SALT LAKE CITY (CN) - A mother claims in court that "sadists and psychopaths" at Turn About Ranch, a residential treatment center in Escalante, subjected her teen-age daughter to "torture," including hours of stress positions, threats to suffocate her, exposure to animal abuse and regular public humiliation.
Elizabeth Verney and her mother, Julia Gordon, sued Turn About Ranch and Aspen Education Group, both California corporations, in Federal Court.
Turn About "purport(s) to be a Utah licensed residential treatment center" in Escalante. It's owned and operated by the Aspen Group, according to the complaint.
Verney, now 22, claims Turn About subjected her to "torture" in 2005, when she was 15.
The ranch billed itself as a place to treat "young people with low self-esteem, depression and mental health problems," according to the complaint, and "boasted [of] daily private therapy sessions, horse riding and outdoor activities with all staff trained as childcare experts."
Gordon, of London, England, claims the defendants charged her $310 a day to treat her daughter for depression and severe anxiety disorder.
But Verney says she spent 7 weeks as an "abject captive" and was "constantly frightened and fearing for her life."
According to the 34-page complaint: "During her stay Elizabeth was subjected to sleep deprivation, denied food, and yet forced to eat and prepare meat, which was abhorrent to her as a vegetarian. The ranch threatened her with restraint and force-feeding with a tube if she did not comply. The ranch forced physical labor and excessive exercise in extreme temperatures. It forced her regularly to put her hands in a sink filled with bleach to wash dishes until they bled, leaving to this day scars on her knuckles.
"Staff's verbal abuse was unrelenting, humiliating both in private and in group 'denunciation meetings' where she was made to list her faults and listen to her peers taking turns denigrating her and her faults, and what they disliked about her, not as therapy but out of relish.
"Staff regularly threatened Elizabeth with physical violence, including potential suffocation if she tried to run away. They told her daily that she was a bad person, and described her as 'disgusting, stupid, manipulative, pathetic and bad.' They screamed at her, punished her for crying and for having panic attacks that caused fearful hyperventilation.
"They forced her to maintain stress positions for many hours at time during the first few days at the ranch, not allowing her to rest her body against any structures, to stretch or to lie down, putting great pressure on her back, neck and joints, all of which was extremely painful. They forced her to sleep on a wooden slab without a pillow or mattress even though she already suffered from ongoing back pain from an injury that her parents had told the ranch about.
"She was often not allowed to wash for days at a time or change her dirty clothes. They forced her to sleep in clothes that had animal feces on them.
"Bullying and abuse between those in the program was not only overlooked but actively encouraged. When Elizabeth informed staff about a 13-year-old boy's being bullied by older teens in his dorm room, a staff member said the boy deserved it and joined the ringleaders in taunting and humiliating her all the more, and then excluded the boy from group activities."