LAKE TOXAWAY, N.C. (WGHP) — An embattled camp still faces lawsuits even after its license was revoked and the property was listed for sale.
In February 2024, a 12-year-old boy was removed from his home in New York and brought to the “troubled teen” camp in western North Carolina. Within 24 hours of his arrival at Trails Carolina, he was dead.
The boy suffocated in a bivvy bag, a type of one-person tent, after counselors refused to let him out. They said they did not hear him ask for help or say he couldn’t breathe.
In the year since that boy’s death, Trails Carolina has settled a lawsuit, been sued two more times, had their licensure revoked by the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services, listed the Lake Toxaway camp property for sale, appealed the license revocation, and then subsequently dropped that appeal.
The death
After the boy’s death, the sheriff’s office and NCDHHS quickly seized children from the camp and suspended the camp’s operations, which Trails Carolina characterized in a media statement as a “negligent and reckless move by the State” and an “illegal and undisclosed” seizure by law enforcement. The sheriff’s office said the camp was being uncooperative with the investigation.
According to an autopsy report, the medical examiner ruled that the boy died by suffocation. The boy had been forced to sleep in a bivvy bag with an alarm on it so that counselors knew if he tried to unzip it. Due to the nature of his death, the OCME deemed it a homicide.
The district attorney declined to press charges in connection to the boy’s death, he announced in November, stating that the camper’s death “was the result of suffocation which, while tragic, did not involve criminal intent or recklessness sufficient to warrant criminal charges for involuntary manslaughter under the law.”
Five camp counselors were in the cabin with the victim the night he died. Four of them told investigators they heard him “thrashing” and speaking incoherently, but allegedly none of them heard calls for help or complaints he could not breathe.
His death came almost 10 years after another teen, Alec Lansing, died after trying to flee from Trails Carolina while out hiking with other campers, an activity that campers told FOX8 they were forced to do constantly regardless of their fitness or ability level.
The sexual assault lawsuit
Days after the camper’s death, a federal lawsuit was filed against Trails Carolina, which alleges that in 2016, a girl who was 12 years old at the time, was sexually assaulted by another camper.
The lawsuit said the 12-year-old girl was “gooned” from her home in Vermont around May 5, 2016, when a man and woman she didn’t know took her “by force” and took her to the North Carolina camp. She was in the legal custody of the camp until near the end of July.
Within a week of arriving, the lawsuit alleged, a girl in her group had been sexually assaulted.
When she told “field staff” of the assault, camp officials did not separate the perpetrator, identified only as Jane Doe, according to the lawsuit. Rather than moving the assailant to a different bunk, the counselor in charge of the victim reportedly dismissed the concerns, “took away all of the children’s tent ‘privileges’ and made them all sleep in a line under a
tarp instead,” forcing the victim to sleep next to her assailant.
After the first assault, the counselor named in the suit was informed and, after the camp intercepted a private letter from the victim to her parents about the assault, dismissed her claims to the girl’s parents, reportedly saying, “I have no legitimate concerns about any of [victim’s] reports.”
“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 accused 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.
The lawsuit was settled in September 2024, the same month that the camp was listed for sale. Details of the settlement were not made public.
Ongoing suits
Two lawsuits were filed by anonymous parents in October 2024. One is a class action suit on behalf of the parents, named Jane and June Doe in the lawsuit, and the other is an individual lawsuit on behalf of their son, John Doe, who they say they were manipulated into sending to the camp through false advertising and misleading, coercive employees.
The plaintiffs filed the suits against Trails Momentum (also known as Trails Carolina), Trails Academy LLC, Trails Carolina LLC, Wilderness Training & Consulting LLC doing business as Family Help & Wellness, WTC Holdco LLC, WTCSL LLC, Unnamed Entities 1-10 and “their officers, directors, managers, employees and agents.”
These companies, collectively, represent dozens of wilderness therapy programs targeted at children and young adults, which are part of what is broadly known by critics as “the troubled teen industry.”
John Doe attended Trails Carolina in 2021 for 93 days due to his struggles with depression and suicidal ideation. The lawsuit filed on his behalf alleges that the camp was negligent in their treatment of him during his time at the camp, even coercively making him change where he went for college.
Despite being 18 at the time and told that, as an adult, he’d be in control of when he left the Trails Carolina program, “he quickly discovered he had no choice or option to leave the program, as he and his parents had previously been told. Instead, he would be forced back or even arrested if he attempted to leave,” the lawsuit says. Despite his age, the camp reportedly controlled every aspect of John’s day-to-day life, including “what he could eat, wear, do day-to-day, and even when he was allowed to talk to his parents,” which was significantly less than the program had advertised.
The lawsuit states this was financially motivated, writing that “Trails purposefully limited options for John and others to report any concerns, abuses, or neglect by the program in order to retain business and keep receiving payments.”
This accusation slots in with the class action lawsuit filed by John Doe’s parents, Jane and June Doe, which accuses Trails Carolina of exploiting concerned parents for financial gain.
Jane and June Doe allege that they spent “countless” hours looking for solutions to their son John’s ongoing struggles with depression, and that the defendants “target families of vulnerable children and young adults struggling at home or in school,” and portray their programs as beneficial to those vulnerable teens.
They also allege that Trails Carolina claimed that the staff who market their services were licensed professionals.
“They are not,” the suit says. “They are salespeople.”
According to the lawsuit, these marketers “make misrepresentations and offer unethical advice to Class members,” which led the complainants to choose Trails Carolina. The employees also use high-pressure tactics like a false sense of urgency, such as telling parents that they might lose their spot in the program if they don’t move quickly, to take advantage of parents’ “desperation.”
The victims spent $3,900 for an enrollment fee and $24,570 for the first 42 days of their son’s 93-day stay at Trails Carolina. After the initial 42 days, “Defendants charge Class members $585.00 per day for ‘Extension of Stay’ meaning that each two-week extension of stay results in an $8,190.00 financial loss for Class members. This does not include separate and additional fees for healthcare treatment,” which the lawsuit further claims their child did not receive. The parents also allege they were additionally charged for food, clothes and supplies without knowing that the defendants were providing those things inadequately.
The complaint alleges that the defendants misrepresented the nature of the program entirely, advertising it as a “‘tranquil’ and ‘enjoyable’ experience for their children and young adults.” Instead, the camp allegedly neglected, manipulated and abused the young people in their care, establishing a “high-control” relationship through fear and severe punishment.
The suit claims staffers would use the death of Alec Lansing as a cautionary tale to frighten campers into not attempting to leave, despite advertising that the campers are allowed to leave when they like.
This lawsuit remains ongoing.
License revocation
In May 2024, the NCDHHS revoked Trails Carolina’s operating license. Trails had been the subject of multiple corrective action plans over the years, many stemming from inadequately trained employees mishandling campers.
Trails Carolina appealed the license revocation in court in July, stating that the abrupt closure of the camp was “detrimental” to children’s health.
It also indicated on the paperwork the belief that NCDHHS “acted erroneously,” “exceeded its authority of jurisdiction” and “acted arbitrarily.”
However, in late October 2024, just days after the two major lawsuits were filed against the camp, it submitted a voluntary dismissal of the appeal.
“This letter is to notify you that the Notice of Revocation of License dated May 17, 2024, for the Trails Carolina facility is in effect as of October 22, 2024,” NCDHHS wrote in a letter following the dismissal of the appeal.
About Trails
Filings from one of the many lawsuits described 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 and their parent company Family Help & Wellness, an Oregon-based company run multiple similar camps across several states including North Carolina, Idaho and Utah.
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.
Trails Carolina remains closed and the property, priced at $3.2 million, remains for sale.
