STOCKBRIDGE, Mass. - Before moving to Arizona nearly a decade ago, Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu led a controversial private school for troubled youths that Massachusetts investigators sought to shut down over reports of abuse, neglect and concerns about students' safety.

Court records, case files and interviews show that problems at the DeSisto School in Stockbridge began years before Babeu took over as headmaster in 1999. The state launched an investigation in 2000 after receiving nine separate complaints about the school, according to the Massachusetts Office of Child Care Services.

Babeu left the school in August 2001. The state's eventual findings showed problems had continued during his administration and didn't end until the school closed in 2004.

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The agency found systemic problems at the school. The probe resulted in a court order to stop specific activities, including punishments that put students in chairs facing corners for hours at a time, withholding food from students and strip-searching. The court also ordered the school to stop group showers and allow students to use the bathroom in private.

Babeu was not named in any specific allegation in the state's investigation.

The sheriff, who is running for Congress in Arizona's 4th District, has come under scrutiny in recent weeks amid allegations by a former boyfriend that he abused his authority as sheriff. Babeu denies any abuse of power.

In 1999, school founder Michael DeSisto named Babeu as his replacement as headmaster. Babeu responded to some questions about the school through an attorney but did not address specific questions about allegations of abuse and neglect at DeSisto.

In an e-mail statement to The Arizona Republic, Babeu downplayed his leadership role at the school. He said he was recognized for "helping to restore financial accountability to the school." He said he did not teach, counsel or discipline students, or supervise teachers or counselors.

Babeu also said that, in his role as headmaster, he was responsible only for operations such as kitchen, housekeeping, facility and grounds maintenance, office-support staff and admissions.

However, interviews, court and tax records, media accounts and Babeu's police personnel records present a broader picture of his leadership role at DeSisto.

In a Chandler Police Department employment application signed by Babeu in November 2002, he wrote that he "supervised directors and 80 full-time employees" at DeSisto. He wrote that he was "responsible for budget preparation, financial accountability, legal issues, long-range planning and fundraising."

Babeu and one other employee, along with the school's founder, were listed as the highest-paid employees on the non-profit school's tax forms in 2000.

Students and school staff said Babeu and other administrators sat in on morning meetings in which student safety and misconduct were routinely discussed. Babeu also intervened with parents, said Harvey Thompson, who oversaw the school's finances from 1989 until its closure in 2004.

Troubled students

The DeSisto School was founded in 1978 by Michael DeSisto as an institution to help troubled students through an intense discipline regimen and group therapy. Students were primarily from wealthy, prominent families who paid up to $78,000 a year for their children to attend.

DeSisto billed himself as a longtime educator with a host of academic degrees and employment credentials that proved to be false, according to a 1988 investigation by the Orlando Sentinel in Florida, where another DeSisto school was located.

Students accepted into the school were considered artistically gifted and exceptionally intelligent. Most received psychological treatment before coming to the school for issues that included depression, eating disorders, anger management, self-destruction, addiction and rebellion, according to former administrators.

Because of the number of special-needs students at DeSisto, the Office of Child Care Services fought to regulate and license the school as a group-care facility "after receiving allegations of neglect and abuse of residents at the facility" during Babeu's tenure, agency spokeswoman Heather Johnson said.

A Massachusetts court agreed.

The state found that students were made to sit facing corners up to 14 hours a day for weeks at a time.

In November 2001, about six months after Babeu left as headmaster, state authorities painted a dismal environment at the school, noting that employees were poorly trained and that the school was chronically understaffed.

There were no written policies at the school for reporting suspected child abuse or neglect and no record of proper background checks on most of the staff, investigators said.

"The school uses discipline that is overly punitive and dangerous; and students are routinely denied their basic human rights through strip searches, denial of permission to use bathroom facilities in privacy, and denial of all means of communication with family members," the state said in court records.

Students were enlisted to help restrain other students, and, in one case, a student contacted a classmate's parents to inform them that their son had run away, records show. Group showers were routine and led to instances of sexual abuse, the state reported.

A New Jersey student who attended DeSisto from 1998 to 2004 told The Arizona Republic last week that one girl sat for so long that she urinated in front of five other students. She said another girl with an eating disorder vomited in socks in order to avoid getting caught.

"She hid them inside a mattress for weeks until the whole room smelled like mildew. A twin mattress was filled. I helped pull it down," the student said. "Everybody knew she refused to eat. They put her in a corner. She didn't need to be in a corner, she needed to be in a hospital."

A political connection

Babeu and DeSisto were friends and political allies in western Massachusetts.

Babeu was hired in April 1999 as DeSisto's assistant and named headmaster of the school in July when DeSisto announced that he was stepping down from that position for health reasons.

DeSisto told the Berkshire Eagle newspaper at the time that he chose Babeu for the job because of Babeu's longtime involvement with the school.

"He will be the public face of the school," DeSisto told the newspaper.

Before coming to DeSisto, Babeu had served as a Berkshire County commissioner and a North Adams, Mass., city councilor and was a 1997 mayoral candidate.

Babeu earned a history degree from North Adams State College in 1992. He also earned a master's in public administration in 2003 from American International College in Massachusetts, working on the degree while at DeSisto.

At the same time Babeu was promoted as headmaster, three other managers were named as part of the school's leadership team.

Later, Babeu later took over as executive director for DeSisto, becoming the first person other than DeSisto to hold the position.

"Paul was loved and respected by the kids," DeSisto told the newspaper in November 2001, after Babeu had left the school. "The kids know a phony; they can see through them. And they love Paul."

Babeu this week downplayed his interaction with students and his role in the school's management. In his e-mail statement, he said he is a recognized leader for victims rights.

