Survivors of $2,800-a-month troubled teen school lay bare abuse from waterboarding to sick electric fence punishment
FORMER students of a $2,800 per month troubled teen academy have laid bare the sickening abuse and punishments they were allegedly forced to endure, from waterboardings and whippings to underground fight clubs.
From 1980 to 2008, the Bethel Boys Academy (later renamed the Eagle Point Christian Academy) operated ostensibly as a reform school for troubled youths in the small, isolated town of Lucedale, Mississippi.
The school was founded by Reverend Herman Fountain and billed itself as a faith-based place of learning engineered to help wayward teens get their lives back on track.
The trouble cited by Fountain as cause for admission could range anywhere from serious criminal activity and underage alcohol consumption, to staying out too late at night and running with the wrong crowd.
Behind closed doors though, Bethel was anything but a haven for reform, let alone a school, say five former students who attended the facility between the late 1990s to the mid-2000s.
David Bowsher, who arrived at Bethel in 1996, likened the militant, abusive, and violent culture cultivated inside Bethel to a cross between The Hunger Games and Lord of The Flies.
Bowsher and his four fellow Bethel alumni say the school operated on a kill-or-be-killed mentality, with teachers regularly instructing students to jump and assault detractors and newcomers to keep them in line.
The school was essentially a military camp, run by Marines. Students were referred to as cadets and much of the school day was spent doing exhaustive physical exercise, often without sufficient water or bathroom breaks, the ex-students say.
One cadet’s failure to complete a physical task – such as doing 200 push-ups in a single sitting – would impact the entire company.
Punishments for such infractions could range from the mild, such as running laps or starting the exercise over, to the incredibly severe.
“Some of the stuff they did to us they wouldn’t be allowed to even do to terrorists but they were doing it to kids behind closed doors,” Bowsher told The U.S. Sun.
“And that’s why most of these troubled teen facilities are in small towns so they can control the town with their narrative and the money it brings in.
“It was like The Hunger Games meets Lord of The Flies in there. It was their rule and their law; nothing else existed.
“You either did it their way, or you were subject to physical abuse, mental abuse, sleep deprivation – you name it.”
‘I THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO DIE’
Bowsher, Allen Knoll, and Daniel Edwards all attended Bethel between 1996 and 1999.
Knoll was just 10 years old when he walked through the facility’s front doors.
Having tragically suffered sexual abuse at the hands of a family friend a year earlier, Knoll said he began acting out and his mother was advised to send him to Bethel by a family counselor.
Despite all the alleged horrors he’d witness and experience over the next 2.5 years inside the academy, Knoll said his mom dropping him off and leaving him there remains the most painful memory of all.
“I feel like I was a throwaway child,” shared Knoll. “My parents were wealthy and wanted to travel and I got in the way of that.
“But the worst part of this whole experience, even more so than the abuse – and the abuse was horrendous – the worst part was being dropped off and left with strangers 2500 miles from home and watching that car drive away. That sticks with me.
“I remember looking at all these people next to me, who were so mean and so big, and I just remember crying and crying and crying every night.
“I went through some terrible things at that place, but the hardest part for me was that first day and that sense of abandonment.
“It’s never gone away – I deal with it every day.”
Knoll’s tender age rendered him among the very youngest on campus.
Within days his anguish over being abandoned would be displaced by an overwhelming fear for his safety.
The catalyst for that fear was spurred by an incident in his dorm when an instructor accused someone of drinking out of a bottle of rubbing alcohol, he said.
The instructor began by punishing the children with extreme exercise, hoping one would crack and fess up to the offense.
When one of his fellow cadets suddenly became violently ill, the instructor presumed the sick child was the culprit, Knoll said.
“He began to collapse and fell unconscious and they were kicking him on the ground because he wasn’t following the steps anymore,” recounted Knoll.
“They were picking him up and throwing him down and he stopped responding.
“They would never call an ambulance but this kid they couldn’t revive, so they took him to the doctors and he never came back.
“[I was later told] the kid had developed diabetes and he was in diabetic shock when he collapsed, he wasn’t drinking alcohol.
“That was the moment for me […] that was the moment that I told myself I could die there.
“I could be sick and they could just beat me for it.”
