2 lawsuits filed against Trails Carolina, parent companies for deceptive advertising, mistreatment of campers

TRANSYLVANIA COUNTY, N.C. (WGHP) — An embattled and now-shuttered North Carolina wilderness therapy camp, which made the news after the death of a child, is now the subject of even more lawsuits.

Trails Carolina and their parent company Family Help & Wellness, an Oregon-based company that runs multiple similar camps across several states including North Carolina, Idaho and Utah, are named as defendants in two lawsuits. Both were filed by anonymous parents who sent their son to the Transylvania County-based camp due to what they describe as deceptive sales and business practices.

The lawsuits

The plaintiffs, none identified, are filing the suit 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.”

“Unnamed Entities 1 – 10 are partners, members, managing members, or subsidiaries of Defendants who worked with Trails with marketing, advertising, referrals, and provision of services, whose names will be known through discovery,” the lawsuit says.

Both complaints were filed against the same defendants on Friday with each suit addressing separate charges: one addresses the alleged neglect and damage done to a former camper during his stay at Trails Carolina and the other is a class action lawsuit that alleges unfair, deceptive business practices that led the anonymous camper’s parents to believe Trails Carolina was a safe place to send their child.

Neglect

One of the complaints centers primarily around a camper, only identified as “John,” who attended Trails Carolina in 2021 for 93 days due to his struggles with depression and suicidal ideation.

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.

Upon arrival at Trails, the suit says John was “forcibly” stripped to his underwear and searched by a male staff member with no medical training. “Taken aback and stunned by the invasive search, John learned that there was a female staff also present in the room and as the exam was not conducted behind a screen or in a private area causing John to be mortified and his privacy rights violated,” stating if he’d known about these invasive practices he would not have chosen to attend the program.

Despite being a legal adult during his time at Trails Carolina, 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.

“John was forced to spend his first two weeks at Trails alone, with only two staff members in an isolated cabin in the woods. He was told he had to quarantine to take precautions for COVID-19. He had no contact with peers during this time. Due to this, his mental health started to decline further,” according to the complaint.

Once those two weeks were up, he could write his parents letters. The contents of his letters were monitored, and they would be withheld if he wrote about his well-being or any concerns he had.

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.”

John made a single phone call to his parents during the three months he was at Trails, but, according to the lawsuit, “John’s therapist limited what could be discussed and the length of the call. If he attempted to raise concerns about his well-being or about abuses and neglect by the program, his therapist would mute the call to prevent that information from getting to his parents.”

He alleges a culture of constant surveillance with staff watching him even during showering and bathing, and the lawsuit alleges that these staff members were inadequately trained and not qualified to be supervising the campers. Information available in the complaint indicates that staff members only needed to be 21 and have a GED to get a job at Trails Carolina, despite information given to parents portraying their staff as trained and qualified to work with at-risk teens and young adults.

According to the complaint, these staffers “made students including John feel violated through this surveillance.”

During his time at Trails Carolina, John was forced to clean the dorms, do landscaping around the property and other labor activities that the lawsuit says only benefited Trails Carolina and not their campers. John and others would hike for hours with heavy packs and inadequate food with no access to clean water.

“While Defendants tout themselves as providing extensive mental health services for their residents, including John, such services were only accessible for approximately 3 hours per week, the remainder of every day and each hour were with unqualified and inexperienced staff,” the lawsuit says.

“Defendants’ staff focused particularly on coercing young people in the program to blame themselves for health conditions and events outside of their control and to feel shame for their health and experiences,” the complaint alleges. “Staff would manipulate students into compliance by telling them they deserved the abuse, neglect, and mental health symptomology they experienced.”

John’s lawsuit also alleges that the camp coerced him into changing his plans for college under the guise of preparing him for his studies. He had been accepted into his “dream school” but staff at Trails Carolina advised him to enroll in a different school. “Defendants put immense pressure on John to choose a university which had a Family Help & Wellness / Wilderness Training & Consulting affiliated transitional program in order to gain further business for Defendants.”

While he reportedly wanted to leave and have nothing further to do with Trails Carolina, under what is described as coercive pressure, John “agreed to choose a university which had a transition program run by Defendants,” which is a decision he regrets to this day and has caused him “emotional distress.”

“Despite the Defendants’ assurances that their therapeutic program would help John overcome his depression, they did no such thing, and instead made his mental health worse,” the complaint says.

After leaving Trails Carolina in June 2021, John struggled with lasting trauma, such as “vivid nightmares about being forced to remain at the program without any means of escaping.”

John attempted suicide five months after exiting the program, and he dropped out of college, which has put him behind his peers by a year.

