May 21, 2024 • 43 mins
Robert Lichfield works with his brother Narvin to create a marketing funnel for WWASP programs. As the demand grows, they begin to open schools around the world. Bill is a young man who would be sent overseas to Paradise Cove in Western Samoa.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The following episode contains disturbing and graphic accounts of survivor experiences.
It may not be suitable for younger audiences. Please listen
with care.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
From iHeartRadio London Audio and executive producer Paris Hilton. This
is Trapped in Treatment. We're your hosts. I'm Rebecca Mellinger, Grown.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
And I'm Caroline Cole. Join us on our journey to
uncover the hidden truths of an industry shrouded and scandal.
We have one mission, to make sure that no child
has to experience the hell that is the troubled teen industry.
This season is all about WASP, the Worldwide Association of
Specialty Programs and Schools, one of the largest networks of
(00:44):
treatment facilities in the industry. These facilities have a main
common denominator. They all tie back to one man, Robert Litchfield.
The stories you will hear in the following episode are
the person allegations and accounts of individuals who have attended
treatment at one of these facilities. All experiences, views, and
(01:07):
opinions are their own. To protect their identities, some names
have been changed.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Last week on Trapped in Treatment, we heard the stories
of Kirby and Lindsay, two survivors who spent months and
in Kirby's case, years, locked away at Cross Creek Manor,
one of Lichfield's first schools in laverk In, Utah.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
We got there and they put me immediately in an
isolation room. They called them ISO, and it was awful.
It was carpeted Florida ceiling, and it smelled horribly like
urine and sweat and just you know, unwashed bodies.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Although the WASP Organization, as we would come to know it,
wasn't officially incorporated yet, Robert Litchfield's personal business was expanding.
He hired his brother Narvin to oversee the marketing, and
he quietly acquired the right to manage and operate a
small hospital in Saint George, Utah. It was called Brightway
at a Lesson hospital.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Brightway represented itself as a short term medical and psychological
care and evaluation center, a neutral third party whose job
it was to assess the incoming kids, offer acute treatment,
and determine if they needed further treatment. However, many questioned
whether Brightway had too close of a connection to all
(02:29):
the facilities it would recommend as the next course of treatment.
Because you see Brightway was quite often referring kids to
programs that fell under the WASP umbrella.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Once again, close connections was a recurring theme at Brightway.
Litchfield had hired several key staff pulling from his personal
contact list to fill the ranks, including a man named
ken K. Ken K began working at the hospital on
the night shift in a security position, but moved up
to director within a few years. Kay also had close
(03:04):
family connections there. JK. Ken K's son worked as a
security guard at Brightway, but would one day, not too
far in the future, run his own program. It wasn't
easy to see it at the time, but it appears
as if Litchfield had learned something from his upbringing in
the church. Keep your people close, help each other out.
(03:24):
The more you utilize your connections, the larger your network grows.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Brightway would soon become a key entry point for WASPS
programs after channeling numerous kids through teen Help's marketing funnel.
Kids like Bill. Bill grew up in Florida. He and
his parents had recently moved from the neighborhood where he
grew up to a different part of town.
Speaker 4 (03:48):
I grew up in a very Christian home. We were
pretty solidly middle class. My father did pretty well. He
worked really hard, and you know, we had a nice
living from that. I went to a small Christian private
school for elementary. We were very religious. My parents are
(04:08):
extremely involved in their church. It is certainly very intense
and especially at the time, demanded a lot of time
out of its members. So we were doing church stuff
three to four days a week at least, sometimes more.
And that was outside of school. Pretty much my entire
(04:29):
social circle, so all we hung out with was people
from the church. The only kids I knew were people
in the church. So in seventh grade and we moved
across town to be closer to my dad's parents, who
lived about an hour away, and so we cut the
trip about in half by moving across town.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
The new neighborhood had a much larger school district, and
he had trouble making friends. After a few months, he
started acting out, eventually refusing to go to school at all.
His parents weren't sure what to do, so they turned
to their community for advice.
Speaker 4 (05:08):
We had a friend in the church who had sent
their son to Paradise Cove and he was struggling at
the time with drugs and alcohol. And he was not
doing well, and so they had sent him to this place.
I'm not entirely sure how they found out, but he
(05:31):
had recently come back from the program, and you know,
at the time, it seemed like he was a completely
changed kid. He was going to school and keeping his
nose clean. It turns out, of course, that that wasn't true.
He was just hiding it better this time. But at
the time it looked like it really worked, and so
(05:52):
they went off that recommendation.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
According to Bill, the friends gave his parents a number.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
My parents called and they, you know, they have a
helpline that you call. I think it's often represented like
you're talking to someone who knows what they're doing, but
usually they're you know, in a call center somewhere. And
they contacted WASP, and WASP told them to have me
(06:20):
set to Right Way, which they represented as an independent
like third party that would evaluate me and see if
I needed to go to a program.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Teen Help was one of several marketing groups that Litchfield
had set up. These companies entire goal was to sell
you on a WASP affiliated program. Teen Help was a
brilliant name, easy to understand and generic enough to seem
like an independent resource center. Narvin, Robert's brother, had done
(06:52):
quite the job, not only of papering the Internet with ads,
but by setting up call centers that those ads directed
parents too. You just had to call a number and
you've got a real live person to help you with
your problem. Here's Narvin.
Speaker 5 (07:09):
It's obvious to anybody now, But it wasn't obvious to
anybody then. Was I was able to do a full
commercial right on the Internet that would immediately bring my
services and the value of my services hopefully to there.
Speaker 4 (07:22):
It was.
Speaker 5 (07:23):
It was great because a parent could call and basically
get a whole basic that every school in the world
now does. This is us, this is our mission, this
is whatever. And I came up with that and put
that in on the Internet on each of the schools,
and then of course trying to get them to call me,
because that would that that would be the creation of
(07:45):
that experience.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
With the help of Narvin Litchfield, Robert was able to
reach parents around the country, funneling them into programs he
was opening around the world. He worked with his brother
to create a system that started with an Internet add
and ended with placement in a program, and it was
effective terribly, so they quickly discovered a lucrative niche market.
(08:11):
Here's Chelsea Filer, again, a survivor whose full story you'll
hear next week. She discussed her thoughts on the way
technological advances allowed WASP to capitalize on their market.
Speaker 6 (08:22):
This was kind of in the very beginning stages of
the internet, right they. I mean, most parents would tell
you that they went ahead and googled help my team
and then what popped up. But these advertisements for WASP,
they will recommend programs by first speaking to the parent
(08:45):
and sometimes answering a questionnaire, and pretty much at the
end of that questionnaire, no matter what if the kid
was just being a normal kid or had significant mental
health issues, yes, your kid needs to go to a program.
And here let me make some recommendations.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
While it can't be confirmed that every child of a
parent who called teen Help was referred to a program,
it does seem like a very high percentage of them were.
It's common sense in a capitalist society, I imagine Litchfield
would have wanted kids to stay within the network of
his companies. Keep your company close, but also keep the
(09:27):
money close. In fact, kin K, the man we mentioned earlier,
who worked for both Brightway and teen Help at different
times between nineteen ninety three and nineteen ninety nine, testified
in a two thousand and four lawsuit between WASP and
a company called Pure Inc. That teen Help was what
(09:48):
he preferred to refer to as intake offices. K further
testified at that trial that the admission coordinators were people
who would take calls from concerned parents or relatives trying
to find out what was available or if their child
was suitable for any of the programs. He went on
to confirm that the admission coordinators would then pass that
(10:11):
info on to one or several of the affiliated programs.
In the years since, Bill has reflected on what may
have influenced his parents to send him away.
Speaker 4 (10:23):
One thing that I have seen is that a lot
of these programs, and I think in a lot of waste.
Loss was one of the pioneers with this, had extremely slick,
very sophisticated for its time marketing. These companies spend a
lot of money on marketing. They have extremely talented marketing professionals,
(10:46):
and they are cutting edge a lot of times with
new techniques and with the hard sell. They really put
a lot of pressure on parents, and you know, I've
seen this myself in letters, in sales brochures, and overheard calls.
