Ridge Creek "School" - Serious Safety Issues/ORS Violation

[Troll Control]

It's interesting that although Len Buccellato is just now "officially" announcing "Ridge Creek School" (RCS is HLA for those of you who don't already know they just changed their name), RCS already has a sordid history of ORS violations including extreme violence, unreported incidents, police involvement, arrests, assaults, failure to follow treatment plans and a generalized underpinning of poor/unqualified staffing.

RCS has been hit with many serious ORS violations already and it sure looks like there will be plenty more to come.  Parents, beware Ed Cons promoting RCS and don't fall for RCS marketing spin.  They are already in serious trouble with watchdogs and they are reportedly colocated on a property where RCS principals also operate a privately run Georgia DOC juvenile lockup facility where convicted criminals are sent to do their time on a contract basis.  

This is a recipe for disaster for children who need legitimate help.

The "new thread" has many posts missing.  I'm sure we'll be fine if we keep this one going.

[Troll Control]

Just for clarification sake for those of you who don't actually have the insight that I do, the majority of the students at RCS are actually NOT inner city. Another point is that my daughter attended that school and luckily we were able to get her out of there. All of this is true, as well as incident in Dec. with my daughter, where she was severely beaten, at the same time as a counselor. Gues who had to pay the medical expenses ? I did, because the privacy rights, of the other student had to be protected, as well as even though inadequate staffing allowed for this to occur, RCS did not pay.
Two points : 1) after reading these posts I definitely am pursuing legal action. 2) This school needs to be shut down immediately.
The kids are running that place. Nearly all the kids are having sex in the dorms, in the bathrooms at the SAC, in the bathrooms in the "school" bldg, everywhere !
Poor education, unqualified staff, abuse and many other incidents.

Some families are selling their homes and spending life savings to send their children there. Obviously filing complaints does not work. I also have reason to believe drug trafficking as I have filed complaints on this already. Complete mismanagement of medication, unmarked bottles, little baggies of drugs and no original prescriptions to be found. I gladly will provide more information on the specifics of the numerous incidents at RCS. All the children's health and safety are in danger there. Due to confidentiality, I have no contact information for any other parents, but to hope that they google and find this site.

Nov 2009 to May 31, 2010 my daughter was at that "school". I am now paying for counseling for her to be treated for the trauma received from that school, in addition to the issues that were present prior to her attending.

Having met many of the parents, during this time, they are most definitely not inner city. It is a sad situation. I do hope that this school gets shut down as soon as possible, and hopefully can refund me some of my money to put towards continued care now. Any attorney's please feel free to send me your information. So far the two I have seen are in LA and TX. I am in Nashville, TN.

Hello, scroft.  Thank you for posting your experience at RCS.  It is indeed dangerous and violent.  Len Buccellato has run other facilites the same way - uneducated staff, phony degrees, no treatment plans, violent kids, sexual predators, etc, etc, etc.  This is no surprise to anyone here.  We've all seen it before when RCS was called "Hidden Lake Academy" and amassed over 1600 pages of ORS violations, but due to cozy relationships between "regulators" and Buccellato, HLA never faced any consequences for their mammoth violations.  It appears RCS is now getting the same free pass from ORS.

Of course, all of us who know about RCS know it is not populated with "inner city kids," but rather "upper and middle class suburban kids."  There are several "pro-program" trolls here who will do and say quite literally anything to spin abusive shitholes like RCS as "gentle" and "effective" and to paint all of you parents who were snookered and had their kids hurt, maimed, raped or killed as "disgruntled by the expense of the program."  Keep that in mind when you see posters like "DannyB II" and "Whooter" posting.

If I were you I'd call Phil Elberg immediately and get the ball rolling with an attorney who knows how these places operate and has won several big cases against programs like RCS.  He's an attorney out of NJ, which is kinda far for you, but he's by far the best.

In the meantime, please post your experiences here in detail to warn others and attract co-litigants.  People here will be happy to help with your research and uncover similar cases.

Again, thanks for posting your experience and I look forward to hearing more about it.

[Whooter]

If you continue to paste posts or post new posts which attack other posters then we will go back to this, DJ.  Stop your derailment.  If you want to start another thread with the personal attacks I am fine with it.  If you want to continue here with your personal attacks then we can continue this way also... its up to you.

Well I think he would but one problem that upper middle class to higher class poster could not be more of a phony then you. Yep, just keep lying DJ, just shows how desperate you are.

DJ makes it up as he goes, Danny:
Link

Walking away from the facility is NOT considered "running away" (unless kid is court ordered, which many HLA kids are).

