Indictments Against AYA in Jensen's Murder

[Anonymous]

By Staff
Published/Last Modified on Tuesday, July 15, 2008 1:30 PM MDT

MONTROSE ??” Two organizations and three individuals are facing serious charges after a Montrose grand jury indicted them in the death of 15-year-old Caleb Jensen.

Jensen, of Utah, was participating in an Alternative Youth Adventures outing when he developed a staph infection and died during the trip in rural Montrose County in May of last year.

According to the district attorney's office, indictments were handed down today against Community Educations Centers, Inc. and AYA, alleging child abuse resulting in death as a class-3 felony and criminally negligent homicide as a class-5 felony.
 
Also indicted were Dr. Keith Hooker and James Omer, on the above charges, and Ben Askins, who was indicted on felony-4 manslaughter and felony-3 child abuse resulting in death.

Penalties range from one to 12 years in prison, plus parole, and fines of up to $750,000.

The indicted parties are due in court at 9 a.m. Aug. 25.

AYA is a wilderness therapy program from at-risk youth. Its parent company is Community Education Centers, which voluntarily surrendered AYA's license to the state of Colorado last July. The state health department had already suspended AYA's licenses for residential and therapeutical childcare. The surrender did not include any admission of wrongdoing.

[AuntieEm2]

Wow. Any chance the charges will hold up? A jury in Texas sure didn't care that a 15-year-old girl had been dragged behind a truck at a school. I sincerely hope jurors in Colorado are more sympathetic.

Thanks for the info, ZEYEC.

Auntie Em

[Anonymous]

The panel consisted of: Dwayne Roberts, MD, CCFP, CCFP (EM), CAQ Sports MED, Director, Utah Valley Sports Medicine Fellowship, Utah Valley Regional Medical Center, Edwin Weigh, PA, Medical Consultant for the Catherine Freer Wilderness Therapy Expeditions; and Dr. Keith Hooker, sports physician, emergency room doctor, mountain climber, one of the founders of the Aspen Program, and a medical consultant for many wilderness programs

To begin the discussion, Dr. Hooker explained there is no cost-effective way of screening all the potential risk factors in applicants of wilderness programs; even major sports teams do not use expensive tests unless an applicant’s case history indicates the need for further testing.....

par for the course. Hooker missed the issue, as most kids die from neglect and/or abuse. they're screening the wrong people. shouldn't they devise a 'tool' for screening potential abusers? but then, a person could pass that screening and still kill a kid due to following the program policies and procedures.

[Anonymous]

shouldn't they devise a 'tool' for screening potential abusers?

But then who would they hire?

[Anonymous]

The panel consisted of: Dwayne Roberts, MD, CCFP, CCFP (EM), CAQ Sports MED, Director, Utah Valley Sports Medicine Fellowship, Utah Valley Regional Medical Center, Edwin Weigh, PA, Medical Consultant for the Catherine Freer Wilderness Therapy Expeditions; and Dr. Keith Hooker, sports physician, emergency room doctor, mountain climber, one of the founders of the Aspen Program, and a medical consultant for many wilderness programs

To begin the discussion, Dr. Hooker explained there is no cost-effective way of screening all the potential risk factors in applicants of wilderness programs; even major sports teams do not use expensive tests unless an applicant’s case history indicates the need for further testing.....

par for the course. Hooker missed the issue, as most kids die from neglect and/or abuse. they're screening the wrong people. shouldn't they devise a 'tool' for screening potential abusers? but then, a person could pass that screening and still kill a kid due to following the program policies and procedures.

If there's "no cost effective" way to screen-out kids too frail for forced marches, exposure, and food and water denial, then no kid should be forcibly subjected to that "treatment"(which has been proved illegitimate) because these monsters don’t have the right to murder people!

Comparing “programs” to professional sports teams, as a way to justify inevitably slaughtering a proportion of “students” is bizarre.

Adults volunteer for sports teams
Minors are physically forced to participate in “programs.”
One cannot imply ethical equivalency between forcing deadly strain on a young adult, and risks consensually undertaken by an athlete.
While we’re at it, let’s beat the head in of a 13 year old. After all, that’s what happens to boxers!

