Trial begins Monday for the founder of a controversial wilderness treatment program accused of hiking a 16-year-old enrollee to death last summer.
Stephen Cartisano faces a misdemeanor count of negligent homicide and nine counts of child abuse stemming from his operation of the now-defunct Challenger II Foundation.Cartisano, 36, is charged in the June 27 death of Kristen Chase of Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., who collapsed while hiking in the southern Utah desert. An autopsy showed the girl, who had been in the program for less than a week, died of a heat stroke.
The state shut the program down that fall after other enrollees complained they were abused, starved, tied up and forced to eat lizards and rodents to survive.