Diamond Ranch Academy to close after the third teenager died at the facility.

Many might wonder why 3 teenagers should die before the authorities came to the conclusion that the entire operation was a danger from day one.

Was it the consideration that jobs could be lost? For decades many jobs in the United States have been moved to countries like Mexico and China and frankly a town like Hurricane do not offer many oppertunities and not even things worth to visit as a tourist. They do not have many bars where youth can go to like they do on Ibiza and even here in Copenhagen where Wonderful Copenhagen marketed the city as a place you could engage in business with women. And if you do not have that, none will come to visit.

Hurricane and the nearby cities became a heaven for private detention centers living of a market of parents who cared less about their offsprings so they had time to go on cruises or play golf. They called them treatment centers or boarding schools. By labeling them that instead of detention centers, they even fooled school districts and caring parents.

But as with all detention centers, people inside them die and then as every operator of prisons and detention centers know, it become important to cover up deaths. Heart-failure and other random causes of death which seems to be impossible to prevent was issued by local coronors.

Look at the killing of Martin Anderson from 2006 in Florida. That is how it is done in 90 percent of the cases.

At Diamond Ranch Academy as mentioned above, 3 teenagers died

Two of the cases look very similar

In 2009 14-year-old James Richard Shirey died of an illness before he could be brought to the hospital

In 2022 17-year-old Taylor Goodridge died of an illness before she could be brought to the hospital

It seems that there from the very start had existed an internal policy where the employees were motivated to wait and see instead of taking the youth to a hospital for a check-up. A policy which have proven deathly in two cases.

The third death occured when a teenager seeking a better place disturbed a marketing event. Parents were given tours of the facility and because the teenager was trying to take his life while possible new customers were around and employee closed the door to the room where the teenager was hanging from a rope and called co-workers. How many seconds were lost because the employee decided not to attempt the rope right away? We cannot know if that were the seconds which enabled the teenager to escape both Diamond Ranch Academy and life in general.

While Diamond Ranch Academy soon will be gone and the city hopefully will turn to dust because none have a reason to come there, the mystery of why it should take to many years for the authorities to intervene, will remain.

Sources

• Diamond Ranch Academy: School for 'troubled teens' ordered to shut down after deaths of students (Sky News)
• James Richard "Jim" Shirey (Legacy Memorial site)
• DHS confirms another child death at Diamond Ranch Academy (Fornits Home for Wayward Web Fora)
• ‘Therapeutic boarding school’ in Utah told vomiting teen to ‘suck it up’ before treatable infection led to deadly sepsis: Lawsuit (Law & Crime)

Children hostages in custody fights (BlueFire Wilderness Therapy)

A number of parents do every year see their child exposed to danger when the custodial parent chooses to decide on a dangerous path with the child in the hope of alienate the child against the non-costodial parent.

In a recent tread on Reddit a parent write:

I tried to get custody back , but the Judge won't listen to me and left the custody with Mother, who convinced her ( judge ) she will do anything for the daughter and that the daughter wants to stay with her. The mother also got a psychologist and a psychiatrist to evaluate my daughter without my knowledge and they recommended for "Change of placement" , By the time I learned that this means to place her outside of home and within days, the educational consultants the Mother hired at the advice of the psychologist, placed my daughter into this camp for 8-12 weeks.

What parents need to realize is that both the medical industry as well as so-called educational consultants are not working independent. The medical industry needs to put diagnose on anyone so they can sell their products. Educational consultants received referral fees from wilderness programs and boarding schools in return for a recommendation towards the product of detention and so-called treatment, they deliver.

Wilderness programs are not a recognized treatment method in a lot of countries. Of course the wilderness programs have hired researchers to white-label the treatment approach but in reality the children could be placed in a enclosed box until they became adults and the same result would be achieved.

Second a number of children have died in wilderness programs. The program known from ABC's "Brat Camp" closed after a death and the local sheriff described the operation as a danger to the children and closed it down.

Sending a child into the wilderness means a risk which is far greater than letting them stay in the troubled home, they came from. Out of 4,000 children treated at the Catherine Freer Wilderness program, 3 died before they closed. Calculate on the percentage!

What is the best option? Based on a research paper in Denmark comparing children in need who was not removed from the home to children sent to residential treatment, there is no difference of the outcome for the children. Even when the parents were alcoholic or drug-users! Fact remains that residential treatment is warehousing. Once the regulated and secure environment is no longer there and the now-adult child has to go on without an important social heritage in the luggage, everything seems to be lost.

Denmark have increased the number of children who are placed outside their home. Many of them end up with Post-traumatic stress disorder and an inability to function on the labor market or in the educational system.

It is not good news for parents who are struggling to raise their children. Because the root of the problem is properly not the child. It is the parent or the school-environment the society offers the child.

All that seems to be the outcome of residential treatment seems to be that the owners of the residential solutions - wilderness program or boarding school - will earn a lot of money while the children and their families will suffer both economic and emotional.

Source:
Daughter , 13yo sent to Wilderness Camp BlueFire in Idaho without my consent , What to Do? (Reddit)

Back in the days where people fell for scams

Ok. You are a bit too heavy.

Then you look at your child and you feel sorry. Your child has turned out to be the spitting image of you and is overweight too. Your child will properly not get many friends in school or a good-looking partner due to the overweight you think.

Then you look in the newspaper and find a boarding school that promises weight loss.

It is a good idea and you send your child to the school.

The school is efficient and soon your child loses a lot of pounds. In fact they are so good that your child need some pills to deal with side effects of the sudden weight loss but that is a minor thing and when the school year is over, your child return slim.

Are you then happy?

Yes for 14 days because once you start serving the very same food you as family always have eaten, weight is gained and you start talking about taking another year at the boarding school despite the cost. The child runs off and you cannot catch your child because you are overweight. Now we are talking social services.

10 years ago such boarding schools promising weight loss were widespread. Today we as parents are smarter. We know that the problem is right next to us. It is in the kitchen. The output from the kitchen produces the results shown in both your child's body and your body.

Today we also know that your children do not listen to you. They just observe what you do and do the same. That is the reason that addiction often passes down through generations. It does not matter if we are talking alcohol addiction, medical addiction or food addiction. What we show children that are OK, is what they make a standard of living.

We can blame TV. We can blame the society.

But we are in control of what we put into our shopping bags. We can make the change ourselves. We know what is right. We know that candy, alcohol and sodas destroy our bodies. We know that exercise make a change.

So just go for an hour of walking. Change your diet. Then you save tons of money for boarding schools.

A lot of parents realized that and as result many of the weight loss schools closed. Maybe some remain but why use money on them when you can change the outcome for your child for free?