Fornits Home for Wayward Web Fora An open discussion about the troubled parent industry
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Lichfield got his first job with problem teens in 1977 when he was a "dorm parent" at a private boys' school on a wooded lot north of Provo. At the fenced-in compound known as Provo Canyon School for Boys, students were subjected to tough treatment, including long periods of solitary confinement and forced lie-detector tests.It was "baptism by fire," said Lichfield, who has no formal qualifications in education or child psychology and didn't graduate from college. On the job, he said, "you learn real fast, just as a [physician's assistant] learns doctoring skills by working with doctors."However, not all of his charges from those days recall the fledgling educator with fondness. David Doran, 34, of Tarzana spent time in his youth at Provo Canyon and said he remembers Lichfield as a humorless, dictatorial figure who seemed to delight in taunting students.About the same time, Lichfield founded the Cross Creek school, his first. In 1987, Lichfield signed a contract to run Brightway Adolescent Hospital in St. George, which health officials said quickly became a pipeline for enrolling students in tough-love schools.State inspectors investigated the private psychiatric institution after receiving complaints of children being admitted without consent from both parents and a failure to report a suspected case of child abuse, Utah Department of Health spokeswoman Debra Wynkoop said. The hospital shut down in 1998 after being informed by state health officials that they were going to order its closure, Wynkoop said.http://www.caica.org/NEWS%20Robert%20Lichfield.htm