[Anonymous]

Here's a slightly longer article:

Telluride, Colo. -

More than a year has passed since Caleb Jensen died in the mountains near Montrose, in a wilderness camp for troubled kids. Languishing from an untreated staph infection, the 15-year-old  collapsed on his sleeping bag one day and never got up.

That was May 2007. Yesterday, a Montrose County grand jury indicted the camp, its corporate parent, two camp staffers and a Utah doctor on charges stemming from the boy’s death. They’re charged with manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide and child abuse and face up to 12 years in prison.

Jensen’s mother, Dawn Woodson, said she’d been waiting for this news in one form or another every since she got a phone call telling her that her son was dead.

“I’m glad to hear of it, and that these people have been indicted,” she said in a telephone interview. “But I still have a huge void and nothings ever going to fill it.”

The Utah boy spent the last month of his life at Alternative Youth Adventures, a now-defunct youth camp outside Montrose. He was sent there in late March 2007 after getting into trouble and landing in the Utah Division of Juvenile Justice Services.

The camp sought to rehabilitate troubled kids with a menu of long hikes, tough physical exercise, counseling and education. It was an offshoot of Community Education Centers, a New Jersey company that runs programs nationwide for adult prisoners and at-risk kids.

But Jensen’s experience became a doomed nightmare.

He was prone to staphylococcus infections and developed one after arriving at the camp, investigators said. He complained, and other campers complained on his behalf, but Jensen’s mother said those pleas fell dead to the ground as her son’s skin went gray, his fever spiked and he started hallucinating.

Jensen was even isolated for insisting that he felt sick, his mother said.

“They were saying he was acting out and lying, and he was being punished the entire time he was sick,” Woodson said. “He was all by himself the whole time. He was dying and he was by himself. He couldn’t talk to anyone the whole time he was sick.”

On May 2, 2007, a month after he entered the camp, Jensen died.

After the state suspended its license, Community Education Centers shut down the camp permanently in July 2007, “without admission of wrongdoing of any sort,” according to a letter it wrote to the Colorado Attorney General’s office.

The case went nearly silent until yesterday’s indictments were announced.

Alternative Youth Adventures and Community Education Centers were charged with child abuse resulting in death and criminally negligent homicide, according to the Montrose County district attorney.

James Omer, the camp’s program director, and Dr. Keith Hooker, a Utah emergency doctor and wilderness program expert, were also charged with child abuse and criminally negligent homicide. Ben Askins, another camp staffer, was charged with manslaughter and child abuse.

The three men could not be reached for comment Wednesday. A spokeswoman for the Utah hospital that employs Hooker said he remains in good standing on the medical staff, but she said the hospital would investigate the charges.

Community Education Centers issued this statement: “CEC stands by its position that at all times the company acted appropriately and that the circumstances that lead to Caleb Jensen’s death, while tragic, were not reasonably foreseeable.”

The indictments offered a rare moment of vindication for child-safety advocates.
Isabelle Zehnder, who runs the Coalition Against Institutionalized Child Abuse, said that institutions and employees rarely face criminal charges after children die or suffer abuse in custody.

The public agencies and private companies that provide care for troubled kids are often the last resort for parents, social services and judges. Their methods are often meant to be tough, and when things go wrong, agencies say they were simply acting in the name of treatment, Zehnder said.

“You don’t know how many cases we have where everybody walks,” she said. “And then to have this — it’s amazing.”

Jensen’s mother welcomed the indictments, but said the pain of her son’s death couldn’t be balmed by the justice system. Months pass, things get better, but then she’ll chance upon a children’s book Caleb once loved, and confront a wall of memories and hurt.