Knoll claimed officials with the state came in to speak with the students about the incident but no further action was taken.
Not long after, Knoll experienced the brutality of Bethel’s instructors firsthand.
During a dispute with one instructor who was taunting him that he’d never be released, Knoll told him to “shut up”. The teacher responded by punching him in the eye with a closed fist, he alleged.
Knoll said his eye quickly swelled shut and he was fearful his retina had been dislodged.
Knowing staff wouldn’t call for an ambulance, in a panic, he ran into a nearby office, deadbolted the door, and picked up the phone to call 911 himself.
While staff frantically banged on the windows and door, Knoll cowered inside the office until police arrived on campus.
They’d make us hold an electric fence while they soaked us with a hose, which they called ‘riding the lightning.’
Daniel Edwards
Finally, a sheriff appeared and spoke with the staff.
But rather than helping the young boy, Knoll claims the sheriff told him, “I bet you won’t get smart next time, boy,” before leaving and driving away without so much as asking him a question.
“The lack of responsibility, culpability, and help made me realize I was in serious danger,” Knoll said.
For Bowsher, whose time at Bethel overlapped with Knoll’s, his reasons for being shipped off to the facility were much different.
Speaking with The U.S. Sun, Bowsher admitted he met the very definition of a troubled youth before he arrived at Bethel: a frequent runaway who was increasingly dabbling with drugs.
But while he admits now that something had to be done to address his behavior, Bethel was not the right environment for him, let alone Knoll.
“There were all kinds of kids muddled in there together, gang members, kids that had stabbed people or their pets, or burned down their parents’ homes, and then there was Allen, a 10-year-old boy surrounded with these dangerous, nutty kids.
“Why would you ever send a 10-year-old to a place like that? And it makes you just look at the owners of these facilities and realize they didn’t care about helping these kids, it was just all about the money.
“If they did care, they would’ve said, ‘No, he’s too young. We don’t take children that age,’ but they didn’t because they wanted the payout.
“It was completely wrong to have Alan in there with us, it was only ever going to do him more harm than good […] it’s mind-boggling.”
HORROR ABUSE & SICK PUNISHMENTS
Daniel Edwards arrived at Bethel in late 1997, aged 14.
He was adopted as a child by devoutly religious parents who were involved with the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP), a fundamentalist Christian organization commonly known as the Shiny Happy People cult.
In rebellion against his strict upbringing, Edwards began smoking marijuana as a 13-year-old and ended up in a juvenile detention center after running afoul of the law.
Edwards was taken to Mississippi by his parents under the pretense they were taking a tour of the facility to see if it would be a good fit for him.
But as he was being shown around by other students, he looked out of the window to see his parents getting into their car and driving away.
Edwards tried to run out of the school after their car but was stopped by another student, whom he attempted to punch.
Two days later, he was allegedly forced to box an older and much bigger boy by staff as a punishment while other teachers and cadets watched on.
He said he was knocked out cold within just a few seconds but received no medical treatment.
From that point onward, Edwards tried to keep a low profile and stay out of trouble, but the school’s policy of punishing all for the mistake of one made that a difficult thing to do, he said.
“If somebody messed up then we’d get switched [whipped] or we’d get whooped,” Edwards shared.
“A lot of people are afraid to talk about the punishments they made us do, but I’m not afraid to.
“They’d make us hold an electric fence while they soaked us with a hose, which they called ‘riding the lightning.’
“We were waterboarded, we’d have to tread water in a pool, sometimes for five or six hours as a punishment, and if we tried to reach the side of the pool or pull ourselves out, they’d hit us with a switch.”
Edwards alleged that he witnessed “a bunch” of children drown during the punishments who he claims later had to be resuscitated by staff.
Another common punishment, according to Edwards, Knoll, and Bowsher, was forcing children to box for the viewing pleasure of staff and even locals from around Lucedale who would allegedly come onto campus to place bets on the bouts as part of an underground fight club of sorts.
Edwards says he still has so many scars all over his body from the alleged beatings, whippings, and abuses he suffered at Bethel.
Sometimes the punishments would be so severe that he’d return to his bunk with his shirt stuck to his back with blood, he claimed.