(11:06):
They will tell parents that their kids are going to die.
You're going to find your kids in a gutter. If
you don't do something now, your child will die. They
encourage them, if they can't afford it, to take out
a second mortgage on their house, or to sell their jewelry,
or do whatever it takes.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Sometimes you may hear survivors refer to teen Help and
WASP as one and the same, because teen Help was
also owned by Lichfield and used primarily to market WASP
affiliated programs. But we feel it's important to clarify that
they are two separate legal entities, but they did work together,
and we're both owned and or controlled by Lichfield. It
(11:46):
seems to us that in a moment of panic, a
parent seeking help makes a life changing call to a helpline,
and rather than being directed to a family counselor or
family therapist, they are bombarded by scare tactics and advised
to do whatever it takes to get their kid help.
Help that often takes the form of a referral.
Speaker 4 (12:08):
They prey on, you know, a parent's really natural and
beautiful love for their children and anxiety that their children
are safe, and they just they just twist that and
use it against parents in a really sick way, in
a really, really unfortunately effective way.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
Effective.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
That was one way to describe Teen Help.
Speaker 4 (12:34):
You know, they're just salesmen.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
Bill might be onto something. In fact, in a nineteen
ninety nine interview with the Rocky Mountain News, after working
as an admissions counselor at teen Help for over a year,
kin K briefly left the company and was quoted telling
the press that the people who worked for the organization
were and I quote, a bunch of untrained people and
(12:59):
don't have credentials of any kind. It must be said
that the employees of these call centers were possibly just
hired to do a job and didn't necessarily know what
was happening in the facilities themselves. However, we were not
able to interview any call center employees for this podcast
and cannot fully speak to their understanding or intentions. Ironically,
(13:20):
ken Ka would rejoin WASP as president not long after
his remarks to the newspaper, Bill continues, and.
Speaker 4 (13:28):
They got the hard sell, and they bought a hook
line and sinker. And I think at that point they
were so panicked and just so terrified that I doubt
they were thinking super clearly. A lot of the decisions
they made during this process are extremely uncharacteristic of them.
My parents research carefully before they spend a few hundred
(13:53):
dollars on something much less about one hundred thousand dollars,
which is what this cost them.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
According to Bill, his parents would make the decision to
send him away within days.
Speaker 4 (14:06):
And you know, the only explanation I have for that
is that they were just, you know, so terrified that
this was their only option and that this was some
kind of a life saving intervention that they felt like
that's what they had to do.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Bright Way Adolescent Hospital was a hospital that was owned
by the Utah Alcoholism Foundation. When Litchfield acquired the rights
to its operations, it still bore the feeling of a
sterile and cold facility. According to Bill, his first night
at Brightway was uncomfortable.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
It was it was near freezing when we got out
of the car in Utah, and I was just that
just added to the sense of confusion and shock I
was feeling. When we got up to the door, it
had one of those big, like magnetically locked doors like
you sometimes see like in prison movies and stuff like that.
(15:04):
They had to buzz us in and you hear the
air and then the door kind of swings open, and
once it closed, it was really clear that I was
not going to get out of that place. They made me.
They took all my clothes and gave me a hospital gown,
even at the time I'm six foot four. At the time,
(15:26):
I was about six feet tall or six foot one,
and this place did not have adult sized hospital gowns,
I guess because it was for kids, at least, you know, teenagers,
So the biggest gown they could get me barely covered anything.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Bill admits that he doesn't remember everything clearly because he
believes he was heavily medicated during his time there. He
remembers a two short hospital gown in ice cold shower
and being sent to bed, but he says it wasn't
a real bed. To his recollection, they didn't actually have
any beds open that night.
Speaker 4 (16:03):
So they put me into the what they called the
seclusion room, which is where they put kids who were
not who were acting up, who are not behaving. It
was a tiny little room it was so small. There
was a hospital bed in it that had to be
diagonal to like get it all the way in there.
(16:23):
That belt that bed had like seat belt style restraints
on it, which was very ominous to me. There was
a camera in the corner watching you twenty four seven,
watching me like all night, and that they locked the door,
and that was where I spent the rest of the night.
And you know, I was just I was extremely scared.
(16:44):
I was confused. I had never been in any kind
of situation close to this before, and I just had
no real idea of what was going on because no
one would really tell me.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
He thought about his parents that night. Did they know
it was going to be like this? Did they have
any idea that when they sent him to a facility
they thought would be helping him, that he would be
left alone in an isolation room with a bed that
had restraints on it. According to Bill, he would spend
somewhere close to two weeks at Brightway. The facility was
(17:17):
set up like a hospital, wide hallways, wide doors, the
kind you might need to wheel stretchers through, he said.
Executives of Brightway said that the hospital employed professional clinical
staff and social workers. Nevertheless, Bill recalls that he didn't
see many actual doctors around and alleges he only encountered one.
Speaker 4 (17:39):
I did see a psychiatrist at Brightway. My understanding is
that he later fell into some disrepute and possibly even
lost his medical license, but he was a psychiatrist. They
called me into like an exam room. He was there,
We talked for maybe fifteen minutes, and then he, while
(18:02):
I was sitting there, pulled out a little dictaphone tape
recorder thing and started recording his notes about me and
the third person while I sat there and watched him,
which I thought was a little insulting and aggravating. And
I also didn't think what he was saying was accurate.
So I objected to that, and we kind of we
(18:23):
got into it. I was pretty upset by the end
of it, and they came and dragged me off back
into the seclusion room and put me in there, and
they told me if I, you know, did anything else
and I didn't calm down, that they were going to
inject me with thorisine. And then they described really graphically
what would happen if they did that. So and I mean,
(18:47):
I watched it happen to other kids, they would inject
them with thorsine and then they would strap them down
to the bed for eight, ten, twelve hours. So I
didn't want that to happen, so I sat in the
seclusion room and tried to get myself calmed down. But
that was the only time I recall speaking to a
doctor at all, in of any kind or any other
kind of professional above like a tech or a nurse
(19:10):
at Brightway.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
No one affiliated with WASP or Brightway Hospital have confirmed
Bill's allegations or been charged with or found guilty of
any crime therefrom and before long Bill got his transfer
orders he would be sent across the ocean to a
WASP affiliated program.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
Robert Litchfield appeared to have set up a really effective pipeline,
But wouldn't this pipeline be at least some sort of
conflict of interest?
Speaker 2 (19:37):
After a bit of digging, we discovered that the state
thought so too. In February nineteen ninety seven, state officials
held a meeting with Brightway, the Utah Alcoholism Foundation, and
Teen Help. The main issue of business was what some
called a too close relationship between Brightway and the treatment
centers that it was referring kids to Around that time,
(20:00):
state investigators also raised concerns about Brightway admitting students without
obtaining the requisite number of consent signatures from parents and
not doing a better job of following up with patients.
A two thousand and three article in The Desert News,
which is owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter day Saints, reported that a licensing director for the
(20:20):
Utah Department of Health set approximately ninety four percent of
the teens to enter Brightway were sent to facilities in
either Jamaica or Samoa, like Paradise Cove. Teens like Bill.
Speaker 4 (20:35):
I was not actually told where I was going, I
think until the night before I went. Several of us
were called into the therapy room until we were heading
out to the real program the next day, and that
we were going to Samoa. I had no idea where
(20:56):
Samoa was. I had no idea how far away it
was anything. And then we were on a plane to
from Las Vegas to Los Angeles, from Los Angeles to Honolulu,
from Honolulu to a r to Pongo Pogo, American Samoa,
and then from there to a po Western Samoa.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Bill was being sent overseas. He doesn't remember speaking to
his parents before being transferred, but in all likeliness they knew.
