Please note that I am 53-year-old mother. I am NOT Mormon and have lived in Escalante, Utah for the past six years. Prior to moving here, I was a business consultant in northern Arizona. I'm currently in the process of moving out of Utah due to the Mormon culture which includes rampant child sexual abuse, male dominance, submissive females and polygamous relationships (it's not just Warren Jeffs). The Utah social system does not work around laws or morals of rights and wrongs, rather, its priorities are connections to the Church and the family (all families are inter-related due to polygamy and Utah's past isolation from non-Mormons).
Wayne is currently the Intake and Intervention Manager at the new Ironwood Maine Residential Treatment Center for teens. In 2004, I worked with Wayne at Turn-About Ranch (TAR) in Utah, a similar teen facility. At TAR, Wayne was also the manager of their intake center which is called Roundy.
On Saturday, June 26, 2004, while working with Wayne, I witnessed, and was involved in, several events which ultimately led to my formal written complaints with the State of Utah DHS Office of Licensing, Utah Child Protective Services, and Garfield County, Utah Sheriff.
As a local resident, these facts are commonly known about Wayne: He is a Mormon. He was a police officer in the Salt Lake City metro area and was a wrestler. He was not divorced, but lived alone in this remote region, separated from his wife in northern Utah (6 hours away). While working at TAR, he worked as an undercover agent for the Sheriff's Office which is 90 miles away (generally, there is no law enforcement officer in Escalante at all, they're hired, but soon leave).
As a TAR employee, these facts are commonly known: Wayne is an alcoholic and was disciplined several times by TAR for drinking on the job. Prior to my complaint, TAR had disciplined him several times for wrestling with male students. The Roundy facility was called "Wayne's World" where every staff was submissive to him. Most employees choose not to work there. He broke whatever TAR rules or state laws he desired.
The following are the "Wayne" points from my complaints:
While alone with two female students (approximately 15 years old), one complained of an aching back as a result of wrestling the previous night with Wayne. Wayne suddenly appeared from out-of-nowhere and boomed, "Yes, we wrestled, and I won, didn't I?"
After that, Wayne assigned me to stay in the front of the cabin with three students who could not leave their area while Wayne took two females to the backside of the building. One of my students asked for her sweater, and since everything had to be approved by Wayne, I went around back to find him.
As I approached, he was turned away from me, but the two female students had eye contact with me. As the "not-so-pretty female" watched, Wayne stood within inches of the very beautiful one with whom he had wrestled the night before. She had one hand on one side of his throat, and Wayne was instructing her to put the other one on the opposite side. She told him, "I don't want to." He picked up her hand and put it there, and then proceeded to twist her around, drawing her into a full contact body slam hold. It was then that he saw me.
A few hours later, Wayne tried to instill in my mind that I was a coward. There was a lot of lightening that day, and we were in a tall Ponderosa Pine forest. Wayne and all students returned to the cabin's front porch. He told everyone that I was a coward because the day before he'd heard me on the radio saying I was bringing my kids back to the Barn facility due to lightning.
Thereafter, with every thunder clap, Wayne came over to me and called me a coward. Then, the thunder continued, but Wayne stopped. I said to him, "Go ahead and say it." He responded, "I don't have to anymore, because every time you hear thunder you will think you are a coward." I laughed, and said, "You have no idea what I'm thinking." I was actually fully aware of his mind control techniques and was thinking that this guy is nuts and just wants me to be a coward due to the mornings events. All of this transpired with students all around us.
On the night of the wrestling match, there were no female staff members at Roundy even though female students out-numbered males. Staff consisted of Wayne and Allen P. Allen is known by locals as having sexually abused his younger sisters. He would only work as "night security" for TAR. As a result of my complaint, he no longer works there.
On the night I filed my complaint with the TAR Director, my husband and I responded to an emergency call at 10 pm from the Roundy facility--Wayne's World. When we arrived, a female student, dressed only in thin pajamas was duct taped at the ankles and wrists, lying on the cold, wet ground (8,000' elevation and rain), and had a 200 lb female staff sitting on top of her. The Sheriff had to respond to the incident because duct tape is explicitly against the law. State licensing told me this was resolved because, by law, TAR had fired the involved male and female staff. Not true, the female was already moving out of state which she did, and the male staff still works there to this day. I told the State this, they did nothing.
My complaint included many other items which TAR was required to fix: Vehicles used to transport the students with no steering or brakes and doors that wouldn't open. No air conditioning in loft bedrooms in the desert facilities. Inhumane punishments. Scheduling and assignment of male staff only with female students (they've gone back to this today).
No action was ever taken against Wayne other than a verbal reprimand by TAR. I discovered his social connections to all three agencies. The state licensing woman's husband worked for the same corporation (Aspen Education Group) at a different facility, the child protective service woman was the TAR Director's cousin, and Wayne worked undercover for the Sheriff.
The male staff involved with the duct tape incident attempted to run me off the road on three different occasions. Each time, he was in a TAR vehicle with TAR students inside. On the third incident, I stayed my course, and we almost crashed, but he has not done it since.
A former TAR student, now a young woman, has recently been in touch with me. She has given me permission to print our discussions. Her comments are:
Wayne would routinely dump cold creek water on sleeping students. He generally picked on the quiet, cooperative ones because he "believed students who 'went along quietly' were just faking it to get out faster." He withheld food from all students if one misbehaved. They took baths in the creek with one staff member watching.
"Males were alone with the female students all the time. And vice versa." "I was denied medical treatment for a serious issue, as were other students, including a friend who had broken her leg when she fell off one of the horses there." "Once, my counselor Annette, after noticing my lips were unusually red, accused me of repeatedly biting them to make them look darker to 'impress the boys.' She called me a tramp, and taped an attenae [sic] to my hat to 'teach me not to care so much about my appearance.' I walked around with a metal appendage on my head for over a month."
She goes on: "As for emotional recovery, I still have a little ways to go. Unfortunately, my parents and I never made up. I just couldn't forgive them after they said I was lying about my experiences at TAR." "Looking back, I'm sad to say that TAR did have one positive aspect on my life; It caused me to grow up faster. I was no longer naiive and immature... I didn't have much of a choice. But, it did make me distrustful of my family, and to this day I still have trust issues with people I am close to."
I'm also going to post this under Ironwood!