Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
ABUSE LONG ALLEGED AT NYE SCHOOL
and it all just gets swept under the rug.’
THOUSANDS OF RECORDS examined by the Las Vegas Review-Journal show a yearslong history of abuse and neglect allegations at Northwest Academy, a private boarding school in Nye County for at-risk youth.
Yet divisions of the Department of Health and Human Services, which licensed the Amargosa Valley school as a child care institution and were responsible for investigating the abuse claims, found many of them to be unsubstantiated.
Even when problems with the school were validated, documents show little if any action was taken to hold the school accountable.
‘ I don’t know who else to contact ... every time the state shows up, people close ranks and paperwork is lost
Allegations also often fell by the wayside without clear communication among state agencies that could have had a hand in shutting down the school, records show.
Unaware of the complaints, the Department of Education continued to renew Northwest Academy’s license as a private school.
It wasn’t until this year that the agencies officially began exchanging information for follow-up. By then, Northwest Academy had been shut down after its owners, Marcel Chappuis, 72, and his wife, Patricia, 66, were arrested on suspicion of allowing child abuse or neglect.
Most of the charges focus on water quality at the academy, which was Nevada’s only private boarding school when it closed in February.
In late December — shortly before the Nye County Sheriff’s Office launched an abuse investigation at the school — a frustrated Northwest Academy employee sidestepped the Department of Health and Human Services, instead reporting directly to the Nye County Juvenile Probation Office that another staff member had dislocated a student’s arm while restraining him.
“I just feel that it is something else the state will ignore or Patti will talk her way out of,” the employee wrote to the juvenile probation officer, referring to Patricia Chappuis. “I don’t know who else to contact because I feel like every time the state shows up, people close ranks and paperwork is lost and it all just gets swept under the rug.”
High staff turnover
Reports of abuse came as early as 2016 from social workers, students and employees, records show.
Some students reported being dragged across the desert by their necks; a girl said a staff member molested her at night in her dorm room, threatening to rape her if she told anyone; and a social worker reported “inappropriate sexual behavior” between staff and students.
“Nobody seems to know if law enforcement was notified or if this was just swept under the rug,” the social worker stated in one of the reports.
Authorities who investigated later found those allegations to be unsubstantiated or did not make any arrests. The owners have said there was never any abuse.
In 2017, the Nye County Sheriff’s Office investigated allegations of child abuse involving Patricia Chappuis but did not arrest her.
Several former staff members told the Review-Journal they quit after seeing a lack of action by state officials and law enforcement agencies over such accusations.
Edward and Jackie Clay, a married couple who worked together at the school in 2017, said they came forward and reported several instances of abuse by staff members to the sheriff’s office.
But when Patricia Chappuis learned the two had gone to the sheriff’s office, the couple said, she threatened to fire them if they ever contacted law enforcement officials again.
“She basically told us to shut our mouths,” said Edward Clay, 31. “It was that small-town mentality. She said if we went to police again we would never get jobs in Pahrump.”
Frustrated that nothing came of their reports, the two quit in the fall of 2017. They had been working at the school for less than a year.
The Division of Child and Family Services said in a statement that it is internally reviewing its Northwest Academy files.
“If the review reveals the need for additional staff training or policy or practice change, appropriate action will be taken,” Social Services Chief Karla Delgado wrote in an email. “In addition, DCFS regularly reviews all policies and procedures in an effort to ensure continuous quality improvement.”
The division declined to comment on specific allegations for confidentiality reasons.
When problems with the school were substantiated, such as improper nutrition and lack of supervision, the Division of Public and Behavioral Health issued statements of deficiencies and reviewed the school’s plans for corrective action — as required by state law.
The division, which licenses child care institutions, issued deficiency statements at least nine times over roughly two years, according to documentation from the division. It also issued three fines as allowed by state law for a total of $1,200, according to an email from the division.
Department of Health and Human Services inspection records also show a number of questionable practices.
A March 2017 inspection found the school was not meeting daily nutritional needs for each student. Northwest Academy appointed a “kitchen manager” as a result “to ensure that the appropriate inventory is available.”
That same inspection also led to the school implementing a “daily shift change report,” after the inspector conducted a review of the school’s records and found Marcel Chappuis failed to maintain counseling or therapy case notes “for students with self-harming behaviors,” according to the document.
The department also noted a lack of proper supervision as required by state law. In one case, a group of children left unsupervised in the boys showers watched as one classmate broke another’s jaw.
