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)