Cedar Ridge Academy was one of five that had rates of reported sex abuse that were more than four times the average. All five are for-profit facilities, though the new owners of Cedar Ridge turned it into a nonprofit.
Sequel Youth and Family Services owns Falcon Ridge Ranch, the Utah center with the highest rate of reported sex crimes. The company said in a statement that four of the crimes reported from the campus located in the southern Utah town of Virgin during the two-year period The Tribune reviewed were calls made by therapists or staff about abuse students disclosed that happened elsewhere. Two involved incidents on the campus, they said, but were investigated and “did not result in any citations or concerns involving the facility.”
These facilities have rules they are supposed to follow, such as having a staff ratio of one employee to every four kids. Utah’s Office of Licensing oversees youth treatment centers but has faced criticism for its light enforcement. In the past five years, the licensing agency has revoked two licenses — neither of which was a youth treatment facility.
It has publicly threatened to pull a license if immediate action isn’t taken, like when Cedar Ridge owners had not reported the sexual abuse between two boys in 2016.
But
a detailed review of thousands of pages of inspection records, incident reports, complaints and emails shows Utah licensors are reluctant to step in when youth facilities have faced troubling accusations of rampant child abuse, such as reports of overusing medication, physical abuse and underfeeding children.
Lise Milne, a professor at the University of Regina in Canada, has researched child sexual abuse among youths in residential treatment. She said sex abuse in group care settings is “staggeringly high” in both the United States and Canada.
Some of the children in these sorts of facilities have already experienced trauma, Milne said, and they sometimes try to cope through sexualized behaviors. And her research has shown that the staff members in facilities often have their own history of traumatic events, which can affect their work.
But Milne said there are ways to reduce this type of abuse. She suggested lowering the number of kids in a facility, and increasing staff. Making sure that two staffers are always with the children, she said, is a safeguard that could prevent one employee from sexually abusing a child.
And when a problem does arise, Milne said it’s important for facilities to be transparent. That often doesn’t happen, she said, if a center worries about its business or the reputation of the accused staff member.
“Youth should be believed about child sexual abuse,” she said. “Few make false allegations, although some might misread a situation due to their histories. Many don’t disclose when it occurs, and most delay until much later — if they disclose at all.”
For Robert, a 24-year-old who grew up in Utah, it didn’t register when he was young that what was happening to him at youth facilities was abuse. He had bounced around a half-dozen centers, including a few in Utah. While in a facility in North Carolina, he said, the boys participated in group masturbation. At a place in Montana, another boy flashed his genitals at Robert.
“It’s impossible for kids to articulate that they’re being sexually abused when they don’t know what sex, abuse or sexual abuse is,” he said. “Or even that it’s wrong and adults should stop it from happening. So it simply doesn’t get reported by kids.”
Robert said that even if workers found out what was happening, no one told the authorities like they were required to do.
“It led to a lot of dysfunctional exposure to sexuality,” he said. “It was known about, but completely ignored.”
The Tribune generally does not identify alleged victims of sexual abuse, but those named in this story agreed to the use or partial use of their names.
Calls to police and lawsuits
Aaron Ross was constantly in isolation during his three years at Provo Canyon School in the early 2000s.
He was 13 years old then and kept getting into trouble. An infraction for not making his bed right. Another for not vacuuming the floor as he was told. Another for talking back.
Sometimes his punishment would be sitting on the floor, legs crossed for hours. Other times, he said, he was denied a meal.
But Ross said that punishment often meant days on end spent in an isolation room, a cold concrete room with no furniture.
It was in that room that Ross said a staff member sexually abused him.