Has Diamond Ranch Academy Given Up On Reopening?
The Latest Public-Records Response Shows No New State Licensing Applications For Diamond Ranch Academy… At Least None Yet
Before the state forced it to close last summer, three children had died at Diamond Ranch Academy (D.R.A.), a self-proclaimed “World-Class Residential Treatment Center and Therapeutic Boarding School for Teenagers” in Hurricane, Utah.
Undeterred by state findings of medical negligence, hundreds of allegations of abuse across more than a decade and pending wrongful-death litigation, D.R.A.’s staffers embarked on a bid earlier this year to rebrand under the name RAFA Academy and reopen.
Such rebrandings are par for the course in the U.S. “troubled-teen industry”—an industry seemingly more troubled and troubling than the teens it purports to help.
Earlier this month, MartyG Reports learned that RAFA Academy had withdrawn its state-licensing application amid mounting difficulties. Full background on D.R.A.’s history and RAFA’s problems is available in the embedded article, below.
The relevant question at that time was whether another attempt was forthcoming to reopen D.R.A.’s premises under yet another new name.
To answer that question, MartyG Reports sent a public-records request to the Utah Division of Licensing and Background Checks (D.L.B.C.). The request sought, on an expedited basis, any licensing applications received since March 1, 2024, for youth residential facilities in Hurricane, Utah.
MartyG Reports has now learned that, in what may be the end of D.R.A.’s years-long saga, no new state-licensing application has been filed to reopen D.R.A., at least none yet, according to the D.L.B.C.’s response, below.
Utah’s D.L.B.C. had never before expedited a public-records request for MartyG Reports, as it did this time. One possibility is that the D.L.B.C. was eager to disseminate its response—a possibility that gives MartyG Reports some trepidation about drawing inferences therefrom.
Almost certainly, however, the D.L.B.C. knows how much is at stake for the thousands who attended D.R.A.: Closing an abusive facility “is important to the health and recovery of any children who have been trapped there against their will and in circumstances in which much less intrusive care would have been more appropriate,” wrote Barry Pollack, director of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, a decade ago. “For those children, like all victimized children, an important step in recovery can be an acknowledgement of wrongdoing by an institution that has failed them.”
If D.R.A. is to remain closed as a “troubled-teen industry” facility, its $20-million site will likely be repurposed. MartyG Reports has filed an open-records request with the city of Hurricane, Utah for any new permits or licensing applications related to D.R.A.’s former address.
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