Provo Canyon School

In 1978, three students attempted to escape from the school, stealing a car and prompting a high-speed police chase.^[7] That same year, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Juvenile Justice Advocacy Project filed a lawsuit alleging that students were subjected to cruel and unusual punishment and denied constitutional rights, including claims of mail censorship and the use of polygraph tests and solitary confinement.^[8]

In April 1979, D. Eugene Thorne became the executive director of Provo Canyon School.^[9]

In 1986, Provo Canyon School was bought by a company called Charter Behavioral Health Systems.^[10] The company filed for bankruptcy in 2000, after which PCS was sold to Universal Health Services.^[11]

In October 2020, a silent protest was held outside the school, attended by former students, including Paris Hilton.^[12]

Between February and April 2023, several incidents at the school prompted police involvement. In February, authorities investigated a report that methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia had been found on campus, though the case was closed due to lack of evidence.^[13] In March, a fight involving students resulted in injuries to three individuals, including staff member Dennis Torrens, who was seriously assaulted and later died; police opened an investigation to determine whether the assault contributed to his death.^[13] In April, a sexual assault was reported to police following a referral from the Division of Child and Family Services.^[13] Later that month, a riot in the school’s living quarters led to injuries to a staff member and the temporary detention of eight students, who were released back into the school’s care the following day.^[13]

PCS claims to offer year-round academics to all of its residents, as well as a variety of other educational programs to its students including career counseling, competitive sports, and special education. PCS is fully accredited by the Northwest Accreditation Commission.

Since its inception, the school has been subject to a large number of individual and class-action lawsuits, particularly throughout the 1980s and 1990s. These lawsuits ranged from verbal, physical, and sexual abuse, medical negligence, to violating students' First Amendment rights and invasion of privacy, to false imprisonment and battery, to intentional infliction of emotional distress, civil conspiracy, and loss of parental consortium.^[14]

In September 2020, media personality and socialite Paris Hilton premiered her YouTube Originals documentary This Is Paris, in which she attributes her chronic insomnia to PTSD developed as a result of being sent to four different "troubled teen" industry programs: CEDU School in Running Springs, California, Ascent Wilderness Program in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, Cascade School in Whitmore, California, and Provo Canyon School. After escaping from the first three, she spent 11 months at PCS in the late 1990s. Hilton reported that she and other students were physically and psychologically abused.^[15][16] Hilton alleged that she and other students were administered unknown medication without informed consent, subjected to physical restraint, and forcibly transported to the facility by a teen escort company, a practice commonly used within the troubled teen industry. She further stated that upon arrival she was subjected to a strip search and placed in a seclusion room for nearly twenty-four hours. Hilton later described Provo Canyon School as “the worst of the worst” among the youth residential programs she attended.^[17][18][19]

In October 2020, tattoo artist and television personality Kat Von D alleged her parents sent her to the school for a three-week program, but was ultimately held there for six months. She claimed to witness students being force-fed medications, sedated, and isolated. Von D said that she left with "major PTSD and other traumas due to the unregulated, unethical and abusive protocols of this 'school'" and wrote that she could not "call them schools because they're not schools they're fucking lockdown facilities". Von D said that she was "spared of the sexual abuse and the physical abuse" but "definitely saw" it happen.^[20]

On October 9, 2020, Hilton and a group of friends who attended PCS with her led a silent protest with hundreds of other protesters through the streets and neighborhoods of Provo, Utah to bring awareness about the facility.^[21]

Robert Lichfield - Founder of World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools.^[22]

D. Eugene Thorne - As head of Brigham Young University's psychology department, conducted electro-shock and vomiting aversion therapy experiments on gay and lesbian students.^[23] He was also a psychologist and attorney for the Challenger Foundation.^[24]

Robert Crist - One of the founders of Provo Canyon School. Crist later went on to open Logan River Academy in Logan, Utah in 2000 after PCS was acquired by Universal Health Services.^[25][26][27]