On the talk-page on Wikipedia people were discussing whether the teenagers who are forced to attend the soon closed Aspen Achievement Academy were students or detainees. Here is a story from one of the now adults who were forced to walk the wilderness.
Yes, I felt like a detainee
It is not my intent to become involved in an argument over the proper use and definition of the word "detainee". However, this debate has been recently brought to my attention, and I feel the need to contribute. As an Aspen Achievement Academy "alumni" or survivor, the question of whether or not I felt like a "detainee" has been posed to me. The answer to that question is "yes".
This is my story:
I ask that any parent thinking about enrolling their child in The Aspen Achievement Academy, to please reconsider. As a former student of the program myself, this request stems from my first hand experiences in the program. Please be for warned that the organization’s advertisements are misleading. I did not see any of the literature provided to my parents until after my return from Utah. After the initial review of a videotape, and several pamphlets provided by the program, I was disgusted. Aspen did not accurately portray itself. My parents were shocked when I came home and they saw the evidence in my backpack, and heard my stories. They had no idea what they had really signed me up for. According to advertisements for the Aspen Achievement Academy, the program resembled a rugged, yet therapeutic summer camp experience. In reality, this could not have been farther than the truth.
It has been nearly twelve years since I spent those two months in the Utah wilderness, and my experience there still haunts me to this day. The extensive neglect that my fellow students and I experienced was unacceptable. I’ll never forget May 11th, 1994. It’s a date that will trouble me for the rest of my life. That morning two strangers awakened me at 5 am. They ordered me to get up and get dressed "because I was going to Utah for a long time". I told them "I couldn’t go to Utah; I had to go to school that day!" However, as it turned out I had no choice. After a lengthy physical struggle with these people, I found myself forced onto a second rate airplane (who’s ever heard of “Morris” airlines anyway?) bound for Salt Lake City. That day remains in my memory as one of the most emotionally devastating and difficult things I have ever been through. My family had betrayed me; they had forever destroyed my full trust in them.
I remember before the program even started, they took us to a therapist, or maybe he was a psychiatrist (they refused to tell me anything), in Provo Utah. It was his job to be sure we were evaluated before being sent out into the desert. One of the worst moments in my life was when this man looked me in the eye and told me that he did NOT believe that I was a very good candidate for the program, but that he was going to recommend that I attend anyway. He said I seemed like a relatively normal and stable teenager. My heart sank; I could actually feel it. He validated this by saying that he thought the program would be good for anyone, even himself.
I felt so helpless. He also told me that my parents had paid $23,000 for my time in the desert. I don’t know where that money went; because it certainly did not go to proper care and feeding of my fellow students and I. Sometimes I suspect that that psychiatrist in Provo saw a fair amount of it for his “recommendation”. All that money my parents spent, for me to just walk for 52 days. Against my will I walked in a line, over cow patties and large rocks, through a desert wasteland, day after day. I remember walking along sheer cliffs with no safety ropes or harnesses, eating from dirty and rancid dishes, and having to use our bare hands to dig up and relocate human "waste" on several occasions. But, I'm getting ahead of myself, all of that didn’t start until a few days later.
The initial “evaluation” period in Utah lasted a couple more days. During that time I stayed with a family in Provo, Utah. The wife (sometimes literally) dragged me around town with her. I joined her while she did things like get her hair done and pick up her kids from school. The family talked to me about God and accepting the Mormon religion into their hearts. It was a confusing couple of days. No one would answer any of my questions. I wish now that I would have screamed and tried harder to run away while we were out in public. We went grocery shopping, and I stayed by her side. During the night I was forced to stay in the living room of her house, guarded by inferred sensitive alarms "so that I could not escape". At the time I thought maybe I was sent to Utah to stay with her. Obviously I had no idea what I was in for. She took me to be drug tested. I have no doubt that the results of this test came up clean. I also spent many hours filling out a lengthy “true or false” personality evaluation. I remember specifically questions such as “I am a secret messenger of God. True or False” and “I like to physically harm small animals. True or False.” It was insulting and humiliating to answer those questions, I wasn’t mentally ill. Looking back, I doubt anyone ever even looked at my answers anyway. I had no idea where I was, or why I was with this strange family.
I slept on their couch for two nights. Then I was transported in a rickety van several hundred miles south to (what I now know was) a remote area of Southern Utah, near the Henry Mountains. That’s when the horror really started.
During the initial days (called “Impact phase”) my fellow group members and I were forced to hike for hours on end with absolutely no food. Our bodies weren’t used to such grueling activity or carrying the primitive backpacks. Several kids screamed, cried and fought. Some collapsed and refused to go on. The counselors were all in good shape. They carried comfortable backpacks, and were able to eat. They stood by, laughing and talking amongst themselves, waiting for us to pick up the fallen victim, even drag them if necessary. I was too exhausted to even talk, let alone expend any energy on tears. They told us nothing; we were at their mercy. I really and truly thought we were going to die. My Mom wrote me a letter a week later, in which she said she had heard that the first phase was “pretty hard”. I resent that understatement to this day. Finally after a few days of “impact phase” we were given a little food (two over ripe bananas to be exact).
Then, later the next day we got a little more, but it was never much. We were starving in Utah; I lost over 20 pounds, and I wasn’t overweight to begin with. We simply were not provided with adequate amounts of food. Often times we were given no food at all, or forced to hike, exhausted for many miles before any food was provided. On a good day, in the mornings we were able to eat half a cup of cold uncooked oatmeal, and then at night if we were lucky we could eat the same amount of cooked potatoes and rice. For a treat we occasionally ate salted pork fat or butter. If we could not start a fire this food was consumed raw. I still eat too fast, and too much as a result of this. To this day I still struggle with my weight and feel like I need to eat as much as possible. Before Utah, it wasn’t ever an issue for me.
Furthermore, the healthcare was unacceptable. There were three specific instances that come to mind concerning this subject. The first concerns my knees. I was born with knee problems (a tendency for my kneecaps to dislocate). During my time with Aspen my knees dislocated twice. This was a preexisting condition, and in no way created by Aspen. However, after each incident I was allowed to rest for only a few minutes and then was forced to hike on the injury. I have still had persistent problems to this day. In fact, a couple of months ago I finally opted for surgery. The surgeon found extensive scar tissue and damage. I wonder how much of it came from those hikes. For the last month in Utah, I also walked on what felt (and looked) to be a broken toe. We were pushing a very heavy handcart that ran over my foot. I got the feeling that they didn’t really believe us when we were hurt. I was never examined, so I can’t be sure if it was broken, but the pain was excruciating for many weeks.
At one point I contracted the stomach flu during the program. One of the counselors came in sick with it once, and I caught it. She got to go home immediately. Meanwhile, I spent three days hiking and vomiting. Eventually I had finally fainted and collapsed several times from the exhaustion, and medical help was brought in. They waited until I was lying helpless in the dirt, physically unable to continue. This was not an acceptable response.
