Provo Canyon School has been under intense scrutiny for decades, but last week the state agency that grants it a license to operate imposed a set of enforceable restrictions.
After looking into a May 18 incident that left a 13-year-old boy with a fractured jaw and brain damage, the Utah Department of Health and Human Services imposed ten immediate conditions on the Provo campus license on June 18. Investigators claim that employees opted to contact a non-medical transport company instead of dialing 911; regulators subsequently claimed that this decision caused treatment to be delayed by about an hour.
It’s a detail that is difficult to forget. A bleeding, unconscious child, and those in charge of his care seem to be prioritizing logistics over urgency.
The new rules prohibit new admissions, mandate surprise inspections, and compel the school to revise its emergency procedures so that employees can dial 911 without first going through internal channels. Additionally, since you would think a residential treatment facility already had a threat-assessment policy in place, it is necessary to create one.
This did not occur in a vacuum. A few days prior, Aleah Corona, the mother of the injured boy, and Paris Hilton stood on the steps of Provo’s historic courthouse and demanded the facility’s complete closure. Hilton has long claimed that she was mistreated, overmedicated, and had pelvic exams performed for no apparent medical reason while attending Provo Canyon School in the 1990s. Her presence transforms a regulatory story into a cultural one, and she has emerged as something of the public face of the larger “troubled teen industry” reform movement.
It’s more difficult to read Corona’s account. She claims that during therapy sessions, her son informed her that he had been threatened by other residents. She brought it up with the employees. In essence, she was informed that this is what children do when they wish to return home. Then, in an altercation that regulators claim staff neglected to defuse before it got out of control, he was gravely injured.
There is a pattern here that goes back fifty years before this month. Shortly after Provo Canyon School opened in the 1970s, the ACLU of Utah filed a lawsuit against the school for allegedly using lie-detector tests on boys and a restraint technique known as the “hair dance.” In that case, the school prevailed. However, accusations have followed it through multiple ownership transitions, culminating in the current owner, Universal Health Services, who is named as a defendant in Corona’s lawsuit.
Tim Marshall, the CEO of Provo Canyon, has stated that the school upholds thorough safety protocols, but he declined to directly address the boy’s care due to medical privacy laws. Almost no one is satisfied by this kind of statement, not even the families or the state senators who are now wondering why the facility even has a license.
This week, two of those senators—Mike McKell and Jen Plumb—spoke out, and their tone was noticeably direct toward elected officials. According to Plumb, a doctor who treated Corona’s son, the state has put licensing revenue ahead of the welfare of children. In the end, accountability must entail more than just another corrective action plan, according to McKell, who has typically been circumspect about advocating for license revocations.
It’s genuinely unclear if ten new requirements represent significant change or are merely another entry in a lengthy compliance file. According to Hilton, Utah has opened hundreds of investigations into this facility over the course of five years, and the school has remained open during each one. Perhaps the difference this time is visibility—two vocal senators, a famous advocate, and a physician who also happened to treat the patient. Perhaps it’s still insufficient.
The Provo campus is currently unable to accept new residents, and state inspectors are anticipated to visit more frequently and without warning. Whether or not people continue to watch after the cameras leave town will largely determine what happens next.
