The day after Matthew Maloney was transferred to the Colorado facility where he died, he was asked by counselors to finish sentences they started.
His responses to the psychological tests included:I wish . . . "I was not born."
I want . . . "not to live."
The worst thing I could ever do is . . . "live."
He was, in his mind, completely worthless.
Ironically, it is the Utah boy's death that prompted Colorado's Department of Human Services to more thoroughly investigate a program that they say has had reports of problems for several years.
Just a week after High Plains Youth Center agreed to "unprecedented scrutiny," police were called to investigate five new cases of sexual misconduct, said Dwight Eisnach, spokesman for the Colorado Department of Human Services.
Investigators had hoped to have those probes last week. But now the outcome of that probe won't make a difference in the facility's future.
Colorado legislators held a hearing Monday and voted to cancel the company's license to operate the 10-year-old program. The 69 remaining boys will be transfered to facilities in their home states, including Utah.
That decision came after the company filed a notice Friday that it intends to sue the state for false statements. The vote marked the end of several weeks of close calls for the program that treats some of the country's worst juvenile criminals.
On April 9, Colorado's Department of Human Services met with officials from Rebound, the company that owns High Plains, and agreed to strict guidelines that were supposed to allow the center to remain open.
Colorado officials did remove the Colorado teens (about 40 boys) from High Plains a week earlier. Despite coming to an agreement with the company, state officials said they wouldn't put those boys back there.
It's not that Colorado officials believed it was OK to leave out-of-state teens in the program while removing in-state youths; but at the time, they said they just didn't feel they had any other choice.
Eisnach said in order to suspend the company's license to run High Plains, the state would have to be able to prove "willful or deliberate violations of the licensing requirements . . . or imminent and immediate danger to the kids."
"We didn't feel we could do that," he said last week. "There is a lot of gray area."
Tom Schilling, spokesman for High Plains, said reports of child abuse are mostly unsubstantiated and exaggerated. He said it has been difficult to get specific details from investigators about the allegations of sexual misconduct against the counselors.
"We would like to find out what they're talking about," he said.
The company agreed to the scrutiny of the guidelines because they were confident they could meet the requirements. High Plains planned to hire its own auditor to investigate complaints who would have reported directly to the state.
Monday Schilling said the company would comply with the vote.
The state had five areas of concern in the audit conducted after Maloney's death. They were: visual checks, staffing ratios, staff qualifications and training, mental health services and child abuse allegations.
Schilling said many of the incidents that have concerned state officials occurred after the facility began accepting teens on psychotropic medications (for mental health problems). That was the case for Maloney.
The center had agreed to move those teens - about a half dozen - and not to take any others.
High Plains Youth Center is owned and operated by Rebound, which runs Utah's Farmington Bay Youth Center in Davis County, and two other youth centers in Colorado, including a boot camp.
None of those facilities have the problems that High Plains had.