Before this topic gets way off into justifying what happened to Nick, or passing off abuse as f'ing exercise....
WHAT FOLLOWS IS NOT EXERCISE OR DISCIPLINE OR ROUTINE OR PROPER CARE. IT IS ABUSE:
Employees at the paramilitary-style camp, where hundreds of California youth offenders are sent, had already tried to deal with Nick's incontinence by MAKING HIM SLEEP IN SOILED UNDERWEAR, ordering him to DROP HIS PANTS SO THAT OTHER BOYS COULD INSPECT THEM, requiring he FINISH WHATEVER PHYSICAL ACTIVITY [EXERCISE???] he was engaged in BEFORE USING THE RESTROOM, making him EAT DINNER WHILE SITTING ON THE TOILET and, near the end of his life, making him CARRY A YELLOW TRASH BASKET FILLED WITH HIS SOILD CLOTES AND HIS OWN VOMIT.
At times he was instructed to do push-ups that LOWERED HIS FACE INTO THE FOUL-SMELLING BASKET.
On the day before he died, Nick COLLAPSED SEVERAL TIMES DURING PHYSICAL TRAINING. After he fell while running up a hill, staff bundled him into a wheelbarrow and made another boy push him around the camp. Nick was told to make the sound of an ambulance siren.
On the day he died, a staff member told Nick he deserved an ACADEMY AWARD FOR RAKING.
Nick collapsed for the last time about 5:30 p.m. on March 2. Staff members, who had SPENT THE DAY ORDERING MORE AND MORE PHYSICAL PUNISHMENT, [NOT ROUTINE, NOT EXERCISE- A HALF HOUR ACCORDING TO DAUGHTER] issued their last command. Get up, Nick was told. "No" was the last word he spoke.
Babb failed to note any illness, even as Nick rapidly lost weight--as much as 20 pounds--and began to VOMIT SEVERAL TIMES A DAY, ate little food and began defecating on himself. Nearly each time he saw the nurse, she cleared him for PHYSICAL EXERCISE, according to the sheriff's investigation.
Other boys reported that Nick's vomiting was so regular that staff would mock him, start a countdown and say: "He's gonna blow!"
According to one 16-year-old boy, everyone watched as Nick was DAILY BELITTLED BY STAFF when he WAS UNABLE TO DO PT.
"They'd tell him, 'Keep going!' or 'get up off your knees!,' " the boy told investigators. "If he didn't keep doing the push-ups, then they'd PICK HIM UP AND START PUSHIN' HIM UP AND HE'D START CRYING, he'd say, 'I can't do it.' They start MOCKING HIM, 'I can't, I can't,' like he was a little kid. They'd start pickin' him up and BEATIN' HIM AGAINST THE GROUND. He would let out a series of yelps, like, 'OW!,' but they kept doin' it."
As he grew more physically unable to perform physical exercise, he was PUNISHED BY BEING MADE TO DO MORE.
"They try and MAKE HIM WORK HARDER THAN ANYBODY ELSE HERE, they make him do PT and he throw up all over the place," he said. "They don't even make him clean up. [They] make him KEEP GOING AND GOING AND GOING. He'll throw up like three times a day but they KEEP MAKING HIM DO PT."
Staff members told investigators that they viewed Nick's complaints and collapses AS A TRICK to get out of work. Andres Torres, Nick's Boys Ranch case manager, told sheriff's deputies that the boy never said anything to him about being sick.
Residents have adopted their own terminology, including "Wall to Wall Counseling," which means BEING THROWN AROUND THE POOL ROOM BY STAFFERS, and "Texas sandstorm," in which residents EXERCISE FOR TWO HOURS IN A SEALED AND HEATED BARRACKS. [A HALF HOUR, DAUGHTER?
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Among the complaints against staffers at the ranch that licensing authorities have substantiated: A boy was HIT ON THE HEAD WITH A SHOVEL, a boy's HEAD REPEATEDLY DUNKED IN WATER, a boy's FEET WERE BURNED so severely in hot water that he required skin grafts, a boy's NOSE WAS BROKEN AFTER HIS HEAD WAS SLAMMED INTO A TABLE.
* In 1995, the ranch fired two employees who struck a 15-year-old California boy 25 to 30 times.
* Newly released Arizona Department of Economic Security records show that in a 1996 internal memo, five employees complained that Boys Ranch was hostile and uncooperative and "CONTINUES TO ABUSE CHILDREN, THWART REGULATIONS AND USE THEIR POLITICAL INFLUENCE TO COMBAT NONCOMPLIANCE OF LICENSING RULES." The documents also show that DES agreed to give the ranch 48 hours' notice before undertaking any inspections.
* The ranch's LICENSE HAS BEEN PUT ON PROVISIONAL STATUS BECAUSE OF ABUSE THREE TIMES. In the latest case, its license was renewed in 1996, with the stipulation that it enact more stringent reporting on ill or hurt children and increase staff training on the use of physical restraint and control.
ANYONE WITH A LICK OF INTELLEGENCE KNOWS WHAT THE SHERIFF KNEW:
Sheriff's investigators ran into a circle-the-wagons mentality when they questioned the staff about Nick's death. At one point, Detective M.C. Downing was losing his patience. He had been questioning Oscar Peru Jr., staff orientation lead, about what takes place at the camp and he got consistently similar answers.
Det. Downing: Mr. Peru, enough, OK? . . . you guys are driving me crazy. Every staff member I've talked [to] in here, they sugar coat everything. Do you see stupid on my forehead?
Peru: No, I don't.
Downing: All right. Let's get over this [expletive], OK? I'm tired of hearing the sugar coating. I basically know what goes on here. I was military . . . and you guys gonna sit here and tell me you're being polite? Ain't gonna happen. I know that, he knows that, everybody that has to deal with this place knows that . . .
Det. Downing: Something was wrong with him the last two weeks of his life.
Torres: I disagree with that, Det. Downing. [It was] his ruse to [get] out of the program, I don't feel [it] had anything to do with his health. I looked at it as his way to get out of the program. . . . His way of lying and making up, you know, a fictitious story.
Downing: Obviously there was a problem. He died.
Torres: Yes.