During my two months there, I was allowed to bathe only twice, both times in the same mud and cow filled streams that we drank from. I tried to do the best I could to stay clean, and splash my face with water daily, but it was difficult. Several of the girls got bladder infections. The second bath I took didn’t come until the very end of the program, right before our parents came. We had to stand in the mucky bottom of an icy stream and wash as best we could. Before our parents saw us, we had to wash and change into fresh clothes. If we didn’t then we couldn’t eat. We argued that we wanted them to see us as we really were, but there was never any reasoning with the staff. My Mom didn’t see the tattered truth of what I really wore until we were back home. I remember her crying when she did.
The web site for aspen Achievement Academy contains photos of clean, smiling teenagers. Their clothes are not in rags. There is even a picture of pensive teenagers sitting around a campfire, with a box of hot chocolate in front of them! There is no way we were ever given anything like hot chocolate! These photos in no way resemble the reality. Often times we drank from streams with high sulfur content that made us very sick. More often than not the water in my jug was brown. Sometimes there was even brine shrimp swimming around in it. I’ll never forget the feeling of them squirming on my tongue as I tried to swallow the gritty water, always to the sound of a counselor saying “come on suck it down!” We had to drink it; we had no choice.
As a "student" I had no rights, I was not even treated like a human. I was a prisoner. In fact there were several other teens there with me who had been sent there by the court system as an alternative to Juvenile Hall. Sometimes I couldn’t even pee behind a bush without the rest of the group having to stand guard. People tried to run away, but were hunted down and brought back. At night they took our shoes so that we couldn’t escape into the wilderness, and believe me we would have tried.
As a member of Aspen’s Group 211, I saw a thirteen year old girl turn purple and then blue as the staff sat by waiting for her to get herself up off the ground and keep walking. We walked in circles, up and down mountains, in the heat, in the cold and in the dark. We were always lost. For most of the time we carried a pack made of a blue tarp with seat belt material for straps. It was painful and awkward. Towards the end they finally gave us a real backpack, and more food. That was what our parents saw when the came to meet us. At home people watched OJ Simpson’s white bronco racing down a Los Angeles freeway.
Meanwhile, we walked, completely unaware of what was happening in the outside world. I got the feeling that a war could have broken out, and they wouldn’t have told us anything. We knew absolutely nothing of the outside world for those two months. My Mom was surprised that I got home and had no knowledge of the OJ incident.
We could not even know where we were, or how long we would be there; let alone what was going on at home. If we asked any questions about such things we were punished by having to carry a large stone in our pocket, one for each question. This wouldn't have been so bad if we weren't hiking. But in that circumstance every added ounce of weight can be excruciating. I knew that I was somewhere in Utah, but that was all. There were “no future questions” allowed. We couldn’t even ask when we would get to stop and rest, or be allowed a drink of water, because that concerned the future.
The program relies largely on scare tactics and threats to coerce students into behaving. There was the constant threat that if we didn’t do what was expected, we would be forced to stay longer, or even repeat the entire 52 days, but by ourselves without a group. They told us that our parents had no choice in whether or not we stayed in the program longer. Looking back I can see how ridiculous these claims were, but at the time they seemed to be a real threat. No one really stayed longer; we all went home that day in July.
We did go home as compliant teenagers, but mostly because we were so terrified of returning. My hiking boots were brand new at the start of the program. However, by the end, the tread on the bottoms had worn down completely. They were basically flat bottom boots. That’s how much hiking we did. In fact, that’s pretty much all we did. We hiked and we hiked, always carrying that heavy backpack.
On my high school transcripts there are credits for classes from “Wayne County High School”. I never went to such a school. They are really from my time at Aspen. These “classes” consisted of the completion a series of “curriculum” packets. They were really just confusing worksheets stapled together. The worksheets had obviously been typed out by one of the Aspen staff members. The physical education credits however, I had earned tenfold! There was a wonderful older man by the name of “LaVoy” who I found out later, was supposed to be the teacher. To the best of my knowledge, he had been a local sheep farmer for his whole life, and had never taught in any classroom. He would come and visit rarely, and when he did it was never for an actual academic lesson that I can remember. I do remember that never the less, that his visits were one of the few pleasant things about the whole experience. Actually, the academic instruction was a responsibility delegated to one of the older students and me. We, of course did not understand anything included in the curriculum anymore than the other kids did, yet were the ones expected to “teach”. At the time I had no idea what, or how to teach. They told us it was a reward, because we were always the first ones packed up and crushing the coals from the fire every morning. It seemed like a strange reward to me.
Aspen markets itself as a “therapeutic” environment. I find that strange too. There was very little actual “therapy” involved. Once a week, for half and hour or less a “therapist” would come speak with us. This was an occasion we looked forward to because for one, the therapist would bring each of us an apple to eat, and for two, it got us out of having to hike for a couple of hours. Other than that they were of no consequence. These therapy sessions were to brief and far between to be of any help. Mostly in Aspen we just walked and starved. The only other mention of something resembling therapy came each morning when one of the 19 to 21 year old staff members would ask us to use a single word to describe how we felt for that day. We’d go around the circle saying things like “sad”, “mad” or “depressed”. The staff would nod. Then we’d all put on our packs and spend the next eleven hours walking. The “therapy” was a joke.
Apparently the “therapist” had periodic phone conversations with my parents. I don’t know what they could have talked about; the therapist knew little of me, or my daily experiences in the program.
My main connection to my parents was the letters that we wrote back and forth. The staff had to sensor them all. I never sent or received a sealed envelope. I had to be careful about what I wrote. I tried to tell my parents what was happening, but it was hard. When I got home I found out that they warned our parents that we would exaggerate and not to believe our first hand descriptions of the program. I even heard that my parents had to actually sign over custody of me to the program, and couldn’t have taken me out if they wanted to. I don’t know if that was true, or just another scare tactic used by the Aspen staff, but that’s what they told us.
To this day my parents and I rarely (if ever) talk about Utah. About once every few years I casually bring up the subject. They never do. I still have a hard time finding the ability to forgive them in my heart. I hated them like never before during the entire program. I was not happy when they arrived in Utah for the last 2 days of the program, nor did our relationship improve once we got home. It got worse for a while, and to this day I still hold a grudge because of the experience.
I know that they had been misinformed, but it is still difficult to forgive them. Before I went to Utah, I was a relatively good kid. I was seventeen years old. Sure, I wasn’t perfect. I had tried smoking cigarettes, tried smoking pot (and hated it) and had sex with two people. When compared to my peers I was fairly normal. Aspen didn’t care; they’ll take anyone whose parents will pay. After I came back from the program I had lost all sense of self worth and self-respect. I decided I didn’t care; it no longer mattered if I continued to resist the bad things in life, because I had already been so severely punished. Within a month of my return I had tried hard-core drugs (such as hallucinogens and Crystal Meth), I spent time in crack houses, with homeless drug addicts, and became a heavy smoker. I also had a lot of casual unprotected sex with different partners, had essentially decided to drop out of high school, and even had an affair with a much older man.