Many of the WASP affiliated programs, like other TTI programs,
restricted the child's access to communicate with their parents. It
was a privilege that must be earned. They claimed it
(21:38):
was better for the kids and that it helped them
acclimate to the structure of the program. It seems to
us that no one stopped to wonder if it might
be a little traumatizing as well. These teens were powerless,
and it resulted in kids like Bill ending up in
foreign lands far from home, at the mercy of people
they had never met.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
Bill ended up in western Samoa, a region that was
the exact opposite of the part of Utah he had
just been in.
Speaker 4 (22:07):
Samoa is a tropical island. I think if people have
an idea of what Hawaii looks like, it's pretty similar.
It is. If you flew from how Hawaii towards New Zealand,
about halfway there, you'd be over Samoa. It's just a
little south of the equator, so it's a rocky island,
(22:27):
kind of built up on an old volcano, with like
coral coral lagoons around it. For most of it, lots
of tropical vegetation. Things just grow wild there. The island
is very small. There's there's we were on the smaller
of the two islands. There is a two lane road
(22:49):
that goes all the way around the like the circumference
of the island, and then one road that cuts through
the middle through the mountains, and that's about it. There's
a small apia where the airport is. That's the capital.
On the middle of the island is pretty tall mountains,
several thousand feet. They rise up pretty sheerly from the ocean,
(23:11):
and the ocean itself where it meets the land, there's
usually a large cliff fifty to one hundred feet down
the cliff to the ocean where there's just a little
shelf of beach. And that's where the facility was. Was
down on one of those little shelves surrounded by cliffs.
It was, as promised, a cove.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
Brian Vaifanua helped establish Paradise Cove, which opened in nineteen
ninety four. He did not respond to our request for comment.
Speaker 4 (23:40):
I knew Brian Viifanua very well. He was the owner
of the programs. He was, you know, he was of
Samoan descent. But I am you know, I don't think
that he was like a Samoan citizen, and I think
that he was an American citizen. That's my understanding. He
certainly spoke English a lot, that was, you know, wealthy.
(24:02):
I think that he came from Utah.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Brian had started his career back at Cross Creek Manor
Robert Litchfield's program in Lavergin, but after cutting his teeth
to Litchfield's treatment model, he headed to Samoa. Brian spoke
with Forty eight Hours in nineteen ninety eight and described
the program at Paradise Cove based on the way he
talks about it metaphorically, Throwing these boys in the deep
(24:26):
end was the whole point.
Speaker 4 (24:29):
This is nothing close to what the boys are accustomed to.
Does it put a student out of his comfort zone? Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
In the same interview, Brian.
Speaker 4 (24:40):
Added, there's no idle time here. Kids are on the go,
kids are encouraged to parade some solid habits.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
This clip not only suggests Brian's mentality about how he
perceived kids working his program, but it further highlights that
even as far back as nineteen ninety eight, reputable news
sources were starting to ask questions around what these children
were experiencing his outlook and answers are so vague. It
feels like his phrasing of solid habits and nothing close
(25:13):
to what the boys are accustomed to are just blanket
statements that hide the horrors of what allegedly happened at
Paradise Cove. Unlike Brian's ambiguous answers, Bill's memories about Brian
elicit much more specific detail.
Speaker 4 (25:29):
He wasn't there a lot for the most part. There
was one period of time where things got really bad
and scary at the facility, and he started showing up more.
You know, the kids were planning a riot and things
got pretty bad there, and he would come down to
talk to us, like surrounded by other staff members, like security,
(25:52):
because he knew that people would try to get their
hands on him. He struck me as extremely smug, probably
without justification, which is the worst kind of smug in
my opinion. And he was very It just seemed very insincere.
He acted like he cared. I think he was in
(26:13):
it for the money, in my own opinion, And you know,
I don't I don't know why he thought he had
any business running a program. As far as I know,
he didn't have any kind of training or education to
do that. And you know, a lot of the systems
that he set up, you know, either were unintentionally really
(26:33):
bad and abusive, or a lot of them were also
intentionally really bad and abusive.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Bill quickly realized it wasn't paradise.
Speaker 4 (26:44):
I guess they decided to play a joke on me,
and they strongly implied that I had to sleep in
the bunk or the bed of one of the guys
and that he was going to rape me that night.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
For Bill, the threat of rape was real, and I.
Speaker 4 (26:59):
Tried to punch him in the face. That got in
trouble right away, because you know, you're not allowed to
do that.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
So Bill says he was immediately tackled and put into
a restraint. He feels he couldn't do anything but submit.
Speaker 4 (27:15):
That was my That was kind of my first hour
there in the facility, and I was my head was spinning.
I was twelve time zones away from my house. I
hadn't talked to my parents, and I had just been
through all these airplane flights and all these really disoriented experiences,
and here I am with the family, father sitting on
(27:35):
top of me, you know, threatening me. With more consequences,
and because because you know, I had just defended myself
against what I thought was a legitimate, great threat.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
Time zones away from family, disoriented and a bit scared,
isolation in the purest form, And as he tells it,
it wouldn't get any better.
Speaker 4 (27:58):
I mean, Paradise Cove was. It was really bad all
the time. It was some kind of weird combination of
like Lord of the Flies and state prison.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
What a distorted name. Paradise Cove. Bill told us even
more about his time there.
Speaker 4 (28:17):
Yeah, I don't know, there was. There was a lot
of bad times in the program. It's hard to just
pick one or two. Just you know, some really horrific beatings.
I don't always like to talk about those kinds of
things because those aren't really my stories to tell. Those
are the kids that happened to. But like I said,
(28:37):
I've seen staff break arms, break jaws. I saw them
eat one kid that they had already thrown into the
isolation stalls with the bamboo stick. They weren't swinging it
like a bat. They were stabbing it like a spear
at him, and I just thought, you know, it was
it was a good like two inches around and I
(28:58):
just thought, boy, that's that can't possibly feel good to
have that stab at you over and over again. But
you know, he was in a confined space. There was
no way he was able to dodge it that and
so I'm sure I'm pretty sure they cracked his ribs
because they took him to the hospital the next day
and he had broken ribs.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
According to Bill, he also didn't escape unscathed.
Speaker 4 (29:25):
The electricity system in Samoa uses higher voltage to a
nun and twenty volt current, but they don't have appliances
that are specifically made for their electrical system, so a
lot of times they use American appliances there. And so
they have these standalone transformer boxes that plug into the
(29:47):
wall on one end and then you plug the appliance
and on the other end, and they're maybe six inches
like a cube six inches and just like a solid
metal casne. And that was how they would our the
appliances there. One thing they would do was make us
listen to like Tony Robbin's motivational tapes and that kind
(30:08):
of thing. And of course, you know, it was the nineties,
so they were like tapes, and they had like a
tape deck, like a little boom box that they would
put and play the tape while we ate. Anytime we ate,
we had to be listening to like Tony Robbins motivational dates.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
One day, Bill's group was eating lunch and trying to
listen to the influential self help coach Tony Robbins. However,
the stereo was malfunctioning. Bill recalled the staff was attempting
to fix the stereo and there appeared to be a
shore in the system.
Speaker 4 (30:41):
So they were all eating and I went to go
tell the family father that I was going to go
take a shower. And I leaned in the doorway to
tell him that, and I had put my I was
standing on this metal grading and I put my hand
on the outside of the chicken wire and boom, I
got like that full two one, two forty or whatever
it was through me. It was enough that it paralyzed me.
(31:05):
I couldn't move, I couldn't pull my hand back off
of it. I was just like stiff as a board,
and I was trying. After a couple seconds, I realized
what was happening to me. And I was trying to
like say, like help, I'm being electrocuted. But I couldn't
make any words come out of my mouth. It was
like this just really loud, buzzing humming in my ears,
(31:29):
and I thought I'm gonna die.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
Bill's entire body became rigid, and he told us that
onlookers would later describe that Bill was motionless and only
let out a high pitched groan. Eventually, staff realized what
was happening.
Speaker 4 (31:45):
So the staff member hit the switch that turned off
the power. And I don't know, I mean, I don't
know if it like blew me back. I was unconscious
at that point, but somehow I flew back and hit
like a rock retaining wall that was about twenty feet away.