Thompson, who oversaw the school's finances, said, "I think all four (managers) were equal in what they did."

Babeu's role as headmaster was limited, Thompson said. The title "tends to make people think it means he's in charge. It didn't have the power that the term headmaster has at other schools," Thompson said

The Republic attempted to contact the other three former managers: a director and assistant director of the school and the director of residential life. Two did not respond to phone and e-mail requests for comment, and the third could not be reached.

Controversial treatment

A review of records by The Republic found that throughout much of the Stockbridge school's 27-year history, students were "leashed" or tied together in the name of therapy, forced to do manual labor as a form of punishment, deprived of food and water on a regular basis and made to strip to their underwear and wear togas.

The school had its supporters. Some former students, their parents and staff credit the school with helping students overcome personal issues.

Spencer Moore, a court-ordered consulting psychologist, defended the school's treatment methods in a sworn statement in 2002.

"In my opinion, absent their participation in this program, many of the students at the school would have been back out on the street, institutionalized, in jail or dead," Moore said. "The model employed by the school is entirely appropriate."

Gregory Steinbach, the school's admissions officer, testified that 90 percent of students went to college and that 35 percent went to graduate school over the years.

However, some former students created "survivor" groups and say the school's stark methods continue to haunt them.

State regulators said relationships between students and teachers were problematic because many staff members had not undergone background checks, were living in close quarters with students and had unsupervised access to them.

State investigation

As part of the 2000 probe, when Babeu was headmaster, investigators found four categories of violations. One centered on the condition of facilities, which he was directly responsible for overseeing. The other three categories were restraints of students, separation and isolation practices, and restricting contact with family. It is unclear what level of oversight Babeu had in those areas.

A judge acknowledged in 2002 that the school had reversed some practices, such as housing five students in a dorm room built for two to four and blocking dorm-room doors.

The school was in violation of building codes, and a local building inspector described the school as "dangerous to life and limb," the judge wrote in his order.

State regulators described dorms as overcrowded with inadequate bathrooms, in violation of the fire code and group-home safety regulations.

Judith Spiewak, a parent of a DeSisto student who attended during Babeu's tenure, declined to discuss his stewardship of the school.

"Our experience (at DeSisto) was a positive one," she said in her Framingham, Mass., home.

Financial woes

Babeu said this week that one of his duties was to raise money for the school and that he was recognized for refinancing and consolidating the school's debts and renovating school properties. A DeSisto board member said in court documents that Babeu was authorized in 2000 to legally sign bank loans on behalf of DeSisto.

Although Babeu touts his financial record at the school, its tax records as a non-profit organization show its decline began on his watch.

In the 1999-2000 fiscal year, Babeu's first, the school ended with a $169,000 surplus. The next year, Babeu's last, it ended with a $165,000 deficit. Afterward, the school's finances spiraled downward as enrollment plummeted and legal expenses soared.

The school's expenses on facility repairs dropped 42 percent, or $105,000, under Babeu. State and local regulators cited problems with the state of the facilities when they stepped in. Although the school saved on repairs during his tenure, its legal expenses increased by nearly as much.

Also, during Babeu's tenure, the state investigation found that school officials advised parents that they deduct the entire cost of tuition from their federal taxes, even though the Internal Revenue Service did not permit it.

One of the DeSisto School's bright spots, an off-Broadway musical called "Inappropriate," starring students from the school, was a meditation on the pains of high-school students drawn from the journals of some of its students. The musical, too, became a source of financial dispute.

During the Babeu years, the musical traveled from New York to Los Angeles, with interest in record and film rights for the project, as well.

Babeu slashed $700,000 from the part of the school's budget that supported musicals, according to the school's tax records. The composer of "Inappropriate" sued and won a $342,000 judgment against the school in 2004.

School's demise

Located in the affluent Berkshire County community of Stockbridge, the school sat on 300 isolated acres of rolling hills behind large iron gates and rock walls. The school consisted of 11 dormitories, a gym and cafeteria fronted by a 19th-century rambling, four-story mansion that served as the headquarters.

Babeu left the school in 2001 to run for mayor in his hometown of North Adams, Mass. After losing the race, he moved to Arizona in 2003.

The state's legal battle with the DeSisto School reached a climax in January 2004, when the school suffered one of the most serious safety lapses in its history.

Dawn Matthews, a girl with 41 hospital admissions for self-inflicted injuries over a two-year span at DeSisto, swallowed two plastic-covered razors. The razors passed through her digestive system without harm, according to court records.

"I had a rough time at school, but it was my issues," said Matthews, 24, who enrolled in 2002. "Mainly, the staff members they hired weren't equipped to deal with people with forms of psychosis. ... Half those people didn't know what they were doing."

In March 2004, a court ordered the school to temporarily suspend new-student admissions. By then, the student population had dwindled to 38 from a peak of about 130. The state asked the court to extend the sanction, which the school's lawyer described as the "death penalty."

Frank McNear took over as DeSisto executive director from Babeu and served until the school closed in 2004. Today, the mansion is shuttered and being gutted as part of a renovation project. Only a few of the school's buildings remain.

"I took the position not knowing the history of the school and spent the next several years answering allegations about things that had happened in the past," McNear said in an e-mail Wednesday, adding that he was not aware of any abuse on his watch. "Paul Babeu was not working at the school on that watch, but had I been informed of inappropriateness on his part after his departure, I would have reported that, as well."

Reach the reporters at robert.anglen@arizonarepublic.com, ronald.hansen@arizonarepublic.com or sean.holstege@arizonarepublic.com.