Before Aspen I wouldn’t have done any of this. But because of the fact that I’d been punished already whether I was "good" or not, I didn’t care anymore. I’d been through a much more traumatic experience in Utah, drugs and street people couldn’t even compare. Also, after hearing about some of the things the other kids in Aspen had done in their lives I felt like a prude. Actually in comparison to some of them, I still wasn’t very out of control. I learned not to trust my parents under any circumstances. While I had once shared the details of my life with them, I had learned what they were capable of. I knew I had to be careful about letting them in ever again. After Utah, I lied and pretended. I felt like I had to; because I was so afraid that they would send me back if I wasn’t absolutely perfect.
many years after the experience I was tormented by nightmares about Utah and my time there. I’ve been back to the state, and even out into the desert where the program was held, all in an effort to make peace with the memories. Slowly, over time I did recover. I only dream about it ever few months now, and I’m rarely kept up at night by the memories anymore. I think my parents are still paying off the loan they took out to pay for Aspen. I wish they had used the money to help me in school, or something like that instead.
Eventually I recovered, and got on a good track. But I feel that (had I not been sent to Aspen) I would have become a healthy productive adult much sooner. In recent years I have heard that the program has been altered slightly. Apparently students now progress through the program at their own rate. It is no longer an issue to wait for everyone in the group to complete a task. Maybe this helps to control the animosity and resentment that existed in my group. We hated each other much of the time. Still, no matter how many changes are made in the program, or how many favorable accounts they post on their web site, I would NEVER recommend this program to anyone.
Now despite the “Aspen Experience”, twelve years later I have been able to successfully graduate from college, find a healthy love relationship, a job as a teacher, and even quit smoking. I have become the person my parents had hoped I would be. But, I still have nightmares of Utah.
I remember Aspen T-shirts that read, “You’ll go to Hell and Back”. They were half right; I went to hell all right, but it took nearly a decade for me to make it back.
References:
Datasheet on the program on Fornits Wiki
The original statement - slightly edited to make it easier to read
mandag den 16. maj 2011
søndag den 17. april 2011
With the news of several programs closing or merging
Aspen Education Group did announce that Aspen Achievement Academy will be merged into another wilderness program. So will an adult program also managed by the same owner. It will merge into SUWS in Idaho.
The blog Today-a-child-died wrote a story about how harsh the now closed Texas Wilderness program was. Fact is that several wilderness programs managed by Aspen Education Group have lost clients during the expeditions.
As mentioned one of the deaths was in the Texas wilderness program. Here is a link to the blog-entry: Matthew Meyers - 2004
The blog Today-a-child-died wrote a story about how harsh the now closed Texas Wilderness program was. Fact is that several wilderness programs managed by Aspen Education Group have lost clients during the expeditions.
As mentioned one of the deaths was in the Texas wilderness program. Here is a link to the blog-entry: Matthew Meyers - 2004
søndag den 27. marts 2011
Making profit of our nature
Most people want to preserve the nature and the politicians have started to listen. However when you are in a business making profit of the nature, this is of course hard to understand. Here is what one of the founders of a wilderness program wrote in response to the improved protection of the nature.
WILDERNESS THERAPY CHALLENGED
by Larry J. Wells (Press-release on strugglingteens.com - a industry marketing firm)
(Larry Wells is one of the pioneers in wilderness therapy. He founded Wilderness Quest in Utah (originally called Wilderness Conquest) in 1988. In 1971 Larry began doing trips for the State of Idaho and Wilderness Quest later became one of the early private-pay, parent-choice wilderness therapy programs.)
WILDERNESS THERAPY CHALLENGED
by Larry J. Wells (Press-release on strugglingteens.com - a industry marketing firm)
Having read Order No. 3310 issued by Secretary Salazor, Federal Department of the Interior, to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), I believe all outdoor based treatment programs using public lands should be aware of its potential impact. It is an order to find and recognize lands with "Wilderness Characteristics" (it does not say what those characteristics are) OUTSIDE of the Wilderness Study Areas and OUTSIDE of the units of the National Wilderness Preservation System.
It states they shall be described as "Lands with Wilderness Characteristics", and if the BLM concludes that protection of the areas designated with wilderness characteristics is appropriate, the BLM shall designate these lands as "Wild Lands" in their land use planning. They will be managed as wilderness designation areas. This directs the BLM to manage areas as Wilderness without congressional approval, thus without voter input.
When an area is managed as "Wilderness", it means several things. First, it means absolutely no mechanized use. Cars, trucks, ATV's, fixed wing airplane for cargo drop and even bicycles would be prohibited, making it exceedingly difficult to support a group in the field and/or effectively deal with emergencies.
Recently, one outdoor based treatment program was denied permission to move a wheeled portable radio repeater by hand to the needed location because wheels are not allowed off the road because the wheels are mechanical and damaging to the environment.
When I operated in Idaho, to get permission to bring a helicopter into a designated wilderness area was time consuming and complicated. To bring one into national forest or BLM land in that case was not life or death, but I wanted to be on the safe side. However, under the proposed regulations, A helicopter may not be approved in any situation, depending on the person you are dealing with.
Second, it is up to the bureaucrat in charge of the land to decide what constitutes "Wilderness Characteristics" and what management decisions are required to preserve them. The BLM will have unlimited latitude in their management decisions. They may not put many restrictions on the land use, or they may completely close an area to any use, or anything in between.
The pattern that removed grazing is instructive. Although the original explanation included acceptance of many current routine activities, the eventual decision was no motorized repair of springs, trails, stock ponds, fences or corrals and this included use of chain saws. To operate in these areas, everybody had to pack feed for their horses, establish no permanent corral or line camp structures, and at one point they had to defend the horse being able to leave manure on the trail.
Currently one program is being told they cannot gather materials for primitive skills. They can use only dead wood on the ground, but no local rocks are allowed to be used and a decision is being made on yucca leaf for cordage.
The order further states the BLM should develop recommendations, "with public involvement," regarding possible Congressional designation of lands into the National Wilderness Preservation System. Based on my experience presenting at the hearings in San Juan County, Utah last fall on behalf of Wilderness Quest (I am no longer a part of Wilderness Quest, but agreed to present at the hearings), the statement "with public involvement" is referring to organized environmental groups, not local citizens.
To put this into context, the BLM already has many different land area designations, including WSA, WSR, ACEC, SRMA, and others. With many outdoor based treatment programs having permits with the Forest Service, Park Service and the BLM, all the rules are becoming harder to conform to and these new rules are becoming a detriment to providing the opportunities needed for an effective treatment program.
The BLM has never repaired roads in San Juan County, which is a county function, so when I owned Wilderness Quest we did a lot of road repair as service projects to keep the roads usable. Now the BLM states if road repair is conducted there can be no disturbance outside of the road track area. This makes road repair impossible because rocks and soil must be gathered to fill washouts, or you need to create a drainage path off the road, etc. This will effectively close some roads.