“As a direct and proximate result of the Defendants’ negligent acts, Plaintiff has been catastrophically injured and sustained permanent and severe emotional distress,” the lawsuit says.

Class action lawsuit

The class action lawsuit focuses on the alleged unfair business practices that led to John’s stay at Trails Carolina and details claims of manipulative, dishonest behavior, leading parents to spend tens of thousands of dollars.

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 salespeople “make misrepresentations and offer unethical advice to Class members,” which led the complainants to choose Trails Carolina. The marketers 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.”

“Defendants’ employ this type of false urgency in their marketing practices, taking advantage of parents seeking help for the kids they love, often making claims that a child or young adult will suffer or endure harm if they don’t enter Defendants’ program immediately,” the lawsuit says. “As a result of this unethical and unfair pressure, Class members incur the financial loss of Defendants’ exorbitant tuition.”

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 lawsuit alleges that the defendants would misrepresent a student’s lack of progress in order to get more money from parents, saying that how long someone was in the program was “often based upon arbitrary and unfair measures such as whether a student can start a fire with a bow drill, whether a student is fully compliant with Defendants’ program, whether Class members and students agree to enroll in another one of the residential programs offered by Family Help & Wellness.”

The complaint also alleges that the defendants misrepresent the nature of the program entirely, advertising it as a “‘tranquil’ and ‘enjoyable’ experience for their children and young adults.” Instead, the camp allegedly neglacts, manipulates and abuses 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, a teen who died after falling from a tree while trying to escape Trails Carolina in 2014, as a cautionary tale to frighten campers into not attempting to leave, despite advertising that the campers are allowed to leave when they like.

“Other tactics that staff utilize include taking away camper’s shoes or clothing to make it more difficult for a child to run away or placing the child in a separate sleeping area or cabin,” the complaint alleges.

Additionally, the defendants set the stage for parents to mistrust their own children, conditioning them to expect complaints about the program as a natural consequence of their treatment.

The lawsuit pulls this passage from an archived page on the defendants’ website:

“Many students come to our program scared and apprehensive about what will happen next. Their first few days may be met with resistance and the strong desire to go home. This is a completely natural response to change. After all, change is hard. It’s so easy to hide in a comfort zone. As a student transitions into our program, we do everything we can to ensure comfort. Dedicated therapists provide support and encouragement. Peers already acclimated with the program offer their stories and experiences to make the student not feel so alone. Soon the student learns this is a community based on positive support and personal growth.”

The complaint says that the language above is a way to “manipulate and condition Class members to question and doubt complaints from their children and young adults in the program,” in order to continue financially benefiting from the plaintiffs.

Ultimately, the plaintiffs are seeking a jury trial and asking the courts to “award Plaintiffs and Class members trebled, statutory, and/or punitive damages.”

In addition to the class action lawsuit, victims individually brought up their own complaint against the same defendants for negligent infliction of emotional distress with allegations similar to John’s experience.

Background

Trails Carolina was a wilderness camp located in Lake Toxaway, North Carolina, that worked with children ages 10 to 17. On its now-defunct website, the camp advertised itself as being “dedicated to helping teens work through behavioral or emotional difficulties, build trusting relationships with their family and peers, and achieve academic success.” At the time of its closure, 3 years after the plaintiffs in the suit paid them, the camp charged up to $715 a day in tuition and a $4,900 fee for children to enroll.

The camp had already previously faced a lawsuit over the alleged sexual assault of a former camper, which has since been settled, and a camper died while in the care of the camp in 2014 . However, Trails Carolina’s troubles really kicked off in February 2024 when a 12-year-old boy died within hours of arriving in North Carolina from his home in New York, bringing the camp into harsh focus.

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, though the law enforcement investigation is ongoing and no one has been criminally charged.

Within days of the camper’s death, another former camper hit the camp with a federal lawsuit alleging that she was sexually assaulted by a fellow underage camper and that the camp did not intervene. She also alleged severe medical neglect. They recently settled that sexual abuse lawsuit.

In the wake of these issues, former campers have spoken up about their experiences at Trails Carolina , describing it as a nightmarish experience in which incompetent, undertrained staff starved and overworked their young charges, denying them medical care or even access to clean water.

Many of the campers echoed the sentiment that the victims in these new lawsuits allege, that Trails Carolina “encourages an environment of ‘breaking down’ its residents, creating an environment of fear and silence, which creates an environment that fails to protect them from neglect, abuse and forced labor.”

The other campers who spoke out about the condition at Trails Carolina said, like John, that they had nightmares about being trapped at Trails Carolina long after leaving, and that they suffered from ongoing mental health issues as a direct result of their time there.

While the camp has appealed the revocation of their licensure , the sale of the property does seem to imply that their closure will be permanent.

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