ChuOnThis

Smith earned millions from federal contracts

At a glance: Sen. Smith’s company and federal contracts

By Keith Chu / The Bulletin

Published: September 30. 2008 4:00AM PST

Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore.

WASHINGTON — Selling frozen peas and corn to the federal government has brought the northeast Oregon company co-owned by U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., at least $9.4 million over the past decade, federal contract records show.

That’s one of the largest sums of federal money earned by a member of the U.S. Senate, according to records from The Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks money in government.

The contracts were awarded to Smith Frozen Foods, which Smith co-owns with his wife, Sharon. The contracts were awarded by competitive bid and have not been questioned.

Smith Frozen Foods President Kelly Brown said Gordon Smith was not involved in obtaining the contracts.

“In no way at all,” Brown said. “When Gordon was running the company, when he was here on a daily basis, he got involved in these only in that he would approve the price that I would quote.”

All of the contracts came from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and are subject to an open bidding process, according to records in the Federal Procurement Data System, which is a government database of contracts.

A U.S. Department of Agriculture spokesman, Jimmie Turner, did not respond to requests for more information about Smith’s contracts.

Smith Frozen Foods sells frozen peas and corn nationally, under a handful of brand names. His grandfather founded the business in 1919.

Smith bought the company in 1980 and managed it until he joined the U.S. Senate in 1997, according to his Senate Web site.

Now Sharon Smith is CEO, and the company is run by professional managers.

Brown said the Weston-based company has been selling to the USDA for decades.

“What we use the USDA for, it’s really a way for us to move excess inventory, if we have it,” Brown said. Government business represents “under 2 percent,” of Smith Frozen Foods’ income, Brown said. Because the contracts were open to bids, they are usually the last resort for the company, Brown said.

“We say, ‘We’ve got X number of pounds and this price if they want it,’” Brown said. “It’s a bid and the lowest price wins, if you call it winning.”

Ramped up deals

Government records show that Smith Frozen Foods ramped up its government contracting over the past decade. Before Smith joined the Senate, Smith Frozen Foods earned a total of $2.9 million, in five separate contracts, in 1978, 1979, 1980 and 1986.

After, the company won $9.4 million in 15 contracts, from 1997 to 2001.

Smith’s campaign declined to comment. He is running against Democratic challenger Jeff Merkley this fall.

“I think we will let the facts, as transparent and above board as they are, speak for themselves,” said spokeswoman Lindsay Gilbride.

Brown said the company also sold to the USDA in 2005 and again as recently as this month, but he did not say how much those contracts were for. The transactions are handled through a broker, for U.S. Food Service, in Watsonville, Calif., Brown said, which may be why they do not show up in the database.

U.S. Food Service Vice President of Sales Matt Haas said he represents about 15 vendors nationwide, selling mainly to the USDA’s schools program.

Senators’ businesses

Smith isn’t the only U.S. senator to own a company that does business with the federal government. Companies controlled by Richard Blum, the husband of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., won more than $61 million in contracts from the U.S. military in 2005, for construction projects, according to the Federal Procurement Data System database of federal contracts.

Feinstein is worth between $51 million and $111 million, according to her financial disclosure forms. Feinstein does not own the companies.

Of the 15 senators with the highest net worth, based on their financial disclosure statements from last year, Smith ranked second, after Feinstein, in federal contracts, based on the Federal Procurement Data System records.

Other wealthy senators own shares of companies that compete for federal contracts but don’t control those firms, according to Center for Responsive Politics data.

Keith Chu can be reached at 202-662-7456 or at kchu@bendbulletin.com.

Ever unconventional, long controversial

Ever unconventional, long controversial

The school’s history is a twisted one, involving atypical therapy methods and company mergers, good intentions and success stories, but also cases of what some, including the state, call abuse. The story behind the academy’s closure.

By Keith Chu / The Bulletin

Published: November 15. 2009 4:00AM PST

Rob Kerr / The Bulletin file photo

The academy’s better days ... Many students and parents attest to Mount Bachelor Academy’s successes. In 2003, The Bulletin interviewed 18-year-old Pedro Macias and his mother, Sally, of Mexico City, on graduation day. The “old” Pedro had been kicked out of school and had a problem with marijuana. But after his time at the academy, “it’s an incredible change,” his mother said. “He was ... unpleasant to be around — a monster. Now he’s back to himself.”

The Bulletin file photo

The private school’s campus, east of Prineville.

Bowman Museum and Crook County Historical Society

The academy’s owners

Mount Bachelor Academy is one of more than 30 facilities owned by Aspen Education Group and designed to treat troubled teens. In 2006, CRC Health, which owns more than 145 schools, clinics and camps, purchased Aspen.