We did not use stoves except during fire closures as I feel wood is a far more renewable resource than any form of fuel for backpack stoves. We used a fire pan, crushed coals into a fine powder, scattering it to wash and blow away. Now a fire pad is required under the fire, and fires are not allowed in Dark Canyon, Fable Valley, White Canyon nor any of their side canyons. This requires stove and fuel. Students must pack out their feces, and all charcoal. It is already a challenge in the winter to meet the state licensing regulations regarding pack weight at 4000 calories per day and extra clothing using a one week resupply. Add one week of feces, charcoal, fuel and stoves and the loss of the one week resupply, the program is becoming less and less of a wilderness program.
The treatment industry needs to lobby against the closing of areas by wilderness management that will take away the ability to provide the 24 hour support for safety. It is also my belief the regulations are against providing appropriate outdoor opportunities for treatment that can fill the gap that mental health, talking therapy and RTC's did not meet for certain adolescents.
Filling that gap is the reason we started doing what we do. It would be harmful to the children we help if this opportunity were lost due to an increasing pattern of restrictive regulations.
(Larry Wells is one of the pioneers in wilderness therapy. He founded Wilderness Quest in Utah (originally called Wilderness Conquest) in 1988. In 1971 Larry began doing trips for the State of Idaho and Wilderness Quest later became one of the early private-pay, parent-choice wilderness therapy programs.)
søndag den 20. februar 2011
Willow G's statement to HEAL-online
A person sent this statement to a human rights organization in the United States named HEAL-online about her stay in a wilderness program in Utah. All rights to this story belongs to the Author, who is known by organization:
Everything in my statement is true. I give HEAL permission to use my statement. I went to aspen
achievement academy in 1991.
I read 2 of the survivors stories and that is exactly what happened to me while I was there. EXACTLY!!!!!!!!!! it makes me think they had to have been written by two of the kids I was there with. the people at aspen are insane. I was starved for the 1st 3 days. starved as punishment.
I was there in December and January. the clothes I was given did not fit me. the 'hiking boots" they gave me had totally bald soles from the 1st day I had them. I was not allowed to bathe in any way shape or form for 60 days. 8 pairs of underwear were doled out to over the 60 days when the "counselors" or whatever they were felt we needed clean ones. thank god I never got my period while I was there. I never once menstruated while in Utah, I always figured that I was so malnourished that there was no way I could have afforded to loose any blood. the adults that were there with us were horrendous.
Two them from the first group we had were getting married and I remember hearing them having sex at night. the woman gave me I knife when I told her I wanted to kill myself so I could get out of Utah. our "therapist" Robert was a joke. he enjoyed seeing ho w angry we would get.he would verbally abuse me to the point of hysteria every time, no matter how determined I would be to not freak out during "therapy", I almost pushed him off a cliff once and didn't give it a second thought.
There are a few people that I have to mention because if they would not have been there I can't even imagine how bad it would have been.
Levoy the teacher, was the nicest, kindest, sweetest teacher I could have asked for. he would bring us bananas and sneak them to us behind the "counselors" backs. he told us that the reason he worked for aspen was because he knew how they treated us and he wanted to be there to make it even a tiny bit better for us if he could. I love that man. I would call him a saint and our "counselors" demons.
Except for "Sept" his real name was mike but he told us it was sept, short for September, AND I still have no idea why. he actually showed us how adjust the backpacks that we got for about 2 weeks. they were given to us without sizing considerations and with no instructions on how to wear it properly so that our lower backs weren't getting the entire weight of the pack. he also stood up to the other "counselors" when they would want to punish us in some insane way for anything they felt like.
I remember having to walk around a hill for hours and hours in a circle. starting it during daylight and not being able to stop until the sun started coming up the next morn. I don't know how many times I collapsed from exhaustion and malnutrition. we drank water that came from streams with cow feces I n it. while we watched the "counselors" drink bottled water they brought from home. we ate raw sticks of butter, raw oatmeal, and raw potatoes while they ate the meat that they had taken away from us as punishment. the other girl there once tried to fight me and OUR punishment was having our wrists tied together every minute if every day and night fir 2 weeks while we were hiking, sleeping, going to the bathroom, climbing mountains everything. and there was also the hand cart, it is a huge wheelbarrow that takes at least 4 people to push. one on each wheel, manually turning the spokes with your raw un gloved hands.
And two behind the bar in front pushing it forward basically with our abdomens. me and the other girl had huge swollen bruises across our whole stomach region that we had to keep pushing against every day pushing the hand cart, the only time we ever slept in any kind of enclosure was when we pushing the hand cart. it was filled with a huge 3 room tent made of canvas with all the poles and stakes, all the "counselors" backpacks, tons of huge heavy iron skillets and the most food we ever saw out there. one of the guys punched the wheel of the handcart and broke his hand. he never got medical treatment. he had his poor broken shattered hand wrapped in dirty rags for weeks. if your wondering why he punched the wheel, it was because one of the "counselors" had tackled him and broke his glasses . they never got replaced and he has half blind for the last 3 weeks we were there.
We also were made to bathe before our parents saw as . the 2 guys and the 2 girls each had to share a cannibal pot of warmed water to wash off 59 days of filth. I spent Christmas in solitude
confinement eating raw potatoes and sticks of butter while everyone else ate the biggest meal we
were given. I had to join the group during dinner and watch h them eat their dinner while I ate
butter. this was my punishment for crying the day before, x mas eve, when I read the letters my
family sent me. I could go on and on. everything that I read from the other 2 stories is absolutely true!!!
Everything from being tackled in the middle of the night in your room and getting taken to
Utah, to the bullshit they told our parents when they were signing us up, and having to sign over custody of us to aspen achievement academy is also absolutely TRUE!!!!!!!!!!!
I vowed to someday go back there are save some kids from this. but even to this day, 13 years later I can not find where I was on a map,on google earth, anything.
I’ve driven through the north part of the state 4 times and I cry the whole way through. I don't stop for anything, and I pray the entire time that I don';t get captured and taken back to the high desert mountains of , I think, southern Utah, where we were considered devil children that were brought there to be tortured as punishment for being teenagers that were not mormons, I was 14 when I went there. smoked pot twice, had gotten drunk a handful of times and I didn't even know things like meth and herion existed until I learned all about them from the other kids there. I got out and couldn’t wait to do speed and acid.
I’m going to look on the internet right now and try to find out where I was in Utah, cuz after writing this I know I need to go there and save anyone I can from there, either that or sit outside their offices begging everyone that walks through t their doors ready to enroll their children to not do it.
I have never felt so hopeless, helpless and scared as I did for those 60 days of my life. I will do anything I can do to stop a parent from enrolling their child into aspen achievement academy. you just let me know and I’m there.
four20willow(a)yahoo.com
Aspen Achievement Academy continues to be in operation despite the fact that teenagers have lost their lives in this particular wilderness program.
References:
The original statement
Datasheet over the program on the wiki database of Fornits
Everything in my statement is true. I give HEAL permission to use my statement. I went to aspen
achievement academy in 1991.
