PORTLAND, Ore. (CN) - Nine former students say they were tortured at a "therapeutic boarding school" in eastern Oregon, where untrained counselors with only high school education subjected them to "physical punishment akin to a 1950s chain gang." Oregon shut down the Mt. Bachelor Academy 2 years ago.
The nine plaintiffs are represented by Kelly Clark, a partner at the Portland firm of O'Donnell, Clark and Crew, who last year won an $18 million sexual abuse suit against the Boy Scouts of America.
All nine plaintiffs were enrolled at the academy in the 1990s as teen-agers.
According to the complaint in Multnomah County Court: "This case involves institutionalized physical and psychological child abuse at Mt. Bachelor Academy, a 'therapeutic boarding school' for troubled teens that was ordered closed by the State of Oregon Department of Human Services. These plaintiffs, now all adults, had their already troubled childhoods made worse by systematic physical and psychological abuse that goes far beyond any reasonable notion of 'boot camp' or 'tough love' schools. Defendants program was staffed by untrained, often only high-school educated counselors and instructors who attempted to psychologically break down and indoctrinate children in their care, typically by berating them in the harshest of terms and subjecting them to extreme physical conditions and privation. Plaintiffs were isolated from their families, allowed only very limited telephone calls every other week, which were monitored by the school's staff. Parents' were instructed not to believe their children if they reported malfeasance or abuse - the children will lie, it is all apart of the treatment process - or so the parents were told by the school's staff. In fact, plaintiffs were denied basic medical care, and run through a battery of 'Lifestep' group encounters that ran for days at a time with no breaks, where little or no sleep permitted, very little food provided, and required traumatizing activities, such as making known victims of child sexual abuse act out sexual propositioning and activities on or with other residents as well as adult staff. Discipline consisted of physical punishment akin to a 1950s chain gang, being sent out into the wilderness with little or no food or supplies, at times alone, often for days. Even minor infractions were met with complete social isolation in which the child was not allowed to speak to or even make eye contact with anyone at the facility, sometimes for up to six weeks or more at a time. At the same time, this 'school' would remove the children from any educational activity during these extended periods of punishment, only allowing plaintiffs to engage in self-abusing personal examinations while in isolation, and left them without transferable academic credits. In short, Mt. Bachelor Academy was no school at all, and only made things worse psychologically for these plaintiffs."
The Lifesteps program features a series of seven multi-day group encounter sessions during which students were subjected to "temperature extremes, meal deprivation, sleep deprivation, denial of restroom use, and rotted food, as well as denigrating, cruel, and abusive shouting," according to the complaint.
During one Lifestep session, plaintiff MLM - a teen-age girl who had been raped by her father - was forced to spread her legs in front of each of the 15 male participants and their adult male counselor and say, "This leg is Christmas, this leg is New Years, why don't you come and see me between the holidays," according to the complaint.