CRC’s Oregon facilities

In Central Oregon:
• Mount Bachelor Academy (Prineville)
• SageWalk (Redmond)
• New Leaf Oregon (Bend)
• NorthStar Center (Bend)
In the Portland area:
• Burnside Clinic
• Belmont Clinic
• Alder Clinic
• Tigard Clinic
In Southern Oregon:
• Medford Clinic
Source: CRC Health Group

... But years of troubles
1988: Mount Bachelor Academy is founded by College Health Enterprises, a group of hospitals in Southern Cali-fornia, at the former Mark’s Creek Lodge, pictured at right, in the Ochoco National Forest.
1997: Aspen Education Group is spun off into an independent company by College Health Enterprises. The company includes Mount Bachelor Academy and about five other schools.
1998: First allegations of abuse at Mount Bachelor Academy. The school is cleared of wrongdoing by the state Department of Human Services.
1998: Aspen Education Group purchases NorthStar Center, a Bend independent- living facility for young adults 18-25. The center had operated independently since 1991.
2004: New Leaf Academy, a girls-only boarding school in Bend, is acquired by Aspen. The school was founded in 1997.
2005: Aspen acquires Redmond-based SageWalk: The Wilderness School. SageWalk was founded in 1997. This year, the school was featured in the ABC series “Brat Camp.”
2006: CRC Health, a conglomeration of treatment centers and weight-loss camps for adults and children, purchases Aspen Education Group for $280 million. CRC Health is controlled by Bain Capital, a private equity firm that now manages about $60 billion in assets.
2009: April: The state begins investigation of abuse allegations at Mount Bachelor Academy.
• August: A camper at SageWalk, 16-year-old Sergey Blashchishen, collapses while hiking and dies at the scene. The case is still under investigation by the Lake County Sheriff’s Office.
• September: The state orders SageWalk to send its students home.
• November: Mount Bachelor Academy’s license is suspended by DHS after an investigation finds nine confirmed counts of abuse and neglect at the school. Aspen Education Group files a layoff notice with the state of Oregon, indicating that it does not plan to reopen the school.
Sources: Securities and Exchange Commission filings, Aspen Education Group news releases, Bulletin research

The academy’s offspring
A handful of former Mount Bachelor Academy instructors and counselors went on to found a number of other facilities in Central Oregon. At least one was later acquired by Aspen Education Group, while others are still independent.
• College Excel: Founded in 2003 by Jeannie Crowell, who worked at Mount Bachelor and later founded NorthStar Center. The school is for young adults who are preparing for college or who had trouble transitioning into college.
• NorthStar Center: Founded by Dennis Crowell and Jeannie Crowell in 1991. Dennis Crowell was also a founder and one-time director of Mount Bachelor Academy. NorthStar was purchased by Aspen Education Group in 1998.
• Ohana House: An independent living house in Bend for women from 17.5 to 30 years old. It was founded by Malia Mullahey, who began at Mount Bachelor as a mentor in 1994, according to a company news release announcing her hiring.

The academy’s parent companies and their Web marketing practices
Mount Bachelor Academy and its parent companies — Aspen Education Group and CRC Health Group — have a reputation for aggressive marketing techniques, most notably through a variety of Web sites tailored to parents of troubled teens.
The sites include byparents-forparents.com, adoptionissues.org, overweightteen.com, yourlittleprofessor.com and teenboarding schools.com. They’re presented as information portals for parents seeking information, not advertising sites for the schools.
All of the sites except for yourlittleprofessor.com, targeted at parents of children with Asperger’s syndrome, note on their home pages that they’re funded by CRC Health. The sites don’t make clear, though, that CRC Health owns all of the schools referenced on the sites.
The current incarnation of the sites is much more transparent than earlier versions, education consultant Tom Croke wrote in a review of Aspen’s marketing apparatus. Before last year, CRC didn’t disclose that it owned those sites, said Croke, who discovered the connections.
Because parents are often making those choices during times of stress, they may be more likely to accept those pitches. It’s self-evident, said consultant Doug Bodin, but bears repeating that parents shouldn’t rely on the Internet when it comes to researching facilities to send their troubled children.
“It’s like going on the Internet to do your own open heart surgery,” Bodin said. “Anyone can throw their testimonials out there; everyone can give you a list of enthusiastic students.”
Before making those decisions, parents should speak with an educational consultant or mental health professional who knows about the treatment options and climate of each facility, Bodin said.
“Parents are having to make huge decisions involving lots of money at a very vulnerable time,” Bodin said. “Too often, parents can miss their own role in helping their child.”
— Keith Chu, The Bulletin

An era ended when Mount Bachelor Academy closed Nov. 3, following allegations of child abuse by the state Department of Human Services.

The private school for troubled teens, located 26 miles east of Prineville, was one of the last of its kind — a school whose methods originated in the Synanon self-help group, which was widely considered a cult by the late 1970s.

It’s also a school that counts hundreds, if not thousands, of devoted graduates and parents who swear that Mount Bachelor Academy put their children on the right track, or even saved their lives.

And for years, MBA was a flagship of Aspen Education Group, a company that grew to become one of the biggest providers of therapeutic, emotional-growth and weight-loss facilities in the U.S. In 2006, that company was swallowed by an even bigger fish, CRC Health, an arm of the private investment firm Bain Capital.

The roots

According to veteran educational consultants, Mount Bachelor Academy was one of the last schools founded on a therapy for troubled teens that originated at the Southern California school called CEDU.

Three educational consultants, including a former CEDU staff member, said the school’s founder, Mel Wasserman, drew from Synanon’s ideas when he started the school.

Synanon began in the 1950s as a Southern California group designed to help “dope fiends” and drug addicts who didn’t have other options for treatment at the time.

In a 1977 article, Time magazine describes the early Synanon method as a “no-nonsense, self-help program that included the ‘game,’ a rugged encounter session in which participants acted out their inmost hostilities. Learning the truth about themselves supposedly helped them stay off drugs or booze.”

The group, according to Time and other contemporary news accounts, eventually required its female members to shave their heads, men to get vasectomies and married couples to swap partners. In 1980, three members of the group pleaded no contest to charges of attempted murder for putting a rattlesnake in the mailbox of an attorney who had sued the group. No one suggests that any of the most unseemly aspects of Synanon were ever part of the CEDU curriculum.