I read 2 of the survivors stories and that is exactly what happened to me while I was there. EXACTLY!!!!!!!!!! it makes me think they had to have been written by two of the kids I was there with. the people at aspen are insane. I was starved for the 1st 3 days. starved as punishment.
I was there in December and January. the clothes I was given did not fit me. the 'hiking boots" they gave me had totally bald soles from the 1st day I had them. I was not allowed to bathe in any way shape or form for 60 days. 8 pairs of underwear were doled out to over the 60 days when the "counselors" or whatever they were felt we needed clean ones. thank god I never got my period while I was there. I never once menstruated while in Utah, I always figured that I was so malnourished that there was no way I could have afforded to loose any blood. the adults that were there with us were horrendous.
Two them from the first group we had were getting married and I remember hearing them having sex at night. the woman gave me I knife when I told her I wanted to kill myself so I could get out of Utah. our "therapist" Robert was a joke. he enjoyed seeing ho w angry we would get.he would verbally abuse me to the point of hysteria every time, no matter how determined I would be to not freak out during "therapy", I almost pushed him off a cliff once and didn't give it a second thought.
There are a few people that I have to mention because if they would not have been there I can't even imagine how bad it would have been.
Levoy the teacher, was the nicest, kindest, sweetest teacher I could have asked for. he would bring us bananas and sneak them to us behind the "counselors" backs. he told us that the reason he worked for aspen was because he knew how they treated us and he wanted to be there to make it even a tiny bit better for us if he could. I love that man. I would call him a saint and our "counselors" demons.
Except for "Sept" his real name was mike but he told us it was sept, short for September, AND I still have no idea why. he actually showed us how adjust the backpacks that we got for about 2 weeks. they were given to us without sizing considerations and with no instructions on how to wear it properly so that our lower backs weren't getting the entire weight of the pack. he also stood up to the other "counselors" when they would want to punish us in some insane way for anything they felt like.
I remember having to walk around a hill for hours and hours in a circle. starting it during daylight and not being able to stop until the sun started coming up the next morn. I don't know how many times I collapsed from exhaustion and malnutrition. we drank water that came from streams with cow feces I n it. while we watched the "counselors" drink bottled water they brought from home. we ate raw sticks of butter, raw oatmeal, and raw potatoes while they ate the meat that they had taken away from us as punishment. the other girl there once tried to fight me and OUR punishment was having our wrists tied together every minute if every day and night fir 2 weeks while we were hiking, sleeping, going to the bathroom, climbing mountains everything. and there was also the hand cart, it is a huge wheelbarrow that takes at least 4 people to push. one on each wheel, manually turning the spokes with your raw un gloved hands.
And two behind the bar in front pushing it forward basically with our abdomens. me and the other girl had huge swollen bruises across our whole stomach region that we had to keep pushing against every day pushing the hand cart, the only time we ever slept in any kind of enclosure was when we pushing the hand cart. it was filled with a huge 3 room tent made of canvas with all the poles and stakes, all the "counselors" backpacks, tons of huge heavy iron skillets and the most food we ever saw out there. one of the guys punched the wheel of the handcart and broke his hand. he never got medical treatment. he had his poor broken shattered hand wrapped in dirty rags for weeks. if your wondering why he punched the wheel, it was because one of the "counselors" had tackled him and broke his glasses . they never got replaced and he has half blind for the last 3 weeks we were there.
We also were made to bathe before our parents saw as . the 2 guys and the 2 girls each had to share a cannibal pot of warmed water to wash off 59 days of filth. I spent Christmas in solitude
confinement eating raw potatoes and sticks of butter while everyone else ate the biggest meal we
were given. I had to join the group during dinner and watch h them eat their dinner while I ate
butter. this was my punishment for crying the day before, x mas eve, when I read the letters my
family sent me. I could go on and on. everything that I read from the other 2 stories is absolutely true!!!
Everything from being tackled in the middle of the night in your room and getting taken to
Utah, to the bullshit they told our parents when they were signing us up, and having to sign over custody of us to aspen achievement academy is also absolutely TRUE!!!!!!!!!!!
I vowed to someday go back there are save some kids from this. but even to this day, 13 years later I can not find where I was on a map,on google earth, anything.
I’ve driven through the north part of the state 4 times and I cry the whole way through. I don't stop for anything, and I pray the entire time that I don';t get captured and taken back to the high desert mountains of , I think, southern Utah, where we were considered devil children that were brought there to be tortured as punishment for being teenagers that were not mormons, I was 14 when I went there. smoked pot twice, had gotten drunk a handful of times and I didn't even know things like meth and herion existed until I learned all about them from the other kids there. I got out and couldn’t wait to do speed and acid.
I’m going to look on the internet right now and try to find out where I was in Utah, cuz after writing this I know I need to go there and save anyone I can from there, either that or sit outside their offices begging everyone that walks through t their doors ready to enroll their children to not do it.
I have never felt so hopeless, helpless and scared as I did for those 60 days of my life. I will do anything I can do to stop a parent from enrolling their child into aspen achievement academy. you just let me know and I’m there.
four20willow(a)yahoo.com
Aspen Achievement Academy continues to be in operation despite the fact that teenagers have lost their lives in this particular wilderness program.
References:
The original statement
Datasheet over the program on the wiki database of Fornits
søndag den 16. januar 2011
H.E's statement to HEAL-online
A person sent this statement to a human rights organization in the United States named HEAL-online about her stay in a wilderness program in Utah. All rights to this story belongs to the Author, who is known by organization:
I hope this helps.
Everything in my statement is true, I give HEAL permission to use my statement. I ask that any parent thinking about enrolling their child in The Aspen Achievement program in Loa Utah, please reconsider. As a former student of the program myself, I did not see any of the literature provided to my parents until after my return from the program. After the initial review of videotape, and several pamphlets provided by the program I was shocked. The program did not accurately portray itself. According to advertisements for the Aspen Achievement Academy, the program resembled a rugged and therapeutic summer camp experience. In reality this could not have been farther than the truth.
It has been nearly twelve years since I spent those two months in the Utah wilderness, and my experience still haunts me to this day. The extensive neglect and abuse that my fellow students and I experienced was unacceptable. My parents were shocked when I came home and they saw the evidence in my backpack, and heard my stories.
I’ll never forget the morning of May 11th, 1994. It’s a date that will haunt me for the rest of my life. Two strangers awaked me at 5 am. They ordered me to get up and get dressed because I was going to Utah. I told them I couldn’t go to Utah; I had to go to school that day! It turned out I had no choice. After a lengthy struggle I found myself forced onto a second rate airplane (who’s ever heard of “Morrissey” airlines anyway) bound for Salt Lake City. It remains one of the most emotionally devastating and difficult things I have ever been through.
I remember before the program even started, they took us to a consular, or maybe he was a physiatrist in Provo Utah to be evaluated. One of the worst moments in my life was when he looked me in the eye and told me that he did not believe that I was a good candidate for the program. He said he I seemed like a relatively normal and stable teenager, but that he was going to recommend that I attend despite this. He said that he thought the program would be good for anyone, even himself. He also told me that my parents had agreed to pay $23,000 for my time in the desert. I don’t know where that money went, because it certainly did not go to proper care and feeding of my fellow students and I.
