In this testimony, the mother of one of the boys that was put in OSS for over 100 days tells her story. Her son was 12 years old when he was dropped off at Midwest Academy for defiant behavior and self-harm. While at Midwest Academy, he was placed in isolation for extended amounts of time and, according to Gary LaChapelle, the boy was subjected to “sexual experimentation” by another boy who was 4 years his senior. The child was 12 years old so he could not legally consent – if it was consensual. The mother was desperate to keep her son safe and decided to pull her son out of the school in the end. In an ultimately disgusting act, Ben Trane tried to manipulate her and her husband into keeping her son in Midwest Academy by saying that her son – who had NO history of sexually acting out or abusing anyone – would prey on his younger sister if she were to take him home.
Some of the notable quotes from this testimony:
The woman’s child had anxiety, depression and ODD which would have made his time in OSS unbearable:
A. To be honest, Dxxx has always been our feisty child, our child that would test every boundary that was ever set. It started at a young age. I remember pre-K even him hiding from the teacher in the classroom just to surprise her, scare her. He had a lot of issues with ADHD through the years. It started mostly in the second grade. We started seeing more trouble. Later we found that he had anxiety, depression, and Oppositional Defiant Disorder.
One thing to note: According to American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, therapies that have been shown not to work on ODD include: tough love, bootcamps, and scare tactics. This should have been assessed when the child first entered Midwest Academy and his needs taken into account. Unfortunately, that’s now how Midwest Academy works.
Source: https://www.aacap.org/App_Themes/AACAP/docs/resource_centers/odd/odd_resource_center_odd_guide.pdf
The parents were concerned about OSS when they were initially touring the school but quickly assured by Ben Trane and Gary LaChapelle that this was a last resort only and they did not believe her son was the type to spend time in OSS. Essentially, it sounded like they were more focused on getting “the sale.”
Q. And what were you explained in regards to the OSS room?
A. While we were in the OSS, we were told that that was used as a last ditch effort for children who were not performing. They would earn so many demerits to go in there, or if the child was being uncontrolled in the family.
Q. And who was telling you this?
A. Ben was explaining that. We also talked to some of the rovers in the room. The rovers were upper level children set to monitor the children that were in the OSS rooms behind the door.
Q. So the Defendant tells you that this is a last ditch effort; you can come here if you have too many demerits; or, you come here if you’re out of control or harming?
A. Correct.
Q. Were you concerned about those rooms?
A. I was. I remember talking that we didn’t think that Dxxx would be the type of child that would be in that room. If he would, it would be maybe twenty-four hours and released. That’s what the typical OSS time was, was twenty-four hours, and then they were released.
Q. And who told you that?
A. I heard that from Ben and then again from Gary Lachapelle. I might have said his name wrong.
Q. All right. So you received this tour of the academy. The two of you go home, I assume?
A. Yes.
After her son was in Midwest Academy, he was in OSS daily for most of his time there.
Q. Did you receive a lot of phone calls about Dxxx being in OSS?
A. Daily. Pretty much daily. Gary would call me to let me know that Dxxx had been placed in OSS for being defiant, causing a ruckus in the classroom, using bad language constantly. He had lots of reasons he went. But it was daily. And then we would get a call from maybe the shift leader each day after that that he was in OSS to tell us what his progress was and the outlook on how soon he would get out.
OSS was extremely strict. If you didn’t sit still for 24 hours, your time would restart if you moved without permission or even scratched and itch. Imagine what it would be like for a child with ADHD that has a hard time sitting still in general due to the way their brain is wired.
Q. What was your understanding of what was going on in regards to the OSS?
A. Can you rephrase that again? I’m sorry.
Q. I can. That was a really bad question. What was your understanding of what was supposed to be happening when he was in OSS?
A. While in OSS, like I said, they were supposed to be in there for twentyfour hours. They were to sit in structure for nineteen hours. That’s where they are–if I remember right, that’s where they sit on the concrete floor with their legs straight out and their hands in their lap. They could have their mattress and a blanket that they could keep up to their chest level at night when it was bedtime. The overhead lights would stay on, the fluorescent lights. If he sat in structure for nineteen hours, then he was able to get a chair, to sit in a chair. Then at hour twentythree, he was to write a 1,000-word essay reflecting on what took him to the OSS room. Then on hour twenty-four, if he complied with all the rules, he would be taken out. However, if you broke structure one time in that nineteen-hour period, your time started over.
The mother started to really worry about her child. He was spending 29 days a month in OSS but Gary continued to tell her that the program would work for her son.
Q. Did you talk at all to–you know, Gary is making these phone calls to you. Did you talk to him at all about any concerns of how much time he was spending in there?
A. I did. I told–because Dxxx would spend–my understanding of OSS would be that he would be in twenty-four hours, he would leave. Dxxx was spending several days at a time up to at least a week. There was times one month he was out of the OSS for one day out of the entire month. So he was in OSS for almost twenty-nine days out of the month. He spent over half his time in OSS, in isolation. I talked to Gary about how hard that was to get phone calls about my son not complying and everything we did. I just kept listening to Gary and to the program that this was going to work; it was going to help my child. I trusted them. I believed them. There came a time where I told Gary I couldn’t take any more calls. I was a wreck.
At one point, Iowa DHS removed the child from OSS and took him in for an interview because they were worried about the amount of time he was spending in OSS. Gary told the mother that the child was trying to get sent to OSS on purpose because he thought that would get him out of Midwest Academy if he was in there too long and convinced the mother to bring her son back to Midwest Academy.