San Francisco educational consultant Alice Jackson said she was impressed by CEDU the first time she visited the school, in 1974. Wasserman and his wife were caring for dozens of “kids off the street,” many of whom had serious substance abuse problems.

“I was first of all astounded by the magical personality that (Wasserman) had,” Jackson said. “I had great admiration for his dedication for these kids.”

Lon Woodbury was admissions director at CEDU for several years and now is an independent education consultant in Idaho. Woodbury said Wasserman “watered down” the Synanon ideas for the school.

“Mel Wasserman was influenced by Synanon, and so used the confrontation model watered down quite a bit in the founding in CEDU,” Woodbury said. “It continued to be watered down and was much less confrontational than it was in the early years.”

The abuse allegations at Mount Bachelor Academy by the Oregon Department of Human Services hearkened back to the earlier practices at emotional growth schools, Woodbury said.

“Some of the things the state had said surprised me because those were things they were doing years ago when it was more acceptable,” he said.

The Oregon Department of Human Services complaint against MBA found that some of the therapeutic methods at the school were “punitive, humiliating, degrading and traumatizing,” including “sexualized role play in front of staff and peers, requiring students to say derogatory phrases about themselves in front of staff and peers, requiring students to re-enact past physical abuse in front of staff and peers, permitting staff to engage in the usage of derogatory names, phrases and ridicule of students and deprivation of sleep.”

Wasserman died in 2002, according to Woodbury’s newsletter on therapeutic schools, Woodbury Reports.

Starting out in Central Oregon

In 1987, College Health Enterprises, a group of Southern California hospitals, decided to start an emotional-growth boarding school for teenagers, somewhere in Central Oregon.

According to a history of MBA on the school’s Web site, the school tried to start in Powell Butte, but “a few difficulties with permits” led founder Linda Houghton to locate at the former Mark’s Creek Lodge, in the Ochoco National Forest.

Woodbury, Jackson and education consultants Doug Bodin and Tom Croke all agreed that CEDU methods were the basis for early emotional growth methods at Mount Bachelor Academy.

Jackson is listed on the MBA history page as one of the consultants who was an important source of student referrals in the school’s early days. She endorsed the school at the time, Jackson said, but gradually grew to believe the model needed to be updated.

“At that time, the programs were very much about behavior management, and they were rigid in their length of stay,” Jackson said. “Some of those things that happened in that model were not what we would think would be OK for kids (today).”

Croke, a consultant in Pennsylvania who runs the Web site FamilyLight.com, agreed that the methods pioneered at CEDU-style schools, including sleep deprivation and confrontational therapy, are now considered inappropriate. But that was less clear in the early days of the industry, he said.

“One problem I have with the naysayers, while I really do not like in 2009 that kind of work, I also think to go back in hindsight to 30 years ago and damn the people who created this as if they were money-grubbing child abusers. That simply wasn’t true,” Croke said.

Rather, those people were well-intentioned but lacking today’s knowledge, Croke said. Indeed, the methods spread to at least six other schools, because they were seen as effective at helping many children.

“Anecdotally, they were successful with a lot of kids,” Croke said. “What is not as well documented are the casualties that were associated with that.”

The Bulletin contacted Houghton and four other former top MBA officials. Houghton and three others did not return messages. Former MBA Director Dennis Crowell declined to be interviewed.

Aspen Education Group

In 1997 or 1998, College Health Enterprises spun off Mount Bachelor Academy and a handful of other youth facilities into the company that became Aspen Education Group.

Aspen quickly grew to become one of the largest owners of therapeutic schools and wilderness camps in the nation by buying independent facilities and starting new ones of its own.

Woodbury, the Idaho consultant, said part of Aspen’s success was a policy of allowing each facility to retain its own character, rather than imposing a single corporate culture.

“They tried to maintain the uniqueness of each culture so that the differences would remain,” Woodbury said.

It now owns four facilities in Central Oregon, including the academy. Its largest concentration of youth programs is in Utah, where it owns nine facilities.

Utah Licensing Director Ken Stettler said the Aspen programs in his state are generally well-run.

When problems do occur, “our programs have been very good about responding to those things,” Stettler said. “They do the right things by getting it fixed.”

Stettler said none of the Aspen programs had incurred a major violation since he started in his position in 2002.

However, three children have died in Aspen-owned facilities in Utah since 2004. Two deaths were suicides. The other happened in 2007, when 14-year-old Brendan Blum died of a bowel obstruction, after counselors failed to call for medical assistance, despite his complaints of stomach pain, loss of bowel control and vomiting.

The school, Youth Care of Utah, had the proper procedures in place and wasn’t at fault, said Stettler.

“The school itself had trained the staff in the policy and procedure in reporting of illnesses, and those staff had failed to follow the training that was provided,” he said.

A fourth teen, 16-year-old Sergey Blashchishen, collapsed while hiking in Lake County and died on the scene in August. Blashchishen was on a trip with Aspen-owned SageWalk, a wilderness school based in Redmond.

The incident is under investigation by the Lake County Sheriff’s Office and the state Department of Human Services. DHS ordered SageWalk to temporarily close in September.

Aspen declined to make any of its officials available for an interview with The Bulletin. In a written statement, Aspen Senior Vice President Mark Dorenfeld said the company takes steps to ensure precautions are taken across its facilities.