We were starving in Utah; I lost over 20 pounds. We simply were not provided wit adequate amounts of food. Often times we were given no food at all, or forced to hike, exhausted for many miles before any food was provided. On a good day, in the mornings we were able to eat half a cup of cold instant oatmeal, and then at night if we were lucky we could eat the same amount of cooked potatoes and rice. If we could not start a fire this food was consumed raw.
Furthermore, the healthcare was unacceptable. There were three specific instances that come to mind concerning this subject. The first concerns my knees. I was born with knee problems (a tendency for my kneecaps to dislocate). During my time with Aspen my knees dislocated twice. This was a preexisting condition, and in no way created by Aspen. However, after each incident I was allowed to rest for a few minutes and then was soon forced to hike on the injury. As a result I have had persistent problems to this day. In fact, a couple of months ago I finally opted for surgery. The surgeon found extensive scar tissue and damage. For the last month I also walked on what felt to be a broken toe. I was never examined, so I can’t be sure, but the pain was excruciating for several weeks.
At one point I contracted the stomach flu during the program. I spent three days hiking and vomiting. Eventually after I had finally fainted several times from the exhaustion, medical help was brought in. This was not an acceptable response.
During my two months there, I was allowed to bathe only twice, both times in the same mud and cow filled stream that we drank from. The second bath came at the end of the program, right before our parents came. Before they saw us, we had to wash and change into fresh clothes. My Mom didn’t see the tattered truth of what I really wore until we were back home. I remember her crying when she did. As a student I had no rights, I was not even treated like a human. I was a prisoner.
Often times we drank from streams with high sulfur content that made us very sick. Sore often than not the water in my jug was brow, with brine shrimp swimming in it. I’ll never forget the feeling of them squirming on my tongue as I tried to swallow the gritty water, always to the sound of a counselor “come on SUCK IT DOWN!” We had to drink it; we had no choice.
As a member of Aspen Group 211, I saw a thirteen year old girl turn purple and then blue as the staff sat by waiting for her to get herself up off the ground and keep walking. We walked in circles, up and down mountains, in the heat, in the cold and in the dark. We were always lost. For most of the time we carried a pack made of a blue tarp with seat belt material for straps. It was painful and awkward.
My hiking boots were new at the start of the program, and by the end the tread on the bottoms had worn down completely, they were flat. We could not know where we were or how long we would be there. There were “no future questions” allowed. I remember walking along sheer cliffs with no safety ropes or harnesses, eating from dirty and rancid dishes, and having to use our bare hands to dig up and “relocate” human "waste" on several occasions.
On my high school transcripts there are credits for classes from “Wayne County High School”. They are really from my time at Aspen. These “classes” consisted of the completion a series of “curriculum” packets. They were really just confusing worksheets, that had obviously been typed out by one of the Aspen staff members.
There was a wonderful older man by the name of “Levoy” who was supposed to be the teacher. He would come and visit rarely, and when he did it was never for an actual academic lesson. I do remember that never the less, his visits were one of the few pleasant things about the whole experience.
Actually, the academic instruction was a responsibility delegated to myself, and another one of the older students. We of course did not understand anything included in the curriculum anymore than the other kids, yet were the ones expected to “teach”. They told us it was a reward, because we were always the first ones packed up and crushing the coals from the fire. It seemed like a strange reward to me.
Aspen markets itself as a “therapeutic” environment. There was very little actual “therapy” involved. Once a week, for half and hour a “therapist” would come speak with us. This was an occasion we looked forward to because for one, the therapist would bring each of us an apple to eat, and for two, it got us out of having to hike for a couple of hours. These therapy sessions were to brief and far between to be of any help. The only other mention of therapy came each morning when one of the 19-21 year old staff members would ask us to use a single word to describe how we felt for that day. The “therapy” was a joke.
Apparently the “therapist” had periodic phone conversations with my parents. I don’t know what they could have talked about; the therapist knew little of me, or my daily experiences in the program. My main connection to my parents was the letters that we wrote back and forth. The staff had to sensor them all. I never sent or received a sealed envelope. I had to be careful about what I wrote. I tried to tell my parents what was happening, but it was hard. When I got home I found out that they warned our parents that we would exaggerate and not to believe our first hand descriptions of the program.
To this day we rarely if ever talk about Utah. About once every few year I casually bring up the subject. They never do. I still have a hard time finding the ability to forgive them in my heart. I hated them like never before during the program. I was not happy when they arrived in Utah for the last 2 days of the program, nor did our relationship improve once we got home. It got worse, and to this day I still hold a grudge because of the experience.
Before I went to Utah, I was a relatively good kid. I was seventeen years old. I had tried smoking cigarettes, tried smoking pot (and hated it) and had sex with two people. When compared to my peers I was fairly normal. Aspen didn’t care; they’ll take anyone whose parents will pay. After I came back from the program I had lost all sense of self worth and self-respect. I decided I didn’t care; it no longer mattered if I continued to resist the bad things in life, because I had already been punished. Within a month of my return I had tried hard-core drugs such as Crystal Meth, become a heavy smoker, had a lot of casual unprotected sex, and even had an affair with a man in his late twenties. Before Aspen I wouldn’t have done any of this. For many years after the experience I was tormented by nightmares about Utah and my time there. I’ve been back to the state, and even out into the desert where the program was held, all in an effort to make peace with the memories. Slowly, over time I did recover. I think my parents are still paying off the loan they took out to pay for Aspen. I wish they had used the money to help me in school instead.
Eventually I recovered, and got on a good track. But, I feel that had I not been sent to Aspen, I would have become a healthy productive adult much sooner. In recent years I have heard that the program has been altered slightly. Apparently students now progress through the program at their own rate. It is no longer an issue to wait for everyone in the group to complete a task. Maybe this helps to control the animosity and resentment that existed in my group. Still, no matter how many changes are made in the program, or how many favorable accounts they post on their web site, I would NEVER recommend this program to anyone.
Now, despite the “Aspen Experience” twelve years later I have been able to successfully graduate from college, find a healthy love relationship, a job as a teacher, and even (very recently) quit smoking. I have become the person my parents had hoped I would be. But, I still have nightmares of Utah. I remember Aspen T-shirts that read, “You’ll go to Hell and Back”. They were half right, I went there, but it took nearly a decade for me to make it back.
Aspen Achievement Academy continues to be in operation despite the fact that teenagers have lost their lives in this particular wilderness program.
References:
The original statement
Datasheet over the program on the wiki database of Fornits
I hope this helps.
Everything in my statement is true, I give HEAL permission to use my statement. I ask that any parent thinking about enrolling their child in The Aspen Achievement program in Loa Utah, please reconsider. As a former student of the program myself, I did not see any of the literature provided to my parents until after my return from the program. After the initial review of videotape, and several pamphlets provided by the program I was shocked. The program did not accurately portray itself. According to advertisements for the Aspen Achievement Academy, the program resembled a rugged and therapeutic summer camp experience. In reality this could not have been farther than the truth.
