(Children's names omitted out of respect for the families)
I know this is old news, but I wanted to bring it back up to the forefront now that Brat Camp has aired.
I am doing this because I worry that parents are going to think that sending their children to these "camps" (boot camps, wilderness programs), are best for their child. I believe they need to read about the other side of things, and how things can get out of hand. Too many children have died at the hands of untrained, mean, and evil people.
They claim the children are lying, claim one boy did not get stung by bees. Amazing that when they were taken to the doctor it was reported he had been stung by bees. Pretty clear to see who the manipulators are, don't you think? Just an opinion, of course.
January 3, 2003 - Transcript
Death In The Desert
A.H. was a troubled kid. In the spring of 2001, after the Phoenix teen was caught shoplifting, his mother M.H. enrolled him in America?s Buffalo Soldiers Re-enactors Association, a boot camp run by 57-year-old Charles Franklin Long II. She never expected him to end up dead. Who is to blame? Richard Schlesinger reports.
Long modeled his camp after military boot camps. He commanded kids as young as 7, who are in trouble with the law or whose parents just want them to have some extra discipline. He has his own style of working with kids - it?s a lot of managing and a little menacing.
A.H. started attending the boot camp?s weekend program, and his mother finally had some hope.
But A.H. quickly tired of the program and slashed his mother?s tires to avoid going back to camp. So M.H. enrolled her son in a more intensive program run by Long. A.K. and A. C. were also sent to the boot camp to straighten up. R. A. was sent there to gain confidence and lose weight.
Their diet: an apple for breakfast, a carrot for lunch, and a bowl of beans for dinner. Their dress code for the Arizona desert: black sweatshirt, black sweatpants, black hats.
R.A. and A.K. became friends with A. H. at the camp, about an hour outside Phoenix. The first two days of boot camp passed without incident. But on the third day, things really started to heat up - it was a day the kids call ?Hell Day.?
Police say the trouble started when Long left the camp that morning, putting his ?drill instructors? in charge: teen-agers M.F. and S.J. - and 39 year-old Raymond Anderson. Witnesses say it all began after lunch, for no apparent reason.
A.K. says he was forced to drink from a jug filled with water, rocks and dirt. One of the instructors then allegedly jumped on his chest with both feet.
A.C. claims she was also beaten by the instructors and slapped all over her body. You can still see the bruises on a videotape shot 5 days afterward.
Hell Day continued well into the evening. R.A. says one of the drill instructors poured sugary water from the baked beans all over his body, then left him alone as bees swarmed over him. He claims he was stung 82 times.
Sunday, July 1,2001, marked the fourth day since ?Hell Day?, when the staff reportedly beat and bruised kids in the hot desert sun. But the worst was yet to come for A.H.
Charles Long is used to kids wanting to leave his camp, and he didn?t make it easy. ?On Sundays I call a formation, and I will ask, ?Is there anyone here that feels as though he or she can't go any further and would like to drop on request, or leave the program,['? he says.
A.H. was one of many kids who asked to leave that day. The group, including A.H., A.K., and R.A., was separated from the rest of the kids and ordered to form a line. ?We stayed out there until the sun went down,? says A.K. The temperature that day reached 111 degrees.
The kids who dropped on request say they were not allowed any water. Some of the campers told investigators there was adequate water, but many said A.H. and his group had nowhere near enough. Long claims that the children were allowed full access to water that day.
The kids say that after several hours in the sun, A.H. began to hallucinate. ?He said he saw Indians and water,? says A.K. He was also eating dirt. By sundown, they say A.H. had gotten worse. ?He was passed out. His face was just pale,? says R.A.
But Colonel Long says A.H. was faking his sickness. ?I've seen A.H. do the very same thing before,? he says. Long believes A.H. was pretending again because he wanted to go home. The staff was told to put A.H. in a pickup truck along with other kids on their way to take a shower.
"A.H. was sitting up, with his eyes squinting, " says Long. "And I said, 'A.H., do you want to go home?' And he'd open one eye. And he'd look at me. 'I just wanna go home, Colonel.' And he shut 'em back down"
?He didn?t say that!? says R.A. ?He would never say that.?
