Jolene, thanks for stopping by and sharing some of your story!
Lemme ask you something, is there anything you can tell me about the Ambassador Inn, located at 1481 S Sundland Dr, St. George UT 84770? Isn't this also owned by Cinnamon Hills? Maybe a fair number of those alleged 195 staff members are actually employees of the Ambassador Inn, lol...
Speaking of which, I've sniffed out an intimation that students/clients at Cinnamon Hills may be pressed into service at the Ambassador Inn. Do you know if there's any truth to that rumor?
Here's mention of that
Ambassador Inn and its connection to
Cinnamon Hills in a 2006 blog entry from an advocate based in Nova Scotia. Said entry addresses the predilection that Nova Scotia's Department of Community Services seems to demonstrate for shipping difficult cases over to Utah, particularly to Cinnamon Hills.
I came across this blog while researching the recent case of that
14-year-old Cole Harbour boy who almost got sent there. (He got sent to
Bayfield Treatment Centre in Prince Edward County instead; Bayfield specializes in Attachment Therapy -- yikes.)
The following blog entry is quite long, and covers quite a bit of ground. To aide in comprehension, I've inserted divider bars between the three major sections:
- Majority of composed portion of blog entry,
- Copy of an article detailing the case of yet another Nova Scotian boy sent to Cinnamon Hills,
- Copies of three personal accounts from HEAL's website (prefacing text says "two statements," but there are three statements regarding two cases).
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Sunday, May 14, 2006
12. They're Shipping our Children to UTAH!You heard it right. Over the years, the Department of Community Services has shipped our children out of province, and even out of country to a number of different locations! One such place has the deceivingly innocent name of Cinnamon Hills and is located in St George, Utah, 2 hours northeast of Las Vegas, Nevada, and 5 hours south of Salt Lake City. Cinnamon Hills was 1 of 4 "out of province placement providers" mentioned in the 2006 Nova Scotia publication
Report of the Child Welfare Steering Committee, page 24 (check hyperlink). The other 3 "placement providers" mentioned are Robert Smart, Wood’s Home, and Hull Homes.
St George is located in a high desert at an elevation of 2,800 feet, and has 8 inches of annual precipitation with an average maximum temperatures for the summer months between 95 and 101 degrees Fahrenheit! This is a whole different climate folks and with that comes a whole different culture. To be sending our children to such a place, based solely on the climate, is a culture shock - how much worse when they are separated from everyone they know and love and everyone who knows and loves them!
See
Satellite map of Cinnamon Hills (hyperlink) in St George, UTAH : (NOTE - scan outside of city limits - nothing BUT desert for miles and miles - A child would easily die if they tried to run away! We need someone watching out for our kids sent here ! )
We have recently accessed information concerning the Ambassador Inn located at 1481 S Sundland Dr, St. George UT 84770. This is a for profit business owned and run by Cinnamon Hills using the sweat of our precious children.
Until very recently, the e-mail address for the Ambassador Inn, posted on
StGeorge.biz was
http://www.dss.cahwnet.gov/getinfo/acl99/99-75.pdfhttp://www.dss.cahwnet.gov/getinfo/acl00/pdf/00-04.PDFIn addition, we have accessed letters from family members posted on a US advocacy site warning parents about Cinnamon Hills and urging them to retrieve their children from this institution. These letters are also found below.
We believe that there is no excuse for sending our children so far a-field. These children need to come back home! But the major concern is, who is watching over the well-being of our children, especially if they have been taken into permanent care where all contact with family has been severed? We do not trust the Nova Scotia government to be honestly accountable for these children.
Did you know that after a little 5 year old girl, Rilya Wilson , went missing in Florida while she was suppose to be in foster care, (she had been missing for 2 years before this was detected) that a number of states did an inventory of their children in the system and it was determined that hundreds of children were unaccounted for! See the following hyperlinks for the article The Lost Children :
http://www.liftingtheveil.org/lostintr.htm and
http://www.liftingtheveil.org/lostkids.htm.
We need to be concerned about shipping our children to United States and we must not be so naive to think that such things cannot, and do not, happen here either. We need to watch our government, provincial and federal, we need to make them accountable to us. We assure you that there is more greed in this county then most people would like to acknowledge and our precious children and our families are paying the price for this ignorance.