“To best serve (students’) special needs, we have established best practices and safety protocols within our policies and procedures to enhance the level of care,” Dorenfeld wrote. “These policies and procedures incorporate all critical elements of care, from health and wellness protocols, to staff training, to therapeutic practices.”

Dorenfeld also said some media accounts of what happened on the trip have been inaccurate. When asked to specify what Dorenfeld was referring to, a spokeswoman said the company “could not comment further.”

An old model

Several boosters of Mount Bachelor Academy in its early days said the school didn’t do enough to update its methods over time.

Bend psychologist Michael Conner has worked with facilities for troubled teens in the past and lists Mount Bachelor Academy founder Houghton as an educational adviser for his company that consults with parents of troubled children. Conner said the school was originally designed for teens in need of emotional growth, but not intense mental health services.

“What the program was when it was founded is not the least bit related to what the program became,” Conner said. “(It) became quite overfilled with a high number of clinical and severe patients, which the program was never designed (for).”

Jackson said she stopped referring children to Mount Bachelor Academy nearly 10 years ago.

“I have not used it for a number of years as I saw it deteriorating and hanging on to an old model that was really no longer useful,” Jackson said.

Croke agreed.

“I can tell you that that didn’t surprise me,” Croke said, of the state’s charges of abuse. “It was irresponsible of (Aspen) to allow that kind of programming to continue to go on in the year 2009.”

Earlier this year, The Bulletin spoke with 10 former students — several of whom had positive experiences at Mount Bachelor — who described one or more of the practices mentioned in the state’s complaint.

Despite the concerns of professionals and some students, a legion of parents and former students say allegations of abuse are overblown and that unorthodox methods, such as using a week or even a month of manual labor as punishment, get results.

Beth McKinnon’s 16-year-old son, Quinn, had been at MBA for six months when the school closed two weeks ago. McKinnon, a licensed family therapist in Santa Cruz, Calif., said she felt entirely comfortable with the program at Mount Bachelor Academy.

McKinnon, like many parents of former students there, grew emotional while talking about the program’s benefits for her child. It’s the only place where Quinn has ever felt comfortable in a group, she said.

“I would hate to see these schools get shut down because a few people felt they were humiliated and embarrassed at what they had to go through,” McKinnon said.

CRC Health

In 2006, Aspen Education Group was purchased by the even larger CRC Health Group, an arm of the Mitt Romney-founded private investment firm Bain Capital Inc. Since the merger, though, CRC’s performance has been lackluster.

The down economy hit CRC hard. After recording a $1.5 million profit in 2007, the company lost $141 million in 2008, according to the company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The recession created a double-whammy for the company: Families were less able to afford the steep tuition — Mount Bachelor Academy charged $6,400 each month — and tighter credit markets meant they had difficulty securing loans to make up the difference.

“In 2008, we experienced a significant decrease in demand for services in our youth division as a result of declining economic conditions and the inability of families to access the credit markets to fund tuition,” the company’s annual report said.

The end

In April, Oregon DHS opened an investigation into allegations of abuse and neglect at Mount Bachelor Academy. On Nov. 3, the agency found nine confirmed allegations of abuse and ordered the school’s license temporarily suspended. MBA Executive Director Sharon Bitz initially said the school would appeal the suspension, but last week, CRC Health filed a mass layoff notice with the state, indicating it would not attempt to reopen Mount Bachelor Academy.

Keith Chu can be reached at 202-662-7456 or at kchu@bendbulletin.com.

2 views of school under fire

2 views of school under fire

Parents and former students react: Some see hope now because of academy’s therapy methods, while others see an opportunity — at least — for abuse

By Keith Chu / The Bulletin

Published: April 12. 2009 4:00AM PST

Jana Adkins is convinced her daughter would have ended up dead, if not for Mount Bachelor Academy.

At 14, Meghan was drinking, failing school and being abused by her boyfriend.

Adkins and her husband had looked into therapeutic schools but couldn’t bear sending Meghan away. Not until she ran away from home for two days, came home and ran away again. “We decided we could not afford to wait any longer,” Adkins said. “It’s sheer gut-wrenching desperation parents feel to save their kids.”

That desperation drove Adkins to send Meghan hundreds of miles away from their Southern California home to Mount Bachelor Academy, located about 25 miles east of Prineville, and to leave the girl there, despite initial reservations about the school’s methods. Now, she feels only relief and gratitude that Meghan graduated from the school, free of the demons that had plagued her.

On April 4, the Oregon Department of Human Services confirmed it was investigating a report of abuse and a licensing issue at the academy. That investigation ignited a long-simmering dispute about the effectiveness of schools like Mount Bachelor that use unconventional methods to treat troubled teens.

Parents of current and former students, and at least one school employee, urged supporters to write newspapers and investigators with testimonials of the school’s success. Meanwhile, mental health professionals and former students who have been critical of the academy seized on the incident as validation of their own objections to those methods.

Mount Bachelor Academy is owned by the Aspen Education Group, which also owns Sagewalk Wilderness School in Deschutes County along with more than a dozen other residential and wilderness schools across the country.

Adkins’ story, of a parent desperate to try nearly anything to help her child, was similar to that of many parents who sent kids to the private school for troubled teens. But several former students, some whose attendance dated back 15 years, confirmed initial reports that youths there have been punished with long stretches of manual labor and that girls were sometimes made to wear revealing outfits as part of therapeutic workshops, called Lifesteps.

