Jan 22, 2009 6:01 pm US/Mountain
Mother Sues Over Son's Death At Wilderness Camp
By Paul Foy, Associated Press Writer
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) ―
After a month in a wilderness therapy camp, Caleb Jensen's body was being ravaged by disease.
The Utah teenager, sentenced by juvenile authorities to 60 days at a rigorous boot camp, was being forced to take long hikes in the Colorado backcountry without water. He was dragged by arm and wrist restraints when he stumbled in pain by counselors who believed he was faking an illness, according to a lawsuit filed in Utah by his mother last week.
At night the boy was "tarped" or bound tightly in a tarp to prevent his escape. Other times, his shoes were taken away. He was given a diaper when he soiled his sleeping bag. Eventually, he couldn't summon the strength to crawl out of the bag, later discarded as a "bio hazard," the lawsuit alleges.
Jensen died the following day, May 2, 2007. He was 15.
Dawn Boyd Woodson, of the Salt Lake city suburb of Murray, says the staff of Alternative Youth Adventures ignored obvious signs of her son's deteriorating medical condition and instead accused him of "behavior issues." It planned to keep him longer as punishment, she said in court papers.
Woodson is suing West Caldwell, N.J.-based Community Education Centers Inc., which ran the former Montrose, Colo.-based wilderness camp. CEC operates in 20 states, providing treatment for criminal defendants and managing a Delaware prison. It shut down the Colorado boot camp for troubled teens two months later.
The company also faces a Colorado criminal trial in March over the boy's agonizing death; indictments against some of its staff members have been dismissed by Montrose County prosecutors, who nonetheless contend the boy's disease went untreated despite glaring symptoms.
"This camp had an excellent reputation and stellar grades from the state agency that oversaw it," Colleen Scissors of Grand Junction, Colo., the company's criminal defender, said Thursday. "Caleb had a staph infection, not something you're normally looking for. You're worried about them having blisters."
Woodson's lawsuit also targets Utah's state divisions of Child and Family Services, which had custody over him, and Juvenile Justice Services, which shipped him off to the boot camp. Other defendants are the camp's operations director, James Omer, its emergency medical technician, Ben Askins, and medical director, Dr. Keith Ronald Hooker of Provo, Utah.
"It was a horrible tragedy but there was no wrongdoing by our company or staff," Bill Pallatucci, the senior vice president, told The Associated Press on Thursday.
Pallatucci said he couldn't respond to specific allegations, "except to say in this matter we were always in full compliance with government regulations governing the program."
Woodson didn't immediately return a message left by the AP on her husband's cell phone. Filed in 3rd District Court, the lawsuit says Caleb Jensen was her youngest son by a different man, an absent father, and that the boy had a troubled childhood and medical problems. In court papers, she said she warned camp officials her son was prone to serious infections.
(© 2009 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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