Jurors in a 3rd district trial will spend two weeks listening to evidence surrounding the 1989 beating and sodomy of a Salt Lake youngster during a one-week children's camp run by the Salvation Army and decide if the assaults resulted from the Salvation Army's negligence, and, if so, whether the charity should pay the boy's family the $5.7 million it seeks.
Children at the camp, Jeremy's siblings and therapists will testify to the four-day torment of a retarded 9-year-old boy by two other 9-year-olds during six August days at the Weber Canyon camp run by the Salvation Army.In 1989, Salvation Army officers in Ogden and Salt Lake City decided to sponsor the six-day children's camp, called "Camp Utaba." This was the first camp sponsored by the local Salvation Army. Officers put together a staff, scheduled a week of activities and began inviting needy youngsters to the free camp that ran Aug. 21-26.
A Salvation Army officer went to Kevin and Shannon Hymas' home and invited three of their children: Jeremy, 9, and two older siblings, to the camp. Jeremy is retarded, Shannon Hymas told the officer. According to medical exam required for the camp, Jeremy had the understanding of a 6-year-old. But the officer interviewed Jeremy and concluded he could handle Camp Utaba.
During the six-day camp, two troubled 9-year-olds repeatedly sodomized Jeremy in the shower, the bushes and the cabin where the boys slept. The boys and other children stripped Jeremy, beat him, stole his shorts and glasses, stomped on his fingers, sprayed bug spray in his face and tried to hang him from a tree, according to a lawsuit the Hymas family filed against the Salvation Army.
The Hymas family seeks $200,000 to pay for Jeremy's future therapy, $500,000 to compensate for his emotional suffering and $5 million in punitive damages.
The Salvation Army does not dispute the assaults on Jeremy. Attorneys for the Salvation Army acknowledged "the outrageous criminal activity" Jeremy was subjected to. Other children saw some of the beatings and sexual abuse. Camp officials learned of the assaults and intervened to protect Jeremy the last two days of camp.
Ross C. Anderson, the Hymas' attorney, told jurors the Salvation Army officers were not trained to put together a children's camp and their staff was not trained to run one. "The Salvation Army did not train these adults in what it takes to supervise children - let alone what it takes to supervise a mentally retarded boy," he said.
The Salvation Army runs a divisional camp in Colorado where local officers and counselors can be trained to run local camps, Anderson said. But Utah officers decided Colorado was too far to go for training, he told jurors.
Elizabeth S. Whitney, attorney for the Salvation Army, said local Salvation Army officers put together that one-time camp in 1989 because they wanted to help needy youngsters, she said.
"They didn't organize it to make money," she said. "These parents didn't pay a dime."
She likened the camp to one run by a local church group. Officers in the Salvation Army "are basically the equivalent of bishops, priests or rabbis," she said. The staff carefully drew up a full schedule of events that the youngsters would enjoy and worked hard to keep them happy.
"These people didn't volunteer to go to these camps to ignore the needs of children. They did it to help kids," she said. If any of the counselors or staff had known about the sexual assaults on Jeremy, they would have acted immediately to stop it, she told jurors.
That's not how Anderson hopes the jury will see it. "The Salvation Army was negligent and reckless," he told jurors.
A doctor's assessment of Jeremy's retardation provided to camp officials was never passed on to Jeremy's counselors, Anderson said.
When Jeremy's shorts were stolen, he tried to tell a counselor about it with head and head gestures, Anderson said. But despite Jeremy's inability to speak, the counselor told Anderson he just thought Jeremy was "more thoughtful" than the other children.
"What were they doing running a children's camp?" Anderson asked jurors.
Counselors apparently didn't even understand that children must be constantly supervised, Anderson told jurors.
Instead, Jeremy was often left alone with the two worst discipline problems in the camp, he said.