Maisa Maisa is now 33 and a mother of two young children in San Diego. She sells motorcycle parts, and her husband is a cook, she said. She remembers her time at the school clearly.

Maisa was sent there in 1992 in part because she was a promiscuous teen, which she traces back to being abused as a child. Her parents told her she was going to a summer camp. She ended up staying until December 1994.

Maisa said she followed the school rules, even winning a humanitarian award for starting a program pairing veteran students with newcomers.

Mount Bachelor Academy Executive Director Sharon Bitz said students are given roles, but they choose their own costumes. School officials have never told students to act in a way that would “sexualize them,” Bitz said.

“A lot of (costumes) are gathered from their own things in their dorm,” Bitz said. “They’re given time to gather their costume. We would never ask a student to give a lap dance.”

Maisa said one of her therapeutic workshops was similar to that described by former student Fembe Adamou, including a revealing costume and acting out undesirable behavior.

“In those workshops, each person is given a role to play that they feel like exaggerates what is your biggest behavioral problem,” Maisa said. “For girls, they’ll make us do things that exaggerate our sluttiness, such as dressing up in outfits and doing sexual things.”

A contemporary of Maisa’s, Jason “Ocean” Mottley, had a better experience at Mount Bachelor Academy while there from late 1991 until December 1993, he said. But he confirmed that students were often asked to act out provocative behavior.

“Women were often asked to dress provocatively, like fishnets, short skirts, makeup. I know at times they were asked to act provocatively,” Mottley said. “At least one person in each workshop had to do that exercise the entire time I was there.”

Jennifer Britton, now 22, has only positive memories of Mount Bachelor Academy. She declined to describe one phase of the Lifesteps curriculum, called “venture,” in detail. Britton said she was told to dress up, in a similar way to other girls there, to cope with past promiscuous behavior.

“When I did venture, they showed me similar things, and it’s more of an eye-opener, and it’s definitely not made to embarrass you or anything,” Britton said.

Blake Segal, 19, said he had a similar experience at the academy when he was there from February 2007 to June 2008. Segal, who now attends Montana State University in Bozeman, said his parents sent him to the school because he was caught smoking marijuana.

Segal said he was present in one session where a girl was told to “wear, like, stripper outfits” and “give every guy in there lap dances.” In another session, a girl was given the role of a homeless person, complete with ripped clothes.

Leif Kelly-Weaver, 17, left the program with his parents’ permission last fall.

Kelly-Weaver said he felt like the program was designed to change his personality, which he didn’t like. He said he was disturbed by his part in another student’s venture workshop.

“I had to take the role of one of the people who had repeatedly molested her throughout her whole childhood up until several years ago,” Kelly-Weaver said. “They’d push me to keep on going and hold her down.”

The idea, Kelly-Weaver said, was to let the girl re-enact childhood trauma, but this time it was to defeat her attacker.

“It felt like my will was being taken advantage of,” Kelly-Weaver said. “I was being pushed to do things I wasn’t comfortable with.”

Former student Brady Miller, now an English major at the University of Kansas, also now credits Mount Bachelor Academy with helping him find his way.

Miller also said students would “sleep a couple of hours” during the Lifesteps workshops. He said one girl “who had been kind of a slut, I guess you would say, she had to go around flirting with the guys or whatever. She had to act like she was trying to get with me.”

But Miller said the girl wore her regular clothes with “like a boa around her neck,” not a revealing costume.

Executive Director Bitz said the school ensures that students sleep a minimum of 5.5 hours each night while participating in the Lifesteps workshops and that Mount Bachelor Academy “has no interest in depriving students of sleep.” Students who believe they slept less than that are wrong, she said.

“I don’t think they would be real aware of it because there’s not a clock in the workshop room,” Bitz said. “I think it’s interesting that they’re so concerned about sleep because most of these kids were used to being out all night.”

Segal said sleep was limited to “only two or three hours” during his Lifesteps. Segal said clocks and watches weren’t allowed in the room where his workshop took place, but he was “tired and groggy” throughout the workshop.

Mottley, now 33 and a third-year law student at the University of California Hastings College of the Law, said most staffers were “very well-intentioned and very loving people” and that he thinks of Bitz as “an amazing woman.”

But he and Maisa each said sleep was scarce during the workshops.

“It’s true there was no clock on the wall,” Mottley said. “But I know there were Lifesteps where I didn’t sleep at all.”

When he broke a school rule, Mottley said, he was assigned a “work project” of breaking rocks for three weeks as punishment. Several other students described similar disciplinary work projects.

Mottley said the academy has helped many children, especially with “how to talk about their feelings in a healthy way.”

But he said parents are often “clueless” about some aspects of the school.

“I think it’s important there’s an investigation of the school,” Mottley said. “I think the program itself theoretically is meant to help people, but it can also be abused.”

In the late 1990s, Sharon Ferguson was one of the parents of academy students who objected to methods there. Her complaint, along with concerns by four former staff members, led to a state investigation in 1998. That investigation ultimately found that Mount Bachelor Academy was a safe place for students.

Ferguson said her son, who is now 27, complained of being ridiculed and yelled at by staff. At first she did not believe him, because she was warned by school officials that troubled teens often lie to their parents.

“(School officials said) ‘Don’t believe anything your son or daughter tells you. … They are all lying. They are going to make up stories about us,” Ferguson said.

