Trails Carolina denies allegations of neglect in camper’s sexual assault lawsuit
LAKE TOXAWAY, N.C. (WGHP) — An embattled North Carolina wilderness therapy camp has issued a response to a lawsuit centered on an alleged sexual assault case.
On March 6, Trails Carolina responded to the Feb. 10 complaint denying all of the claims made in the lawsuit except for factual claims about advertising and what’s on the camp’s now-blocked website.
The lawsuit claims that the camp neglected to prevent or appropriately respond to the plaintiff, who was 12 during her stay at Trails Carolina, after she was sexually assaulted by another young camper sharing a cabin with her.
The allegations
The victim says in the complaint that the camp intercepted mail she tried to send to her parents, provided her with significantly less face-to-face time with a licensed therapist than was advertised and responded to her sexual assault report by wrapping the alleged assailant in a “burrito” restraint.
“Despite the façade of providing a safe and therapeutic residential treatment center for children, Trails Carolina has failed to screen and assess the children in its legal custody and creates an environment where troubled children have and do sexually assault other children within Trail Carolina’s custody and care,” the lawsuit said. “Further, Trails Carolina has failed to provide adequate medical care, food, and shelter for the children in its custody.”
More broadly, the lawsuit accuses Trails Carolina of failing to adhere to North Carolina’s mandatory reporting laws and hiding incidents from parents who send their children to the camp.
“Trails Carolina conceals incidents of physical neglect, child deprivation, injury, and sexual assault and battery between children from the public, including Plaintiff and her family, for the deceptive purpose of lulling parents into a false sense of security when entrusting their children to Trails Carolina’s exclusive custody and care.”
Trails Carolina denies these claims in its response.
Other cases
In a similar lawsuit filed in January 2023, another young woman accused Trails Carolina of neglecting to prevent her sexual assault. Trails Carolina and the plaintiff have agreed to a settlement, though the details of the settlement are not public and the parties requested extra time from the courts to work on the specifics of it.
On Feb. 7, a 12-year-old boy who had been taken from his New York home by two men and brought to Trails Carolina died in the early morning hours after his arrival the previous evening.
The boy had been zipped up into a single-person tent known as a bivvy bag. Counselors, who are described in the lawsuit as largely untrained young adults with no real counseling or medical experience, told law enforcement that they believed the boy was having a panic attack.
Staff reportedly checked on the boy several times over the night before finding him dead around 7 a.m.
NC therapy camp Trails Carolina where 2 have died faces lawsuit over child sexual assault
Inside Trails Carolina
The lawsuit describes Trails Carolina as “a for-profit program run by (Wilderness Training & Consulting, LLC), which is part of an organization of for-profit affiliated businesses that does business as Family Help & Wellness.”
Trails Carolina, WTC and Family Help & Wellness largely conform to the template of the “troubled teen” industry, which often involves teens being “gooned” away from home by force and taken to a wilderness camp over behavioral problems ranging from relatively minor issues, such as truancy, to more severe issues, such as sexually disordered behavior.
The camp charged up to $715 a day in tuition and a $4,900 fee for children to enroll, a price comparable to other similar programs.
The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services ordered the camp to close and took custody of the children in the days following the young man’s death. He was the second child to die while in the custody of Trails Carolina, almost ten years after a teenager died of hypothermia.
“These answering Defendants further expressly deny that they caused any harm to Plaintiff,” they write in the document.
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