Lee Rood

lrood@dmreg.com

Wendy and Keith Couch of Athens, Ala., didn’t know where to turn when their son was acting up last year, so they tried doing their own research on the internet.

When Keith stumbled onto AnswersforParents.com, he thought he was getting exactly what was advertised: a free referral service to help the couple identify “some of the top Youth Development Programs in the world.”

In fact, the Couches now believe they were unwittingly steered toward Iowa’s Midwest Academy by a business more geared toward profit than therapy. In Utah, where AnswersforParents is based, a whole industry surrounding troubled teens has delivered cash and kids to controversial residential facilities for more than 30 years, experts say.

“In hindsight, I didn’t realize I was being drawn into it,” Keith Couch said. “I would get pushy phone calls daily. … It got to the point the phone calls were becoming an annoyance."

Neither AnswersforParents nor others who helped persuade the Couches to send their son to Midwest returned The Des Moines Register's phone calls seeking comment for this story.

Raided at the end of January, the now-closed Midwest Academy in Keokuk is at the center of investigations by the FBI, Iowa's Division of Criminal Investigation, the state's attorney general and the Legislature. The academy is one of several private boarding schools for youths that began in states such as Iowa with little or no regulation of such facilities.

Legislation has been introduced at the Statehouse to provide more oversight.

Midwest's director, Ben Trane, distanced his facility from a Utah network of tough-love boarding schools called the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools after news broke of the criminal probe. In emails to the Register, Trane said in February that Midwest was a stand-alone company with “no ties” to other schools in the network, also known as WWASPS.

A former student has accused Trane of sexual abuse, according to a search warrant application filed by the Lee County attorney. Trane has not commented since on allegations against him or the school, and his lawyer, George Jones of Lamoni, did not return phone calls.

Experts say schools associated with the network and others modeled after them have made millions of dollars marketing fixes to parents with out-of-control or drug-addicted teens. The schools get new clients from troubled-teen websites in which consultants are paid for referrals.

“A lot of good, well-intentioned parents have gotten sucked into this because they didn’t know it was a marketing thing,” Maia Szalavitz, a former Time magazine health reporter, told the Register. Szalavitz penned the first book on the so-called troubled-teen industry a decade ago. “The thing is, there’s no diagnosis for ‘troubled teen.’ It’s a thing made up to sell these programs.”

Szalavitz said parents could afford the best in psychiatric care daily for what they spend on private tough-love programs.

“In any other area of medicine, they would be sued for not providing a standard of care,” she said.

Indeed, Szalavitz and others critical of the facilities' methods say no research shows they are effective for youths battling mental health or addiction issues. The National Institutes of Health has said teen programs using "fear and tough treatment" are not successful and can worsen existing behavioral problems.

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Network's history of investigations

The WWASPS boarding schools and marketing businesses created by their founders have faced a series of lawsuits and federal criminal probes over the years stemming from allegations that sound eerily similar to those leveled at Midwest Academy: child abuse, sex abuse, fraud, false marketing and bogus claims of accreditation.

The U.S. State Department first looked at association schools in the 1990s. “It was clear back then these places were connected to each other. The (State Department) sent out a warning, but they didn’t move to shut them down,” Szalavatz said.

The schools quietly settled some lawsuits, including one in 2013 involving a 16-year-old who hanged herself at a Montana facility, and succeeded in having others dismissed, news reports show. Several U.S. facilities, as well as overseas facilities in Samoa, the Czech Republic, Costa Rica and Mexico, were shut. One school in New York was ordered to pay $1 million to parents for falsely claiming to provide legitimate diplomas.

In 2010, Ken Kay, then-president of the WWASPS schools, told Forbes magazine the association went "out of business" after the recession and publicity surrounding the abuse claims.

Robert Lichfield, founder of the Utah-based network, told The New York Times in a 2013 email that he supplied business and educational services to some remaining programs but no longer owned any schools.

But state records in Utah show that the corporation, and a handful of related consulting and marketing companies created by WWASPS founders or their relatives, are still active.

In Iowa, Lee County property records show Midwest Academy is still owned by Midwest Twister, a corporation created by Lichfield. He remains a manager of Midwest Twister, and the academy's property tax statements are sent to its mailing address, Utah and Iowa records show.

Complex corporate structures make it difficult to track financial connections between WWASPS schools and related businesses.

After reports by the U.S. Government Accountability Office highlighted abuse and deaths at some boarding schools, the Federal Trade Commission warned the public that referral services claiming to be independent may actually be operated or paid by the treatment program operators.

"Some companies may provide services, claiming to match troubled kids with an appropriate treatment program. Be aware that although some of these services represent themselves as independent, they may not be," the commission said in 2008. "They may actually be operated or paid by one or more of the treatment programs."

One big lawsuit filed in 2009 against the WWASPS network was dismissed — not for lack of merit, but because the judge did not consider federal court in Utah the most appropriate venue.

Parents: A hard sell

It's unclear whether some other companies recruiting new clients for Midwest Academy have ties to WWASPS.

AnswersforParents was founded by David Arslanian, a former college football coach who co-founded Eagle Ranch Academy, a troubled-teens school in St. George, with his brother. Neither Arslanian nor his brother returned the Register's telephone calls to Eagle Ranch seeking comment.

Mark Brady, an admissions and enrollment consultant for a company called Top Youth Programs, responded to the Couches' inquiry on the AnswersforParents website. Brady was a former admissions director at Eagle Ranch.

