Why CAFETY A START should never be trusted ever again.

[Anonymous]

Brian Quoted:

"This most recent incident with Summit has forced me to think and reflect on this topic, because as I've stated before Summit to me was the least program-like program I've ever heard of because of the lack of restrictions. The place reminded me more of a college campus than any residential treatment. I had visited the place unanounced, and heard from several current and former students (and yes I suppose having sex with one of my sources might have clouded my thinking a little bit) who had positive things to say about the place."

" So this issue doesn't come up again. How far along the line must the associations be cut off?

We are a member of the Youth Policy Action Center, which NYRA is a member of, which means we are linked to YPAC which has a link to NYRA.

Should we cancel our membership in YPAC?

ASTART is based out of the University of South Florida Research and Training Center. The USF RTC holds an annual conference, where a small portion of the funding is taken from residential programs. Should ASTART disassociate from the USF RTC (they are separate entities, but the director is the same of both) because of that funding source (Pressley Ridge and Boys and Girls Town). And there is a board member of the USF RTC (I happen to be one of them) who has been a director of a residential treatment program (he is also one of the fiercest advocates for community based services).

Lawsuit: Youth claims camp couselors broke his arms
By Barbara White Stack
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 3, 2005
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A 14-year-old Wilkinsburg boy has sued the Pressley Ridge Foundation, claiming that counselors at the group's Ohiopyle camp threw him to the ground and broke both of his arms while restraining him.

Larrel Dallas filed suit in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court, a result of a Feb. 20 incident. He said counselors broke his arms while pulling them back.

"I heard my arms snap," Dallas said in an interview last month. "It felt like someone cut my arms off or something."

While held face down in the dirt, he said he couldn't breathe. "The only thing I was thinking of is 'Am I going to die?' " [Emphasis added]

Officials of Pressley Ridge, which houses abused and neglected children, said yesterday they hadn't seen the complaint and wouldn't comment if they had.

However, in a letter to the Post-Gazette two weeks ago discussing incidents at Pressley Ridge facilities like the Ohiopyle camp, Janet C. Emery, president and chief development officer, said Dallas' injury "is particularly distressing to Pressley Ridge because of our commitment to putting the safety of our children first."

Emery denied in the letter that both of the boy's arms were broken. The child's lawyers, Joseph R. Petrina and Brian C. Thompson of Penn Hills, said, however, that medical records clearly show the youngster suffered two fractures.

Doctors at Uniontown Hospital immobilized both of the boy's arms in casts, preventing him from feeding himself or performing other basic care functions for himself.

Emery says in the letter that staff members restrained Dallas to thwart him from injuring another child: "This occurred as the staff conducted a passive restraint to prevent the young man from committing a violent act toward a defenseless child or harming himself in the process."

Dallas tells a different story. He says the boy Emery describes as defenseless had punched him in the face, knocking him the ground.

He said when he got up, dizzy and stumbling, he told the other boy not to ever hit him again. In the meantime, Pressley Ridge counselors had restrained the boy who punched Dallas.

At that point, Dallas said, some of the other boys in the group began attacking him. Counselors pulled them away.

Dallas said a counselor tackled him, then, with the help of others, restrained him on the ground, face down.

Dallas said one of the staff members pulled his arms up behind him, crossing them over his back and forcing them up to his head.

"At first I was kicking because he was hurting my arms," Dallas said. But then, he said, a staff member jumped on his legs and he could not move, and his arms went numb.

When the staff members released him, Dallas said they dismissed his complaints of pain in his arms. They made him walk back to camp, and there, he said, they told him to pick up trash. "They thought I was playing a game or something."

Sometime later, Dallas said, the staff arranged for him to see an emergency medical technician, who said Pressley Ridge needed to take him to a hospital.

A report about the incident written by Pressley Ridge for the state Department of Public Welfare says after a boy knocked Dallas to the ground, Dallas got up and threatened to kill the other youth.

That was followed by a scuffle between Dallas and several of the other boys, while counselors restrained the child who had decked Dallas, the report says.

Counselors ordered the youngsters to disperse, and all did but Dallas who "attempted to kick and hit those around him," it says.

That is when "a restraint was initiated by staff," the report says, adding, "The restraint was difficult due to his attempts to stand up and free himself and the loose coat he had on at the time."

The lawsuit says Pressley Ridge counselors used "unreasonable and excessive force," and his injuries were a result of its negligence.

(Barbara White Stack can be reached at [email protected] or 412-263-1878.)

I feel let down in so many ways.

[Che Gookin]

^My official response.