It has been nearly twelve years since I spent those two months in the Utah wilderness, and my experience still haunts me to this day. The extensive neglect and abuse that my fellow students and I experienced was unacceptable. My parents were shocked when I came home and they saw the evidence in my backpack, and heard my stories.
I’ll never forget the morning of May 11th, 1994. It’s a date that will haunt me for the rest of my life. Two strangers awaked me at 5 am. They ordered me to get up and get dressed because I was going to Utah. I told them I couldn’t go to Utah; I had to go to school that day! It turned out I had no choice. After a lengthy struggle I found myself forced onto a second rate airplane (who’s ever heard of “Morrissey” airlines anyway) bound for Salt Lake City. It remains one of the most emotionally devastating and difficult things I have ever been through.
I remember before the program even started, they took us to a consular, or maybe he was a physiatrist in Provo Utah to be evaluated. One of the worst moments in my life was when he looked me in the eye and told me that he did not believe that I was a good candidate for the program. He said he I seemed like a relatively normal and stable teenager, but that he was going to recommend that I attend despite this. He said that he thought the program would be good for anyone, even himself. He also told me that my parents had agreed to pay $23,000 for my time in the desert. I don’t know where that money went, because it certainly did not go to proper care and feeding of my fellow students and I.
We were starving in Utah; I lost over 20 pounds. We simply were not provided wit adequate amounts of food. Often times we were given no food at all, or forced to hike, exhausted for many miles before any food was provided. On a good day, in the mornings we were able to eat half a cup of cold instant oatmeal, and then at night if we were lucky we could eat the same amount of cooked potatoes and rice. If we could not start a fire this food was consumed raw.
Furthermore, the healthcare was unacceptable. There were three specific instances that come to mind concerning this subject. The first concerns my knees. I was born with knee problems (a tendency for my kneecaps to dislocate). During my time with Aspen my knees dislocated twice. This was a preexisting condition, and in no way created by Aspen. However, after each incident I was allowed to rest for a few minutes and then was soon forced to hike on the injury. As a result I have had persistent problems to this day. In fact, a couple of months ago I finally opted for surgery. The surgeon found extensive scar tissue and damage. For the last month I also walked on what felt to be a broken toe. I was never examined, so I can’t be sure, but the pain was excruciating for several weeks.
At one point I contracted the stomach flu during the program. I spent three days hiking and vomiting. Eventually after I had finally fainted several times from the exhaustion, medical help was brought in. This was not an acceptable response.
During my two months there, I was allowed to bathe only twice, both times in the same mud and cow filled stream that we drank from. The second bath came at the end of the program, right before our parents came. Before they saw us, we had to wash and change into fresh clothes. My Mom didn’t see the tattered truth of what I really wore until we were back home. I remember her crying when she did. As a student I had no rights, I was not even treated like a human. I was a prisoner.
Often times we drank from streams with high sulfur content that made us very sick. Sore often than not the water in my jug was brow, with brine shrimp swimming in it. I’ll never forget the feeling of them squirming on my tongue as I tried to swallow the gritty water, always to the sound of a counselor “come on SUCK IT DOWN!” We had to drink it; we had no choice.
As a member of Aspen Group 211, I saw a thirteen year old girl turn purple and then blue as the staff sat by waiting for her to get herself up off the ground and keep walking. We walked in circles, up and down mountains, in the heat, in the cold and in the dark. We were always lost. For most of the time we carried a pack made of a blue tarp with seat belt material for straps. It was painful and awkward.
My hiking boots were new at the start of the program, and by the end the tread on the bottoms had worn down completely, they were flat. We could not know where we were or how long we would be there. There were “no future questions” allowed. I remember walking along sheer cliffs with no safety ropes or harnesses, eating from dirty and rancid dishes, and having to use our bare hands to dig up and “relocate” human "waste" on several occasions.
On my high school transcripts there are credits for classes from “Wayne County High School”. They are really from my time at Aspen. These “classes” consisted of the completion a series of “curriculum” packets. They were really just confusing worksheets, that had obviously been typed out by one of the Aspen staff members.
There was a wonderful older man by the name of “Levoy” who was supposed to be the teacher. He would come and visit rarely, and when he did it was never for an actual academic lesson. I do remember that never the less, his visits were one of the few pleasant things about the whole experience.
Actually, the academic instruction was a responsibility delegated to myself, and another one of the older students. We of course did not understand anything included in the curriculum anymore than the other kids, yet were the ones expected to “teach”. They told us it was a reward, because we were always the first ones packed up and crushing the coals from the fire. It seemed like a strange reward to me.
Aspen markets itself as a “therapeutic” environment. There was very little actual “therapy” involved. Once a week, for half and hour a “therapist” would come speak with us. This was an occasion we looked forward to because for one, the therapist would bring each of us an apple to eat, and for two, it got us out of having to hike for a couple of hours. These therapy sessions were to brief and far between to be of any help. The only other mention of therapy came each morning when one of the 19-21 year old staff members would ask us to use a single word to describe how we felt for that day. The “therapy” was a joke.
Apparently the “therapist” had periodic phone conversations with my parents. I don’t know what they could have talked about; the therapist knew little of me, or my daily experiences in the program. My main connection to my parents was the letters that we wrote back and forth. The staff had to sensor them all. I never sent or received a sealed envelope. I had to be careful about what I wrote. I tried to tell my parents what was happening, but it was hard. When I got home I found out that they warned our parents that we would exaggerate and not to believe our first hand descriptions of the program.
To this day we rarely if ever talk about Utah. About once every few year I casually bring up the subject. They never do. I still have a hard time finding the ability to forgive them in my heart. I hated them like never before during the program. I was not happy when they arrived in Utah for the last 2 days of the program, nor did our relationship improve once we got home. It got worse, and to this day I still hold a grudge because of the experience.
Before I went to Utah, I was a relatively good kid. I was seventeen years old. I had tried smoking cigarettes, tried smoking pot (and hated it) and had sex with two people. When compared to my peers I was fairly normal. Aspen didn’t care; they’ll take anyone whose parents will pay. After I came back from the program I had lost all sense of self worth and self-respect. I decided I didn’t care; it no longer mattered if I continued to resist the bad things in life, because I had already been punished. Within a month of my return I had tried hard-core drugs such as Crystal Meth, become a heavy smoker, had a lot of casual unprotected sex, and even had an affair with a man in his late twenties. Before Aspen I wouldn’t have done any of this. For many years after the experience I was tormented by nightmares about Utah and my time there. I’ve been back to the state, and even out into the desert where the program was held, all in an effort to make peace with the memories. Slowly, over time I did recover. I think my parents are still paying off the loan they took out to pay for Aspen. I wish they had used the money to help me in school instead.