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Boy charged in school bus beating headed for U.S. boot camphttp://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:lal ... =clnk&cd=4This article comes from NovaServe::The News Magazine For Southwest Nova
http://magazine.novaserve.ns.ca/The original URL for this story was:
http://magazine.novaserve.ns.ca/modules ... e&sid=5578Posted on Monday, December 27 2003(4 ) ? @ 06:40:01 CST Topic: Yarmouth
Originally Published In The Halifax Herald
By BRIAN MEDEL
YARMOUTH - A 12-year-old boy charged in a violent attack on another youngster aboard a Yarmouth school bus last month will be sent to an American facility by the Nova Scotia government, the boy's mother says.
"He's going to be shipped off to Utah in January," the woman said in a telephone interview from Cape Breton. "He went into permanent care with Family and Children's Services. "They think that he's a risk to the other children."
Neither the mother nor her son can be identified under the Youth Criminal Justice Act.
On Nov. 4, an 11-year-old boy was pummelled on a school bus unloading children at Meadowfields Community School. The victim was knocked out and collapsed on the floor of the bus where his assailant continued to kick him and stand on his head.
The victim was taken to hospital by ambulance after the attacker fled on foot.
RCMP said they believed the attack was unprovoked. They later arrested the 12-year-old, who lived at the Hebron Residential Centre near Yarmouth, and charged him with aggravated assault.
The boy made a brief family court appearance and was sent to the Nova Scotia Youth Centre in Waterville for an assessment. He is there now on remand until he returns to family court in Yarmouth on Jan. 12.
On Dec. 15, the boy's mother met with officials in Waterville. That's when they broke the news to her son that he was headed out of province.
"They have something down there that's sort of like a boot camp and I guess they've sent other children there.
"They said (he'll leave) sometime in January after his court hearing," said the boy's mother.
"I was sitting there at that meeting and they wanted to call him in to let him know that he was going to be going to Utah and . . . into permanent care."
The woman said her son did not misbehave at the meeting but was shocked at the decision.
"He was in tears. He wanted to come home," said his mother.
"He keeps telling me that, but it's not going to happen. It's sad. It's really sad how everything turned out. I was very miserable that day when I came home."
"The boy's father drowned two years ago. I found that a lot of the anger came when his father passed away because he was just starting to get to know his father and spend some time with him," the woman said in a previous interview.
The boy has had a hard time dealing with his grief and was not being counseled for it, she said. Family and Children's Services later got involved with the family because the boy accused his stepfather of hitting him, which is not true, the woman said.
"He's full of anger," she said on Nov. 9.
"My son was suspended [from school] 13 times in one year."
Those suspensions occurred at a school in central Nova Scotia the boy attended before he was moved to Yarmouth.
The woman said she volunteered to give up custody of her son in April so he could receive the help he needs.
She said her son was in foster care from April until August, when a bed was found for him at the residential centre near Yarmouth.
He wasn't there very long when he was charged with fighting and using a piece of glass as a weapon.
"I wanted him to come back home, " the woman said. "If he didn't have these assault charges, he would have been coming home (from Yarmouth) in June."
Nova Scotia has 2,000 children in foster care, Community Services spokeswoman Vicki Fraser said. Of that number, 21 have been sent out of province this year for specialized treatment, usually involving anger management or addictions counselling. That's about average for a one-year period. And the province does send kids to Utah, Ms. Fraser said.
She said Nova Scotia sometimes sends young people to the Cinnamon Hills facility for troubled teens. The Cinnamon Hills Youth Crisis Centre is about a two-hour drive northeast of Las Vegas in St. George, Utah.
Children as young as 12 may attend Cinnamon Hills, says its online statistical information.
Last year's admissions in the 92-bed facility included a total of 82 adolescents. The average stay was nine months. Forty per cent of admissions were female and all admissions were under 25 years of age. The cost of treatment is $1,600 US per week.
The Utah centre serves teens with behavioural, mental health, educational and/or substance abuse issues who need a highly structured environment with 24-hour supervision. Nova Scotia also sends kids to centres in Ontario and Alberta, Ms. Fraser said.
