The decision comes a week after the state revoked the license for the school’s Springville campus, and after more than 50 years of abuse allegations.
Utah officials are shutting down Provo Canyon School’s original Provo campus, ending the operation of one of the state’s oldest and most notorious teen treatment programs.
The school failed to protect children from harm, failed to keep youth free from abuse and mistreatment, used “cruel and unnecessary” pain-compliance techniques, and imposed discipline intended to “frighten or humiliate, according to the state’s license revocation letter that cited more than a dozen violations.
Video evidence showed staff using prolonged, unnecessary physical restraints on a child, according to state inspection records from June that said licensors reviewed the recording. And, licensors said, staff were generally verbally aggressive and dismissive towards the youth in their care.
The state also said that several clients and a staff member reported that staff “intentionally humiliate clients.”
Examples included directing youth to get on their hands and knees and bark like a dog for snacks, and forcing one Black youth “to eat a banana while their peers laughed.”
Utah’s Department of Health and Human Services announcement Friday that it is revoking the Provo campus license comes a week after the state also revoked the license for the school’s other campus in Springville.
Provo Canyon School helped pioneer the so-called “troubled teen” industry, when it opened in the 1970s as a boys school. For more than 50 years, it’s been dogged by abuse allegations yet continued to operate with a state license.
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The company has until Aug. 16 to move its clients from its Provo campus. It had already been ordered by state officials to find new placements for its Springville clients by Aug. 6.
At the Provo campus, the state found, teens who were in the program’s “stabilization unit” were not allowed to speak, and were only permitted to use the restroom or get a drink of water at the top of the hour — in violation of a state rule which says clients should have access to water, rest and the opportunity to use the bathroom.
State licensors also determined that Provo Canyon School staff omitted critical details in incident reports they’re required to submit to the state, and employed staffers who did not pass a background check but still had access to children or their records.
It’s not clear whether Universal Health Services, which has owned Provo Canyon School since 2000, will appeal the revocation.
Staci Bradley, Provo Canyon School’s director of business development, said in a Friday statement: “We disagree with the state’s decision regarding the license for Provo Canyon School’s Provo Campus and are carefully reviewing all available legal and administrative avenues, including the appeals process.”
Utah officials have said they are working to move teens either back home or to another treatment program.
“No child should be hurt in a program that is meant to protect them,” Shannon Thoman-Black, director of Utah’s Division of Licensing and Background Checks, said in a statement Friday, “particularly programs that require the authorization of the state to operate.”
The Provo program has been under fire in recent weeks after a 13-year-old boy was seriously injured in a fight, and state regulators say staff didn’t call 911 or seek immediate medical care.
Since then, a chorus of voices has demanded the program’s closure — including state Sen. Jen Plumb, who, as a physician, initially treated the 13-year-old boy, and Paris Hilton, who went to Provo Canyon School in the 1990s when it was under different ownership and alleges she was abused there.
Hilton has been advocating for the program’s closure since she led a rally in Provo in 2020. In a Friday statement, she said she can finally say the words she has been fighting to say for years: “Provo Canyon School is officially shut down.”
“This horrific chapter of abuse, neglect and trauma has finally come to an end,” she said. “... Today means no child will ever have to endure what we did at Provo Canyon School again.”
Hilton noted that when she stood outside the campus on the day she led that rally in 2020, staff covered the windows so the teenagers couldn’t see them.
“They could block the children’s view of us,” she said, “but they couldn’t stop what was coming.”
Just a few years after Provo Canyon School opened in 1971, the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah sued it over its practice of using lie detector tests on boys and pulling students’ hair to get them under control, called a “hair dance.”
The program defeated the lawsuit, but allegations of abusive tactics have continued in the years since, even as the school went through several ownership changes. It remained operational despite multiple lawsuits, a company bankruptcy, state threats to pull its license, and public accounts of abuse from young people who were sent there.
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