Posted on Sun, Dec. 19, 2004
JOE LEDFORD/The Kansas City Star
After Tim Rocha of St. Joseph worked at Thayer Learning Center Boot Camp and Boarding School for seven days last summer, he filed two reports of alleged child abuse with the Caldwell County sheriff's office.
Teen's death raises concerns about boot camp
Panel: It may have been prevented
By STEVE ROCK
The Kansas City Star
KIDDER, Mo. ? A panel of county and state officials has concluded that the recent death of a 15-year-old at a little-known boot camp might have been prevented with earlier medical treatment.
The panel's report, as well as police records and allegations from former students and employees, paints a disturbing picture of Thayer Learning Center Boot Camp and Boarding School, a military-type home for troubled teens. The report sparked questions from state legislators and illustrates to child advocates why state oversight is needed for such homes.
The privately run facility, about 50 miles north of Kansas City, houses about 100 children who typically range in age from 13 through 17.
One of them, Roberto Reyes of Santa Rosa, Calif., died Nov. 3. The probable cause of death was determined to be a spider or insect bite. Also, a police report said scrapes on Roberto's knees, feet, toes, elbows and back indicated ?that he had been dragged.?
In addition to Roberto's death, police incident reports and seven former Thayer employees and students allege physical and emotional abuse of other students, such as one being forced to eat her own vomit, lengthy isolation, medical neglect and censored communication with parents.
John and Willa Bundy, who own Thayer, declined to be interviewed, but in a written response to The Kansas City Star, Thayer officials called the allegations ?ludicrous and false.?
?These same allegations have been made by several disgruntled former employees over the last couple of years,? the response said. ?All the allegations have been investigated by appropriate state agencies and all have been found false.?
Caldwell County Prosecutor Jason Kanoy said that various allegations have been ?taken under advisement,? but that his office has never filed charges against Thayer or the Bundys. There is a pending investigation in Roberto's case, he said, and he doesn't know whether charges will be filed.
State Rep. John Quinn, a Chillicothe Republican, said he had questions about Roberto's death, but had heard some ?real good reports? about the facility. And the parent of a former student said a stint at Thayer turned her son's life around.
Roberto's death was the first at the facility since it opened more than two years ago.
The final report of the Child Fatality Review Panel in Caldwell County said earlier medical treatment ?may have prevented this fatality.? The bite may have occurred as much as a week before Roberto died, the Caldwell County coroner said, but he doesn't know how much medical attention Roberto received during that time.
Kanoy has refused to release the autopsy report.
Thayer's seven-page faxed response to the abuse allegations consisted largely of testimonials that school officials said were written by unnamed students. Those students reported positive experiences, and one of them thanked the Bundys ?for all their hard work they put into this place.?
?These students' lives were completely out of control before coming to our school,? the response from Thayer said. ?The parents and families of our students who visit on a weekly basis continue to show their support and gratitude for our services and trust Thayer with straightening out their troubled child.?
Ed Proctor, an attorney for Thayer, said last week that he had not seen the final report of the Child Fatality Review Panel and couldn't comment on it. Regarding Roberto's death, he said, ?The bottom line on the reports that have been issued is that it was an accidental death.?
Proctor declined to discuss Roberto's specific situation but said, ?Every child at Thayer has immediate access to medical care at any time.?Deb Hendricks, spokeswoman for the Missouri Department of Social Services, said state privacy laws prevent her from discussing whether the children's division had investigated allegations of child abuse at Thayer. She said a State Technical Assistance Team was involved in the investigation of Roberto's death but didn't know how long that investigation would take.
Regardless, the fatality has caught the attention of Missouri child advocates.
Sen. Pat Dougherty, a St. Louis Democrat, would like to see more state regulation of teen homes. Missouri law exempts facilities from state licensing if they provide care, like Thayer does, ?in conjunction with an educational program.?
?The laws are so weak,? Dougherty said.