“I still battle,” she said. “I don’t know how to tell myself, ‘You just have to understand that you’re not going to have Caleb back.’ I want him back so much, it hurts. It’s not easier or better. Somehow we find a way to get through every day.”

http://www.telluridenews.com/news/x3799 ... en-s-death

[Anonymous]

Specifics are listed here:

http://greenclovers.net/fican/in_memori ... jensen.htm

[EricasMom]

The panel consisted of: Dwayne Roberts, MD, CCFP, CCFP (EM), CAQ Sports MED, Director, Utah Valley Sports Medicine Fellowship, Utah Valley Regional Medical Center, Edwin Weigh, PA, Medical Consultant for the Catherine Freer Wilderness Therapy Expeditions; and Dr. Keith Hooker, sports physician, emergency room doctor, mountain climber, one of the founders of the Aspen Program, and a medical consultant for many wilderness programs

To begin the discussion, Dr. Hooker explained there is no cost-effective way of screening all the potential risk factors in applicants of wilderness programs; even major sports teams do not use expensive tests unless an applicant’s case history indicates the need for further testing.....

Edwin Weigh, PA (Physician's Assistant), was the person who ran the code, from OR, on our daughter, Erica Harvey, while she was dying in NV.  He was also described, by Freer personnel,  before and after her death as Dr. Weigh.  Took us at least a year to find out otherwise.

Some panel--was that at a NATSAP event or OBHIC?

[Anonymous]

I still don't see how wilderness therapy is appropriate for treating youth with major drug addiction issues. 

Common sense tells me that's a risky approach from a detox standpoint, if nothing else.

[Anonymous]

The panel consisted of: Dwayne Roberts, MD, CCFP, CCFP (EM), CAQ Sports MED, Director, Utah Valley Sports Medicine Fellowship, Utah Valley Regional Medical Center, Edwin Weigh, PA, Medical Consultant for the Catherine Freer Wilderness Therapy Expeditions; and Dr. Keith Hooker, sports physician, emergency room doctor, mountain climber, one of the founders of the Aspen Program, and a medical consultant for many wilderness programs

To begin the discussion, Dr. Hooker explained there is no cost-effective way of screening all the potential risk factors in applicants of wilderness programs; even major sports teams do not use expensive tests unless an applicant’s case history indicates the need for further testing.....

Edwin Weigh, PA (Physician's Assistant), was the person who ran the code, from OR, on our daughter, Erica Harvey, while she was dying in NV.  He was also described, by Freer personnel,  before and after her death as Dr. Weigh.  Took us at least a year to find out otherwise.

Some panel--was that at a NATSAP event or OBHIC?

yeh, quiet the line up, huh?
obhic quarterly in 2003
http://www.strugglingteens.com/news/obh ... sions.html
glad you discovered the truth about Weigh.
Hooker has a relationship with several programs.
how many programs can one person be 'on call' doc for?

[TheWho]

The panel consisted of: Dwayne Roberts, MD, CCFP, CCFP (EM), CAQ Sports MED, Director, Utah Valley Sports Medicine Fellowship, Utah Valley Regional Medical Center, Edwin Weigh, PA, Medical Consultant for the Catherine Freer Wilderness Therapy Expeditions; and Dr. Keith Hooker, sports physician, emergency room doctor, mountain climber, one of the founders of the Aspen Program, and a medical consultant for many wilderness programs

To begin the discussion, Dr. Hooker explained there is no cost-effective way of screening all the potential risk factors in applicants of wilderness programs; even major sports teams do not use expensive tests unless an applicant’s case history indicates the need for further testing.....

Edwin Weigh, PA (Physician's Assistant), was the person who ran the code, from OR, on our daughter, Erica Harvey, while she was dying in NV.  He was also described, by Freer personnel,  before and after her death as Dr. Weigh.  Took us at least a year to find out otherwise.

Some panel--was that at a NATSAP event or OBHIC?

It was the quarterly meeting of OBHIC in January of 2003 when they were discussing the screening of risk factors and also the relevance and use of the PPE…………..



...

[psy]

The panel consisted of: Dwayne Roberts, MD, CCFP, CCFP (EM), CAQ Sports MED, Director, Utah Valley Sports Medicine Fellowship, Utah Valley Regional Medical Center, Edwin Weigh, PA, Medical Consultant for the Catherine Freer Wilderness Therapy Expeditions; and Dr. Keith Hooker, sports physician, emergency room doctor, mountain climber, one of the founders of the Aspen Program, and a medical consultant for many wilderness programs

To begin the discussion, Dr. Hooker explained there is no cost-effective way of screening all the potential risk factors in applicants of wilderness programs; even major sports teams do not use expensive tests unless an applicant’s case history indicates the need for further testing.....

