State To Close Trails Carolina, But Scandal Never Stopped Its Parent Co.
Family Help & Wellness Corp. Is No Stranger To Deaths, Felonies & Grand Reopenings.
This report discusses child sexual abuse. If you or someone you know is unsure whether to file an abuse report or just need support, contact the National Children's Alliance at www.nca-online.org or 1-800-239-9950.
The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services moved on Friday to close the controversial youth wilderness program Trails Carolina. Trails Carolina has 60 days to appeal. But, given the history of Trails Carolina’s parent company, rebranding may be both more likely and more viable.
The state’s decision had been awaited since February, when 12-year-old Clark J████h H████n died on his first day at Trails Carolina. H████n’s death was Trails Carolina’s second fatality.
In 2014, 17-year-old Alec Lansing ran away from Trails Carolina. Instead of return to the program, Lansing spent five days alone, in the woods, without food, before he fell into a stream, broke his hip and succumbed to hypothermia.
Details on H████n’s and Lansing’s deaths are available in the article, embedded below.
N. Carolina Has "no timeline" For Final Ruling After Two Kids Died At Youth Program
Trails Carolina also faces allegations of child sexual abuse and violations of North Carolina’s mandatory child-abuse reporting law. Details on those allegations and relevant pending litigation are available in the following embedded article.
Interview—"A 12-Year-Old Girl Was Raped" and "It Was 100 Percent Trails’ Fault"
The state cited five violations in its decision to close Trails Carolina, including of rules controlling client rights, medications, incident response and protection from harm, abuse, neglect or exploitation.
Such violations and outcomes are common in the “troubled-teen industry,” a group of loosely affiliated youth residential and wilderness programs like Trails Carolina. The U.S. Government Accountability Office documented many such incidents at the request of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and Labor.
But even in an industry noted for the abuse, torture and deaths of children, Trails Carolina’s parent company stands out.
Trails Carolina is operated by Oregon-based Family Help & Wellness (F.H.&W.). (F.H.&W., in turn, is a D.B.A. of an Oregon L.L.C. called Wilderness Training and Consulting.)
F.H.&W. was co-founded in 2008 by Tim Dupell. Its C.E.O. for six and a half years, up through last July, was Steven Stradley.
Before F.H.&W., Stradley worked for a nursing-home operator named Sunwest Management Inc. In 2007, an attorney filed a class action against all of Sunwest’s Oregon facilities for failing to provide residents the services they had been promised.
Sunwest called the suit “frivolous and inaccurate.”
Stradley, then identified as Sunwest’s “director of risk management,” lashed out at lawyers in general and the plaintiffs’ attorney in particular for filing “misguided class action lawsuits in a variety of states in order to advance their own practices, as opposed to doing what is truly best for residential care residents and senior citizens in general.”
Less than two years later, Sunwest filed for bankruptcy and the S.E.C. charged Sunwest with securities fraud for lying to investors.
F.H.&W., in 2017, hired Sunwest’s former “director of risk management” to be its C.E.O.
Meanwhile, F.H.&W.’s co-founder had problems of his own. In 2016, Dupell was arrested in Hawaii on felony drug charges. He pleaded no contest to two misdemeanors and completed a diversion program, all while he professed competency to manage adolescent substance-abuse programs. Unlike the many children taken by strangers in the middle of the night and forced into F.H.&W.’s programs, no one placed Dupell in involuntary inpatient treatment.
Numerous other drug cases and a separate D.U.I. case against Dupell in Oregon were reported online, but MartyG Reports was unable to find any corresponding court records. They may have been sealed.
Despite Dupell’s drug charges, his LinkedIn profile says he is active today with F.H.&W.
And F.H.&W.’s problems in its C-suite should not overshadow the organization’s other history.
For example, F.H.&W. once ran a program in North Carolina called Solstice East. State licensors repeatedly cited it for deficiencies.
At one point, the state’s Department of Health and Human Services halted admissions to Solstice East and issued a 151-page report that cited 115 medication errors at the facility. Ultimately, the state relented and allowed Solstice East to continue operating.
But, facing continued activism, and perhaps knowing that licensors’ patience was exhausted, Solstice East was rebranded this year as Magnolia Mills School.
Moreover, in at least one other instance besides Trails Carolina, F.H.&W. effectively reopened a closed “troubled-teen industry” program.
In 2011, Randy Scott Young worked at Copper Canyon Academy in Arizona, when he was reported for an alleged sexual relationship with a minor girl. No charges were filed, but Young reportedly resigned and went to work at another nearby “troubled-teen industry” facility named American Heritage Academy (A.H.A.).
The next year police found Young, then 33, parked in a known “hook-up spot” with a minor girl. He reportedly gave the officers a fake name and claimed to be a teenager. It did not work. He was arrested.
The next day an A.H.A. staffer searched Young’s laptop and found photographs of child sexual abuse.
Young eventually fled to Ireland, but he was brought back to Arizona in 2023 and sentenced to 50 years for multiple counts of sexual exploitation of minors.
By then, Copper Canyon Academy had closed. Almost immediately F.H.&W. opened Sedona Sky Academy on the same site.
All this history gives advocates pause, despite the state’s decision to close Trails Carolina.
“This news, while incredibly validating, does not mean this battle is over,” wrote Max Rosenberg, the author of a petition on Change.org to close Trails Carolina permanently. “Family Help and Wellness, the parent company of Trails, has a long history of resurrecting and rebranding [its] shuttered programs. We must ensure that doesn't happen in this case. Too many lives ride on it.”
At the time of publication, the petition has 1,843 signatures.
Noting the state’s decision, Rosenberg wrote, “I still suggest people to share, comment, and sign.”
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Some information is redacted at the request of Clark J████h H████n’s family. The family, through its representative Robert J. Higdon Jr., previously declined to comment.
MartyG Reports tried to contact Alec Lansing’s mother but was unsuccessful.
Trails Carolina declined to comment to N.B.C. News on Friday about the state’s decision.
Thank you for covering this! People need to be aware of FHW's shady practices before celebrating the closure of Trails. All too often these closures are only temporary.