INNOCENCE LOST

Because of his suicide attempt at Griffith, Spencer was shipped up to Denver General Hospital's psychiatric unit. He says he stayed there for two weeks, much of it on a suicide watch. "Mostly I just sat or played Foosball," he recalls. "People there are kind of crazy. I was kind of used to being in places like that, though."

The next stop was Brighton again, where he stayed for another month waiting for probation officers and other professionals there to decide what to do with him. Although he says they again wanted to send him to Lookout Mountain, his mother, on her own initiative, found another private treatment center, in Boise, Idaho, called Northwest Passages. The facility, Spencer says, was much like Charter Hospital, with one exception: It relied heavily on aversion therapy.

end of part 1