I hit it hard enough or else, I guess. After that,
(32:07):
I fell down, and I was like having seizures somewhere
in all that process, either for me spasmy because of
the electricity me hitting the rock wall, or then like
the really hard ground, or like having seizures somewhere and
all that, one of my vertebrae broke completely in half
and then dislocated and slipped up behind the vertebrae above it.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
Bill was in excruciating pain. He was taken to the
hospital and it was determined that he would need surgery
to repair the injury.
Speaker 4 (32:37):
But at the time, the hospital I was in was like,
at least half of it was like kind of open air.
There was like flies and stuff, and I was like,
spinal surgery here is going to be a no from me. So,
you know, I just lived with it after that, and
you know, that has been a decision that's continued to
affect me to this day.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
The emotional pain was real too. The next day, Bill
would hear from his dad.
Speaker 4 (33:02):
I got a facts from my dad, and it was
just a letter. I guess they had called my parents
to tell them what it happened, but they had explained
it in such a way that my dad thought that
it was appropriate to draw a little doodle on the
facts of like a skeleton, you know, like you know
in the cartoons when someone gets electrocuted and you can
see their skeleton through their skin like that, with little
(33:24):
lightning bolts coming off it. And I don't I just
remember the first line it said, dear son, heard you
had a shocking experience yesterday, ha ha ha. And so
I don't know what they told him about what happened,
but clearly they misrepresented the seriousness of the situation.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
According to Bill Paradise, Cove's impact was inescapable and its
effects permanent.
Speaker 4 (33:57):
There are things that I still have to deal with
today because of what I went through in the program.
I talked about breaking my back. I now have spinal stenosis.
My bone never stopped growing once it healed because I
didn't get proper medical treatment, and it's slowly cutting off
my spine. It's my spinal column, and I'm starting to
(34:22):
lose sensation in the lower half of my body from that.
Sometimes my back goes out and I can't get out
of bed. I have trouble washing dishes because where the
break is such that I have to bend right at
that spot to bend over a sink and wash dishes,
and so I really have trouble doing some of those
(34:42):
day to day tasks. And because of that, you know,
those are things that I still live with because of
the program. Those are things emotionally, I still find myself
shutting down sometimes when I shouldn't be, ways that are
not feared in my family, and I have to fight
(35:02):
through that. You know, the consequences of my treatment in
the program will probably stay with me for the rest
of my life and I've made some good out of it,
you know, but people shouldn't. Kids shouldn't have to make
(35:24):
good out of traumatic experiences.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Open for six years and hounded with allegations of abuse,
Paradise Cove eventually shut down from what we can tell,
at some point in the year two thousand. A lawsuit
filed against them in nineteen ninety eight called the facility
a cult camp and alleged that the youth were paraded, tormented, ridiculed, belittled, scolded, deprived,
(35:56):
and demeaned. They called the treatment abusive, dangers and degrading.
Robert Litchfield responded to the allegations when speaking to the
Daily Spectrum in Saint George, Utah, in November nineteen ninety eight,
blaming it on the manipulative youth. He said, and I quote,
when you take on problem kids, there are going to
(36:17):
be some who bring some problems. That's why they're there.
That nineteen ninety eight lawsuit was ultimately dismissed without WASP
Paradise Cove teen help or any affiliated entity or representative
being found liable, and Brian Vaifanua, the co founder of
Paradise Cove, wouldn't face any liability either. Instead, he would
(36:41):
head back to Cross Creek and just a few years
later open another program, Midwest Academy in Keyokok, Iowa.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
Paradise Cove wasn't the only international facility under the WASP
umbrella that closed amid allegations of abuse. Marava a cade
Me in the Czech Republic was opened for less than
a year, and Sunrise Beach in Cancun, Mexico suffered a
similar fate. Both of these facilities run by a couple
with ties to Saint George.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
Investigations expanded back in Utah, iiO. In August nineteen ninety seven,
the Utah Department of Health placed Brightway on a conditional
license and required that they trained staff report any signs
of child abuse, create appropriate treatment plans, and upgrade programming
to ensure that both custodial parents had signed off on
(37:34):
their child being admitted. A year later, officials still weren't satisfied,
demanding that Brightway open its admission records for review. It
was reported in March of nineteen ninety eight that the
Department of Health found that Brightway staff failed to report
child abuse and admitted students before obtaining permissions from both
(37:55):
custodial parents. In an interview with Dateline NBC from the nineties,
Litchfield tried distancing himself from Brightway.
Speaker 4 (38:04):
My again, let me clarify, Brightway is probably the program
I had the least mount involvement in.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
In another moment from his interview, Lichfield acknowledged wasp's relationship
with Brightway, but once again played it off like he
did not have much of a hand in it.
Speaker 4 (38:23):
We don't own it, but we do a management contract
with it.
Speaker 2 (38:27):
This is a theme we see across many WASP affiliated programs.
Lichfield's involvement seems to be just out of reach of liability.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
It is also telling that even twenty years ago, new
sources were investigating Robert Litchfield in the interconnectivity between him
Brightway in these WASP programs, and unlike us, they were
able to get some answers straight from Litchfield himself, as
we just heard. Soon thereafter, Brightway announced it would be closing,
(39:00):
but according to Ken Kay, who was director at the time,
it wasn't because of the pressure from state officials. He
claimed they had been planning to close for months prior
before its final investigation and closure. Brightway would send hundreds
of kids from their initial assessment to international facilities. At
(39:22):
least one former staff member of WASP alleged that she
sold WASP programs and was trained and instructed to make
sure that she only wrote certain types of qualifications to
ensure that the doctors would approve the children in order
to get all of whatever insurance benefits the children had.
(39:42):
The staff member's allegations were made and an affi David
signed under oath that was uncovered when it was attached
as an exhibit to a complaint in a lawsuit filed
against WASP years later. She went on to allege that
this was done with the specific intent to defraud the
insurance company and not because the children actually had the
qualifying mental health symptoms. However, despite the claims, no WASP
(40:08):
affiliated facility, Brightway, nor any person associated with WASP has
been found guilty of insurance fraud or any other wrongdoing
in connection with the programs beyond those conclusions made by
Utah state officials before Brightway's voluntary closure based on our research.
Despite these closures, Litchfield remained untouched and had a plan
(40:33):
one that would allow programs to continue.
Speaker 2 (40:43):
Robert wasn't listed as the owner of these overseas facilities,
and from our research, the ownership and directies to WASP
were opaque. However, there was substantial news reporting at the
time claiming that many of these facilities were at least
indirectly affiliated with Lichfield. We believe Lichfield knew that separating
(41:04):
himself from the facilities would ensure protection of his multi
million dollar business. Instead of direct ownership of the programs,
he officially incorporated WASP as a legal enterprise in nineteen
ninety eight, creating a layer of corporate distance between himself
and his schools. Ken Kay, the director of Brightway mentioned
(41:27):
earlier in this episode, who had moved up the ranks
of Lichfield's earlier endeavors, would ultimately become president of this
new entity, WASP, and through this new corporation, more schools
would begin opening. Paradise Cove wouldn't be the last program
or the worst. Next week on trapped in treatment and
(41:49):
I was.
Speaker 4 (41:49):
Not put into the general population. I was enstially put
into a dog cage.
Speaker 5 (41:54):
That was my punishment.
Speaker 4 (41:55):
So my first week was in the.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
Dog cage the first week straight.
Speaker 7 (42:00):
As soon as I got there.
Speaker 2 (42:14):
All of our efforts to reach Robert Litchfield, Brian Vaifanua,
ken Ka, and JK were unsuccessful and they did not
respond to our requests for comment. From our research, none
of them have ever been charged with or found guilty
of any crime stemming from allegations of abuse or in
connection with WASP or any of the schools affiliated.
Speaker 7 (42:33):
Therewith Hey everyone, it's Paris. Thanks for listening to episode four.
Next week is one of the most difficult episodes yet.
