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September 7,
2001
Arizona Boot
Camp Where Boy Died Reopens
By Michael Janofsky
Phoenix -- Two
months after a 14-year-old boy died at a boot camp for troubled
youths, the camp owner is open for business again, ready to welcome
more than two dozen children who have registered for a 13-weekend
program that starts on Saturday.
The resumption
of the camp, operated by Charles F. Long II of the America's Buffalo
Soldiers Re-Enactors Association, has horrified some parents of
former campers, who contend that Mr. Long's staff is unqualified to
recognize the kind of emergency that led to the death of A.H. on
July 1, after complications from exposure to intense desert heat,
according to the autopsy report.
Yet other
parents in the Phoenix area say that the youth's death should not
obscure the benefits their children have derived from a program that
uses grueling physical activity and harsh discipline to improve
attitudes and behavior. Nor has the death discouraged families from
enrolling children in Mr. Long's $695 fall program. Mr. Long's wife,
Carmelina, the camp administrator, said about one-third of the
children starting camp on Saturday are new to the Buffalo Soldiers.
"There isn't
any other way to help my children behave," Yolanda Jubran of Tempe, Ariz., one of the first- time
parents, said in a telephone interview. Ms. Jubran enrolled her
daughter, 14, and her son, 8. "I always try my best for my children,
and if I didn't think it was not good, I would not send them," she
said.
Doreen Hurff of
Mesa, Ariz., offered a different
perspective. She withdrew her two young sons from the summer program
and called Mr. Long's plan to reopen this week "a totally insane
idea." Her sons said children were routinely hit, kicked and made to
eat dirt.
"People are
putting their kids back in there, and we still don't know what
happened," she said, referring to how the A.H. youth died. "Why
would anybody take that chance?"
However parents
are responding, the death has spurred state officials to look for
ways that camps like Mr. Long's might be regulated. Arizona has
virtually no health and safety laws governing programs for children
that run for a period of less than a year. Mr. Long has run camps
since 1994 at various sites in the Phoenix area for periods as long
as six months.
Gov. Jane Hull,
a Republican, recently appointed a 13-member panel to recommend what
actions, if any, the state might take. In addition, Chris Cummiskey,
a Democratic state senator, said the Legislature would review the
issue when it returned in January.
Mr. Long's
operation is among hundreds of so-called therapy camps that use
rugged outdoor settings to shock teenagers out of bad habits. But
many camp operators have been accused of abusing young people, and
in the last two decades, 30 children have died of various causes.
Mr. Long, a
56-year-old former Marine lance corporal who refers to himself as
Colonel Long, said he was eager to return to the outdoors with
another group of children whose parents, in many cases, have turned
to him as a last resort to separate their children from gangs, drugs
and alcohol problems.
Sitting in his
lawyer's office on Tuesday, he wore the black uniform of the Buffalo
Soldiers Association camp and spoke animatedly for 90 minutes about
his camps and his life. The only subject that his lawyer, David
Burnell Smith, ruled off limits was the circumstances of A.H.'s
death, a matter still under investigation by the Maricopa County
Sheriff's Department.
An autopsy
report released last month concluded that the death was accidental,
after A.H. was forced to endure 111-degree temperatures for five
hours, a time in which investigators said he became disoriented and
was "observed eating dirt."
A sheriff's
affidavit said camp counselors took him to a nearby motel and placed
him in a bathtub with the shower running. The affidavit said that
when counselors returned they found him with his face in the water
and then, at Mr. Long's direction, returned him to the camp because
Mr. Long believed the youth was faking his distressed condition.
Back at the
camp, the affidavit said, the youth stopped breathing and counselors
called 911. He died that night. The youth's parents, who are
divorced, have each filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Mr. Long
and his program.
Mr. Long said
he would operate his brand of camps "until the day I die." He
described A.H.'s death as a "tragic accident and a sad thing" for
which he said he apologized profusely to the youth's mother, M.H..
He said he has not spoken to the youth's father, G.H., Jr. of
Hannibal, Mo.
Yet the death
also served as a rallying point, of sorts, he said, explaining how
friends have encouraged him to persevere. "You're in a foxhole," he
said, recalling the advice of a friend, who urged him to continue
his work. "Bullets are flying. You are being bombarded. Do what you
did in the United States Marine Corps. Do what you do best."
Mrs. Long
provided the names of six families who had enrolled children with
the camp for the first time. Besides Ms. Jubran, no one answered at
one home and messages left at the others were not returned. Yet
mothers of other children who have participated in Mr. Long's camps
came to his defense.
Becky Martinez
of Glendale, Ariz., said her 13-year-old
daughter, Tracie Arvizu, had become "totally poisoned" by her
friends, to the point she ran away for two weeks. "She hated me,"
Ms. Martinez said. "She blamed me for everything."
After Tracie
returned home, Ms. Martinez said she persuaded her to enter Mr.
Long's program, and the results, she said, "were stunning." "Colonel
Long was a stranger who opened her brain, unlocked her heart and
gave me my baby back," Ms. Martinez said.
Frances Lighty
of Phoenix, whose daughters, Monica, 14, and Erica, 15, attended Mr.
Long's summer camp, said she would "absolutely not" be scared to
send them back, even after the death of another child. "I know who
I'm talking to with him," Ms. Lighty said. "He comes from the
heart."
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