Juanita Crawford, 19, who spent a year and a half at Lansing Girls Residential Center after she was found guilty of reckless endangerment and conspiracy and is now an intern at the A.C.L.U.,
said in an interview that she was restrained after not moving quickly enough to dispose of her food tray and talking back to a staff member. “He takes you and hooks your arms backwards with a lot of force, and it hurts, and you’re dropped face down,” she said. “It’s almost like getting tripped.”
The program's license to operate was suspended after the 15-year-old died May 2.
Boyd said she believes camp staff ignored her son's assertions that he was sick and needed to go home. She also believes the Utah Division of Juvenile Justice Services, which placed her son in the rough and remote program, failed to take into account his frequent problems with staph infections.
"He should have been cared for. He should be alive today," a sobbing Boyd said during a telephone conversation from her home. "I know my baby told them. He always knew when he had a staph infection."
Boyd said her son's letters from camp recently said he was feeling better about his life but badly wanted to come home, "so he could get in his SpongeBob pajama pants and his big slippers and curl up with me and his sisters to watch TV."
Caleb described a different life in camp. He wrote he had to climb mountains every day until he was exhausted. He was able to wash only twice a week using tiny amounts of water. He had to clean his dishes after meals by licking them and then using dirt to scour them.
"That's not how he should have been treated - like a dog or a lizard," said his grandmother, Ella Reese of Troy, Idaho.
Caleb expressed some optimism along with the complaints. "Mom, I think I'm going to make it this time," he wrote in a letter.
Caleb died of a methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus infection. The bacterial infection traditionally
(click to enlarge) is seen in hospitalized or very ill or elderly patients.
Caleb's mother said he had been treated for numerous staph infections since he was a toddler and suffered a related skin problem called impetigo. He was treated for three infections while he was in other juvenile justice programs in Utah before being sent to the camp, she said.
"When I saw my son in the casket and looked at his little face, there was a sore on each side of his mouth under the makeup. ... I knew," she said.
Actions at camp defended
Carol Sisco, a spokeswoman for the Utah Department of Human Services that oversees the juvenile justice programs, said Caleb passed a physical before he was sent to the camp March 28. She said he had a physical in the field the week before he died and a session with a therapist the day before his death. No one reported that he was ill. His mother said he did not report being ill in his last letter.
Caleb's family has been unable to get much information about his death. Reese said they pieced together information that shows Caleb was sitting on his sleeping bag in the camp during a rest day on the day he died. Caleb, who had been exhibiting behavioral problems for several days before his death, told a counselor he didn't feel well and needed to go home. After the counselor moved on, Caleb slumped over. Less than 10 minutes later when a counselor checked on him, he was dead, Reese said.
BLOG ARCHIVES
In a last letter to his family from a wilderness camp for troubled youths, Caleb Jensen wrote about the difficulties of surviving in the wild and added a postscript: "I want my mommy."
Caleb's mother, Dawn Boyd of Salt Lake City, received the letter from her youngest child during the week before he died of an untreated staph infection. He was participating in a court-ordered wilderness therapy program through Alternative Youth Adventures near Montrose.
