A state inspection report offers new details on the hours leading up to a 12-year-old’s death at Trails Carolina, a camp for troubled adolescents.

Staff at a North Carolina wilderness therapy camp failed to check that a 12-year-old boy was breathing during his first night at the facility, a state report released Tuesday found.

The boy, who has been identified in law enforcement records only by his initials, CJH, was found unresponsive around 7:45 a.m. on Feb. 3 at Trails Carolina, a camp for troubled adolescents in the western part of the state.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    In case anyone wasn’t aware, the ‘trouble’ many of these ‘troubled adolescents’ get themselves into is having a boyfriend or girlfriend that’s the same gender they are. Or, worse, saying their gender is not the one assigned to them at birth!

  • dohpaz42@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    What the actual fuck? There is so much to unpack from this article. I googled a bivy; it’s basically an enclosed sleeping bag. Before bivys, they would put a tarp over the zipped-up sleeping bag. Why? What’s the point in enclosing a child on their first night? Maybe to break their spirit? Show them you mean business? I can’t think of anything positive that could come from doing that to them.

    And the “counselors”… they should be equally held liable. They heard things they were unsure of, but never thought to go check them out? That’s negligence.

    I’m pissed. Beyond pissed. Everyone in that organization needs to go to jail. I pray that NC does the right thing and closes this torture factory down.

    • rtxn@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Every “camp for troubled youth” I’ve ever heard of turned out to be a fucking concentration camp for kids full of physical, mental, and sexual torture and religious indoctrination. I wonder if this one also kidnaps kids in the middle of the night.

      The entire idea should be made illegal.

    • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      So I’ve worked at out door facilities (none that did this kind of work) and have had colleagues that worked these kinds of camps.

      Basically, you get thrown a minimum of supplies and told figure it out. Not usually a tent but a tarp you are expected to construct into a tent. I knew of one outfit in Utah where kids would get sent in the middle of the winter. I consider it abuse, but if their parents sign the waivers… keep in mind that children are a form of property (for most intents and purposes).

      I refused to ever work those kinds of camps and threw shade at my friends who did.

  • stoly@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Founded in 2008, Trails Carolina is a for-profit wilderness camp that treats children with diagnoses such as autism, ADHD, bipolar and post-traumatic stress disorders, as well as those struggling with depression or unruly behavior.

    Excuse me? You are sending your children with MEDICAL CONDITIONS to be scared straight by a FOR PROFIT company? How is giving them over to abusers going to help them?

    • Passerby6497@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Because they see the medical condition as a problem, and depending on the parents may not even acknowledge that it is a medical condition. So many of these types of parents see their kid as a burden that will lower their social standing by being weird.