On October 7, 2004 Karlye Anne Newman slipped into a bathroom at Spring Creek Lodge Academy, which was a behavior modification boarding school outside Thompson Falls in Montana and hanged herself in a stall with her sweatshirt.
When she passed she was 16 years of age. Some weeks later she would have turned 17.
How could it go so far? It seems that she saw no other solution she was forced into. Faced with isolation from family and friends, without possibility to complain about possible abuse and under threat to be placed in a tiny isolation chamber called "the hobbit" due its size, she did choose what she saw as the only possible way out.
Could she have run away?
Maybe, but as a TV-station was able to show in a documentary even the local police seemed to be more worried about jobs in the remote community than the well-being of the teenagers in this special boarding school.
The campus was shut down in 2009, but it could very well open under a new name with the same management as it has been seen in other case. The very same setup for tragedy could be re-created.
Montana has no valid regulation of the standards in their boarding schools. The very consultants the politicians have hired are represents for the boarding school industry. Of course it would be odd if they regulated themselves out of the business due to concern of the safety of their students. It will never happen.
It seems that federal regulation is the only answer and it is about to happen if the politicians in Washington can be pushed to pass HR 911.
The world does not need yet another family who is robbed of their daughter like the parents of Newman was.
RIP
References:
Spring Creek's short leash, by John S. Adams, Missoula Independent, June 16, 2005
Spring Creek Lodge Academy, WWASPinfo
MT: Lawuits Mount Against Spring Creek Lodge (2006 Article) (The Coalition for Positive Behavioral Interventions & Supports) - blog
Victims_2000 - 4 (Fornits Home for Wayward Web Fora Wiki)
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