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[See update to this story
A Mother’s Heartache - The Shame of the NS Government Continues]
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CINNAMON HILLS YOUTH CRISIS CENTER
LOCATION: ST. GEORGE, UTAH
http://www.heal-online.org/cinhills.htmTaken from FRAUDULENT AND ABUSIVE "TREATMENT" CENTERS FOR CHILDREN AND YOUNG ADULTS!
http://www.heal-online.org/childtortureusa.htmThis program is confirmedly abusive. Below are two statements regarding atrocious abuses at this facility. Please do not send your child to this program. If your child is currently enrolled at Cinnamon Hills, rescue them immediately. Here are the statements regarding abuse.
ONE GRANDMOTHER’S STORYBy Helen Daniels
My grandson spent 7 months in 2002 at Cinnamon Hills in Utah. He is mentally disabled. His family and he lived in California and it was an 11 hour drive to go see him. Cinnamon Hills told us that even if we had driven all that way, if he misbehaved while we were in route, we would be turned away without a visit with him. On several occasions when we visited him, he would have bruises up and down his spine from being restrained. The restraining could come from something as minor as kicking his bed.
If his did the least little thing, he would be put in a room for punishment and not allowed to come out till he was ready to "behave". My daughter went once for a visit with her son and he was missing a tooth. she inquired about and was told "he fell in the shower." She asked if they had taken him to a dentist and they told her "not until he starts to behave". My daughter got very upset and told them that even prisoners get medical attention. My grandson stuck to the story about falling in the shower until another boy from Cinnamon Hills was a patient of my daughters and he recognized her and told her that the staff was restraining her son and he was having trouble breathing (he has asthma) the only defence he had was to try and bite the one restraining him, upon that the staff member shoved his head to the ground so hard and broke the tooth.
These people who are staff members are built like gorillas and my grandson weighed maybe a 100 pounds at that time. These kids were not allowed to look at members of the opposite sex or they were punished, had to keep their heads down when a woman or girl was present.
My grandson was forced to wear girls sneakers and we could not bring him anything different. We were not allowed to take his picture or use our own cell phones and let him call and talk to his siblings at home. No one other than this boy's Mom was allowed to phone him and that was once a week and could only talk to him for 5 or 10 min and the calls were always monitored from staff.
My grandson also had a fungus on his feet that was even on the tops of his feet and we were not allowed to bring in medicine for it, they would take care of it but never did.
I would hope that anyone reading this to not, no matter how desperate, put their child in Cinnamon Hills.
I give my permission to HEAL to use our story regarding Cinnamon Hills. Everything is true to the best of my knowledge and experience.
ONE AUNT'S STORYBy Bonnie Sivyer
I was not abused at Cinnamon Hills but my nephew was. You may have already heard from other members of my family who've found your site but I wanted to put in my two-cents worth just in case.
My nephew spent over a year at this facility. His mother and grandparents live in California so driving to Utah to visit him was a long drive. The staff at Cinnamon Hills can deny visitation at any time and did so on several occasions, only notifying family members when they arrived that he had 'misbehaved' and was being denied the visit from his family. This was much more like a prison than a Behavior Modification Center! One can only imagine the frustration of driving for days only to be told at the last minute that you cannot see your child.
This policy gives the facility a prime opportunity for abuse since parents are only allowed access to their children at the facility's discretion.
During one visit my sister noticed that her son's front tooth was missing. She asked why he had not seen a dentist and they told her it was because he had not behaved and therefore could not leave the facility to see the dentist. Denying medical care should not be a consequence of one's behavior!
My sister is very proactive in her son's care programs and is used to being very involved in his treatment. This system was new to her and since he was in another state he was out of her local jurisdiction and she was completely at a loss as to how to deal with this situation.
She was ultimately able to retrieve her son from Cinnamon Hills but she did not retrieve the same son that she had left there. He was now afraid of people and behaved like an animal that had suffered abuse; hunkering down when approached, and other fearful behavior. He refused to speak about his tooth and what had happened. She had been told by Cinnamon Hills that he had slipped in the bathroom but he would not comment on it.
After his release my sister, who worked in a hospital, received a patient one day that was a prior resident of Cinnamon Hills. This patient recognized her from her visits with her son and asked her if she knew what happened to her son's tooth. This person claimed to have witnessed the entire event. It seems the staff had 'restrained' him for what they arbitrarily deemed unacceptable behavior. Several staff members participated in this restraint effort which makes no sense to me as this child can't weigh more than 90 pounds soaking wet! Apparently they got 'a little rough' during the restraint which resulted in knocking out my nephew's tooth.
