Testimonials
Sorensons Ranch School - Koosharem Utah
"I was woken up with a strange man in my room yelling at me to get dressed wouldn’t even allow me privacy, had to dress infront of him then dragged me out of my house while I was crying… when I first got there I had all my stuff moved into the room and had my rosary in my hands , one of the instructors tried ripping it out of my hands and I ended up being thrown into the tub until I finally opened up my hands, in the report they wrote down I threw a brick at one of them and that is why they shoved me in the tub , and I didn’t do that I wasn’t there for violent behaviour the next day I woke up and I had to go do a work out at 4 am for punishment during that work out I almost died because I have bad fitness asthma , I was collapsed on the floor gasping for air and they just left me there to suffocate before yelling at me saying they r adding another day on because I’m not compliant . Next day I refused to go to the work out so the made me sit on a plastic bucket for hours in the middle of a field , during the time there they also made us hike non stop up the mountains for punishment until some of us could not go anymore. They would be right next to you during the 1 phone call a week u had so you couldn’t say anything bad or tell ur family what was going on , they made me bail hay for hours and put me at a secluded table and I couldn’t talk to anyone for weeks. iI was alone in a orange jumpsuit sitting on a bucket all day every day , until one day i seen a shooting star and wish so hard to go home , my eating disorder got so worse there and i wasn’t taking in any meals or keeping it down i wasn't going to class or doing my work I was just wasting away hoping this would just end , they ended up framing me for taking tweezers and told my parents I could not come home for my visit, so I didn’t go home for thanksgiving, I finally was able to go home Christmas.. and I never went back I begged my parents not to and they didn’t" E.M. - Former Sorenson's Ranch School Student 2005
" While I was at sorensons from 2014 to 2017 - 70 percent of kids at the ranch were from California. Of that 70% 90% were adopted and the state was paying for them to be at Sorenson’s Ranch. Sorenson’s Ranch became a dumping ground for parents who adopted kids and then realized they no longer wanted them. I knew kids that were there from the time they were 14 until past 18 because their parents no longer wanted them. I watched one kid sharpen a pencil, and use it to stab another kid for telling on him. I had to help comfort a 14-year-old child that had been violently raped with a pencil by another student. I had to comfort this child on a long drive to the border after the incident. Lane sorenson made me accompany them to drop this child off with his parents after his parents discovered what happened. They wanted their child home as quickly as possible." C.D.- Former Sorenson's Ranch School student 2014-2017
"I was known as Dino nicknamed by Norm and Jay. Bernel and Shane were around then and I loved them. Doreen was my councler and I was a mess . There were lots of dark things happening that shouldn't have. At the same time for me, a lot was right. I was so out of control I needed some of that trauma to snap out of it. I would be dead or in prison had I not experienced Sorenson's. It was so bad I realized I never wanted to be locked up again. I had nightmares for years after leaving that place. So many hikes in deep snow, soaking wet and forced to continue. Days at a time on the mountain freezing with a tarp and sleeping bag left alone a mile from another person. Terrifying. My brain literally will not let me remember a major portion of my time there. My caseworkers in Colorado apologized for sending me there. They thought it was a therapeutic horse camp for kids. Not kids with serious criminal offences under their belt. Attempted murder was a fairly common reason kids were sent there. Nothing therapeutic about the place. No therapist. There was a candy dr. Dr Goats. He had huge white eyebrows. You could tell him anything and he would give you the meds you want. He didn't diagnose or treat. He hurried and wrote scripts. Like he honestly cared nothing about us or what we needed and was wanting to get it over with and leave. It was insane. I get more and more flashes of events as time goes on. So that speaks of the severity of the trauma by itself. It destroyed so many lives and the few that it saved are so damaged, you wonder if it was worth it. The complex PTSD is real and brutal. I've had it longer now than I had been alive when I first went to Sorenson's" T.S. - Former student
