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Deadly
discipline?
Some Say Unregulated Wilderness Schools are a Threat to Troubled
Teens' Lives
Saturday, February
12, 2000
By Gordon Gregory,
Correspondent, The Oregonian
BEND -- Utah
officials who cracked down on wilderness schools in the 1990s
following the deaths of three teen-agers say Oregon is courting
trouble by allowing similar camps free rein.
"Is your situation
ripe for abuse? Yes," said Ken Stettler, who helped draft standards
and regulations for the wilderness programs in Utah. "By having no
regulations, you are endangering the kids."
In Oregon, like in
most Western states, anyone can set up a wilderness therapy
business. Such businesses get permits and pay fees to operate on
public land, but no agency oversees the quality of programs or the
care offered children.
Four companies
operate wilderness schools in Oregon. In 1999, the schools brought
about 270 youths to the high desert of Central Oregon, according to
the Bureau of Land Management, which issues land-use permits for the
programs.
By their nature,
wilderness therapy schools are hard to oversee. The teen-agers are
led far out into the mountains or desert for weeks or months at a
time. The regimen can be grueling, both physically and emotionally.
Often the children are refused direct contact with parents or anyone
from the outside.
The escape of two
teen-agers from an Obsidian Trails Outdoors School camp in the
desert near Christmas Valley in December put a spotlight on such
programs in Oregon. The teen-agers robbed a ranch couple at
knifepoint, stealing the family's car.
The incident
provoked an outcry among ranchers in the area and prompted the BLM
to suspend Obsidian's permit. But no one checked on the conditions
at the camp, nor on the safety of the teen-agers who were moved to
another remote wilderness location on federal land.
Gregory Bodenhamer,
director of Obsidian Trails, said the robbery incident was much less
serious than what occurs in public schools. "There is no
relationship between the school and the crime," he said. "Thousands
of teen-agers leave school without permission and commit crimes on a
daily basis."
Links to Utah
programs
Obsidian Trails'
outdoor program apparently had no serious problems before the
escape. However, until last week the program employed members of a
family linked to wilderness camps in Utah that had serious problems.
And until last
summer, the program employed a man -- a member of the same family --
who was charged with child abuse and neglect in connection with the
1994 death of a student enrolled in the now-defunct North Star
Expeditions school in Utah.
The former Obsidian
employee, Eric Henry, 26, signed a Dec. 11, 1996, diversion
agreement with Garfield County, Utah, authorities in which
prosecution was deferred if he refrained from involvement in similar
programs for pay and obeyed all laws for nine months. Yet, six
months later -- in June 1997 -- he was at SageWalk, an Oregon
wilderness school based in Bend. He was subsequently fired,
according to the current co-owner of the school, then joined
Obsidian Trails in 1998.
He left Obsidian
Trails last summer, according to Bodenhamer.
Henry refused to
comment. Bodenhamer would not say why Henry was hired or why he
left. He objected to The Oregonian's inquiries. He said it was
unfair to tar his program because of something that happened in Utah
years ago.
"It's guilt by
association," he said.
Parents pay up
to $17,000
Desperate parents
anxious to help their troubled teen-agers have flocked to programs
like Obsidian Trails' over the past decade -- often paying up to
$17,000 for eight to 12 weeks of something like wilderness survival
therapy. The children are often taken to the schools against their
will, either by "escort services" or by parents who sometimes must
deceive their children to make them attend.
One Bend outdoor
school owner said he has had children show up with snowboards,
thinking they were headed to a sports camp.
But wilderness
therapy is hardly a vacation retreat.
The schools use
harsh methods to teach responsibility. For centuries philosophers
have seen nature as redemptive; wilderness therapy throws in a tough
survivalist approach to aberrant teens, in an attempt to force them
to understand the connection between actions and consequences.
Months of forced survival living in the Oregon desert in winter are
not unusual as the core of the schools' techniques for teens.
All four of the
Oregon camps say that safety comes first, and there have been no
reported serious injuries and no deaths.
Deaths prompt
action in Utah
Utah's experience
in the early 1990s proved to be the warning wail about troubles in
wilderness therapy programs.
And the Henry
family was smack in the middle of the problems. Eric Henry's father,
William Henry, owner of North Star Expeditions, pleaded guilty to
negligent homicide in the 1994 death and was given three years of
probation. Bodenhamer was a contractor providing family workshops
off site for North Star and another troubled Utah program.
Eric's mother,
Pattie Henry, was not charged in the case. She worked for Obsidian
Trails until Tuesday, when she resigned after the State Office for
Services to Children and Families sent a letter instructing
Bodenhamer that no member of the Henry family could be involved in
his new residential school. Pattie Henry said Tuesday that her
family was victimized in Utah, and that Obsidian Trails is a quality
program.
"I don't understand
the concern about us," she said. "I've devoted my life to kids and
family. I've tried to be a good person my whole life, and to
have this now keep me from doing the work I love makes me mad."
In December,
Bodenhamer set up a companion residential school near the mountain
town of Sisters to house troubled teen-agers, but he failed to get
the required state license meant to ensure adequate supervision.
Dale Paulsen,
licensing coordinator for the Oregon Department of Services to
Children and Families, said Bodenhamer is in violation of state law,
but that rather than close the school down, "I chose to try and work
with the guy."
Director charges
unfairness
Bodenhamer said it
is unfair to single out his program because of something that
happened in Utah years ago.
But a prosecutor
who was involved in the Utah case said he was troubled to learn that
the Henry family had moved to Oregon and that Pattie and Eric Henry
had continued to work in the field.
"That is just scary
to me," said Wallace A. Lee, county attorney for Garfield County,
Utah.
He said he would
have concerns with any program that hired any of the Henrys.
