U.S. NEWS

Teens were sent to Wyoming ranches for therapy. They say they found a nightmare of hard labor and humiliation.

Two Christian programs are accused of forcing troubled teens to do heavy farm work. One man says he was branded with a cross. Three women say they were tied to a goat as a punishment.

Sept. 7, 2022, 8:30 AM EDT / Updated Sept. 7, 2022, 5:46 PM EDT
By Tyler Kingkade

For girls who were depressed, drinking, skipping school or fighting with their families, Trinity Teen Solutions claimed to offer a cure. Desperate parents paid $6,000 a month to send their children to the Christian therapeutic program at a working ranch in a remote area of Wyoming, often without visiting first. ... What girls encountered once they got there, according to 22 women who spent time at the ranch as teens from 2007 to 2020, was a nightmare of hard labor and humiliating punishments that left some injured and others with post-traumatic stress disorder.

In recent interviews and court filings, the women described injuries to their hands, legs and feet, including cuts, frostbite and in one case torn ligaments requiring surgery, from hauling heavy metal pipes to irrigate fields and carrying bales of hay they said weighed over 50 pounds. The girls built barbed wire fences, dragged carcasses of dead animals into a pile and were driven around the county to clean churches and recreation centers, they said. ... “From the time we woke up in the morning to the time we went back to sleep, we were always doing work. Always,” said Taybre Conrad, 19, who left the ranch in 2020. “And they were having us do the type of stuff that grown men do.”

If they stepped out of line, girls were forced to run up and down a small mountain, dodging rattlesnakes, or were given only a can of olives and beans for a meal, according to former residents. Three women said that staff members who accused them of being “stubborn” tied them to a goat with a leash for days at a time.

Down the road from Trinity Teen Solutions, which serves girls, sits Triangle Cross Ranch, a program for boys run by the same family that has also long been accused of forcing children to perform manual labor. The state has confirmed numerous regulatory violations over several years, finding that the ranch made teens box each other as punishment and tried to interfere with government investigations. One former Triangle Cross Ranch resident said staff members branded his arm in the shape of a cross in 2012, leaving a lasting scar.

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