Teen suing Utah youth treatment center says industry needs to stop treating children as ‘cash cows’

SALT LAKE CITY ( ABC4 ) — When he was 15, Finn Pool says he was kidnapped in the middle of the night from his Washington, D.C., home and taken across the country to a teen treatment center in northern Utah.

The moment he entered Elevations RTC , located in Davis County, the teenager was stripped naked and made to bathe, Pool detailed in an article published Monday in Newsweek . The experience left him feeling broken and betrayed by his father.

“I don’t think I’d ever cried more in my life,” he told ABC4.com.

Pool spent roughly 10 months at Elevations, only leaving through the interventions of his mother and a lawyer. In January, the now 18-year-old sued the treatment center , alleging neglect and abuse. He claims Elevations was more concerned about the paychecks coming from his father than his own well-being.

Since he left the treatment center, Pool has become an advocate for other survivors of what’s been called the “troubled teen industry.” For-profit care facilities operate across the country, but Utah has historically been known as the industry’s epicenter, with more teens sent to treatment centers here than in any other state, The Salt Lake Tribune reports.

“I’m doing my lawsuit not only for myself, but for everyone who can’t talk about their experience … or who is currently confined in one of these places,” Pool said.

Pushing for federal reform

This week, the teenager appeared before lawmakers in Washington alongside other survivors, such as Paris Hilton. Since 2020, the reality TV star and businesswoman has publicly discussed the childhood abuse she says she suffered at various treatment centers, including one in Utah.

“These programs promised healing, growth and support, but instead they did not allow me to speak, move freely, or even look out a window for two years,” Hilton testified Wednesday before the House Ways and Means Committee .

She added: “I was force-fed medications and sexually abused …. My parents were completely lied to, deceived and manipulated by this for-profit industry about the inhumane treatment I was experiencing.”

Both Hilton and Pool are calling for Congress to pass the “Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act.”

If approved, the law would develop best practices for the industry and tap agencies to make recommendations on oversight at both the state and federal levels. For Pool, one of the key aspects of the legislation is that it wouldn’t allow treatment facilities to “treat children as cash cows.”

Introduced last year by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), the bill has bipartisan support. Among its cosponsors is Rep. John Curtis (R-Utah).

‘Never should have been in a program’

Another Utah supporter of the bill is state Sen. Michael McKell (R-Spanish Fork). He met with Pool earlier this year, and described him as a teenager who “never should have been in a program to begin with.”

In 2021, McKell played a role in passing state legislation to develop a regulatory framework for residential treatment centers, which until then had operated in Utah with very little oversight. He believes more can be done to hold bad actors accountable.

“We’ve lost a number of kids since that legislation was passed,” he said. “There have been a lot of kids who’ve been hurt similar to Finn.”

As detailed in his lawsuit, Pool says his father sent him to Elevations because he was gay — not for any mental health or substance abuse issues. He also accused his father of sexually abusing him.

While at Elevations, Pool told his therapist at the center about the parental abuse, the lawsuit states. But instead of immediately reporting the abuse to authorities, the therapist told Pool’s father.

Last year, the therapist pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of failure to report abuse of a child. The therapist, Ryan Faust, still works at Elevations, according to its website.

Elevations responds

Jennifer Wilde, an Elevations executive, previously told ABC4 that Faust, the therapist, did report the sexual abuse allegation to authorities but delayed doing so to “review the matter” given the social dynamics between the parents. She noted that Pool’s father was investigated but never charged.

Following a request for comment on Pool’s allegations, Elevations gave ABC4.com a statement saying that it has a team of caring professionals that has provided mental health treatment to more than 700 young individuals since 2014.

“The safety and well-being of our students are, and always have been, our priority,” the statement said. “We support advancing legislation that promotes the widespread safety of youth who need higher levels of care.”

Pool’s lawyer, Alan Mortensen, said the lawsuit against Elevations is currently waiting to advance through the medical malpractice review process.

“We anticipate being finished with that process and beginning into discovery in the fall,” he said, in a statement. “This is obviously a very important matter for Finn as he continues to push ahead despite the horrible events he endured at Elevations RTC.”

Pool plans to attend the University of California, Berkeley in the fall.

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