Nate’s Aspen Ranch Testimony

I’m not really sure how to start with this testimonial and frankly I don’t want to write it because this will mean rehashing a very painful part of my life that I have done much work to work through and put behind me. I would be astounded if there turned out to be even one former patient of this “treatment center” that did not develop some level of PTSD or a complex directly related to their time spent at the Ranch.

I’d like to start this off by saying that Aspen Ranch as a business and a self proclaimed Residential Treatment Center meets all legal standards and definitions of the term “fraud” and even more specifically “insurance fraud.” Fraud is defined as the “the deliberate misrepresentation of fact for the purpose of depriving someone of a valuable possession”. Aspen Ranch marketed themselves as a treatment center for troubled youths that provided a therapeutic solution. Not only did Aspen Ranch provide no true therapy during my 11 months spent there, their “treatment model” highlighted by different forms of psychological manipulation, torture, and unjustified physical restraint caused me and many others to develop deeply routed psychological trauma that would prove incredibly harmful later in life. I could go on forever so I will provide a few specific examples.

1. Dan’s broken wrist- Any time the patients did not comply with orders from the staff, the staff used something called “PCS” short for positive control system. This was a form of restraint consisting of multiple grown men and women twisting the arms of teenage boys and girls behind their backs in order to position them face down in the ground for minutes to hours at a time. They did this anytime a patient refused an order such as “time to get out of bed”. Dan (alias) was another patient of Aspen. Dan for whatever reason did not want to go from the cafeteria to the horse barn. One of the Staff Joe Giles (not at alias) who was actually a police officer employed by the local town and also a large man pushing 200 lbs proceeded to lunge at Dan grabbing him by the arm, sweeping his feet from under him and shoved him face down in the dirt. During this process, Dan broke his wrist. Although Dan was screaming in pain begging Joe to stop Joe continued putting pressure on his wrist while at the same time leveraging his 200 + lb bodyweight on top of Dan. It took hours for Dan to receive any medical attention and Joe never faced any type of legal repercussion. This is just one instance but occurrences like this happened multiple times a week. Anytime a patient did something that a staff member considered “disobedient” the threat of physical restraint was used. I personally witnessed hundreds of instance of this same physical abuse at the ranch consisting of multiple adults at one time applying their entire weight on top of a 13-18 year old child.

2. Stolen Mail and deliberate blackout from family members- The Ranch would not allow any type of communication with family members until you hit a certain “level” which typically took at least three months. Any communication from the patients to their family was closely monitored as they knew that as soon as the families of certain patients heard about the true nature of the program, they would immediately pull their kids out and stop paying. In multiple instances, patient’s who’s parents were questioning the program and on the verge of pulling their children out – had their mail stolen by Aspen Ranch employees. The staff would not send the patients letters to their families as they knew this would be a risk to their business. Mind you – there were only 80 patients – each paying 15-30k a month for their stay, losing even one patient would be financially harmful. This is an illegal act and considered “mail tampering” and beyond the legal status, incredibly immoral and unethical.

3. The Known Molester – Scott Peterson – this is public information and can be researched outside of this post. Scott Peterson was the equine therapist and years after the ranch shut down was convicted of having sex with one of his 14 year old patients.

4. The Unknown Molester – This is a personal account and to my knowledge has never been made public. A staff member Eric G was accused of molesting another member of my team (different groups were called teams). Due to the fact that this particular patient had a history of what the Ranch deemed to be poor behavior they did not take his word for it and brought in someone to “investigate” these claims. I have no idea who this investigator was and could have very well been employed by the Ranch or their parent company CRC Health. After the investigation concluded, they determined that patient had lied about being molested. The patient was kicked out of Aspen and moved to another facility – Eric G remained as a staff at the Ranch. Years after I was released I reconnected with an old friend from the ranch via Facebook. He told me that Eric had been accused of the same behavior at another treatment center and formally charged with a crime. Deductive reasoning would lead any reasonable person to conclude that Eric had in fact molested my team member at Aspen Ranch and not only was not punished, but remained at the Ranch as a staff.

5. Psychological Abuse – Aspen’s therapeutic model was based around the idea that you had to “break someone down in order to build them back up”. While in a certain context this can be true (hitting rock bottom in recovery etc.) Aspen perverted this idea and neglected the part where you’re supposed to build someone back up, leaving most of their patients in psychological shambles by the time they left. A regular practice at Aspen that highlighted this abuse was staff members systematically picking apart the shortcomings and insecurities of certain group members in a group setting. This may sound to some like a “feedback group” of some sort, the difference between this type of instance and a feedback group is that staff members were encouraged to deliberately expose the specific insecurities and issues that group members were struggling with in order to “break them down”. They would do this in a group setting and the recipient of the verbal onslaught was not permitted to respond…all other group members were present. This sounds a bit counter-intuitive in a place marketed as a treatment center – it is. Again – this is just one example of the type of psychological abuse that the staff regularly dished out to patients. These types of groups were routine and public embarrassment of the patients was one of the staff members favorite method of abuse.

The reason these treatment centers existed at such a disproportionate rate in Utah is that the laws regulating these types of facilities were lax compared to other states. There was little to no state or federal regulation of the practices at Aspen Ranch. The directors of Aspen and CRC Health were allowed to operate their fraudulent treatment center with impunity and have more than likely faced no legal repercussion to date. They defrauded insurance companies and families out of millions of dollars by misrepresenting themselves as a treatment center, hiring a crack team of therapists often times lacking any type of professional certification, and practicing a flawed and outdated treatment model that caused further harm to their patients.

Why? Why does any criminal commit crime? Money, financial gain, and greed. The only thing I can hope is that the people in charge of Aspen and other facilities similar to these be held accountable and pay for what they did. If not legally, I know karma will get them. If anybody is still reading – I did struggle when I left the Ranch and returned home. The blame cannot solely be placed on the Ranch however I’m sure what I experienced there did not help. I’m 3.5 years recovered from heroin addiction today and have a beautiful life that I am grateful for. I am blessed in many different ways. If anybody reading this has trauma related to their experience at Aspen or any other treatment center I would encourage them to reach out to a professional or write their testimony here.

I am also available to chat if anyone would like my email is nberry19921@gmail.com.

Peace and Love.