http://outside.away.com/outside/magazin ... _deth.htmlLoving Them to DeathIt's the "wilderness experience" at its most extreme--rehabilitation of wayward teenagers delivered with the in-your-face discipline of a boot camp. But in the past five years at least four young people have died, the victims of alleged beatings, starvation, and emotional abuse, and the so-called therapy is looking more like murder.By Jon Krakauer
The long-distance connection was good, but as Sally Bacon stood in her Phoenix kitchen, she couldn't make sense of what she was hearing. A month before, she'd sent her 16-year-old son, Aaron, to a Utah wilderness school called North Star Expeditions. Now a disembodied voice from North Star was telling her, "Aaron is down. We can't get a pulse."
"What does that mean, you can't get a pulse?"
"Aaron's been airlifted to the hospital in Page, Arizona," came the reply. "Call your husband. He's been given the hospital phone number." Sally frantically dialed Bob Bacon at his office. Sounding numb, he repeated what he knew: Aaron had collapsed in the desert. It was a freak accident. There was nothing anyone could do. Their son was dead.
On March 1, 1994, the Bacons had enrolled Aaron in a 63-day North Star course conducted in the sandstone badlands of southern Utah, near Escalante. Tall and skinny, with shoulder-length hair, Aaron was a funny, articulate kid who wrote prizewinning poetry and excelled academically. But early in his sophomore year at Phoenix's Central High School, he started smoking pot every day and ditching classes. His grades plummeted. In February of 1994, he was jumped in the school parking lot by members of a gang known as the Crips. Although he vehemently denied any gang involvement, witnesses reported that the Crips acted like they knew him well.
"That really scared us," says Sally, who worried that the beating involved a drug deal. "Aaron seemed to be caught in a big downhill spiral."
From a friend of a friend, Sally had heard about a company called North Star Expeditions, whose adolescent-treatment program was based on an increasingly popular regimen known as wilderness therapy: a blend of intensive counseling, enforced discipline, and spartan hikes through the desert. "Students at North Star...learn that Mother Nature does not make exceptions," explained the outfit's brochure. "They learn responsibility, self-discipline, and motivation."
Tuition was $13,900 for a 63-day course, plus another $775 to have Aaron forcibly "escorted" to Escalante--something North Star strongly recommended. Bob's architecture firm, once prosperous, had lately been teetering on the brink of insolvency, and the Bacons no longer had that kind of cash. But, says Sally, after talking to several parents whose kids had been helped by the program, "We were given a lot of hope that North Star was going to build Aaron's self-esteem. I knew it would be rigorous, but I pictured him out there with God and nature, hiking all day, discussing his issues with therapists around the campfire at night."
Still, the Bacons had concerns, which they expressed during a long meeting at a Phoenix hotel with Lance and Barbara Jaggar, two of North Star's owners. "I was worried because Aaron was very, very thin," says Sally, "but Barbara assured me, 'Oh, we would never let any of our students lose weight.'"
Bob cautioned that Aaron didn't respond well to intimidation. "Don't worry," insisted Lance, a 280-pound former military policeman with a neck like a fire hydrant. "I have a special gift for working with kids. They really open up to me." Convinced, Sally and Bob took out a second mortgage to pay the tuition and, without telling Aaron, signed him up.
At 6 a.m. on March 1, Aaron awoke to the sight of his father walking into his bedroom with Lance Jaggar and Jaggar's brother-in-law, Don Burkhart. Taking Aaron's arm in his meaty grip, Jaggar announced, "You're coming with me. If I detect any resistance, I'll assume you are trying to get away, and I'll take the appropriate action. Do I make myself clear?"
As Aaron was led out of the house barefoot, Sally tried to hug her terrified son, but Jaggar wouldn't release Aaron's arms. Trying not to cry, she took his face in her hands and declared, "I love you. I don't want you to be afraid. This is what's best." Jaggar then hustled the boy outside, drove to the airport, and flew him to Escalante in a single-engine Cessna.
Over the next month, Sally called frequently to see how Aaron was doing. The news wasn't encouraging. Her son, said North Star spokeswoman Daryl Bartholomew, was "belligerent and a whiner," and the other kids resented him. During a long conversation on March 30, Bartholomew informed Sally that Aaron's attitude was so bad he'd probably have to repeat the program.
Twenty-four hours later, Aaron was dead. According to the autopsy, the cause was acute peritonitis resulting from a perforated ulcer. The contents of Aaron's gastrointestinal tract had leaked through two holes in his small intestine, spreading a massive infection throughout his abdominal cavity. North Star explained that the ailment had surfaced so suddenly that heroic efforts by its field staff and an emergency medical helicopter were futile. Preliminary reports from the Garfield County sheriff's office seemed to confirm North Star's contention that the death was an unavoidable accident.
The Bacons' grief was compounded by guilt over the fact that they'd never had an opportunity to explain to Aaron why they sent him to North Star. "After Aaron died," says Sally, "all I wanted was to get his body back. I wanted to hold him and say good-bye. I wanted a chance to apologize."
But with the arrival of his remains at a Phoenix mortuary three days later, guilt gave way to anger. Pulling the sheet from Aaron's body, Sally was confronted with a battered, emaciated corpse. She started screaming hysterically and had to cover her eyes. "His legs were like toothpicks," Sally recalls, breaking into sobs. "His hipbones stuck way out, his ribs--he looked like a concentration-camp victim. There were bruises from the tip of his toes to the top of his head, open sores up and down the inside of his thighs. The only way we were even able to recognize him was a childhood scar above his right eye."
"Right then it became obvious that Aaron's death was not an accident," Bob Bacon says. "We knew that something horrible had been done to him."
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