Liahona Academy is a boot camp styled boarding school for boys located outside Virgin in Utah. A boy died there in 2010. The first review has been written by Anna P.
I sent my son here and it was a mistake. Most, if not about all, of the staff are not professionally trained to handle at-risk youth.
In fact, many of the staff are not great role models that put 100% into this academy. And they should because the cost is around $6,500 a month. For that price the youth should be getting top-notch counseling and a very good selection of knowledgeable teachers. The teachers are mostly cranky, old women from the neighboring area that come in just a few times a week. My child could never get any math help because there were always too many others that needed assistance and there was only one teacher for the subject. The owner is virtually absent most of the time. I can’t say all, but most of the the workers at Liahona have a responsibility that they are shirking by not giving their 100% and striving to make a real difference in the lives of these youth. These are all lost opportunities.
Parents, my advice is to try to get your child some help closer to home where you aren’t forced to give up guardianship. See counselors in your area. Get your child in a place where you can better monitor what is going on.
Then there is a review from Perry A
I sent my son here. The problem that I had with this facility is that the mental health help is not very good. The kids that are sent here deserve so much more. Even though I paid a huge amount of money for his care, they try to get away with the very least possible. Don’t send your troubled teen here until you do lots and lots of homework. Ask lots of questions and keep them on their toes. I trusted them too much. My son wasn’t physically harmed here, but he wasn’t helped in the way I’d hoped
Sources:
- The parent reviews
- Victim List (Fornits Wiki)
- Datasheet about the facility (Fornits Wiki)
When far from home 
It’s hard to believe it’s coming up on 10 years, the night Taylor Mangum died at Liahona Academy. I remember watching it happen, and thou the death is traumatic it’s not the most haunting part, as it is that 10 years later and nothing has been done about it. Justice may never be served to Clay and the staff at Liahona Academy, but I hope this message will be seen by parents considering sending their kids to Liahona Academy. I hope all parents do not hesitate upon raised skepticism around the safety for the treatment Liahona offers.
I remember watching Taylor die that night, a fellow student approached me telling me Taylor was not doing well, as I went his room I saw Taylor screaming while banging his head against a table in pain as he was slowly losing conciseness. Sadly, Taylor was dying of a brain aneurysm. I immediately got the staff members and they REFUSED to call 911 to get medical assistance over there. Instead the supervisor and 2 students carried Taylor to a van and drove him to an instant care. Taylor was transferred to 2 different facilities until he even was placed into a hospital in Las Vegas, from there he was transferred to Primary Children’s hospital in Salt Lake City, UT where he was properly diagnosed.
As students of Liahona Academy, we were all told to never talk about this. We were told if we were caught telling our parents or taking to one another about this, we would receive the worst consequence the facility could possibly give us. I remember feeling at that moment that none of us were safe.
The sad thing about brain anyuersums is there usually are not any warning signs but in some rare cases they can be detected. Taylor was one of those rare cases, but he was neglected for treatment of this medical condition by the staff of Liahona Academy. The main warning sign is chronic headaches, and if you have headaches for over 2 weeks, it is doctor recommended that you consult a physician about it. At Liahona if you ever need to take an Advil or Tylenol for a headache, you must request it from the staff where they log your name and date you took it in a book. Before I left Liahona I looked in this book, Taylor was taking headache medications for a month. He was constantly complaining about headaches to the Liahona staff but the staff at Liahona (including the owners dad-Clay) called Taylor a “faker”.
They told him to
“man up and stop making up medical conditions” .
His parents and the world need to know, that his life could have been saved. While Liahona Academy say they teach young men to learn accountability, it’s unfortunate that their business can’t practice the ethics they claim to teach. They denied responsibility for someone’s death, they even had the nerve to bring Taylor’s parents to our facility and force us to lie to them. The end of the day, parents send their kids away to save their lives. However at what line does it become more dangerous for a child to be in a treatment facility than the outside world? I think back to this everyday, how if Taylor was having these symptoms outside of Liahona he would have lived.
Why did Liahona do this? Was it that they didn’t want police and authorities interviewing students and having non warrant access to medical records to uncover the truth? What else is Liahona hiding? If they are willing to lie about a child’s death, what else are they capable of?
At the end of the day, when your inside these places your children are not as safe as you think they are. Your child’s life is in someone else’s hands. Your child does not have access to call 911, your child’s health and life is determined by a staff member and their mood that day. So besides the all the other corrupt and unethical practices Liahona does ( that you can find on the internet), this is about the negligence that Liahona had towards someone’s life that could have been saved. As Einstein once said –
“The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.“
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