Court ordered kids are not typically upper or upper middle class.  We have shown that DJ fabricated his education to try to get people to respect him here and now he is lying to new people who come here for honest information.  Not sure why he does this.

...

 Thank you very much, Whooter, damn it you are good. Whooter .

Thanks, DannyB II, Someone has to call DJ on his lies.  He is out of control this week.  Look what he did to this thread just to cover his tracks.  Its a mess, it will be difficult to make any sense of it now.



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[Troll Control]

There's not much more I can do here, Jill.  He's determined that you will not be heard.  And the mods here will let him silence you.  They really don't care whether or not you have your right to be heard.  That's why this site is in bad shape.  The mods don't enforce policy and allow each and every thread to be derailed by this troll.

[Whooter]

There's not much more I can do here, Jill.  He's determined that you will not be heard.  And the mods here will let him silence you.  They really don't care whether or not you have your right to be heard.  That's why this site is in bad shape.  The mods don't enforce policy and allow each and every thread to be derailed by this troll.

Just dont attack other posters, DJ.  That is what started the derailment in the first place.  You are responsible. If your posts contain attacks on other posters then you will derail this thread again.  Try to be civil.



...

[Troll Control]

Just for clarification sake for those of you who don't actually have the insight that I do, the majority of the students at RCS are actually NOT inner city. Another point is that my daughter attended that school and luckily we were able to get her out of there. All of this is true, as well as incident in Dec. with my daughter, where she was severely beaten, at the same time as a counselor. Gues who had to pay the medical expenses ? I did, because the privacy rights, of the other student had to be protected, as well as even though inadequate staffing allowed for this to occur, RCS did not pay.
Two points : 1) after reading these posts I definitely am pursuing legal action. 2) This school needs to be shut down immediately.
The kids are running that place. Nearly all the kids are having sex in the dorms, in the bathrooms at the SAC, in the bathrooms in the "school" bldg, everywhere !
Poor education, unqualified staff, abuse and many other incidents.

Some families are selling their homes and spending life savings to send their children there. Obviously filing complaints does not work. I also have reason to believe drug trafficking as I have filed complaints on this already. Complete mismanagement of medication, unmarked bottles, little baggies of drugs and no original prescriptions to be found. I gladly will provide more information on the specifics of the numerous incidents at RCS. All the children's health and safety are in danger there. Due to confidentiality, I have no contact information for any other parents, but to hope that they google and find this site.

Nov 2009 to May 31, 2010 my daughter was at that "school". I am now paying for counseling for her to be treated for the trauma received from that school, in addition to the issues that were present prior to her attending.

Having met many of the parents, during this time, they are most definitely not inner city. It is a sad situation. I do hope that this school gets shut down as soon as possible, and hopefully can refund me some of my money to put towards continued care now. Any attorney's please feel free to send me your information. So far the two I have seen are in LA and TX. I am in Nashville, TN.

scroft, have you contacted Phil Elberg yet?  Please PM me when you get some more information and are formulating a plan.  I'll be happy to connect you to some other families in the same position.  Good luck.

[Troll Control]

Yet another thread gone.

Yes, I tried to stay on topic and argue on the merits, but Whooter is intent on this thread getting killed.  I haven't responded to him at all and he keeps burying it anyway.  Sorry, Jill.  He must have some other vested interest in HLA/RCS because he kills every one of those threads systematically.  This has been going on for years.

So even when I won't respond to you, you still want to derail the thread?  I'm not responding, so why do you continue to derail?  I have nothing more to say to you.  Let the thread live.

Maybe the mods can help us out?  If not, I'd suggest starting a new thread in the CALO forum where there is a mod who will nuke this flooding.  It's sad, but that may be the only choice to get this info out without the trolls derailing the thread.

scroft, Jill, you are "free" to continue posting in this thread now.  The disruptive troll has been exterminated from the premises.  This thread will be free from derailment from here out.  

Thanks again for sharing your experiences and documentation.

Back on topic once again "Ridge Creek School - Serious Safety Issues/ORS Violations"

[Troll Control]

Parents should remind themselves that HLA is Ridge Creek School.

Take a look at what a former HLA masters-level counselor has to say about the people who run Ridge Creek School:

Well bully for you.  I did the same almost 15 years ago.

In my experience, the vast majority of problems were indeed caused by the parents and not the kids.  It sounds like that held true for the duration.

Were you a "masters level" counselor?  What is your professional judgment on the efficacy of HLA's "treatment" model?

What types of abuse did you witness?  Kid-on-kid?  Staff-on-kid?  Can you tell us a bit about the relative safety of the campus considering the dearth of staff and the genuinely dangerous kids enrolled there?

Thanks!