A. Before or after the DHS?
Q. Well, during this time when youwere discussing this DHS investigation, did he tell that Dxxx was fine, that he was doing okay, or anything like that?
A. At that time I believe they pulled Dxxx out of OSS at that time. DHS had to pull him out of the OSS. That’s where he was at at the time when they came. I don’t recall any specific update on how he was doing. But after he got back, we had gotten a call from Gary that Dxxx was acting out more than normal and was spending more time in OSS. He said this was common after kids come back from DHS, because they think that this is their way to get out of Midwest.
Q. Did you believe him?
A. At the time I did. I believed that what we were doing was the right thing at the time. I, of course–I didn’t like it, but we were in such trouble that we wanted anything for our child. There was nothing we weren’t going to do. So we opted to take him back, or let him go back, after DHS had taken him.
A month later, the mother found out about her child performing a sex act on an older boy and was told by Gary that it was “experimentation” but they couldn’t do anything to prevent it from happening again. The mother ended up talking to DHS and got a vastly different story from them which worried them. When they went back to Midwest Academy, Ben Trane did not want her to pull her son out of the school and that’s where he told the mother something like this could happen to her younger daughter if they took the son home. Both she and her husband felt this was Ben Trane trying to manipulate them into keeping their son in the program since they had been paying so much money to keep him there. Between paying out of pocket and amount the school district paid, Midwest Academy received $47,000 in tuition for the victim’s stay which lasted under a year.
Q. Was there something that happened,then, within the next month or two that you said, this is enough?
A. Dxxx was–there was a new program that they’d started called the Pride Family. It was for kids who were not–for boys–I should rephrase–for boys that were not leveling up in the program. This was supposed to be a program that they could earn points, level up, get out of the program sooner. So he went to the Pride Family, and he had been in there once before, and then he was dismissed from the program and then brought back in. But in April–on April 8th we were contacted by Gary that there was an incident with the boys experimenting with sexual activity.
Q. Is that how it was put to you?
A. Yes. We asked for more details. My husband and I were not happy they were telling us that Dxxx had performed and received [explicit sexual act] in the bathrooms, but it was also going on in the bunk room as well.
Q. Were you concerned about the supervision at this point?
A. We were. We asked, what was being done to stop this from happening? We asked, can they put video cameras in the rooms? Can they put video cameras in the bathrooms? Video cameras in the hallways? Some way to protect my child and other children from this happening to? We were told that those are private areas and that they couldn’t do that; that Midwest was doing an internal investigation and we’d be notified when there was a determination made. But then on April 15th–
Q. I’m going to stop you there.
A. Yes. Go ahead.
Q. Were you aware of the age range of the boys in that Pride Family?
A. I can’t say specifically, but I do believe they were between 13 and 17, Dxxx being the 13 year old because he had just turned 13 on the 9th of March.
Q. Did you talk to the Defendant about your concerns?
A. I did. Because we did not–we didn’t want–nobody wants that to happen to their child or their child to be a participant in something like that, because even at 13 you’re not old enough to give consent to do anything. We were concerned. How were they going to keep my child safe while there?
Q. And what was the Defendant’s response to that?
A. That there was nothing much they could do about that.
Q. About a week later, did you receive a call from the Department of Human Services here in Iowa?
A. We did. On April 15th we had gotten a call from the DHS worker and again from Midwest.
Q. I don’t need you to repeat everything that was said, but based on the phone call that you received from the Department of Human Services, did you feel that what you were being told from them was different than what you had been told from the Defendant?
A. My husband and I actually drove to the DHS office that day and spoke with Dxxx and spoke with the case worker there. We felt that the information we were given was not meshing with what Midwest had told us on how it had happened. I had asked the case worker how this case–how this incident was reported and what could be done to prevent it. She instructed me to talk to Ben about that.
Q. So what did you do?
A. So after that we took Dxxx home–we didn’t take him home. We took him back to Midwest. I remember meeting Gary and Ben on the–in the front driveway. We asked them what we could do. What was the plan to keep this from happening again? How were we going to keep the kids safe? Could we put video cameras up? Could we do anything? And again, we were told that there wasn’t much they could do. When we said that we were going to go ahead and take Dxxx home for his safety, think about what was best for our family and for Dxxx, Ben had asked, what are you going to do when he does this to his sister? Which my husband and I felt that that was a manipulation to try to manipulate our feelings because we–you don’t want that to happen to your baby girl either. And just knowing–
Q. Did the Defendant want Dxxx to stay there?
A. He did.
Q. How much were you paying them a month?
A. When he went there in May of 2014, we paid them $30,000.00. We actually qualified for a scholarship.
Q. You qualified for a scholarship, but you paid $30,000.00?
A. Yes. On financial need we qualified for financial aid.
Q. Did your school district also make payments to the academy for Dxxx to be attending school there?
A. They did. They paid $75.00 a day for the days that he was in class. Midwest had sent an invoice stating that Dxxx was in class for 233 days while he was there, so the school paid $17,000.00, which was reimbursed back to us.
The son spent almost his entire stay in OSS while he was at Midwest Academy and lost over 30 pounds while there.
Q. Do you know about how much Dxxx weighed when he went to Midwest Academy?
A. Dxxx was 122–I’m sorry–120 pounds and 62 inches.
Q. Did he lose a lot of weight while he was at the academy?
A. When we brought him home, he was 90 pounds.
