Diamond Ranch Academy


The Diamond Ranch Academy is a residential treatment center and therapeutic boarding school in Hurricane, Utah. It admits adolescents with various issues, including ADHD predominantly inattentive, using what they call the "Real Life Transition Program", which includes a peer participant judicial system which uses citations, fines, and an appeal process, with an emphasis on the participants solving real life problems. It enrolls young people between 12 and 18 years of age.
Diamond Ranch Academy was founded in Boise, Idaho, in 1999 by Rob Dias and later moved to southern Utah, where it occupied a ranch. Enrollees aged 12 to 17 were housed in age- and gender-specific groups on four separate areas of the ranch. Students who had reached the age of 18 before completing the program were housed in a fifth area. In 2012, a new campus was opened at a site about from Hurricane.
The academy's motto is "Healing Families, One Youth at a Time." Its education programs are accredited by the Northwest Accreditation Commission, and its courses generally last between ten and twelve months. Activities include various sports, including interscholastic competition, as well as caring for farm animals.
In 2013, there were news media reports that Paris Jackson, daughter of singer Michael Jackson, was being placed at Diamond Ranch Academy.

Abuse Allegations

There have been multiple allegations of abuse at Diamond Ranch Academy; two students died under the care of Diamond Ranch Academy and a sexual abuse lawsuit was filed in 2017. A website titled DRASurvivors collected and displayed accounts of students who had accused the institution of abuse but the website was closed after Diamond Ranch Academy sued its owner and took over the domain; however, the websites archive can still be found online. Other informal reports of abuse can still be found on r/troubledteens on Reddit.
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