My sister returned home and told her son that she knew what had happened to his tooth but didn't tell him what she knew. She assured him he was safe and asked him to tell her the truth. She did not lead him in his response...only created a feeling of safety in revealing the truth. His first response was "I misbehaved"...when prodded further he told the exact story the witness had provided.
His family was never told of this and was in fact denied visitation until his mouth had healed enough for him to be seen by them.... Meanwhile they concocted the story and used fear to persuade him to go along with their made up stories about how this had happened.
This is the way I recall it being told to me at the time. I plan to forward this site to my sister so that she can write her own version, which would be straight from the horse's mouth.
I advise anyone who is considering long or even short term placement of their children in ANY facility, regardless of the state, to first investigate the facility and make absolutely certain that you, the parent, have the right to have regular visitation and access to your child regardless of the child's behavior. Contact with parents is ESSENTIAL to any behavior modification program and taking away that right from a child is emotionally abusive!!
I would also recommend that you ensure the facility is governed by state and local laws and that a patient advocate for the governing bodies is available to investigate any concerns parents may have regarding the care of their child.
PLEASE DO NOT ALLOW YOUR CHILD TO BE PLACED IN CINNAMON HILLS!! IT SHOULD BE LISTED AS A CONFIRMED ABUSIVE FACILITY AND NO CHILD IS SAFE IN THEIR CARE!
Thanks for hearing me out. I give permission to HEAL to use our story regarding Cinnamon Hills. Everything in my statement is true to the best of my knowledge and experience.
ONE MOTHER'S STORYBy Mary S.
I am writing on behalf of my Daughter. She is a resident of Cinnamon Hills. She is a victim of Child Abuse from her Father and when she began to get in trouble she was sent to A Wilderness Camp in Pennsylvania, and when that didn't work, the Judge sent her to Cinnamon Hills in Utah.
She was only [suppose to] be there for 9-12 months. She has been there for 2 years now. She is scheduled to come home shortly, but I'll believe it when I see it. Every time she gets close to coming home they come up with another reason why she can't.
They have placed her on a medication called Effexor XR for depression, which in turn caused side effects such as insomnia, weight gain, constipation, headaches, & aggravation so they in turn placed her on sleeping pills. She was bullied by another pier to give her the sleeping pill and when she just couldn't take it anymore, she caved in and gave the pill to the girl.
My Daughter was scheduled to come home the following week but because of that she received a two month suspension. I had already purchased he airline ticket to come home, which was going to be reimbursed, but that didn't happen.
She gets in trouble if she can't sleep but when I tell them to stop her medication, which is causing the sleeplessness they just argue with me, and give me a run a round about signing papers to have that done, but I never get the papers to sign.
Another problem is, (and I have witnessed this first hand when I was out there to visit) is that she was not allowed to go to the bathroom when she asked to. There is always a waiting list which takes twenty minutes or more to go. Just last week, they ordered her to start drinking more water for her constipation and when she did, and had to go to the bathroom, and had to wait so long before they would let her, she wound up wetting herself. This has been going on now for a few weeks. I am sure that did wonders for the self esteem of a sixteen year old girl.
Also while I was out there visiting, I asked about what kind of qualifications and experience that the staff had, but they just ignored me and I was told that I just had a chip on my shoulder.
They go through staff like crazy.. Can't seem to keep them. They are always advertising for help.
She is getting off her suspension Nov. 2 and now they want to send her to a Group Home for another six months. There isn't a bed available at the place they want to send her so she will have to wait another month to leave.
She is not an alcoholic or drug user. She just had the misfortune of having a Father who was a Child Abuser. I live sixty miles away from her Father, and they want to send her to a place that is closer to him than to me. She needs to be home with me in a loving and nurturing environment, and not with more strangers with more problems.
She is a straight A student and needs to get on with her life and school. I have written to the Judge, and the head of Probation, and Congressmen and anyone who will listen, but it doesn't seem to do any good. If anyone can help me get my Daughter home, please help me. She is a good kid, but the system is going to ruin her. "Everything in my statement is true. I give HEAL permission to use my statement."
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