Since November 2006, Aspen Education Group, with corporate offices located in Cerritos, California has been a division of Bain Capital's CRC Health.
Youth Care of Utah merged into Island View Residential Treatment Center, and Passages to Recovery moved to the SUWS Adolescent Program to expand the services offered there.
[6][7][8] The Aspen Education Group in 2005 was the target of criticism related to the large revenues its programs generated, and the charge that the provider takes advantage of parents in desperate situations.
[33] In April 2014, a mother claimed in court that her teenage daughter was taken from Texas by a human trafficker and locked up at a secret "private prison" in Utah, where she was made to perform "mindless tasks of blind obedience".
Contact with family members or friends is not allowed, and even contact with the family member or agency that transferred full and complete custody to the prison is monitored, and the inmate knows that any disparaging remark or complaint about the prison will be punished by a loss of all privileges earned, meaning having to start at the bottom all over again to rise from level to level by successfully completing mindless tasks of blind obedience.
In the episode, the teen admitted to having sex with adult men she met online, which the family called "bizarre and dangerous conduct" in their lawsuit.
In their suit, the family calls the facility a "private prison" where their daughter was deprived her of freedom, privacy, education, and subjected to "involuntary servitude, and unjust unusual punishments.
When staff members tried to pull her off, her right arm "was badly and perhaps irreparably broken, and its main nerve severely damaged", the lawsuit states.
The complaint alleged that staff at the residential treatment center subjected the 15-year-old girl to hours of stress positions, threats of suffocation, exposure to animal abuse and regular public humiliation.
[47] One summer morning, the boy suited up in an 80-pound backpack; by afternoon, the heat had topped 80 degrees, and he was soon staggering, drifting off the trail, and complaining of dizziness and exhaustion.
[48] Staffers thought he was faking his symptoms and failed to call 911 until his pulse had stopped; that death is the focus of a negligent homicide investigation.
State investigators found nine cases of abuse and neglect at Mount Bachelor Academy, including incidents of "sexualized role play", in which teenage girls were allegedly forced to give lap dances during therapy sessions.
[50] Because Mount Bachelor and its director threatened costly lawsuits, Oregon's Department of Human Services softened the language of the report.
[57] With the cost of Aspen programs ranging from $200-$500 per day (amounting to $73,000 - $182,000 annually), and length of stays averaging from one month to two years, monetary concerns tend to arise for those funding treatment.
[61] Educational consultant Tom Croke has criticized Aspen for its marketing practices and for closing programs without sufficient regard for the harm done to students whose promised services were being disrupted.
[21] Yet in April 2014, he provided an updated review on Aspen and again expressed on his website that he "cannot be confident that their facilities will not compromise the best interests of patients/ clients in order to increase earnings.
"[67] Two reports are widely cited in Aspen program marketing and promotional materials: Report of Findings from a Multi-Center Study of Youth Outcomes in Private Residential Treatment (Aug 2006) and A Multi-Center, Longitudinal Study of Youth Outcomes in Private Residential Treatment Programs (April 2007; not publicly available, summary of select findings available via marketing materials).