To get involved and receive exclusive content about Trapped in
Treatment and all things Paris Hilton, sign up with the
link in the episode description and make sure you tune
into new episodes every week on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, or
(42:56):
wherever you get your podcasts. See you next week.
The following episode contains disturbing and graphic accounts of survivor experiences.
It may not be suitable for younger audiences. Please listen
with care.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
From iHeartRadio London Audio and executive producer Paris Hilton. This
is Trapped in Treatment. We're your hosts. I'm Rebecca Mellinger, Grown.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
And I'm Caroline Cole. Join us on our journey to
uncover the hidden truths of an industry shrouded and scandal.
We have one mission, to make sure that no child
has to experience the hell that is the troubled teen industry.
This season is all about WASP, the Worldwide Association of
Specialty Programs and Schools, one of the largest networks of
(00:44):
treatment facilities in the industry. These facilities have a main
common denominator. They all tie back to one man, Robert Litchfield.
The stories you will hear in the following episode are
the person allegations and accounts of individuals who have attended
treatment at one of these facilities. All experiences, views, and
(01:07):
opinions are their own. To protect their identities, some names
have been changed.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Last week on Trapped in Treatment, we heard the stories
of Kirby and Lindsay, two survivors who spent months and
in Kirby's case, years, locked away at Cross Creek Manor,
one of Lichfield's first schools in laverk In, Utah.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
We got there and they put me immediately in an
isolation room. They called them ISO, and it was awful.
It was carpeted Florida ceiling, and it smelled horribly like
urine and sweat and just you know, unwashed bodies.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Although the WASP Organization, as we would come to know it,
wasn't officially incorporated yet, Robert Litchfield's personal business was expanding.
He hired his brother Narvin to oversee the marketing, and
he quietly acquired the right to manage and operate a
small hospital in Saint George, Utah. It was called Brightway
at a Lesson hospital.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Brightway represented itself as a short term medical and psychological
care and evaluation center, a neutral third party whose job
it was to assess the incoming kids, offer acute treatment,
and determine if they needed further treatment. However, many questioned
whether Brightway had too close of a connection to all
(02:29):
the facilities it would recommend as the next course of treatment.
Because you see Brightway was quite often referring kids to
programs that fell under the WASP umbrella.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Once again, close connections was a recurring theme at Brightway.
Litchfield had hired several key staff pulling from his personal
contact list to fill the ranks, including a man named
ken K. Ken K began working at the hospital on
the night shift in a security position, but moved up
to director within a few years. Kay also had close
(03:04):
family connections there. JK. Ken K's son worked as a
security guard at Brightway, but would one day, not too
far in the future, run his own program. It wasn't
easy to see it at the time, but it appears
as if Litchfield had learned something from his upbringing in
the church. Keep your people close, help each other out.
(03:24):
The more you utilize your connections, the larger your network grows.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Brightway would soon become a key entry point for WASPS
programs after channeling numerous kids through teen Help's marketing funnel.
Kids like Bill. Bill grew up in Florida. He and
his parents had recently moved from the neighborhood where he
grew up to a different part of town.
Speaker 4 (03:48):
I grew up in a very Christian home. We were
pretty solidly middle class. My father did pretty well. He
worked really hard, and you know, we had a nice
living from that. I went to a small Christian private
school for elementary. We were very religious. My parents are
(04:08):
extremely involved in their church. It is certainly very intense
and especially at the time, demanded a lot of time
out of its members. So we were doing church stuff
three to four days a week at least, sometimes more.
And that was outside of school. Pretty much my entire
(04:29):
social circle, so all we hung out with was people
from the church. The only kids I knew were people
in the church. So in seventh grade and we moved
across town to be closer to my dad's parents, who
lived about an hour away, and so we cut the
trip about in half by moving across town.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
The new neighborhood had a much larger school district, and
he had trouble making friends. After a few months, he
started acting out, eventually refusing to go to school at all.
His parents weren't sure what to do, so they turned
to their community for advice.
Speaker 4 (05:08):
We had a friend in the church who had sent
their son to Paradise Cove and he was struggling at
the time with drugs and alcohol. And he was not
doing well, and so they had sent him to this place.
I'm not entirely sure how they found out, but he
(05:31):
had recently come back from the program, and you know,
at the time, it seemed like he was a completely
changed kid. He was going to school and keeping his
nose clean. It turns out, of course, that that wasn't true.
He was just hiding it better this time. But at
the time it looked like it really worked, and so
(05:52):
they went off that recommendation.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
According to Bill, the friends gave his parents a number.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
My parents called and they, you know, they have a
helpline that you call. I think it's often represented like
you're talking to someone who knows what they're doing, but
usually they're you know, in a call center somewhere. And
they contacted WASP, and WASP told them to have me
(06:20):
set to Right Way, which they represented as an independent
like third party that would evaluate me and see if
I needed to go to a program.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Teen Help was one of several marketing groups that Litchfield
had set up. These companies entire goal was to sell
you on a WASP affiliated program. Teen Help was a
brilliant name, easy to understand and generic enough to seem
like an independent resource center. Narvin, Robert's brother, had done
(06:52):
quite the job, not only of papering the Internet with ads,
but by setting up call centers that those ads directed
parents too. You just had to call a number and
you've got a real live person to help you with
your problem. Here's Narvin.
Speaker 5 (07:09):
It's obvious to anybody now, But it wasn't obvious to
anybody then. Was I was able to do a full
commercial right on the Internet that would immediately bring my
services and the value of my services hopefully to there.
Speaker 4 (07:22):
It was.
Speaker 5 (07:23):
It was great because a parent could call and basically
get a whole basic that every school in the world
now does. This is us, this is our mission, this
is whatever. And I came up with that and put
that in on the Internet on each of the schools,
and then of course trying to get them to call me,
because that would that that would be the creation of
(07:45):
that experience.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
With the help of Narvin Litchfield, Robert was able to
reach parents around the country, funneling them into programs he
was opening around the world. He worked with his brother
to create a system that started with an Internet add
and ended with placement in a program, and it was
effective terribly, so they quickly discovered a lucrative niche market.
(08:11):
Here's Chelsea Filer, again, a survivor whose full story you'll
hear next week. She discussed her thoughts on the way
technological advances allowed WASP to capitalize on their market.
Speaker 6 (08:22):
This was kind of in the very beginning stages of
the internet, right they. I mean, most parents would tell
you that they went ahead and googled help my team
and then what popped up. But these advertisements for WASP,
they will recommend programs by first speaking to the parent
(08:45):
and sometimes answering a questionnaire, and pretty much at the
end of that questionnaire, no matter what if the kid
was just being a normal kid or had significant mental
health issues, yes, your kid needs to go to a program.
And here let me make some recommendations.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
While it can't be confirmed that every child of a
parent who called teen Help was referred to a program,
it does seem like a very high percentage of them were.
It's common sense in a capitalist society, I imagine Litchfield
would have wanted kids to stay within the network of
his companies. Keep your company close, but also keep the
(09:27):
money close. In fact, kin K, the man we mentioned earlier,
who worked for both Brightway and teen Help at different
times between nineteen ninety three and nineteen ninety nine, testified
in a two thousand and four lawsuit between WASP and
a company called Pure Inc. That teen Help was what
(09:48):
he preferred to refer to as intake offices. K further
testified at that trial that the admission coordinators were people
who would take calls from concerned parents or relatives trying
to find out what was available or if their child
was suitable for any of the programs. He went on
to confirm that the admission coordinators would then pass that
(10:11):
info on to one or several of the affiliated programs.
In the years since, Bill has reflected on what may
have influenced his parents to send him away.
Speaker 4 (10:23):
One thing that I have seen is that a lot
of these programs, and I think in a lot of waste.
Loss was one of the pioneers with this, had extremely slick,
very sophisticated for its time marketing. These companies spend a
lot of money on marketing. They have extremely talented marketing professionals,
(10:46):
and they are cutting edge a lot of times with
new techniques and with the hard sell. They really put
a lot of pressure on parents, and you know, I've
seen this myself in letters, in sales brochures, and overheard calls.