Edwin Weigh, PA (Physician's Assistant), was the person who ran the code, from OR, on our daughter, Erica Harvey, while she was dying in NV.  He was also described, by Freer personnel,  before and after her death as Dr. Weigh.  Took us at least a year to find out otherwise.

That's why I like the FTC's warnings so much.  They seem, at least on the surface, to be a lot more skeptical than the average govt agency and issue warnings accordingly.  Every line is, more or less, "make sure to check with other sources to see if hte program is full of shit."  Most parents aren't skeptical enough to expect that a program out to "help" kids could be pulling such cons.

[Anonymous]

The panel consisted of: Dwayne Roberts, MD, CCFP, CCFP (EM), CAQ Sports MED, Director, Utah Valley Sports Medicine Fellowship, Utah Valley Regional Medical Center, Edwin Weigh, PA, Medical Consultant for the Catherine Freer Wilderness Therapy Expeditions; and Dr. Keith Hooker, sports physician, emergency room doctor, mountain climber, one of the founders of the Aspen Program, and a medical consultant for many wilderness programs

To begin the discussion, Dr. Hooker explained there is no cost-effective way of screening all the potential risk factors in applicants of wilderness programs; even major sports teams do not use expensive tests unless an applicant’s case history indicates the need for further testing.....

Edwin Weigh, PA (Physician's Assistant), was the person who ran the code, from OR, on our daughter, Erica Harvey, while she was dying in NV.  He was also described, by Freer personnel,  before and after her death as Dr. Weigh.  Took us at least a year to find out otherwise.

Some panel--was that at a NATSAP event or OBHIC?

It was the quarterly meeting of OBHIC in January of 2003 when they were discussing the screening of risk factors and also the relevance and use of the PPE…………..
...

ding, ding, ding... that's right who....
three years after OBHICs report claiming wilderness to be safer than normal teen activities,
and a few months before Catherine Freer's THIRD avoidable death.

[Anonymous]

The panel consisted of: Dwayne Roberts, MD, CCFP, CCFP (EM), CAQ Sports MED, Director, Utah Valley Sports Medicine Fellowship, Utah Valley Regional Medical Center, Edwin Weigh, PA, Medical Consultant for the Catherine Freer Wilderness Therapy Expeditions; and Dr. Keith Hooker, sports physician, emergency room doctor, mountain climber, one of the founders of the Aspen Program, and a medical consultant for many wilderness programs

To begin the discussion, Dr. Hooker explained there is no cost-effective way of screening all the potential risk factors in applicants of wilderness programs; even major sports teams do not use expensive tests unless an applicant’s case history indicates the need for further testing.....

Edwin Weigh, PA (Physician's Assistant), was the person who ran the code, from OR, on our daughter, Erica Harvey, while she was dying in NV.  He was also described, by Freer personnel,  before and after her death as Dr. Weigh.  Took us at least a year to find out otherwise.

Some panel--was that at a NATSAP event or OBHIC?

It was the quarterly meeting of OBHIC in January of 2003 when they were discussing the screening of risk factors and also the relevance and use of the PPE…………..
...

ding, ding, ding... that's right who....
three years after OBHICs report claiming wilderness to be safer than normal teen activities,
and a few months before Catherine Freer's THIRD avoidable death.

That young adults are being abducted and forced to endure a "treatment" that's never been proved valid, with no other impetus then their guardian's whim, is so unbelievably violating of our society's basic social contract and legal foundation, in the first place, is beyond human comprehension.

That's the same type of  "oops" as the genocide of the American Indian, slavery, the holocaust, all over again. People in 20, or less, years will scratch their heads and think, "what sort of person could do this?". How could anyone be so evil?

Well, how can they?
How can they?

[Anonymous]

You are all being incredibly judge mental.   Were any of you there, do you know the people involved? What about if it comes out that the staff are not to blame ? Then good people will have been wrongly accused, and their lives ruined.