He plans to introduce a bill in the 2005 legislative session that would require state oversight for facilities such as Thayer. And though previous attempts at similar legislation have failed, Dougherty hopes the recent death ?serves the purpose to bring public debate out there.?
Ruth Ehresman, policy director of Citizens for Missouri's Children, a nonprofit child advocacy group based in St. Louis, doesn't like that there are six or more unregulated homes throughout Missouri.
?We require places where animals are kept to be inspected,? she said. ?And yet we're willing to allow children to be placed for 24 hours a day, away from their parents, in a place that doesn't require any oversight.?
Preventable tragedy?
Police reports show that about 10 a.m. Nov. 3, a Thayer official called Roberto's parents and asked whether Roberto had any medical problems because he was having a hard time breathing.
Roberto's father said his son didn't have any medical conditions.
Roberto ? who stood 6 feet tall and weighed 240 pounds ? was pronounced dead at 4:34 p.m. that day.
Through a relative, Victor and Gracia Reyes declined to discuss their son's case with The Star. But police reports show that Roberto had been confined to bed the day he died and that school officials were checking his vital signs ?every few hours.? During one checkup, the reports show, Roberto was unresponsive.
School officials performed CPR and called for emergency assistance. One portion of a police report indicated that 12 minutes elapsed between the time Roberto was found unresponsive and the call to 911.
Roberto eventually was transported to Cameron Regional Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.
The autopsy was performed by the Jackson County medical examiner's office. A doctor there made the diagnosis that Roberto probably died of a spider bite. There is no definitive test to determine a spider bite fatality, said Caldwell County Coroner Gary Brown, but it's done primarily through elimination of other things.
Brown said that doctors couldn't determine the exact location of the bite, but that the autopsy and ensuing tests revealed ?breaking down of the protein,? presumably caused by spider venom.
A supplemental police report written by a Caldwell County sheriff's deputy, who was present at the autopsy along with Sheriff Kirby Brelsford, said the scrapes on Roberto's feet and toes indicated he hadn't been wearing shoes.
In addition to the scrapes, the report said there was a 2-inch bruise on the bottom of Roberto's right foot, and bruises on his chest and arms. There also was a bruise that covered most of his right shoulder and upper right arm.
Brown said he believed some of the bruising could have been caused by the spider bite, but not the scrapes. The police report shows that when a Caldwell County dispatcher asked a school official whether Roberto had been complaining about chest pain, the woman responded that he was ?flopping himself on the floor and probably got his muscles sore.? She also said other people had to help him walk because his knee muscles were sore from exercising.
Elsewhere in the report, a school employee said: ?(Roberto) had been playing a game for a week or so with us saying that he couldn't walk, and he would throw himself to the ground.?
The Child Fatality Review Panel ? which includes representatives from law enforcement, the state's children's division and several other disciplines ? said in its final report: ?The panel feels appropriate legislation dealing with access to the facility by juvenile authorities, social services and law enforcement should be enacted.?
Allegations
Tim Rocha of St. Joseph worked at Thayer for seven days last summer.
?By the second day,? he said, ?I was telling my wife, ?This isn't right.'??
So disgusted was Rocha, 41, that he asked some students for their parents' names and phone numbers so he could call them, an action that he said led to his firing. At least one of those parents yanked her child from the school.
Joanie Nations' son, Anthony, was at Thayer from June until September. Within an hour of her conversation with Rocha, she was making the 11-hour drive to Kidder from her Henderson, Texas, home. She remembers the phone call like this:
?(Rocha) was crying, and he told me, ?I just want you to know what's going on.' He told me Anthony was not being abused at that point by any of the staff there, but he said, ?I know it will happen eventually. Please go get your boy.'??
Rocha filed two reports of alleged child abuse with the Caldwell County sheriff's office in September, noting in one that a student was placed in ?half a chokehold? and that a Thayer employee then sat on the student's legs.
