A state inspection report offers new details on the hours leading up to a 12-year-old’s death at Trails Carolina, a camp for troubled adolescents.

Staff at a North Carolina wilderness therapy camp failed to check that a 12-year-old boy was breathing during his first night at the facility, a state report released Tuesday found.

The boy, who has been identified in law enforcement records only by his initials, CJH, was found unresponsive around 7:45 a.m. on Feb. 3 at Trails Carolina, a camp for troubled adolescents in the western part of the state.

  • dohpaz42@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    What the actual fuck? There is so much to unpack from this article. I googled a bivy; it’s basically an enclosed sleeping bag. Before bivys, they would put a tarp over the zipped-up sleeping bag. Why? What’s the point in enclosing a child on their first night? Maybe to break their spirit? Show them you mean business? I can’t think of anything positive that could come from doing that to them.

    And the “counselors”… they should be equally held liable. They heard things they were unsure of, but never thought to go check them out? That’s negligence.

    I’m pissed. Beyond pissed. Everyone in that organization needs to go to jail. I pray that NC does the right thing and closes this torture factory down.

    • rtxn@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Every “camp for troubled youth” I’ve ever heard of turned out to be a fucking concentration camp for kids full of physical, mental, and sexual torture and religious indoctrination. I wonder if this one also kidnaps kids in the middle of the night.

      The entire idea should be made illegal.

    • girlfreddy@lemmy.ca
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      7 months ago

      He wasn’t just in the bivy.

      He had been required to sleep in a tubelike tent, known as a bivy, enclosed by a solid plastic sheet.

      Asphyxia anyone???

      • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        And since the zipper was broken, they secured him in it with zip-ties.

        And when they noticed his shallow breathing, they didn’t check on him because they couldn’t see through the bivy and were too fucking lazy to untie him to see if he was okay.

        That’s not manslaughter. That’s depraved-indifference murder.

    • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      So I’ve worked at out door facilities (none that did this kind of work) and have had colleagues that worked these kinds of camps.

      Basically, you get thrown a minimum of supplies and told figure it out. Not usually a tent but a tarp you are expected to construct into a tent. I knew of one outfit in Utah where kids would get sent in the middle of the winter. I consider it abuse, but if their parents sign the waivers… keep in mind that children are a form of property (for most intents and purposes).

      I refused to ever work those kinds of camps and threw shade at my friends who did.