ALABAMA
AL.com
by Anna Claire Vollers
It was a case that almost didn’t make it to trial.
“Everybody, from Alabama, Maine, Dallas, Houston, New York – it was a herculean task and it took a lot of people at the DA’s office working hard to make it happen,” said Keith Blackwood, Mobile County assistant district attorney, “to make sure I had what I needed to prove my case.”
In the end, three leaders of a religious Alabama bootcamp for troubled teens were convicted on multiple counts of aggravated child abuse for what they did to the children in their care.
The convictions were thanks in large part to the testimony of five former students, who told the court about the physical and mental abuse they suffered at the school.
Despite multiple investigations by the Mobile County DA’s office, local law enforcement and the Alabama Department of Human Resources, it took officials five years to close down the school and another seven months to arrest the employees accused of the worst of the abuse.
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