Tristan Groom, who attended Northwest Academy in early 2016, when he was 12, said staff members sometimes even encouraged students to fight.
“They wouldn’t stop it or anything. It was just fight, fight, fight,” said Tristan, now a soft-spoken 15-yearold. “It was like their TV show.”
A 2016 Legislative Counsel Bureau audit detailed a slew of deficiencies in Northwest Academy policies that violated state law.
It found the school did not have approved procedures in place for treating mental health and substance abuse disorders.
And there were “serious concerns” over the school’s medication practices.
Tristan, for example, was prescribed five different medications when he arrived at the school. His mother, Nicole Bayer, has said the school failed to disclose why his son needed them.
After Tristan was taken out of the school, Bayer said, it took her over a year to wean him off the medications. She said she took her son to another doctor for a second opinion, and he no longer takes the medications prescribed by the school.
Margot Chappel, a deputy administrator for the Division of Public and Behavioral Health, said the agency never aims to shut down an institution.
“It’s the goal to encourage and
‘ She basically told us to shut our mouths … She said if we went to the police again we would never get jobs in Pahrump. ’ Edward Clay Former Northwest Academy employee
inform the facilities to come into compliance,” she said. “We just don’t look at it like, ‘When do we shut this down?’ ”
That philosophy allowed Northwest to continue operations, despite years of recorded noncompliance and allegations of abuse.
“Obviously, the issues did end up repeating themselves out there, and that does happen, to be totally honest,” Chappel said. “We can always do better, and we are looking at this from a ‘How do we learn?’ perspective.”
When division employees were asked how long the division should give a noncompliant facility chance after chance, the question was met with a period of silence.
After a long pause, Chappel said, “I asked that question a number of times throughout the process.”
‘Patty is getting out of hand’
The 2017 allegations against Patricia Chappuis would not resurface until Feb. 1. That was days after the Nye County Sheriff’s Office launched an investigation following reports of abuse against Northwest
shift supervisor Caleb Hill, 29, from a former student and staff member.
Hill was arrested in connection with the investigation and faces one count of child abuse.
The investigation also revealed ongoing issues with the school’s water, which had levels of arsenic and fluoride that exceed the Environmental Protection Agency’s recommendations.
Two weeks later, Patricia and Marcel Chappuis, a psychologist, were arrested in Las Vegas on 43 counts each of allowing child abuse or neglect in connection with the water issues.
Patricia Chappuis also faces two felony counts of child abuse stemming from a July 20, 2017, incident, which originally was investigated by Nye County Sheriff’s Deputy Sedrick Sweet.
According to her arrest report, filed Feb. 12, Patricia Chappuis had four female students stand against a wall near the school’s classrooms as punishment. When one of the girls stepped away from the wall, Patricia Chappuis allegedly pulled her to the ground by the hair, got on top of her and restrained her by the arms.
At the time, staff members and students who witnessed the woman’s behavior told Sweet another staff
member had to tell her at least three times to get off the girl.
“Patty is getting out of hand with students,” one of the girls confided in Sweet, saying she had recently been kicked by Patricia Chappuis, according to the report.
The girl showed Sweet bruises on her body, and photographs were taken as evidence, the report stated.
“Multiple juveniles interviewed stated that they did not feel safe while Patty was working and that she appears to have anger issues,” Sweet wrote in his 2017 investigative report.
Despite Sweet’s conclusion that both girls had injuries consistent with abuse, the Nye County district attorney’s office did not move forward to prosecute the case at the time.
Nye County Lt. David Burochowitz told the Review-Journal the case has remained open but pending.
Formal charges against the couple and Hill, who are free on bail, had not been filed as of early May. They are due in court June 17. Nye County District Attorney Chris Arabia has declined to comment.
The Chappuises returned to the school in late April — for the first time since their arrests — to tour the grounds with the Review-Journal.
“Our premise has always been, by
virtue of these kids having to be here, we owe them the highest level of respect,” Patricia Chappuis said, tearing up. “There was never any abuse, ever.”
The couple’s attorney, Malcolm LaVergne, has maintained the sheriff’s office is targeting and harassing his clients, purposefully humiliating the two “senior citizens” by arresting them in the middle of the night “like they’re El Chapo.”
But investigators contend the couple planned to flee the state.
“They were taking things from the building and selling those items from the property in Amargosa. As a result, a swift arrest was planned and executed,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement. “After arriving at their residence in Las Vegas prior to their arrest, it was confirmed that their personal vehicle was loaded with personal effects giving the impression that the information we received was correct.”