?Colonel has a golden tongue,? says A.K. ?He tries to say things that kind of fit in.?
Sirveorge Jones and another instructor took A.H. to a nearby motel room.
The staff put A.H. in the bathtub, turned on the shower, and reportedly left him alone for five to ten minutes. When they returned, according to some witnesses, the 14-year-old was facedown in the water and barely responsive. One of the instructors claimed he was concerned about A.H.?s condition and called Long.
?There was nothing in the conversation that I had to be concerned about,? says Long.
Despite that call, Long was still convinced A.H. was faking, and ordered his staff to bring A.H. back to camp. That?s where Colonel Long finally got concerned and tried to revive A.H.
At 9:43 p.m., Long?s wife called 911. At this point, A.H. was not breathing.
A.H. was airlifted to the hospital. In Phoenix, his mother?s phone rang. she rushed to the hospital, where doctors told her that her son had died.
An autopsy said the cause of death was ?complications of near drowning and dehydration due to heat exposure.? But the medical examiner called the death an accident.
Long still believes A.H. was trying to go home. ?I think A.H. wanted to get himself sick, and sick to the point whereby he would get himself out,? he says.
Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio shut down the camp. His detectives started investigating A.H.?s death and Colonel Long. ?This was a kid that died under a very, very strange situation,? Arpaio says.
Long doesn?t believe he was responsible for A.H.?s death. ?Do I feel bad that I didn?t take him home alive to his parents? Yeah, I feel bad about that,? he says. ?So bad that you will never, ever understand how bad I feel. Am I responsible? I didn't kill A.H.?
Weeks after A.H.? death, Charles Long was back in business, running his boot camp on weekends. Long has no degree or even any formal training in how to reform defiant young people. Before this, he was a stunt man, a disc jockey, a cop and a Marine.
Each morning before sunup, the drill begins at Long?s house. There is no doubt who is in command. His wife calls him ?colonel,? and his kids call him ?sir.?
Despite the controversy surrounding the camp, C.B. and her husband are still hoping that Long can help their 13-year-old son, J.B. ?He was defiant. He was disrespectful,? C.B. says. ?It got to the point where? he did get violent with us.?
She tried psychologists, psychiatrists and medication. Finally she was so desperate she sent her son to Long?s program, three months after the death of A.H.
?Right now I don?t think any of us really know how that boy died. And if that boy died because of an accident or a suicide, why should we stop using this program,? C.B. says.
She says she is there watching him every day, and that what she has seen is encouraging. She watches as her son takes a 4 and a half mile run through the desert.
As the race begins, J.B. lags behind. Then he takes a short cut to the finish line. But even though he did not run the entire course, J.B.?s mother believes he?s done more than he ever has before. She says she is proud of him.
?Bottom line is, we take them to the extreme, to the extreme, it gets a lot of young people?s attention,? says Long.
Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who brought back chain gangs and keeps prisoners in desert tents, calls himself ?America?s toughest sheriff.? But even he thought things went too far at Long?s boot camp.
Witnesses say after several hours under a sweltering sun, in 111-degree heat, A.H. was delusional and eating dirt before he passed out.
Says Long: ?If I knew that A.H. had been eating dirt, then I would immediately had taken steps to make sure that A.H. got some treatment. He says he didn?t find out about that until A.H. had gone to the showers.
But Long did not immediately call for help, when counselors called him from a nearby motel, where A.H. was slumped in the shower. Later that evening after A.H. had been brought back to the camp, Long finally had his wife call 911. The police believe A.H. may have been in danger for nearly two hours before anyone called for help.
No one else has ever died attending the Buffalo Soldiers, but there have been other charges about other boot camps run by Long. Just one summer before A.H.? death, Long was running a boot camp on an Indian reservation a few hours to the north. 48 Hours Investigates has obtained a copy of the FBI investigation into complaints lodged by kids and parents there. The allegations involve kids being kicked and beaten and denied water.
No charges were ever filed against Long that summer, and he denies any wrongdoing then or now. He says he?s the victim of lying, scheming teen-agers. Long says that R.A., A.K. and A.C., who have left the program, made up their stories about how they were abused, and how A.H. died. Long says they are lying.