Keith Couch said Brady didn’t stop contacting him until he and his wife decided to enroll their son, Jesse, in Midwest Academy in spring 2015 because of drug use. He said they had also been eyeing a smaller residential program in Asheville, N.C., but Brady pushed for Midwest and steered him away from the Asheville school.

Couch said Brady also insisted that they use USA Guides, a youth transport outfit located next to Eagle Ranch Academy in St. George, to bring their son to Iowa. He said a tattooed bald man and a woman flew from Utah to Nashville, then drove to Athens to pick up Jesse and bring him to Keokuk and Midwest Academy, another nine hours away. The couple paid about $2,000 for the transportation service, Wendy Couch said.

A telephone call to USA Guides seeking comment was not returned.

As happened with other parents, Brady also gave the Couches a list of preapproved families to contact to vouch for Midwest.

Jesse, now 18, lasted seven days there.

'Worse than a prison'

Wendy Couch says she got a letter from her son, emailed from the school. He said he hadn't been allowed to shower in days. He had diarrhea and a skin rash, and described rats in the ceiling and bathrooms that were "beyond unsanitary."

Students told Jesse his letter would be thrown out or censored. "I honestly believe the only reason I got it was that his handwriting was so bad," his mother said.

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Wendy Couch and her mother drove 14 hours to see her son. She says she arrived in Keokuk to find him dirty, covered in scabies and wearing the same pair of pajamas he put on after his arrival. He was so hungry, he had been eating tubes of toothpaste. He had not seen a textbook or a counselor since he arrived, she said.

“I was told my child was adjusting well, that he was talking and laughing with other children,” she said. “It was all lies. They weren’t even allowed to talk at that stage.”

The Couches say the environment at Midwest was “worse than a prison.” But they said they never formally complained to the state or filed a lawsuit because they were given a refund.

After Jesse was placed at the school, Brady, the man who made the referral, would not return their phone calls, the Couches said.

“If I was in Vegas, I’d put $100 bill on it that it was all a setup,” Keith Couch said. “It turned out to be the Hanoi Hilton for my stepson. And I have a lot of guilt over that. He came home really shook up, and I don’t know if he really is over it.”

The letter

These are excerpts from a six-page letter Wendy and Keith Couch received from their son, Jesse, last year complaining about conditions at Midwest Academy. After receiving an e-mail containing the letter, Wendy Couch drove 14 hours from their home in Athens, Ga., to Keokuk in southeastern Iowa and removed Jesse from the facility after seven days there.​

Others made Midwest referrals

Core Solutions out of Winchester, Calif., also referred students to Midwest. Tara Akers, former admissions director at Midwest Academy, mentions Core Solutions founder Randall Cook in emails some parents provided to the Register.

Cook was a former student at Paradise Cove in Western Samoa. That WWASPS-affiliated school, which housed as many as 450 boys at one time, was closed by the Samoan government in 1998 after a series of child abuse allegations, according to news reports.

Cook has said in marketing materials that he provides "immediate and long-lasting solutions for parents whose teens are making poor choices and engaged in risky behaviors that are putting their health and safety in jeopardy, and undermining the well-being of the family."

His website features pictures of Midwest Academy, and promotional materials online say he has been a consultant in the creation of several therapeutic boarding schools. He also has administered a Struggling Teens site and other online bulletin boards related to the industry.

Discounts for testimonials

Other Midwest Academy parents say they were told they could receive tuition discounts if they agreed to having their own websites promoting the boarding school. If someone clicked on the URL provided and enrolled a son or daughter in the academy, the parent to whom the site belonged would qualify for a discount.

Laura Gillings, a suburban St. Paul, Minn., mother, whose son, Joshua Martinson, attended the school in 2006, said she was assigned a web page at http://jnzmom.parentshelpingteens.com, which is no longer in use.

Parents searching the internet using terms such as "teen help" or other phrases parents of troubled youths might use could be directed to the site. She said she was also encouraged to post the link in online forums about those topics.

“It was a generic page for every parent, with information on troubled teens and how to get help,” Gillings said. “It had links to the different schools, and an 800 number to call and talk with someone on admission and any questions.

“If someone would click on it and enroll, I could get a discount on tuition," she said. "I can't remember how much it was now, but it was something like $5,000."

Jenna Devereaux of Sacramento, Calif., said she found Midwest Academy through USBoardingSchool.com, another now-defunct website. When she emailed the site to place her son Zach, she got a call back from Akers, the former Midwest Academy admissions director.

While Midwest is one of only a handful of unregulated facilities in Iowa, Utah has more than 115.

Since at least 2005, facilities in that state housing more than four youths have been subject to regulations governing everything from mental health care and staffing to food service and distribution of medications.

Yet the Utah schools continue to draw new students — and new controversy.

Last month, Mount Pleasant Academy in St. George was the latest to make headlines.

An employee who previously reported sodomy and sex abuse of children reached out again to Utah child welfare officials, according to a story published by ProPublica, an online investigative news organization.

This time, the employee told the Utah Department of Human Services that several boys as young as 13 were having sex with each other — and one of its staffers shared a video with other employees.

State and local officials confirmed to ProPublica that an investigation was underway in March.

Lee Rood’s Reader’s Watchdog column helps Iowans get answers and accountability from public officials, the justice system, businesses and nonprofits. Contact her at lrood@dmreg.com, 515-284-8549 on Twitter @leeroodor at Facebook.com/readerswatchdog.