Former students report injuries and isolation at Utah facility for troubled teens

Elevations Residential Treatment Center in Syracuse, Utah, says on its website that it strives to provide “guidance, support, and relief to students of all genders” in a safe, therapeutic environment.

But some former students say that description bears little resemblance to the facility they attended. 

Two recent attendees say they incurred serious injuries while being restrained by staff. In the past five years, Elevations employees have failed to follow mandatory reporting requirements for child abuse, improperly secluded children for days on end and have conducted unauthorized strip searches, according to state records. 

“They need to close their business down,” said Chloe Gilliland, 18, who attended Elevations from July 2023 to June 2024. “I don’t understand how they can go to sleep at the end of the day.”

Elevations is part of Family Help & Wellness, a company headquartered in Oregon that operates 10 treatment programs in four states for adolescents with behavioral and mental health challenges. Many, like Elevations, attract children from other states.

Chloe Gilliland graduated from Elevations in June.Courtesy Chloe Gilliland

Earlier this year, one of those programs, a North Carolina wilderness camp called Trails Carolina, lost its license after a 12-year-old suffocated in the weather-proof sack he was required to sleep in. The death, which was ruled a homicide, happened within 24 hours of the boy’s arrival. Trails Carolina has denied wrongdoing, and no one has been criminally charged in the death, though the investigation is ongoing.

Several other Family Help & Wellness programs have run afoul of state regulations for failing to notify the state of critical incidents, such as those in which children were injured or allegedly abused, and preventing children from calling licensing agencies, among other violations.  

Child welfare experts and advocates say multiple incidents at facilities within the same organization highlight the need for closer scrutiny of companies that run youth treatment centers and more communication among the states they are based in. 

“If you have an entity that has numerous places, and you’re hearing about problems that are similar across several of them, why aren’t you looking at all of them, and why aren’t you asking the tough questions about that?” said Nate Crippes, a supervising attorney with the Disability Law Center of Utah, which he said has received complaints about Elevations.

NBC News interviewed four former staff members and 11 former students who attended Elevations in the last five years, many of whom are active on a grassroots Instagram page where alumni share concerns and push for more oversight of the facility.

Nearly all described a chaotic environment where staff members were spread thin and physical restraints and self-harm were common. 

“I genuinely left worse than when I came in,” said Stella Downey, 20, who attended Elevations from June 2020 until February 2021. Downey said she frequently had to intervene when peers, including her roommate, harmed themselves. 

“I would see her covered in blood,” she said. “It definitely has scarred me.”

A 2022 statement posted on both the Elevations and Family Help & Wellness websites asserts that the former clients criticizing its programs and the industry at large are unreliable narrators who mischaracterize their treatment, and that children are safer in its programs than in public schools. Elevations’ leaders did not respond to interview requests. Through an attorney, Elevations declined to comment on specific allegations, citing privacy laws.

“Elevations RTC has helped nearly 700 children and families in crisis,” the attorney, Christopher Droubay, said in an email. “It is often the last hope for families who have exhausted all other options to help their child.”

But in recent years, there has been a steady increase in calls to police from Elevations, rising from 15 in 2019 to 56 in 2023. Syracuse Chief of Police Garret Atkin said Elevations is on track to nearly double last year’s tally by the end of 2024. Most of the calls involve clients alleging that they have been mistreated by the facility staff, or children assaulting a peer or employee, he said.

From May 2023 to May 2024, Elevations reported at least 105 incidents of self-harm and 138 uses of physical restraints, according to state records.

Miranda Goodwill, 20, said she was violently restrained face-down by a staffer for throwing books at a wall in 2019. Another student at the time said she witnessed this incident and described it similarly to NBC News.

“I got up, and there was a bunch of blood coming down my ear,” Goodwill said. “They made me tell the people at the hospital that I just fell instead of telling them what actually happened.”

Youth rights advocates said they hoped the closure of Trails Carolina would result in more regulatory scrutiny of Elevations, but thus far it has not. In Idaho, North Carolina and Utah, where the Family Help & Wellness youth programs are based, officials said they do not take violations at affiliated facilities in other states into account when evaluating programs. Only the child welfare agency in New Mexico, where one treatment center is, said it is currently looking into that program’s association with Family Help & Wellness, though its actions are limited to the facilities in its state.

“I genuinely left worse than when I came in,” said Stella Downey.Courtesy Stella Downey

Kelly Webster, board treasurer for the National Association of Therapeutic Schools and Programs, a trade association to which Elevations belongs, said she understands why prospective families might want to draw connections between related programs. But she urged caution.

“I don’t think it’s reasonable to assume that just because something awful happened at a program in North Carolina, because it’s owned by some of the same corporate-backing as a place that serves a totally different population, does different things in the name of treatment in Utah, that they’re also going to be bad and that a tragedy like that will occur there, too,” she said.

Katie England, a spokesperson for the Utah Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees facilities like Elevations, said that it “does not have the statutory authority to use facility violations or adverse incidents in other states when making Utah-specific licensing decisions.”

Recent changes in Utah have increased the number of state inspections of treatment centers and required more tracking of critical incidents, such as restraints and self-harm. But there’s little national data available on the frequency of those incidents, something industry experts and advocates hope to change with the Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act. The bipartisan bill would establish a federal interagency work group to improve communication among state licensing and child welfare agencies, and create the first national database of restraints and seclusion in youth treatment centers.

Ben Jones, director of legal and policy initiatives for the youth advocacy group Lives in the Balance, said the bill is a “necessary step in the right direction because at this point, we have no centralized oversight whatsoever.” If families are sending kids away from home for treatment, he said, “then we should damn well be sure that they’re safe and getting good stuff for all this money.”