It’s true that students can leave the Lifesteps if they feel uncomfortable, said former student Segal. But that will extend their stay at the school by a month or more.

“If we don’t do what they tell us, we get kicked out (of the Lifesteps), and we have to wait a month later to do it (again),” Segal said.

Supporters of the school often said it’s hard to understand the methods from the outside without going through the entire experience.

Britton said she found the school strange at first.

“I was like, ‘I’m in a nuthouse. This place is crazy. These people are going to brainwash me,’” Britton said.

She grew to appreciate the academy, however. It helped her learn self-confidence. There was physical labor, like digging up a tree stump, but “a little back-breaking labor never hurt anybody,” Britton said. And although she relapsed into drugs and other bad behavior after she left Mount Bachelor Academy, she credits the school with helping her get back on track.

“After I did all my drugs and got some stuff out of my system, I was like, ‘Wow, I couldn’t have come out of this funk if I didn’t have the tools MBA gave me,’” Britton said.

Adkins said she also found some of the therapeutic methods strange, but she saw her daughter continue to improve.

“If I had not had that experience, to have someone describe the Lifesteps to me, I would just think they were nuts,” Adkins said. “As long as I continued to see positive growth in her, I maintained trust in the process.”

Miller said he was a troublemaker while attending Mount Bachelor Academy in 2004, before he realized the school helped him.

“I did everything within my power to get out of that place, from the day I got there to the day I left,” he said.

Miller said he dealt drugs in the suburbs of Wichita, Kan., before being sent to the school.

In one workshop, Miller, formerly a star soccer player, was told to do tricks with a soccer ball and then explain how he had hurt his friends and family. In another, he “rolled a 60-pound stump end over end up the side of a f------ mountain,” Miller said.

“Once I got there, I had to stand on top of a stump and yell out to a whole valley, ‘I’m better than a drug dealer. People do like me.’ … I just broke down and started crying.”

Still, it wasn’t until he had been away from Mount Bachelor Academy for two years that he began to view his time there positively.

“I seriously had nightmares for two years after leaving, that I would be stuck back there and I couldn’t leave, and my dad would be there and be like, ‘You’re staying here,’” Miller said. “I’d wake up and be like, ‘Thank God I’m not there.’”

Sometime after that, though, “I started wanting to go back there,” Miller said.

“I just started to think, ‘Wow, that place wanted to do nothing but to help me.’”

Keith Chu can be reached at 202-662-7456 or at kchu@bendbulletin.com.

State looks into school abuse claim

State looks into school abuse claim

Prineville’s Mount Bachelor Academy for troubled teens is target of DHS investigation

By Keith Chu / The Bulletin

Published: April 05. 2009 4:00AM PS

A Prineville private school for troubled teens is being investigated for alleged mistreatment of students in its care, the Oregon Department of Human Services confirmed Saturday.

Department spokesman Gene Evans would not discuss details of the allegations against Mount Bachelor Academy. He issued a written statement Saturday morning.

“There are two concurrent assessments underway involving Mount Bachelor Academy — one regarding reports DHS has received of child abuse and one regarding the school’s license,” Evans wrote. “We cannot comment on the details or timeline of the assessments while they are ongoing. When they are concluded, there may be information that can be shared.”

Mount Bachelor Academy Executive Director Sharon Bitz denied any wrongdoing and said school officials are cooperating with state investigators. “They’ve come in to do a review, and all we’ve been told is there is an allegation of abuse. They have not identified any person or any thing to us,” Bitz said. “We believe the allegation to be false and unfounded.”

Mount Bachelor Academy houses about 80 students in a facility east of Prineville. The 20-year-old residential school is not connected to the Crook County School District.

Two former students who spoke with The Bulletin said physical and emotional discipline was common at the private boarding school.

Fembe Adamou, 18, left the school about two weeks ago, she said. Adamou’s parents sent her to the school when she was 15, after she became involved with drugs and performed badly at her previous high school. Adamou said her problems dated back to a sexual assault against her as a young teen.

Adamou said the academy didn’t help her with her scars from that experience. It made them worse.

She said her worst experience at the academy came in a role-playing game called “venture” in November 2007. The game — in a group setting — was designed to help kids overcome past problems.

“(Students) have to dress up in costumes, and whatever costume they chose for you, you have to do it,” Adamou said. “They gave me a job as a French maid.”

The costume made Adamou uncomfortable, she said.

“The shirt was like as long as my bra. I had to wear 4-inch high heels with fishnets. My skirt — you could see my butt,” Adamou said in a telephone interview from El Salvador, where she is now living with her parents.

She and another girl were then told to dance for instructors and students, Adamou said.

“They would play dirty songs by Salt-N-Pepa or ‘Milkshake,’” a popular song by Kelis, Adamou said. “I had to go and give guys lap dances.”

Bitz said she couldn’t speak to the allegation, but said that Adamou is an unreliable source of information, and her story is “very suspect.”

“I can’t answer that at this point,” Bitz said, when asked about the role-playing session. “I was not present in her workshop.”

Andrew Friedman was a student at Mount Bachelor Academy for more than two years. Friedman, who left about a year ago and now attends San Diego State University, said he was present at the sessions where Adamou was made to dance.

“You cannot make a girl get into little skimpy outfits and give lap dances to people,” Friedman said.

Susan Owren, who is currently a van driver for the school, said she had been told similar stories by other students and has seen instructors make crude comments to girls there.

