Troubled teens were banished to the Monarch Center wilderness program. Then their troubles really started

Comments (0) By Adam Cayton-Holland Thursday, Nov 13 2008

...continued from page 5

After that session, Michael was going back into the field for a two-week stint of camping, hiking and group therapy. Maura was worried about how her son might handle all the horrific information he'd just been handed, and asked if he was going to receive any immediate counseling. She was assured that he would. But as soon as Michael got back in the field, he was told that some kids from another Monarch group had gotten into the medicine box, crushed up a bunch of pills and snorted the concoction. As a result, the entire camp was being punished through quiet time and solos, which consisted of hiking alone and then sequestering yourself in a tent.

"You're in your tent, there's no talking, you're just supposed to sit there and write in your journal," Michael says. "Those kids up in my group, they were like my family. You get really close with those people, and I wanted to tell them about what was going on and everything I had just learned, but I couldn't. I just had to deal with it."

Dave Ventimiglia thought that with Monarch's wilderness therapy, he could provide better care than traditional treatment centers.

Emily Jarvis with her souvenir of Monarch: ten-month-old Lily.

More About

Maura didn't hear from her son while he was off in the field, but she did hear from the Sallie Mae Foundation: Her loan request was being denied because Monarch was not approved by the Colorado Department of Education, contrary to a claim on its website. She e-mailed Dave Ventimiglia about the discrepancy. "You are reading older information that was pertinent to our days as a social service organization and is no longer relevant," he responded. "When we operated with social services students, it was necessary for us to be approved by CDE — and we were. It is no longer relevant for the type of students and families that we work with now."

"Oh, now I understand, but it is misleading," Maura responded. "Your residential treatment plan I have downloaded says a date on the front of 1/09/06...How would anyone know that information is old?...Sorry but that is one reason I sent Michael there and I bet other parents as well. I hope you correct this on your web as well as to make sure parents who currently have their children there understand your treatment package has not been updated since 2003."

She began looking into more of Monarch's claims. "I checked with the Department of Human Services about their record and I got this horrible report," she says. She read complaints about students not receiving the therapy promised, about lack of supervision and proper sanitation, about children having sex.

Michael was now three weeks into his month-long program, and Maura decided to go up for the final family week and voice her concerns about Monarch. She wanted to know why the website made misleading claims about student loans, why she'd never received Michael's treatment plan, why Michael had been assigned a counselor who was not appropriately trained and did not have a master's degree — yet another contradiction of Monarch's website claims. But as soon as she raised the issue, Maura says, her son was kicked out of the program for non-payment.

Michael was not allowed to retrieve any of his belongings or the journal he'd been writing in; he wasn't even able to snag the phone number of a girl with whom he'd grown close. He and his mother were simply escorted off the property, with no discharge report or further treatment advice.

"Michael was devastated," Maura remembers. "He wanted to say goodbye to his friends; he spent so much time bonding with those kids. I mean, this is a kid with an attachment disorder to begin with, and he didn't get to say goodbye or get his journal; he was confused, and he figured I was to blame."

Back home, Michael acted very strange. He kept putting his belt around his neck, pretending it was a noose; Maura went around the house and removed all the belts. Then Michael sequestered himself in his bedroom. Maura poked her head in occasionally, and he seemed asleep. After fifteen hours, though, she went back in and found Michael unconscious. She scrolled through his cell phone and found a text to a friend that said, "I'm really fucked up on pills right now."

After a trip to the hospital where nurses told Michael he was lucky to be alive, Maura learned that Michael had ground up an enormous amount of Percocet that he had left over from a knee injury, and some of her Xanax. He'd topped off his chemical cocktail with a bottle of tequila that he'd scored from a neighbor kid. Maura hadn't thought to remove the pills, since Michael had never had any problem with prescription medications in the past — and he hadn't told her about the snorting incident at Monarch.

"Michael doesn't remember a whole lot about that time," Maura says. "He won't say he did it on purpose, but I don't think you're really looking for reflection when you're a teenager. You don't do that type of thing for no reason."

After the overdose. Maura tried to suggest other programs, but Michael said he'd rather live on the street — and on one occasion, he followed through. Finally, Maura took her son back to Massachusetts so they could be closer to her family. When they left Colorado, Michael was as angry as he'd ever been, threatening to kill himself and cut himself; he started punching holes in walls again and yelling at his mother about how he'd never forgive her for sending him to Monarch.