Was R.A. covered in sugar water and left for the bees to sting him? ?Hell no. That?s bizarre,? says Long. ?He?s a liar. He's lying.?
A.K. says he was abused in the program
But hospital records show R.A. had extensive bee stings. Detectives who spent eight months investigating all the charges concluded the kids were telling the truth.
In February 2002, Long was arrested. Authorities charged him with child abuse, aggravated assault, and 2nd degree murder for failing to prevent A.H.? death.
His murder trial is scheduled to begin in June. If convicted, he could face more than 20 years in prison.
?It's taking somebody else's life when you have them stand outside in the sun for over five hours with very little water and very little food,? says A.H.? mother A.H. ?I'm sorry, that?s killing somebody. Slowly.?
And from another article I found, can you believe this? Seven year olds in wilderness camps? Now that's taking this a bit too far, don't you think?
Many of the other children, who ranged in age from 7 to 18, had been in trouble with the law or with their families.
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And here's another:
From the Arizona Republic:
(Get this one; the counselor claims the boy cracked a smile after he was having convulsions, while the counselor was putting a pen in his mouth. Hard to imagine this child had much to smile about. These please are sick.)
October 20, 2004
Boot-Camp Witness Tells of Boy's Death:
Probation Promised for Testimony vs. Long
An adult who attended the tough-love boot camp where a teen died in 2001, painted a grim picture of the boy's death for the jury in the murder trial of Charles Long.
Long, 59, is charged with second-degree murder in the death of A.H., 14, a camper attending Long's America's Buffalo Soldiers Re-Enactor's Association "summer endurance camp" near Buckeye in June and July 2001.
Troy Hutty pleaded guilty to negligent homicide in A.H.' death, and was promised a sentence of probation if he testified in Long's trial.
But Hutty, 32, had difficulty remembering many details, and in his testy responses to the prosecutor's questions, reinforced the defense's argument that Long was not with A.H. as he was dying nor when other allegations of abuse took place.
Long's trial began Oct. 6 before Judge Ronald S. Reinstein of Maricopa County Superior Court and is expected to continue through most of November.
Hutty flew to Phoenix from his home in Pennsylvania to testify. During his testimony Monday and Tuesday, he said that he and his two children attended Long's camp as a vacation and so that his children could learn about Buffalo Soldiers, African-Americans who fought in military campaigns against Mexicans and Native Americans in the late 19th century West. Long's association re-enacts those battles.
Many of the other children, who ranged in age from 7 to 18, had been in trouble with the law or with their families.
A.H. was an overweight boy taking medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. On July 1, 2001, Hutty said, A.H. began acting erratic while sitting in the sun in a "drop on request" or DOR line, because he wanted to leave the camp.
Hutty claimed that A.H. ate dirt and refused to drink or wash out his mouth with water.
"He had dirt in his mouth and dirt in his teeth," Hutty said. "I tried to give him water to rinse it out."
Then A.H. ran around the campsite "screaming and making a bunch of crazy sounds" and doing what Hutty called "Three Stooges antics," striking others, hitting himself in the face and smearing dirt on himself.
When A.H. later appeared to go into convulsions, Hutty claimed he went to put a pen in the child's mouth to keep him from swallowing his tongue.
"He cracked a smile as if he was just playing around," Hutty told the court.
According to Hutty, Long then told Hutty to take A.H. and four other boys to a nearby hotel to shower. They carried A.H. to a pickup truck and placed him in the bed, then carried him up to the room. He was now unresponsive and started vomiting dirt and stones in the room. Hutty and the boys undressed him and placed him in the shower.
When Hutty checked on him, the shower drain had clogged with the vomit, though he claimed that A.H.' face was above water. Then he said he used his foot to put pressure on the boy's stomach to force out more dirt and stones.
Hutty said that he didn't call police because, as a Black man from Philadelphia, he didn't trust them.
"I'm a product of my own environment," he said, "and police are not looked upon favorably, and I didn't want to end up pretty much where I am now."
Instead he called Long, who told him to bring the boy back to camp.
When he got there, A.H.' pupils were dilated, and Hutty and Long began performing CPR, but A.H. died.