“It’s common practice for them to use vulgar language to kids on a daily basis,” Owren said. “I can’t even repeat the stuff I hear.”

Adamou said she was told by instructors that she “put (herself) out there” to be assaulted and was ordered to smear mud on her body to illustrate the fact that she was “dirty.”

Positive experience

Ivy Kessel, whose daughter is attending Mount Bachelor Academy, said her family’s experience with the school has been entirely positive. Kessel, a Los Angeles attorney, sent her daughter there nine months ago to treat her anorexia and cocaine addiction.

“She has just thrived there,” Kessel said of her 17-year-old daughter.

Her daughter has regained weight and is now “like her old self,” Kessel said. The girl never mentioned any inappropriate treatment of girls, Kessel said. If some of the academy’s techniques are unusual, that can be called for to treat troubled kids, she said.

“If you have a troubled teen, that teen can use a healthy dose of indoctrination,” Kessel said.

In a letter to DHS, Kessel defended the “venture” treatment, saying that costumes are designed to externalize the internal struggles of teens.

“(S)tudents may be dressed in a clown costume, or girls with body image issues may be (dressed) in swimsuit attire as part of their Lifestep experience, (which) allows these students to put their negative thinking patterns ‘out there’ for their peer group to evaluate and then allow the students to realize that their peers accept them for who they are on the inside, not what they look like on the outside,” she wrote. “Your investigator’s reliance on the explanation from troubled teens about the therapeutic activities at MBA is like asking a sick person how it feels to be healthy.”

Friedman said he was punished for arriving two minutes late for a meeting with two weeks of shoveling snow all day. Other punishments included sleep deprivation and isolation from other students, he said.

Bitz said that Friedman’s story was “an exaggeration.”

“Students have consequences for bad behavior, but we don’t abuse children,” Bitz said. “We have a 20-year reputation that demonstrates that.”

The academy’s Web site describes its philosophy: “Our methods emphasize acquisition of self-awareness and self-esteem, and the development of problem-solving and decision-making skills through experiential learning. Students deal with situational living, as well as personal issues in communication skills groups two to three times weekly.”

Allegations in 1998

These are not the first allegations of abuse at Mount Bachelor Academy.

Former employees at the academy told The Bulletin in 1998 that students were “subjected to frequent obscenity-laced screaming sessions by staff members; students are deprived of sleep; a group of girls emerged from one group therapy session with bruising on their arms after they were ordered to clasp their hands in front of them and pound a mattress for an extended period; and another group of girls on a backwoods ‘intervention’ outing (was) rousted from their sleeping bags at midnight and forced to remove rocks from a dirt road for two hours in the middle of a cold October night,” according to Bulletin reports at the time.

Parents of two students at the school at that time corroborated the staff members’ allegations, but later that year, the Oregon DHS determined the school was “a safe environment” for children.

Owren, the van driver, said she has seen students locked in their rooms for several hours as punishment and denied food for up to eight hours at a time.

Friedman and Adamou said students were unable to leave the school or contact family members when they felt uncomfortable about practices at Mount Bachelor Academy. Telephone calls home were strictly limited and monitored by school staff, the students said and Owren confirmed.

If Friedman, Adamou and Owren’s stories are true, those techniques didn’t serve any therapeutic purpose, said Dr. Pamela Birrell, a clinical psychologist at the University of Oregon.

“There’s nothing standard about those techniques,” Birrell said.

Keith Chu can be reached at 202-662-7456 or at kchu@bendbulletin.com.

School poses a threat to children, say investigators

School poses a threat to children, say investigators

State probe confirms reports of child abuse, rules violations at Prineville-area campus

By Keith Chu / The Bulletin

Last modified: November 05. 2009 5:30AM PST

Mount Bachelor Academy, an alternative high school near Prineville, was ordered to immediately suspend classes on Tuesday morning, following a state investigation that confirmed nine allegations of child abuse and neglect and more than a dozen violations of state rules.

In its report, the state Department of Human Services found abusive practices at the school — including sexualized role playing in front of other students, sleep deprivation and extended manual labor as punishment — that were first reported by The Bulletin in April and denied by school administrators at the time.

The violations by Mount Bachelor Academy “establishes that MBA poses a serious danger to public health or safety of children at MBA and that MBA should not be permitted to continue operating as a therapeutic boarding school for children,” the state order read.

Mount Bachelor Academy is a private school for troubled teens, located about 26 miles east of Prineville in a remote part of Crook County. As of March, the school was home to 88 students and employed more than 75 staff. Tuition at the time was $6,400 per month.

The state ordered an emergency license suspension, writing that “effective immediately you must stop providing all services, educational or therapeutic, to children until further order of DHS.”

It also cited the school's executive director, Sharon Bitz, for failing to prevent the violations.

Neither Bitz nor Kristen Hayes, the communications director for MBA's parent company, Aspen Education Group, returned calls seeking comment about the order. Aspen is owned by Cupertino, Calif.-based CRC Health Group, Inc.

In Central Oregon, the company owns New Leaf Academy, a boarding school for middle school girls; NorthStar Center, a treatment center for young adults age “17.6-24,” and SageWalk, a wilderness school for troubled teens based in Redmond. SageWalk activities are also the subject of a criminal investigation following the death of student in August.