Eventually I recovered, and got on a good track. But, I feel that had I not been sent to Aspen, I would have become a healthy productive adult much sooner. In recent years I have heard that the program has been altered slightly. Apparently students now progress through the program at their own rate. It is no longer an issue to wait for everyone in the group to complete a task. Maybe this helps to control the animosity and resentment that existed in my group. Still, no matter how many changes are made in the program, or how many favorable accounts they post on their web site, I would NEVER recommend this program to anyone.
Now, despite the “Aspen Experience” twelve years later I have been able to successfully graduate from college, find a healthy love relationship, a job as a teacher, and even (very recently) quit smoking. I have become the person my parents had hoped I would be. But, I still have nightmares of Utah. I remember Aspen T-shirts that read, “You’ll go to Hell and Back”. They were half right, I went there, but it took nearly a decade for me to make it back.
Aspen Achievement Academy continues to be in operation despite the fact that teenagers have lost their lives in this particular wilderness program.
References:
The original statement
Datasheet over the program on the wiki database of Fornits
lørdag den 11. december 2010
M.S's statement to HEAL-online
A person sent this statement to a human rights organization in the United States named HEAL-online about her stay in a wilderness program in Utah. All rights to this story belongs to the Author, who is known by organization:
I am 26 years old and was held prisoner at Aspen Achievement Academy for 2 and a half months in the winter of 1994. I had no idea that this program was still operating, as I had heard while at another program that a child had died there, but apparently that is not the case.
While at Aspen, I was forcibly deprived of food and made to hike long distances for the first 72 hours of my stay. At one point, I threw myself in a ditch and tried to cut my wrists with a mildly sharp rock that I found, during which time I was laughed at by my "counselors."
Also, during this period I was suffering from extreme heroin and cocaine withdrawal, that had left me at a weight of only 130 lbs, and was never allowed to see a doctor, or provided with any medical treatment for my extreme pain and nausea; I collapsed almost unconscious on the second day, and was dragged by my "pack" strap for almost a mile, while being constantly derided by my "counselors." We were made to carry packs weighing up to 100lbs, which were made of only a camping tarp tied together with a seatbelt strap. After my two months without drugs, I had gained no weight whatsoever due to the lack of nourishing food.
The horror that I and my fellow captives suffered over that hellish period is more deserving of a treatment by Solzhenitsyn than by me, but for the sake of brevity I will tell anyone thinking of sending their child to this program to consider that I still, 10 years later have nightmares of Aspen, and what they put us through. My childhood effectively ended that day in my fifteenth year, when I arrived at Aspen Achievement Academy.
Aspen Achievement Academy continues to be in operation despite the fact that teenagers have lost their lives in this particular wilderness program.
References:
The original statement
Datasheet over the program on the wiki database of Fornits
I am 26 years old and was held prisoner at Aspen Achievement Academy for 2 and a half months in the winter of 1994. I had no idea that this program was still operating, as I had heard while at another program that a child had died there, but apparently that is not the case.
While at Aspen, I was forcibly deprived of food and made to hike long distances for the first 72 hours of my stay. At one point, I threw myself in a ditch and tried to cut my wrists with a mildly sharp rock that I found, during which time I was laughed at by my "counselors."
Also, during this period I was suffering from extreme heroin and cocaine withdrawal, that had left me at a weight of only 130 lbs, and was never allowed to see a doctor, or provided with any medical treatment for my extreme pain and nausea; I collapsed almost unconscious on the second day, and was dragged by my "pack" strap for almost a mile, while being constantly derided by my "counselors." We were made to carry packs weighing up to 100lbs, which were made of only a camping tarp tied together with a seatbelt strap. After my two months without drugs, I had gained no weight whatsoever due to the lack of nourishing food.
The horror that I and my fellow captives suffered over that hellish period is more deserving of a treatment by Solzhenitsyn than by me, but for the sake of brevity I will tell anyone thinking of sending their child to this program to consider that I still, 10 years later have nightmares of Aspen, and what they put us through. My childhood effectively ended that day in my fifteenth year, when I arrived at Aspen Achievement Academy.
Aspen Achievement Academy continues to be in operation despite the fact that teenagers have lost their lives in this particular wilderness program.
References:
The original statement
Datasheet over the program on the wiki database of Fornits
torsdag den 2. december 2010
Brenham Banner-Press on the death at the Five Oaks Achievement Center
All rights belongs to the Brenham Banner-Press, which published this article on August 19, 2010:
Teen who collapsed at residential treatment facility dies
The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services is continuing its investigation into the death of a 17-year-old girl at a residential treatment facility in Austin County.
The department confirmed Wednesday that Shanice Nibbs, who collapsed about a month ago at Five Oaks Achievement Center in New Ulm, had died.
Nibbs collapsed July 16 while on a nature walk at center. On Wednesday, agency spokesman Patrick Crimmins issued a news release notifying the media that the teen died last Friday.
Reporters for the Houston Chronicle and Texas Tribune first contacted DFPS officials two weeks ago about the girl’s collapse. At the time, the girl was alive in the intensive care unit at Texas Children’s Hospital, and the agency gave no details, saying the incident was being investigated, according to the Chronicle.
An official with the governor’s office confirmed that the agency notified it immediately of the incident and that it was aware that the agency had suspended all placements at the facility until an investigation was completed, the newspaper said.
An official with the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences, which conducted an autopsy, said the girl died of complications of hypothermia.
Again, no other details were released.
The Brenham school district renewed a one-year contract in July with Five Oaks to educate Brenham students who suffer from severe disabilities, continuing a relationship the district has had with the facility for almost a decade.
The current principal of the roughly three-dozen bed facility is Jim Bruce, the Brenham school district’s former assistant superintendent.
References:
Link til original article
Teen who collapsed at residential treatment facility dies
The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services is continuing its investigation into the death of a 17-year-old girl at a residential treatment facility in Austin County.
The department confirmed Wednesday that Shanice Nibbs, who collapsed about a month ago at Five Oaks Achievement Center in New Ulm, had died.
Nibbs collapsed July 16 while on a nature walk at center. On Wednesday, agency spokesman Patrick Crimmins issued a news release notifying the media that the teen died last Friday.
Reporters for the Houston Chronicle and Texas Tribune first contacted DFPS officials two weeks ago about the girl’s collapse. At the time, the girl was alive in the intensive care unit at Texas Children’s Hospital, and the agency gave no details, saying the incident was being investigated, according to the Chronicle.
An official with the governor’s office confirmed that the agency notified it immediately of the incident and that it was aware that the agency had suspended all placements at the facility until an investigation was completed, the newspaper said.
An official with the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences, which conducted an autopsy, said the girl died of complications of hypothermia.
Again, no other details were released.
The Brenham school district renewed a one-year contract in July with Five Oaks to educate Brenham students who suffer from severe disabilities, continuing a relationship the district has had with the facility for almost a decade.
The current principal of the roughly three-dozen bed facility is Jim Bruce, the Brenham school district’s former assistant superintendent.
References:
Link til original article
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