Rocha and others described a regimented, joyless setting that included students sleeping on the floor ? with only a thin pad and a sleeping bag between them and the concrete ? when they first arrived at the facility.
Cullen Parker, a resident of Texas, was a student at Thayer from November 2003 until January 2004.
He remembers students regularly being awakened and forced to ?bear crawl? for an hour or more through the snow. He also remembers a student's punishment for stealing a box of raisins: He was isolated for three days. Between 6 a.m. and 9 p.m., Parker said, the student had to stand in an area about 2 feet square and could sit for only 15 minutes every hour.
?I'll never forget it,? Parker, 17, said of his Thayer experience. ?If someone could record what went on there, even for a week, they'd go out of business.?
In May, three Thayer employees went to the Caldwell County sheriff's office. Incident reports say the employees saw or heard that:
? Students were stripped down to their underwear, tied up and laid on a concrete floor, and ice-cold water was poured on them every hour.
? Restroom breaks were so limited that students regularly soiled themselves. The restricted bathroom breaks led to various urinary-tract and bladder infections. One girl was forced to sit in a plastic tub containing urine for at least 2½ hours.
? One student was tethered to a four-wheeler and ?dragged around ? on the sand track.?
? A female student, a vegetarian, was forced to eat meatballs. The girl got sick and vomited in her hands. ?The girl was then forced to eat the vomit,? the report said.
Sheriff's Deputy Donald Fuller, who took the employees' statements, said he found them to be credible.
?We've had a few reports of similar allegations (at Thayer),? Fuller said. ?It's like the same stuff being said over and over again.?
Kanoy said that the investigation is still open.
Kris Kessinger, 27, one of the three employees who reported abusive treatment to Fuller in May, said she was fired after lodging the complaints.
?It makes me sick to think about it again,? she said of her time at Thayer. ?I don't think I had a day of work where I didn't have a kid cry: ?I can't do this. I want to go home. I'll never get out of here.'
?The parents have no idea what these kids are going through.?
Thayer defenders
The school in Kidder, a town of fewer than 300, houses students in two buildings. There are only three or four houses in the school's immediate view, and nearby traffic is just as likely to be a tractor carrying hay bales as anything else.
?Some people like it (the school), some don't,? said Charles Harpster, 74, a lifelong resident of Kidder. ?But I think they've proven that they're pretty good neighbors.?
The American School, based in Illinois, confirmed that Thayer uses its curriculum. The American School is a high school correspondence course that is accredited by the Commission on International and Trans-Regional Accreditation.
During downtime at Thayer, which costs as much as $4,000 a month per student, students listen to inspirational tapes and read inspirational books.
To Judy Mitchell of Ohio, sending her son to Thayer was ?the hardest thing I ever had to do.? But she did it in March 2003, and son Cole stayed until the following November.
The results?
?It saved his life,? she said. ?He did a 360-degree turnaround and, believe me, we tried everything imaginable.?
Cole acknowledged it was hard, she said, ?but he never spoke of abuse.? Now, she said, Cole is earning good grades at Camden Military Academy in South Carolina.
It's the kind of success story that Quinn, whose district includes Kidder, believes is indicative of the work Thayer does.
?A lot of these are really troubled kids,? Quinn said. ?They'd be in prison if they weren't there.?
But, Quinn said, the final report of the Child Fatality Review Panel said Roberto's death is something ?we definitely need to investigate further.?
?I think they definitely do some good,? Quinn said of Thayer. ?But we may need to examine just what they are doing.?
To reach Steve Rock, call
(816) 234-4338 or send e-mail to
srock@kcstar.com.
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First glance
? Police reports, as well as former students and employees of Thayer Learning Center Boot Camp and Boarding School, allege instances of physical and mental abuse at the facility near Cameron, Mo.
? Thayer's owners, John and Willa Bundy, said in a written response that the allegations are ?ludicrous and false.?