The MBA allegations

According to state investigators, the worst abuses occurred during student therapy workshops, called Lifesteps, which were “punitive, humiliating, degrading and traumatizing,” the report said. In the Lifesteps, and elsewhere, the MBA curriculum “included, but was not limited to, sexualized role play in front of staff and peers, requiring students to say derogatory phrases about themselves in front of staff and peers, requiring students to re-enact past physical abuse in front of staff and peers, permitting staff to engage in the usage of derogatory names, phrases and ridicule of students and deprivation of sleep.”

In March, a former MBA student told The Bulletin that she was made to dress up in a revealing French maid outfit and act out promiscuous behavior — including giving lap dances to male students, as part of one Lifestep. Many other former students, dating back more than a decade, recounted similar stories about role playing, sleep deprivation and stringent punishment.

Among the 18 total allegations in the state report, investigators said the school broke state rules by:

• Requiring students to engage in strenuous work projects and camping alone on an island in “inclement weather conditions” as punishment for bad behavior.

• Censoring phone calls to parents as a way to control behavior. Students weren't allowed to tell parents about what went on in Lifesteps and other “emotional growth” curriculum.

• Using bans, where students weren't allowed to talk, touch or look at others for a week or more, as punishment.

• Failing to develop individual treatment for students, depending on their mental health or substance abuse issues.

• Failing to provide trained therapeutic staff to meet the needs of students. The school had no staff member qualified to treat substance abuse or eating disorders, and only one staff member licensed as a mental health professional in Oregon. That staff member told investigators that he doesn't meet with every student or regularly participate in the emotional growth curriculum.

As a result of the many violations, the state issued a complaint against Bitz, the executive director, personally. If the complaint is not overturned on appeal, that would disqualify her from leading other similar schools in Oregon.

“The Executive Director either knew of the abusive practices of the agency, or she should have known what was happening under her authority,” the complaint said.

In an interview with The Bulletin in April, Bitz denied many of the allegations, saying that former students had exaggerated or were untrustworthy sources.

In background material accompanying the state's findings, a child psychiatric expert wrote that the methods at MBA risked “reinforcing self-blame and self-loathing attitudes already present in traumatized individuals. It is essentially retraumatizing.”

What's next

Under the correction order, Mount Bachelor Academy could reopen if it meets a nine-page list of required changes to nearly every aspect of its program within 90 days. The required changes include overhauling the behavior management system based on recommendations by a panel of independent experts, admitting only students that staff are trained and licensed to treat, providing individual therapeutic services to students, creating an independent mediator where students and parents can voice concerns about the school without punishment and replace the executive director.

It also has the right to appeal both the correction order and the emergency license suspension.

Reaction

Despite the state's findings, at least one parent of an MBA student said she doesn't believe the school deserved to be closed.

Virginia Stauffer, a marketing professional in Dallas, Texas, said the school worked to correct problems with its curriculum after the investigation began. Correspondence between MBA and the state released in a public records request by The Bulletin confirmed that the school had tried to revamp its therapy practices over the past several months.

“They did everything in their power to change what they were told the issues were,” Stauffer said. “They were keeping the most meaningful part of the therapy or the transitional workshops without the role playing or the staying up (late).”

And Stauffer said the sudden closure could spell trouble for her 18-year-old son, Max, who had grappled with drug and alcohol issues before going to Mount Bachelor Academy. She said she doesn't know where to send him next.

“I've exhausted every avenue,” Stauffer said. “My suspicion is he'll go back to his alcohol and drug abuse.”

Mike Zielaskowski worked as academic director at Mount Bachelor from 2001 until 2007. Zielaskowski said the facts laid out in the state's complaint, or what he'd seen of it, matched up with his experience at the school.

“Everything I've read is accurate,” Zielaskowski said.

Zielaskowski, who now works at Paulina Elementary School, said the nontraditional methods helped many of the kids who were at Mount Bachelor Academy as a last resort. But after the death of a student at SageWalk, the state may have been reluctant to let the school continue operating, given the possibility of harm.

“It helped a lot of kids,” Zielaskowski said. “At the same time, you've got some kids who it probably hurt.”

SageWalk has been shut down since mid-September following the death of 16-year-old Sergey Blashchishen, of Portland, on Aug. 28. Blashchishen collapsed while on a hiking trip in Lake County and then died on the scene.

The Lake County Sheriff's Office opened an investigation into potential criminal mistreatment and reckless endangerment by the school. Lake County Sheriff's Deputy Chuck Pore said Monday afternoon that he doesn't have a timeline for completing his investigation.

“There's more investigating almost every day,” Pore said.

The last school to face closure by the state was Crater Lake School, also based in Bend. That school voluntarily closed for good in 2004, rather than try to meet the conditions for reopening, according to previous Bulletin reports.

In 1998, former employees at Mount Bachelor Academy told The Bulletin that students were “subjected to frequent obscenity-laced screaming sessions by staff members; students are deprived of sleep; a group of girls emerged from one group therapy session with bruising on their arms after they were ordered to clasp their hands in front of them and pound a mattress for an extended period; and another group of girls on a backwoods intervention outing (was) rousted from their sleeping bags at midnight and forced to remove rocks from a dirt road for two hours in the middle of a cold October night,” according to Bulletin reports at the time.

Sharon Ferguson was a parent of a student at the school at the time and corroborated the staff members' allegations, but later that year, the Oregon DHS determined the school was a safe environment for children.

Ferguson, who lives in San Diego, said she's glad the school faces consequences this time.

“I can't tell you how good I feel about this,” Ferguson said. “I had just thought this is going to be like the last time, and they're going to get away with it again.”