(11:06):
They will tell parents that their kids are going to die.
You're going to find your kids in a gutter. If
you don't do something now, your child will die. They
encourage them, if they can't afford it, to take out
a second mortgage on their house, or to sell their jewelry,
or do whatever it takes.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Sometimes you may hear survivors refer to teen Help and
WASP as one and the same, because teen Help was
also owned by Lichfield and used primarily to market WASP
affiliated programs. But we feel it's important to clarify that
they are two separate legal entities, but they did work together,
and we're both owned and or controlled by Lichfield. It
(11:46):
seems to us that in a moment of panic, a
parent seeking help makes a life changing call to a helpline,
and rather than being directed to a family counselor or
family therapist, they are bombarded by scare tactics and advised
to do whatever it takes to get their kid help.
Help that often takes the form of a referral.
Speaker 4 (12:08):
They prey on, you know, a parent's really natural and
beautiful love for their children and anxiety that their children
are safe, and they just they just twist that and
use it against parents in a really sick way, in
a really, really unfortunately effective way.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
Effective.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
That was one way to describe Teen Help.
Speaker 4 (12:34):
You know, they're just salesmen.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
Bill might be onto something. In fact, in a nineteen
ninety nine interview with the Rocky Mountain News, after working
as an admissions counselor at teen Help for over a year,
kin K briefly left the company and was quoted telling
the press that the people who worked for the organization
were and I quote, a bunch of untrained people and
(12:59):
don't have credentials of any kind. It must be said
that the employees of these call centers were possibly just
hired to do a job and didn't necessarily know what
was happening in the facilities themselves. However, we were not
able to interview any call center employees for this podcast
and cannot fully speak to their understanding or intentions. Ironically,
(13:20):
ken Ka would rejoin WASP as president not long after
his remarks to the newspaper, Bill continues, and.
Speaker 4 (13:28):
They got the hard sell, and they bought a hook
line and sinker. And I think at that point they
were so panicked and just so terrified that I doubt
they were thinking super clearly. A lot of the decisions
they made during this process are extremely uncharacteristic of them.
My parents research carefully before they spend a few hundred
(13:53):
dollars on something much less about one hundred thousand dollars,
which is what this cost them.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
According to Bill, his parents would make the decision to
send him away within days.
Speaker 4 (14:06):
And you know, the only explanation I have for that
is that they were just, you know, so terrified that
this was their only option and that this was some
kind of a life saving intervention that they felt like
that's what they had to do.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Bright Way Adolescent Hospital was a hospital that was owned
by the Utah Alcoholism Foundation. When Litchfield acquired the rights
to its operations, it still bore the feeling of a
sterile and cold facility. According to Bill, his first night
at Brightway was uncomfortable.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
It was it was near freezing when we got out
of the car in Utah, and I was just that
just added to the sense of confusion and shock I
was feeling. When we got up to the door, it
had one of those big, like magnetically locked doors like
you sometimes see like in prison movies and stuff like that.
(15:04):
They had to buzz us in and you hear the
air and then the door kind of swings open, and
once it closed, it was really clear that I was
not going to get out of that place. They made me.
They took all my clothes and gave me a hospital gown,
even at the time I'm six foot four. At the time,
(15:26):
I was about six feet tall or six foot one,
and this place did not have adult sized hospital gowns,
I guess because it was for kids, at least, you know, teenagers,
So the biggest gown they could get me barely covered anything.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Bill admits that he doesn't remember everything clearly because he
believes he was heavily medicated during his time there. He
remembers a two short hospital gown in ice cold shower
and being sent to bed, but he says it wasn't
a real bed. To his recollection, they didn't actually have
any beds open that night.
Speaker 4 (16:03):
So they put me into the what they called the
seclusion room, which is where they put kids who were
not who were acting up, who are not behaving. It
was a tiny little room it was so small. There
was a hospital bed in it that had to be
diagonal to like get it all the way in there.
(16:23):
That belt that bed had like seat belt style restraints
on it, which was very ominous to me. There was
a camera in the corner watching you twenty four seven,
watching me like all night, and that they locked the door,
and that was where I spent the rest of the night.
And you know, I was just I was extremely scared.
(16:44):
I was confused. I had never been in any kind
of situation close to this before, and I just had
no real idea of what was going on because no
one would really tell me.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
He thought about his parents that night. Did they know
it was going to be like this? Did they have
any idea that when they sent him to a facility
they thought would be helping him, that he would be
left alone in an isolation room with a bed that
had restraints on it. According to Bill, he would spend
somewhere close to two weeks at Brightway. The facility was
(17:17):
set up like a hospital, wide hallways, wide doors, the
kind you might need to wheel stretchers through, he said.
Executives of Brightway said that the hospital employed professional clinical
staff and social workers. Nevertheless, Bill recalls that he didn't
see many actual doctors around and alleges he only encountered one.
Speaker 4 (17:39):
I did see a psychiatrist at Brightway. My understanding is
that he later fell into some disrepute and possibly even
lost his medical license, but he was a psychiatrist. They
called me into like an exam room. He was there,
We talked for maybe fifteen minutes, and then he, while
(18:02):
I was sitting there, pulled out a little dictaphone tape
recorder thing and started recording his notes about me and
the third person while I sat there and watched him,
which I thought was a little insulting and aggravating. And
I also didn't think what he was saying was accurate.
So I objected to that, and we kind of we
(18:23):
got into it. I was pretty upset by the end
of it, and they came and dragged me off back
into the seclusion room and put me in there, and
they told me if I, you know, did anything else
and I didn't calm down, that they were going to
inject me with thorisine. And then they described really graphically
what would happen if they did that. So and I mean,
(18:47):
I watched it happen to other kids, they would inject
them with thorsine and then they would strap them down
to the bed for eight, ten, twelve hours. So I
didn't want that to happen, so I sat in the
seclusion room and tried to get myself calmed down. But
that was the only time I recall speaking to a
doctor at all, in of any kind or any other
kind of professional above like a tech or a nurse
(19:10):
at Brightway.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
No one affiliated with WASP or Brightway Hospital have confirmed
Bill's allegations or been charged with or found guilty of
any crime therefrom and before long Bill got his transfer
orders he would be sent across the ocean to a
WASP affiliated program.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
Robert Litchfield appeared to have set up a really effective pipeline,
But wouldn't this pipeline be at least some sort of
conflict of interest?
Speaker 2 (19:37):
After a bit of digging, we discovered that the state
thought so too. In February nineteen ninety seven, state officials
held a meeting with Brightway, the Utah Alcoholism Foundation, and
Teen Help. The main issue of business was what some
called a too close relationship between Brightway and the treatment
centers that it was referring kids to Around that time,
(20:00):
state investigators also raised concerns about Brightway admitting students without
obtaining the requisite number of consent signatures from parents and
not doing a better job of following up with patients.
A two thousand and three article in The Desert News,
which is owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter day Saints, reported that a licensing director for the
(20:20):
Utah Department of Health set approximately ninety four percent of
the teens to enter Brightway were sent to facilities in
either Jamaica or Samoa, like Paradise Cove. Teens like Bill.
Speaker 4 (20:35):
I was not actually told where I was going, I
think until the night before I went. Several of us
were called into the therapy room until we were heading
out to the real program the next day, and that
we were going to Samoa. I had no idea where
(20:56):
Samoa was. I had no idea how far away it
was anything. And then we were on a plane to
from Las Vegas to Los Angeles, from Los Angeles to Honolulu,
from Honolulu to a r to Pongo Pogo, American Samoa,
and then from there to a po Western Samoa.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Bill was being sent overseas. He doesn't remember speaking to
his parents before being transferred, but in all likeliness they knew.
Many of the WASP affiliated programs, like other TTI programs,
restricted the child's access to communicate with their parents. It
was a privilege that must be earned. They claimed it
(21:38):
was better for the kids and that it helped them
acclimate to the structure of the program. It seems to
us that no one stopped to wonder if it might
be a little traumatizing as well. These teens were powerless,
and it resulted in kids like Bill ending up in
foreign lands far from home, at the mercy of people
they had never met.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
Bill ended up in western Samoa, a region that was
the exact opposite of the part of Utah he had
just been in.