I was a master's level counselor. HLA is completely ineffective, abusive, and predisposes the kids towards negative attitudes, habits and lifestyles. In Theory, the place seems very attractive and effective. The execution of those theories/practices is completely off kilter. The school is run by socially conservative money-loving zealots who do not have the slightest clue what they are doing despite their good intentions. With the exception of a handful of bad "therapeutic" practices such as disclosures, the theraputic aspect of the program should theoretically be effective. the problem is everything else - power and money hungry staff, excessive and undeserved consequencing, the fall-out system, strip searches, excessive supervision and paranoia regarding safety concerning the "agreements", admissions, everything.

kid-on-kid violence was common, especially at night. we broke up a "fight club" [like the movie] in dorm B the week i arrived. one time a kid was "tea-bagged" (scrotum placed in mouth) at night by his roommates and then had "i love cock" scrawled all over his body while he was sleeping. kids would also get into minor altercations very often, but would get broken up quickly. Staff-on-kid PHYSICAL violence rarely occured, if it did it was while performing a restraint improperly or while breaking up fights. what did occur was a whole lot of power-tripping: staff would single out kids they didnt like and consequence them excessively at the slightest misstep. In many ways the consequences bordered on violence - forcing kids to carry heavy objects all day, yelling and spitting in their face, forcing kids to do exercise in freezing rain, preventing visits to the bathroom, etc.

There you have it.  Straight from an employee.  Don't say you weren't warned!

[Troll Control]

I am a rare adult survivor of HLA - I got out IN FEBRUARY 2005,with a little sanity left. After teaching special education for nearly 20 years, I only survived 6 months at HLA. The kids don't feel they can talk to their counselors - maybe its manipulation - maybe not, so they told me things, but I was not in a position to do much except listen without criticizing them and then report safety concerns.ACTUALLY I REPORTED A SAFETY CONCERN TO A COUNSELOR (D.S.) THE DAY I LEFT. IT WAS ABOUT A GIRL WHO HAD JSUT RETURNED FROM A PSYCH HOSPITAL FOR TRYING TO COMMIT SUICIDE WHILE SHE WAS ON "clean air" _ where there is supposed to be extra supervision - THE GIRL HAD CUT SEVERAL MORE TIMES (mostly small stuff)DURING THE 24 - 36 HOURS SHE HAD BEEN BACK AT HLA AND TOLD ME SHE DIDN'T FEEL SAFE AND THOUGHT SHE NEEDED TO RETURN TO THE PSYCH HOSPITAL - I TOLD DOUG S. - ONE OF HER COUNSEWLORS ABOUT IT AND HE SAID "WELL, TELL HER TO CUT AGAIN AND THEN WE'LL SEND HER BACK TO THE PSYCH HOSPITAL." They certainly can't tell their parents their real feelings and experiences without being punished for being manipulative by those who are assigned to monitor their mail, email and phone calls. HLA is not the panacea for all teen problems - most of which kids grow out of or learn to use to their advantage in the business world. Some HLA kids need counseling, some need AA, some need psych hospitals; most need love and time to mature - most are there because their parents were MANIPULATED BY ED. CONSULTANTS AND HLA advertisements. Want a GREAT LAUGH? Go to "struggling teens.com/archives/2001/6/visit01.html" this is a site from "Woodbury Reports, Inc." some ed. consultant deal out of Idaho . This site, while only a few years old, certainly did not describe the HLA I just left. The article claimed the campus was attractive - that's about the only info. I can agree with in their entire review. All the "players" names have changed, except Len, who still owns it and seems like a decent guy, only he leaves the "Mice to play" while he does all his other business things and they do whatever they find most convenient (and maybe even sadistically fun). The article says all teachers are certified - try maybe 20%! The site claims all the kids have IEPs - not! Even if they come in with an IEP, HLA does not have to abide by it because they are a private institution. 100% do not attend college! The cafeteria does not over look the lake - maybe they visited on a rainy day! Restrictions kids get less food and water and are supervised by folks with questionable objectives. Most of the counselors are straight out of college with no experience, so they buy into what the administrators feed them about treating kids in a very punitive way and being constantly suspicious, not to mention telling them behavior modification works. It has been proven that behavior modification in humans is temporary at best.PARENTS - DO YOURSELF AND YOUR WALLET A FAVOR - BEFORE PICKING ANY BOARDING SCHOOL, VISIT UNANNOUNCED AND MORE IMPORTANTLY, AFTER PLACING YOUR KID IN ONE, VISIT UNANNOUNCED. Refuse to be treated like a mushroom- kept in the dark and fed crap! (Parents need to know when their son has been beaten up by a group of homophobic guys. (Some of the kids who came to tell me their problems were gay and felt they were being discriminated against because of this by their counselors and others.) Parents need to know when their daughter has stepped in big puddles of blood first thing in the morning that were left behind by her suicidal roomate. Parents need to know that group therapy has been shown to be more harmful than helpful for "cutters." THIS IS ALL SERIOUS AND FROM THE HEART BECAUSE I TRULY CARE ABOUT THESE KIDS