To Rachel Jonas, Elevations seemed like a sanctuary for her daughter. The facility advertised an LGBTQ-affirming environment, and Jonas was optimistic that Elevations would help Sabrina, who is transgender, with her suicidal thoughts. She was relieved when the San Diego Unified School District agreed to cover the tab for her Elevations tuition under a 2009 Supreme Court ruling requiring accommodations for children with special needs.

Jonas’ trust turned to distress in July 2023, a month into her daughter’s stay, when Sabrina revealed in a family therapy session over Zoom that another teenager at Elevations had grabbed her by the hair and slammed her into a chair, fracturing her tooth. Sabrina’s therapist at Elevations then abruptly ended the call, she and her mom said.

“I was sobbing and crying,” Sabrina, now 18, said, adding that she was told to return to class instead of continuing the discussion.

Sabrina Jonas' Elevations tuition was covered by the San Diego Unified School District.Courtesy Rachel Jonas

Sabrina later told her mom that she had also been sexually harassed and groped multiple times by a student at Elevations. She said she told her therapist, but he took no action. 

Jonas said she felt like she was “conned” by Elevations. As she looked for a new placement for Sabrina, Jonas said she complained about her daughter’s treatment to administrators at her school district, who in turn promised to investigate.

When contacted about Sabrina’s case, the San Diego Unified School District said it was not currently using Elevations. 

In October 2023, the California Department of Education found that Elevations had failed to refer “allegations of sexual abuse to the appropriate authorities” in a timely manner, according to an investigation report that closely mirrors Sabrina’s description of events. The education department ordered Elevations to show that it had provided mandated reporter training to all appropriate staff to stay on approved status with California.

In a statement, the department said it “monitors nonpublic schools on a regular basis” and “can impose corrective actions where appropriate.” It did not say whether Elevations had provided the training but noted that nine students from the state are currently attending the school. 

Sabrina Jonas' tooth was damaged in an altercation at Elevations.Courtesy Rachel Jonas

At least 28 school districts in seven states have paid millions in total to send students to Elevations, according to data from GovSpend, a database that tracks government spending. Of the 16 that answered questions from NBC News, only one said that it was aware of recent violations at the facility, and six said the information would make them reconsider whether they would use Elevations again.

Family Help & Wellness was founded in 2008. After getting a nearly $15 million infusion in 2014 from Trinity Hunt Partners, a private equity firm in Dallas, the company took over a treatment center known then as Island View, where former students alleged they were subjected to cruel punishments and aggressive restraints. Family Help & Wellness renamed the facility Elevations and defended the program at the time as in line with state regulations. The allegations of mistreatment continued.

In 2018, a former Elevations student sued the facility, alleging that she suffered a traumatic brain injury three years earlier that went untreated for about six days as a result of being slammed to the ground during a restraint. Elevations disputed in a court filing that the staff member had “violently grabbed” or “slammed” the student, and settled the suit for a confidential amount, according to the student’s lawyer. Elevations did not respond to requests for comment on the case or settlement.

Trinity Hunt Partners did not respond to a request for comment. 

Elevations charges more than $500 per day to house and treat a child at its facility, and is approved to hold 90 students at a time. Yet Elevations was consistently understaffed, three former staff members said. Erica Ulii-Suyat, who worked at Elevations from 2021 to 2023, said sometimes there weren’t enough employees to escort everyone to the cafeteria, so students would be forced to stay in their dorms all day.

“These kids were just wasting away in the hallways, looking at these brick walls day in and day out, especially on the weekends,” Ulii-Suyat said. “Then they would wonder why they would have freakouts — I wanted to freak out.”

Finn Pool was placed at Elevations by his father, whom he was living with at the time, in August 2021 as he struggled with suicidal ideation. 

Finn Pool became an activist pushing for more oversight of the troubled teen industry.Jared Soares for NBC News

In November 2021, Pool said he told his therapist at Elevations, Ryan Faust, that his father had sexually assaulted him earlier that year. Faust responded that he did not believe Pool and called his father to discuss the allegations, according to a lawsuit Pool filed against Elevations in January. Faust did not immediately report the allegations to authorities.

“I just felt like, maybe in my heart, there was a chance that he could have helped me,” said Pool, 18, who called it “crushing” that Faust didn’t believe him. “I mean, he could have at least just reported it.”

Jennifer Wilde, Elevations’ executive clinical director, said in a January statement that Faust delayed reporting the allegations “while he reviewed the matter” and that Pool’s father was investigated but ultimately not charged. 

Faust entered a guilty plea in August 2023 for failure to report child abuse, a misdemeanor, according to court records. A three-member state panel ruled on Aug. 5, 2024, that Elevations appeared more interested in keeping Pool “in their facility for monetary reasons rather than his best interests as a minor.” The lawsuit is still pending.

Faust and an attorney representing him did not respond to requests for comment.

Derek J. Williams, an attorney for Pool’s father, said that Pool’s allegations were part of a series of false accusations. Williams said the father placed Pool at Elevations to “try to keep his son alive.”

Pool was released to his mother’s care in 2022 and, since filing his lawsuit, has become outspoken on social media and visited Capitol Hill this year as an advocate for tougher oversight of the troubled teen industry. He was recently accepted to the University of California, Berkeley. 

Jonas said her daughter, Sabrina, is also doing better after leaving Elevations last September. Sabrina was placed at the San Diego Center for Children, where she was allowed to frequently call her family and where she felt safe. She finished her senior year with A’s, learned to play guitar and has made new friends.

But her mother still regrets Sabrina’s time at Elevations.

“I thank God every day that she’s out of that hellhole,” Jonas said. “We are traumatized from that place.”

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or chat live at 988lifeline.org. You can also visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for additional support.