that she was physically and mentally abused at Provo Canyon School in the 1990s, the treatment facility’s owner quickly brushed off responsibility.
They spoke of repeated physical restraints, with up to 10 staffers piling on young children. Some were chemically sedated, or so overmedicated they felt like a zombie. Others spoke of being left in isolation rooms for days after getting in trouble for things like not getting out of bed or asking for an inhaler.
Jurors returned a verdict favoring Provo Canyon School after a lengthy trial in 1980, but a federal judge issued abanning the school from using polygraph tests on the boys, opening and reading their mail, using isolation for any reason other than to contain a boy who was violent, and prohibited physical force from being used to restrain a boy unless he was an immediate danger to himself or others.
He moved quickly through the levels of the program but was knocked back down after he tried to run away during an approved visit to a family reunion in New Hampshire. His punishment involved standing up against a wall for hours on end for several weeks. Whiteley said he was prescribed so much medication, he “felt like a zombie.”“The program was a complete failure for me,” the now-46-year-old man said. “It was basically almost two years of prison.
“I didn’t know what they were giving me,” she said. “I would just feel so tired and numb. Some people in that place were just gone. The lights were on, but no one was home.”It was around this same time that Provo Canyon School’s parent company was under intense scrutiny, facing allegations of Medicaid fraud and media reports of inappropriate treatment and inadequate care at Charter-owned facilities across the country.
Kayla Smith was 8 years old when her parents, in coordination with her California school district, sent her to Utah in 2010.Smith recalled being strip-searched and touched by staff, an experience that was foggy to her because she had been medicated before she came. She was homesick her first night, and staff put her in an isolation room and locked her inside — which is against Utah regulatory rules, which says “timeout rooms” cannot be locked.