"I would worry
about their involvement in a wilderness program because the attitude
they had . . . would somehow bleed into any other program they're
working with. And I fear that if they're there, that Bill Henry is
having some influence into what's going on," he said.
Bodenhamer
dismissed such worries as "silly." Bodenhamer said that William
Henry, the co-founder of the Utah school and one of the people
prosecutors say was most responsible for what happened there, has
never worked for Obsidian.
"Bill did not work
for us, does not work for us, will never work for us," he said.
Stettler, who
regulates the camps in Utah, said that most wilderness therapy
schools operating nationwide are probably safe, but reports of abuse
and neglect are not unusual. Unregulated programs can be magnets for
pedophiles and crooks, Stettler said.
"If I were a child
molester and wanted to get in a situation where I have access to
kids, this is perfect," he said.
With tuition of up
to $350 or more a day per student, the industry can be attractive to
charlatans. "You've got people who say, 'Hey, $15,000 per kid, if I
just took four kids out for six weeks, that's $60,000. That's all I
need to live off of for a year. I don't have to have any training. I
don't have to have any background checks,'" Stettler
said.
Obsidian earned
$618,000 in gross revenues in 1999, according to BLM records.
The deaths at
schools like North Star led Utah in the early 1990s to become the
first Western state to adopt licensing standards and
regulations for wilderness schools. Arizona soon followed suit, and
California has some form of regulation. Idaho and Montana are
looking into regulation. Other Western states, including New Mexico,
Washington and Oregon, have no regulations, said Keith Russell, an
assistant professor at the University of Idaho who studies outdoor
therapy schools.
All agree
regulations needed
Oregon state Rep.
Ben Westlund, R-Bend, is drafting legislation that would require
wilderness therapy schools to be licensed and meet state standards.
Bodenhamer said he
welcomes state oversight of outdoor therapy schools.
"I think in the
long run everyone will profit from that," Bodenhamer said.
Brett Merle,
co-owner of SageWalk, the Outdoor School, the Bend school that
originally hired Eric and Pattie Henry, also endorses state
involvement. Merle was not an owner at the time either Henry was
hired, he said.
"We don't have to
answer to anybody, and that scares the hell out of me," Merle said.
"Oregon needs some (regulation) before children die."
William and Pattie
Henry have a history of involvement with troubled programs, said
Lee, the Utah prosecutor. In 1990, the two were employed at the
Challenger Foundation, where a 16-year-old girl died of hyperthermia
and dehydration.
After Challenger
folded following the unsuccessful prosecution of its owner, Steve
Cartisano, William and Pattie Henry co-founded North Star
Expeditions, also of southern Utah.
Like Challenger,
North Star adopted William Henry's tough approach to dealing with
its students, Lee said.
"I think that Bill
Henry . . . built an atmosphere where the kids were worthless and
not to be trusted," he said.
And that, said Lee,
was conducive to abuse.
Teen loses 23
pounds in a month
Lee said the 1996
prosecution of the Henrys and others involved in North Star was one
of the most emotionally trying cases he'd ever been involved with.
In all, eight
people were charged with felony child neglect and abuse in the death
of A.B., a 131- pound 16-year-old. A.B. died March 31, 1994,
after almost a month of camping in the northern Arizona high desert.
The youth, whose parents had sent him to the school because he had
begun smoking marijuana and his grades had plummeted, lost about 23
pounds while at the camp. Prosecutors say he was deprived of food,
forced to march when he was too weak to even lift his pack, made to
sleep without a sleeping bag in below-freezing temperatures, and
harassed and ridiculed by North Star employees.
His death brought a
flurry of publicity to the wilderness therapy movement in the
mid-1990s, then the attention faded away. Yet the programs continue
to thrive.
Lee said William
Henry not only set the tone for the treatment of A.B., he was
personally informed of and approved of the care A.B. was receiving.
And that care, Lee said, was horrific. A.B. became so weak from an
undiagnosed medical condition that he couldn't keep up with the
group.
On the morning of
A.B.'s death, the field staff finally decided that the boy, who was
too weak to stand, should be taken out of the field.
Eric Henry drove a
truck to the camp to retrieve A.B.
"When Eric did
arrive, they put A.B. in the seat in back of the (club) cab, and
then Eric just came around and shot the breeze with the other
counselors there for about (15 to 20 minutes). I mean they left him
in the truck, goofed around," Lee said. "And kind of poked fun of
(A.B.) and accused him of faking again and told him how pathetic he
looked. And when they got back to the truck, they noticed he was
slumped over. That's when they noticed he wasn't breathing."
Eric Henry began
CPR, but A.B. was either already dead or died shortly after.
An autopsy found
that A.B. died of peritonitis from a perforated ulcer.
Pattie Henry said
authorities grossly distorted the situation. She said no one
suspected the boy was ill and he was not mistreated. She said her
entire family has been devastated by the death.
"Our lives were
destroyed; it was like losing a child of your own," she said.
"That's how you feel about the kids."
Cathy Sutton's
15-year-old daughter died of dehydration in 1990 just three days
after she was enrolled in a Utah program called Summit Quest. Today,
from her Ripon, Calif., home, Sutton runs a nonprofit foundation
that tries to act as a watchdog for the industry.
Her daughter,
Michelle Sutton, was simply hiked to death, she said. While an
extreme case, it underlines the risks to students in these programs,
she says.
Sutton said parents
are almost powerless to assess such programs, particularly in states
that provide no oversight.
In unregulated
states, she said, parents must rely on the information provided by
the programs themselves.
She is now calling
for national regulation of the industry. The reason: Some
individuals who have problems in one state simply move to another
state or country. She said that she was upset, but not surprised,
when she learned that Eric and Pattie Henry were working in Oregon.
"Money is governing
the industry," she said.
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