said.
"I've had a lot of experience with
troubled youths, and I know that parents when they have a child that
is clearly self-destructive, they will do about anything to help
them," said Eyre, a former Juab County attorney.
"They looked like they were running
a good program. They had a satellite phone, two radios, immediate
contact with their home base. It clearly was an isolated location,
and it took a long time for medical assistance, but they had trained
individuals."
The aftermath: Berkley said
he was surprised at the judge's decision to kill the case before it
could get to trial, but he says there is not much he would have
changed about his prosecution.
After the charges against Wardle
were dismissed, Berkley had a lengthy conversation with Fred Voros,
head of the Utah Attorney General's Appeals Division.
Voros decided against taking the
case. "We analyzed the case very thoroughly and concluded that under
the law and the facts an appeal was not warranted," Voros told The
Tribune.
More than 90 percent of the appeals
handled by the division are defense appeals where it is believed a
judge misinterpreted a rule of law or applied a wrong legal standard
in arriving at his decision, Voros said. "We don't usually take
appeals when it was a judgment call on the part of the trial court
and we simply disagree with the trial court's judgment call," he
said.
Ian's death on that hot July
afternoon continues to trouble Berkley. "It worries me that [Skyline
is] still out operating," Berkley says. "I think they are still
doing the same thing." The day-to-day operations of Skyline remain
the same since Ian's death.
"We haven't changed anything
because we were safe at the time," Wardle says. But Skyline, like
the state's other wilderness programs, must meet new requirements
put in place after Ian's death.
Stettler banned wilderness hikes in
temperatures above 90 degrees, dropping the ceiling by 5 degrees.
Today, on Wardle's suggestion, physical exams cannot be conducted
more than 15 days before a teen enters a wilderness program.
The former regulation allowed
month-old exams. Wilderness programs are now required to contact
emergency agencies every six months to ensure future rescue
operations are better coordinated.
Sheriff's officials in Millard and
Juab counties say they haven't been told where Skyline Journey is
operating these days, although Wardle says the program has filed its
operating location with both offices.
Medical complaints must now be
promptly checked by a medical professional -- regardless of whether
field staff believe a teen is faking.
"When [Ian was] saying, 'I'm not
feeling well. I'm going to pass out.' They thought he was faking,"
Stettler says. "When he was moaning when he exhaled they they
thought he was playing it to the hilt. "The problem of it is, out of
the last five [wilderness therapy] deaths dating back to 1990, we
can actually attribute four of them to this very same mind-set that
these kids are faking. They can't be believed. They are liars and
are manipulators."
Stettler's office will make its
case for shutting down Wardle's outfit in mid-August in front of an
administrative law judge.
Assistant Attorney General Carol
Verdoia will represent the state in the hearing on Aug. 18. She has
represented the state Office of Licensing for about 12 years but
declined to comment on the case.
Stettler says the licensing case is
critical because there has to be a consequence for Ian's death. "I
don't feel like we have a strong enough guarantee that nothing's
going to happen again," Stettler says. "If we don't level a
consequence in this case it sends a message to other programs that
the Office of Licensing is nothing. They need to know there are
rules and there is a consequence for violating those rules,
especially when the violations result in a similar thing like this
death."
At the hearing, officials from the
state and the program will call witnesses to testify about alleged
rule violations. Wardle can appeal the judge's decision to state
district court if Skyline loses its license.
In the past few weeks, temperatures
around Utah have eclipsed 100 degrees -- nearing and equaling the
records set in the days surrounding Ian's death.
Stettler's office has contacted
Utah's six active wilderness programs (eight are licensed) to remind
them to not take teens hiking in temperatures above 90 degrees.
Although Wardle describes what
happened in his program as "sad and tragic," he says he will
continue to fight to keep Skyline open. "It is important to me to
keep helping kids. Losing Ian was like losing a little brother."
Berkley, too, still feels the
impact of Ian's death, although he never met the teen.
One year later, a small black and
white photo of Ian hangs among the scribbled notes on a peg board
next to the 33-year-old prosecutor's desk. "Some things are
important to remind you of why you are doing your job," he says.
"That's one of them."
----- Tribune reporter Brooke Adams
contributed to this story.
Regulation changes Following Ian
August's death in a wilderness therapy program last July, the
state's Office of Licensing changed how such programs must operate.
Changes include:
Temperature: No hiking in
temperatures above 90 degrees.
Prior to Ian's death, wilderness programs could hike in temperatures
up to 95 degrees.
Emergency Response:
Wilderness programs must contact emergency agencies every six
months, an exercise designed to better coordinate rescue responses.
Medical Care: Complaints by
teens must be promptly checked out by a medical professional,
regardless if the field staff members believe the youth is faking.
Physicals: Exams must be
conducted within 15 days of a teen entering a wilderness program.
Former rules required such exams within 30 days.
Equipment: Wilderness field
staff are required to have working watches and thermometers. Source:
Office of Licensing
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