"I was at Sorensons School back in the 80s and was assaulted numerous times by staff and subjected to 100s of 25 miles walks from one end of Seiver County to the other. I was held down a number of times by a male staff member who layed on top of me when he was on shift with no one else around and he would get an erection while laying on me and I will never forget trying to never be alone in a room with him or the smell of his aftershave and his breath while he would get his sexual thrills grinding on me when I was helpless under him!! I was subjected to days and months of free labor building the new school house and given marijuana from the builder to smoke and working on the roads filling pot holes and working at the fish hatchery's and Sheep farms for free while the Ranch had contracts that they received money for my work. For 2 and half years I was worked like a slave never getting to go to school like the rest of the kids or getting to go on trips with them because I had such A great work ethic they said and I was somewhat strong for my age. If I didn't work or refused to work they would 1st take away privileges and then 2nd they would assault me very violently and I have had back problems since a very young age because of the assaults and my mental state from going through this my whole life was changed by these assaults and my mentality was to be forever in a state of fight or flight in every aspect of my life. I've never be the same since the 2 almost 3 years I spent there and if I had not successfully escaped I would have spent my life there until turning 18 is what I was led to believe. I believe that to be true now because the money they made off my work and others but mostly myself working for various farmers and city workers repairing roads and water lines and sewer lines and cleaning stalls full of frozen manure to killing pigs cleaning them and harvesting the meat for the school . I would work everyday including Sundays and the rest of the kids got to go to school and activities which I never was able to take part in. I was put out in the fields of the school during the cold Winter months with a fire and a pot with rice a couple bullion cubes and a potato once a day and had to dig a hole 10 by 10 by 10 to sleep in with one tarp and wool blanket and given no showers no interaction with anyone unless it was to inflict more scrutiny from certain staff and Mr. Sorenson at the time was old and would turn a blind eye to all this abuse as I tried many times to plead with him to put a stop to it. I never thought him to be a evil man ,but who lets this abuse happen in front of their face and never stops it. Who takes the cowards role when bad men are not out in check when they run rough over the good men ,or are they all just bad men doing what they want when no one is there to make them follow the rules or behave like Real Men who make the Community and it's Children feel safe. I've known Good men and I can say there were two at the Ranch and they were powerless to intervene or act because there were too many bad men doing what they wanted and zero accountability or anyone to come in from the outside and say anything to these horrible ones that got away with whatever they felt like doing. It has haunted me my entire life and I have 100s of stories that would either turn the stomach or make a grown man cry. I wrote down and journaled most of my time there and probably still have most of my journals hidden at home in a filing cabinet that my Mother read years later after I had left and ran away from them and the Ranch. She lived with the guilt for many many years begging my forgiveness and of course I forgive her and my step dad. But I never could forget .Never." S.M. Former student 1980's
One Parent’s Story By Anonymous. My son attended Sorenson's Ranch last year. I was led to believe that if misbehavior occurred, students would be sent to the time out room (which was staffed by a therapist). In my mind, kids would receive counseling and reflect on their negative behavior and set goals for improvements. This did not occur. I was also told that the longest a kid would have to stay in the room would be three days. I was very much misled about the actual specifics of this beh. mod/therapy and found it to be extremely punitive. After I pulled my son out of there, I found out much more about this so called therapeutic timeout. According to my son, he and others were forced to sit at the edge of a bed in an orange jumpsuit for several days (depending upon the offenses). Students could NOT EVEN lay on the bed and stare at the ceiling or even read a self help book or the bible during the day. They had to sit at the edge of the bed and stare at the blank wall for one, two, three, or several days at a time. (there was some type of wall dividers between the students). They used to hope that one of the staff members would come in at shift change because that one individual let them lay down on the bed during the day. My son was kept in this situation for ten days straight (only being allowed to get up to go to the bathroom, go get meds, or lay down during the night. Although students were supposed to get one hour of exercise a day (taken on a hike), this did not regularly occur. After ten days of staring at the wall in an orange jumpsuit, he still had to pay for his misbehavior, returning to the lowest point level. At the lowest point levels, students don't even attend school but do several hours of manual labor instead (cleaning the barn, picking up trash, etc.). Just think---all of this supposedly wonderful therapy for approx $4,000 or more a month! Except for a few kind staff members (especially one nice night staff member who prayed with my crying son and other sad youth), I have nothing good to say about this facility. It was very punitive and led by the disciplinarian rather than the therapists. My son also said that there was an underground drug market (students on higher levels supposedly smuggled in cigarettes or other drugs for others--something that likely occurs in many facilities). Consequently, I would never ever recommend this facility to others!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! -Parent testimonial from https://heal-online.org/sorenson.html