Speaker 4 (22:07):
Samoa is a tropical island. I think if people have
an idea of what Hawaii looks like, it's pretty similar.
It is. If you flew from how Hawaii towards New Zealand,
about halfway there, you'd be over Samoa. It's just a
little south of the equator, so it's a rocky island,
(22:27):
kind of built up on an old volcano, with like
coral coral lagoons around it. For most of it, lots
of tropical vegetation. Things just grow wild there. The island
is very small. There's there's we were on the smaller
of the two islands. There is a two lane road
(22:49):
that goes all the way around the like the circumference
of the island, and then one road that cuts through
the middle through the mountains, and that's about it. There's
a small apia where the airport is. That's the capital.
On the middle of the island is pretty tall mountains,
several thousand feet. They rise up pretty sheerly from the ocean,
(23:11):
and the ocean itself where it meets the land, there's
usually a large cliff fifty to one hundred feet down
the cliff to the ocean where there's just a little
shelf of beach. And that's where the facility was. Was
down on one of those little shelves surrounded by cliffs.
It was, as promised, a cove.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
Brian Vaifanua helped establish Paradise Cove, which opened in nineteen
ninety four. He did not respond to our request for comment.
Speaker 4 (23:40):
I knew Brian Viifanua very well. He was the owner
of the programs. He was, you know, he was of
Samoan descent. But I am you know, I don't think
that he was like a Samoan citizen, and I think
that he was an American citizen. That's my understanding. He
certainly spoke English a lot, that was, you know, wealthy.
(24:02):
I think that he came from Utah.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Brian had started his career back at Cross Creek Manor
Robert Litchfield's program in Lavergin, but after cutting his teeth
to Litchfield's treatment model, he headed to Samoa. Brian spoke
with Forty eight Hours in nineteen ninety eight and described
the program at Paradise Cove based on the way he
talks about it metaphorically, Throwing these boys in the deep
(24:26):
end was the whole point.
Speaker 4 (24:29):
This is nothing close to what the boys are accustomed to.
Does it put a student out of his comfort zone? Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
In the same interview, Brian.
Speaker 4 (24:40):
Added, there's no idle time here. Kids are on the go,
kids are encouraged to parade some solid habits.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
This clip not only suggests Brian's mentality about how he
perceived kids working his program, but it further highlights that
even as far back as nineteen ninety eight, reputable news
sources were starting to ask questions around what these children
were experiencing his outlook and answers are so vague. It
feels like his phrasing of solid habits and nothing close
(25:13):
to what the boys are accustomed to are just blanket
statements that hide the horrors of what allegedly happened at
Paradise Cove. Unlike Brian's ambiguous answers, Bill's memories about Brian
elicit much more specific detail.
Speaker 4 (25:29):
He wasn't there a lot for the most part. There
was one period of time where things got really bad
and scary at the facility, and he started showing up more.
You know, the kids were planning a riot and things
got pretty bad there, and he would come down to
talk to us, like surrounded by other staff members, like security,
(25:52):
because he knew that people would try to get their
hands on him. He struck me as extremely smug, probably
without justification, which is the worst kind of smug in
my opinion. And he was very It just seemed very insincere.
He acted like he cared. I think he was in
(26:13):
it for the money, in my own opinion, And you know,
I don't I don't know why he thought he had
any business running a program. As far as I know,
he didn't have any kind of training or education to
do that. And you know, a lot of the systems
that he set up, you know, either were unintentionally really
(26:33):
bad and abusive, or a lot of them were also
intentionally really bad and abusive.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Bill quickly realized it wasn't paradise.
Speaker 4 (26:44):
I guess they decided to play a joke on me,
and they strongly implied that I had to sleep in
the bunk or the bed of one of the guys
and that he was going to rape me that night.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
For Bill, the threat of rape was real, and I.
Speaker 4 (26:59):
Tried to punch him in the face. That got in
trouble right away, because you know, you're not allowed to
do that.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
So Bill says he was immediately tackled and put into
a restraint. He feels he couldn't do anything but submit.
Speaker 4 (27:15):
That was my That was kind of my first hour
there in the facility, and I was my head was spinning.
I was twelve time zones away from my house. I
hadn't talked to my parents, and I had just been
through all these airplane flights and all these really disoriented experiences,
and here I am with the family, father sitting on
(27:35):
top of me, you know, threatening me. With more consequences,
and because because you know, I had just defended myself
against what I thought was a legitimate, great threat.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
Time zones away from family, disoriented and a bit scared,
isolation in the purest form, And as he tells it,
it wouldn't get any better.
Speaker 4 (27:58):
I mean, Paradise Cove was. It was really bad all
the time. It was some kind of weird combination of
like Lord of the Flies and state prison.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
What a distorted name. Paradise Cove. Bill told us even
more about his time there.
Speaker 4 (28:17):
Yeah, I don't know, there was. There was a lot
of bad times in the program. It's hard to just
pick one or two. Just you know, some really horrific beatings.
I don't always like to talk about those kinds of
things because those aren't really my stories to tell. Those
are the kids that happened to. But like I said,
(28:37):
I've seen staff break arms, break jaws. I saw them
eat one kid that they had already thrown into the
isolation stalls with the bamboo stick. They weren't swinging it
like a bat. They were stabbing it like a spear
at him, and I just thought, you know, it was
it was a good like two inches around and I
(28:58):
just thought, boy, that's that can't possibly feel good to
have that stab at you over and over again. But
you know, he was in a confined space. There was
no way he was able to dodge it that and
so I'm sure I'm pretty sure they cracked his ribs
because they took him to the hospital the next day
and he had broken ribs.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
According to Bill, he also didn't escape unscathed.
Speaker 4 (29:25):
The electricity system in Samoa uses higher voltage to a
nun and twenty volt current, but they don't have appliances
that are specifically made for their electrical system, so a
lot of times they use American appliances there. And so
they have these standalone transformer boxes that plug into the
(29:47):
wall on one end and then you plug the appliance
and on the other end, and they're maybe six inches
like a cube six inches and just like a solid
metal casne. And that was how they would our the
appliances there. One thing they would do was make us
listen to like Tony Robbin's motivational tapes and that kind
(30:08):
of thing. And of course, you know, it was the nineties,
so they were like tapes, and they had like a
tape deck, like a little boom box that they would
put and play the tape while we ate. Anytime we ate,
we had to be listening to like Tony Robbins motivational dates.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
One day, Bill's group was eating lunch and trying to
listen to the influential self help coach Tony Robbins. However,
the stereo was malfunctioning. Bill recalled the staff was attempting
to fix the stereo and there appeared to be a
shore in the system.
Speaker 4 (30:41):
So they were all eating and I went to go
tell the family father that I was going to go
take a shower. And I leaned in the doorway to
tell him that, and I had put my I was
standing on this metal grading and I put my hand
on the outside of the chicken wire and boom, I
got like that full two one, two forty or whatever
it was through me. It was enough that it paralyzed me.
(31:05):
I couldn't move, I couldn't pull my hand back off
of it. I was just like stiff as a board,
and I was trying. After a couple seconds, I realized
what was happening to me. And I was trying to
like say, like help, I'm being electrocuted. But I couldn't
make any words come out of my mouth. It was
like this just really loud, buzzing humming in my ears,
(31:29):
and I thought I'm gonna die.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
Bill's entire body became rigid, and he told us that
onlookers would later describe that Bill was motionless and only
let out a high pitched groan. Eventually, staff realized what
was happening.
Speaker 4 (31:45):
So the staff member hit the switch that turned off
the power. And I don't know, I mean, I don't
know if it like blew me back. I was unconscious
at that point, but somehow I flew back and hit
like a rock retaining wall that was about twenty feet away.