[DannyB II]

Parents should remind themselves that HLA is Ridge Creek School.
Take a look at what a former HLA masters-level counselor has to say about the people who run Ridge Creek School:

I was a master's level counselor. HLA is completely ineffective, abusive, and predisposes the kids towards negative attitudes, habits and lifestyles. In Theory, the place seems very attractive and effective. The execution of those theories/practices is completely off kilter. The school is run by socially conservative money-loving zealots who do not have the slightest clue what they are doing despite their good intentions. With the exception of a handful of bad "therapeutic" practices such as disclosures, the therapeutic aspect of the program should theoretically be effective. The problem is everything else - power and money hungry staff, excessive and undeserved consequences, the fall-out system, strip searches, excessive supervision and paranoia regarding safety concerning the "agreements", admissions, everything.

Kid-on-kid violence was common, especially at night. we broke up a "fight club" [like the movie] in dorm B the week i arrived. one time a kid was "tea-bagged" (scrotum placed in mouth) at night by his roommates and then had "i love cock" scrawled all over his body while he was sleeping. Kids would also get into minor altercations very often, but would get broken up quickly. Staff-on-kid PHYSICAL violence rarely occured, if it did it was while performing a restraint improperly or while breaking up fights. What did occur was a whole lot of power-tripping: staff would single out kids they didnt like and consequence them excessively at the slightest misstep. In many ways the consequences bordered on violence - forcing kids to carry heavy objects all day, yelling and spitting in their face, forcing kids to do exercise in freezing rain, preventing visits to the bathroom, etc.

There you have it.  Straight from an employee.  Don't say you weren't warned!

Not saying HLA was a great program but this report by a "master-level counselor" is broad in it's content, he doesn't really say anything bad about RCS. Not what I would call a scathing report. Seems some pretty tuff kids are in there playing antics on one another.
Now that "tea bag" episode, man, that is messed up.
I have a power tripping project manager and architect, I'm dealing with right now.
I hate to say this DJ but many parents find this to be exactly what there kids need. I am only commenting on this because I had a parent ask me about this post, she said her son would benefit from a place like this. I told her to be careful when operating out of anger or helplessness.

[Troll Control]

Well, the "tea bag" incident is mild compared to other sexual assaults on HLA's campus.  They had a kid diagnosed with pedophilia (after sodomizing his little brother at home) at HLA who sodomized several other boys and they also had a female there that raped another female with a tree limb, a horrific and brutal assault well documented by the LCSO.

HLA was and RCS is a very dangerous environment for children.

[DannyB II]

Well, the "tea bag" incident is mild compared to other sexual assaults on HLA's campus.  They had a kid diagnosed with pedophilia (after sodomizing his little brother at home) at HLA who sodomized several other boys and they also had a female there that raped another female with a tree limb, a horrific and brutal assault well documented by the LCSO.

HLA was and RCS is a very dangerous environment for children.

Well where should they go, DJ. Maybe most of the residents there are disturbed as such.

[psy]

Well where should they go, DJ. Maybe most of the residents there are disturbed as such.

The problem, like most programs, is that the disturbed students are put with "normal" students who then become prey.  As I understand it, HLA had (has?) a policy that they won't accept such disturbed kids. Yet all this still happened.  Apparently they made "exceptions".

[Whooter]

I just dont buy the whole story.  I can see a fight club and all but forcing another kid to tea bag?  The kid would bite...err fight back.  I cant see anyone sticking their testicles into a kids' mouth that wants to bite them off.  No one would have the balls to do that (no pun intended).

The story doesn't add up to me.



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[DannyB II]

Well where should they go, DJ. Maybe most of the residents there are disturbed as such.

The problem, like most programs, is that the disturbed students are put with "normal" students who then become prey.  As I understand it, HLA had (has?) a policy that they won't accept such disturbed kids. Yet all this still happened.  Apparently they made "exceptions".

From TC's posts and the post from the ex-staff member I am beginning to believe that RCS is taking in residents that are this disturbed. Not that this is OK or I would like to see this, right now I am trying to understand as I have been since RCS opened who in the heck do they have in there as students. Where are they coming from because it seems the vast majority are somewhat prone to violence.