Teen's death helps close "Troubled Teen" Center Diamond Ranch Academy

D.R.A. Has Until Aug. 14 to Discharge Its Youth; Director Calls Decision "Unfair."

Diamond Ranch Academy showed no prior signs of financial troubles. (Google Earth)

“Troubled” teenagers are quite literally a multibillion-dollar commodity in the United States.  An entire troubled teen industry astroturfs Google, Facebook, Yelp and even sites like Psychology Today.  When fearful parents go online for help handling their teens’ emotional, social, substance-abuse or other problems, the industry promises treatment to fix just about everything.

That is, for a price.

Taylor Goodridge’s parents sent her to Diamond Ranch Academy (D.R.A.), in Hurricane, Utah, for help, court documents indicate.  D.R.A. charges upwards of $12,000 a month, nearly double Harvard’s full boarding cost.

The 17-year-old died five days before Christmas last year.  Her family is suing D.R.A. in U.S. district court.

D.R.A.’s website boasted it is “America’s leading teen therapeutic boarding school and clinical residential program, providing a first-class, structured, and supportive campus for boys and girls struggling with emotional, social, educational, or behavioral issues.”

But reconciling D.R.A.’s website with what befell Goodridge is difficult.  D.R.A., its medical director Dr. Danny Wormwood and two of D.R.A.’s nurses each breached the state’s minimum level of care, harming Goodridge, according to the Utah Division of Professional Licensing.

For over a week before Goodridge died, the teen vomited.  Her blood pressure was low, her heart rate high.  The D.P.L. found those symptoms required emergency care, which D.R.A. withheld.  Moreover, Brooks Wiley, a psychiatric nurse practitioner and D.R.A.’s assistant medical director, was “not qualified to work in an urgent care, ER, or family practice setting” and “was working beyond the scope of his license” when he treated Goodridge, the panel found.

A few hours after the panel’s report, the Utah Office of Licensing (O.L.) denied D.R.A.’s application to renew its licenses and ordered it to “discharge all of its clients on or before August 14, 2023.”

The O.L. also noted that Utah’s Child Protective Services “has a supported finding of severe physical neglect issued against” Wiley.  Nonetheless, state records available here indicate no disciplinary action of any kind against Wiley’s medical licenses.

On Friday, D.R.A. announced it will close.  Mr. Ricky Dias, D.R.A.’s executive director, called the O.L.’s decision “unfair.”

To some, Dias’s protest may seem ironic.

“Goodridge was placed and kept in DRA with no due process rights, [without] a conviction in a legal court that justifie[d] her presence there, with no ability to call her parents (or any other person), while Taylor’s parents were kept in the dark about her health and well-being as all communications in and out of DRA were controlled by DRA, who had a huge profit motive to keep Taylor there as long as possible,” states the relevant federal civil complaint.

The suit also states Goodridge “entered DRA in very good health and was an athlete, competing on the DRA volleyball and cheerleading teams.”  But, “Unbeknownst to Plaintiffs, despite DRA’s assurances, representations and promises, children that become ill at DRA are often ignored or told that they are faking their illnesses. Many claim that they are given aspirin and water and told to ‘suck it up.’”

Goodridge’s death is not an isolated incident.  The O.L. noted two other deaths at D.R.A. in recent years.  Industrywide, deaths are common.

The industry has been widely investigated.  The U.S. Government Accountability Office (G.A.O.) has catalogued many deaths under questionable circumstances.  The video below, reviewing some of these incidents, is not for the faint of heart.

And Entire Congressional hearings have been dedicated to the industry’s “deceptive marketing” practices, which principally use Google’s AdWords platform, Facebook and online review sites like Yelp, where D.R.A. had a four-star rating.  Psychology Today lists industry programs as “Verified by Psychology Today.”  The Better Business Bureau gives D.R.A. and many other industry programs an A+ rating.

Parents often have a hard time navigating this landscape.  In 2008, Mr. Gregory Kutz, the G.A.O.’s managing director of forensic audits and special investigations, told Congress that some industry programs operate like cults and had “brainwashed many of the parents.”

But D.R.A.’s director and many of its survivors do seem to agree on at least one thing, which Dias included in his statement to NBC News: “The State of Utah […] has consistently demonstrated its lack of concern for the safety, well-being, and treatment of youth in programs.”

For more information, see, e.g., PBS Montana’s award-winning documentary Who’s Watching the Kids?, directly below.