I hit it hard enough or else, I guess. After that,
(32:07):
I fell down, and I was like having seizures somewhere
in all that process, either for me spasmy because of
the electricity me hitting the rock wall, or then like
the really hard ground, or like having seizures somewhere and
all that, one of my vertebrae broke completely in half
and then dislocated and slipped up behind the vertebrae above it.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
Bill was in excruciating pain. He was taken to the
hospital and it was determined that he would need surgery
to repair the injury.
Speaker 4 (32:37):
But at the time, the hospital I was in was like,
at least half of it was like kind of open air.
There was like flies and stuff, and I was like,
spinal surgery here is going to be a no from me. So,
you know, I just lived with it after that, and
you know, that has been a decision that's continued to
affect me to this day.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
The emotional pain was real too. The next day, Bill
would hear from his dad.
Speaker 4 (33:02):
I got a facts from my dad, and it was
just a letter. I guess they had called my parents
to tell them what it happened, but they had explained
it in such a way that my dad thought that
it was appropriate to draw a little doodle on the
facts of like a skeleton, you know, like you know
in the cartoons when someone gets electrocuted and you can
see their skeleton through their skin like that, with little
(33:24):
lightning bolts coming off it. And I don't I just
remember the first line it said, dear son, heard you
had a shocking experience yesterday, ha ha ha. And so
I don't know what they told him about what happened,
but clearly they misrepresented the seriousness of the situation.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
According to Bill Paradise, Cove's impact was inescapable and its
effects permanent.
Speaker 4 (33:57):
There are things that I still have to deal with
today because of what I went through in the program.
I talked about breaking my back. I now have spinal stenosis.
My bone never stopped growing once it healed because I
didn't get proper medical treatment, and it's slowly cutting off
my spine. It's my spinal column, and I'm starting to
(34:22):
lose sensation in the lower half of my body from that.
Sometimes my back goes out and I can't get out
of bed. I have trouble washing dishes because where the
break is such that I have to bend right at
that spot to bend over a sink and wash dishes,
and so I really have trouble doing some of those
(34:42):
day to day tasks. And because of that, you know,
those are things that I still live with because of
the program. Those are things emotionally, I still find myself
shutting down sometimes when I shouldn't be, ways that are
not feared in my family, and I have to fight
(35:02):
through that. You know, the consequences of my treatment in
the program will probably stay with me for the rest
of my life and I've made some good out of it,
you know, but people shouldn't. Kids shouldn't have to make
(35:24):
good out of traumatic experiences.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Open for six years and hounded with allegations of abuse,
Paradise Cove eventually shut down from what we can tell,
at some point in the year two thousand. A lawsuit
filed against them in nineteen ninety eight called the facility
a cult camp and alleged that the youth were paraded, tormented, ridiculed, belittled, scolded, deprived,
(35:56):
and demeaned. They called the treatment abusive, dangers and degrading.
Robert Litchfield responded to the allegations when speaking to the
Daily Spectrum in Saint George, Utah, in November nineteen ninety eight,
blaming it on the manipulative youth. He said, and I quote,
when you take on problem kids, there are going to
(36:17):
be some who bring some problems. That's why they're there.
That nineteen ninety eight lawsuit was ultimately dismissed without WASP
Paradise Cove teen help or any affiliated entity or representative
being found liable, and Brian Vaifanua, the co founder of
Paradise Cove, wouldn't face any liability either. Instead, he would
(36:41):
head back to Cross Creek and just a few years
later open another program, Midwest Academy in Keyokok, Iowa.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
Paradise Cove wasn't the only international facility under the WASP
umbrella that closed amid allegations of abuse. Marava a cade
Me in the Czech Republic was opened for less than
a year, and Sunrise Beach in Cancun, Mexico suffered a
similar fate. Both of these facilities run by a couple
with ties to Saint George.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
Investigations expanded back in Utah, iiO. In August nineteen ninety seven,
the Utah Department of Health placed Brightway on a conditional
license and required that they trained staff report any signs
of child abuse, create appropriate treatment plans, and upgrade programming
to ensure that both custodial parents had signed off on
(37:34):
their child being admitted. A year later, officials still weren't satisfied,
demanding that Brightway open its admission records for review. It
was reported in March of nineteen ninety eight that the
Department of Health found that Brightway staff failed to report
child abuse and admitted students before obtaining permissions from both
(37:55):
custodial parents. In an interview with Dateline NBC from the nineties,
Litchfield tried distancing himself from Brightway.
Speaker 4 (38:04):
My again, let me clarify, Brightway is probably the program
I had the least mount involvement in.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
In another moment from his interview, Lichfield acknowledged wasp's relationship
with Brightway, but once again played it off like he
did not have much of a hand in it.
Speaker 4 (38:23):
We don't own it, but we do a management contract
with it.
Speaker 2 (38:27):
This is a theme we see across many WASP affiliated programs.
Lichfield's involvement seems to be just out of reach of liability.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
It is also telling that even twenty years ago, new
sources were investigating Robert Litchfield in the interconnectivity between him
Brightway in these WASP programs, and unlike us, they were
able to get some answers straight from Litchfield himself, as
we just heard. Soon thereafter, Brightway announced it would be closing,
(39:00):
but according to Ken Kay, who was director at the time,
it wasn't because of the pressure from state officials. He
claimed they had been planning to close for months prior
before its final investigation and closure. Brightway would send hundreds
of kids from their initial assessment to international facilities. At
(39:22):
least one former staff member of WASP alleged that she
sold WASP programs and was trained and instructed to make
sure that she only wrote certain types of qualifications to
ensure that the doctors would approve the children in order
to get all of whatever insurance benefits the children had.
(39:42):
The staff member's allegations were made and an affi David
signed under oath that was uncovered when it was attached
as an exhibit to a complaint in a lawsuit filed
against WASP years later. She went on to allege that
this was done with the specific intent to defraud the
insurance company and not because the children actually had the
qualifying mental health symptoms. However, despite the claims, no WASP
(40:08):
affiliated facility, Brightway, nor any person associated with WASP has
been found guilty of insurance fraud or any other wrongdoing
in connection with the programs beyond those conclusions made by
Utah state officials before Brightway's voluntary closure based on our research.
Despite these closures, Litchfield remained untouched and had a plan
(40:33):
one that would allow programs to continue.
Speaker 2 (40:43):
Robert wasn't listed as the owner of these overseas facilities,
and from our research, the ownership and directies to WASP
were opaque. However, there was substantial news reporting at the
time claiming that many of these facilities were at least
indirectly affiliated with Lichfield. We believe Lichfield knew that separating
(41:04):
himself from the facilities would ensure protection of his multi
million dollar business. Instead of direct ownership of the programs,
he officially incorporated WASP as a legal enterprise in nineteen
ninety eight, creating a layer of corporate distance between himself
and his schools. Ken Kay, the director of Brightway mentioned
(41:27):
earlier in this episode, who had moved up the ranks
of Lichfield's earlier endeavors, would ultimately become president of this
new entity, WASP, and through this new corporation, more schools
would begin opening. Paradise Cove wouldn't be the last program
or the worst. Next week on trapped in treatment and
(41:49):
I was.
Speaker 4 (41:49):
Not put into the general population. I was enstially put
into a dog cage.
Speaker 5 (41:54):
That was my punishment.
Speaker 4 (41:55):
So my first week was in the.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
Dog cage the first week straight.
Speaker 7 (42:00):
As soon as I got there.
Speaker 2 (42:14):
All of our efforts to reach Robert Litchfield, Brian Vaifanua,
ken Ka, and JK were unsuccessful and they did not
respond to our requests for comment. From our research, none
of them have ever been charged with or found guilty
of any crime stemming from allegations of abuse or in
connection with WASP or any of the schools affiliated.
Speaker 7 (42:33):
Therewith Hey everyone, it's Paris. Thanks for listening to episode four.
Next week is one of the most difficult episodes yet.
To get involved and receive exclusive content about Trapped in
Treatment and all things Paris Hilton, sign up with the
link in the episode description and make sure you tune
into new episodes every week on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, or
(42:56):
wherever you get your podcasts. See you next week.
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