“I can talk about the atrocities all day,” said Edwards. “But perhaps the worst was that one of the drill sergeants bred pitbulls […] and if we messed up he would sic the dogs on us.
“One of my good buddies from Bethel had a dog sicced on him and it tore his testicle sack off.
“But they didn’t take him to hospital they just stitched him up there.
“It was archaic the treatment we got.”
Some of the stuff they did to us they wouldn’t be allowed to even do to terrorists but they were doing it to kids behind closed doors.
Dave Bowsher
‘INSANITY, DEPRAVITY’
Edwards’ account was independently corroborated by Knoll and Bowsher, who named the drill sergeant in question as William Knott.
Knott worked at the academy from the late 90s until the mid-2000s, later opening up his reform school for troubled teens.
Knoll wrote extensively about Knott in his book, Surviving Bethel: A True Story of Surviving Torture and Abuse, which was released in 2018.
In one class-action lawsuit filed by Bethel alumni, Knott was accused of having “planned, orchestrated, and directed” abuse at that camp including allegations of torture involving the forced holding of electric fences and water submersion.
He also lost a default judgment in another case in which a former Bethel cadet alleged Knott had sicced a pit bull on him.
After leaving Bethel, Knott was subject to numerous other abuse complaints.
In 2017, he and two other teachers were sentenced to 20 years in prison after being convicted on multiple counts of aggravated child abuse in connection with the Saving Youth Foundation school they ran in Mobile, Alabama.
Knoll described the former drill instructor as an “absolutely insane human being.”
Recounting how he’d allegedly use pit bulls to scare and harm Bethel cadets, he shared, “He’d say [something] and you’d have to run for it.
“It was a game to him, and he’d watch and smile as he ran from bunk to bunk in terror, trying to get away from this dog.
“He’d make us roll over ant hills, and he was this big muscle-bound dude and he’d just pick you up and throw you to the ground.
“He bred intimidation.”
WRITING ON THE WALL
Allegations of abuse at Bethel Boys Academy long predated William Knott’s time at the school.
In 1980, officials removed 38 children from the facility after a 15-year-old cadet who fled Bethel filed assault charges against Rev. Herman Fountain and a handful of other staff members.
Despite the boy’s claims, the school was permitted to stay in business.
However, eight years later, another 72 children were removed from Bethel by state officials following more claims of abuse, and the school was ordered to shut down, court records and multiple reports show.
Herman Fountain was arrested for assaulting a police officer during a subsequent visit to Bethel. He served a year in jail for the assault but faced no charges from the child abuse allegations, according to court records.
Four years later, the Bethel Boys Academy was reopened under a slightly different name.
Then, in 2003, the Mississippi Department of Human Services once again ordered the removal of 13 youths from the school, saying at the time the children in question had been abused or neglected.
Shortly after, the state Attorney General’s Office filed a motion to close Bethel.
The AG’s office alleged that male youths were struck, forced to fight, denied proper medical treatment, shocked with electrical instruments, and forced to exercise in the sun without water.
No criminal charges were filed as part of that motion, and eventually, the state agreed to allow Bethel to stay open, providing it adhered to several court-mandated changes.
As part of the consent decree, Herman Fountain was prohibited from taking an active management role in the academy.
Other mandated changes included firing specific staff members and easing its strict disciplinary measures.
The following year, a group of parents sued Bethel in federal court, sharing horrifying allegations of abuse, including beatings, locking kids nearly naked in isolation rooms, depriving them of food, sleep, water, and bathroom privileges, and training dogs to bite them in the crotch.
The ex-students also claimed to have been subjected to slave labor and forced to beat other students at the direction of their instructors.
In one such allegation from the lawsuit, plaintiff Mark Riepenhoff Jr. claimed he was once ordered to put his hand in a bag that contained a poisonous snake.
When he refused, he was “taken out back and sand was dumped in his face, in his shirt, and down his pants. He was made to crawl through rocks on his hands and knees,” reads the suit.
The same student claimed to have witnessed another incident where a fellow cadet had his mouth filled with toothpaste and held shut while an instructor poured water into his nostrils.
A second cadet, Ralph Nock, claimed he was drowned by an instructor until he fell unconscious and then resuscitated.
After being resuscitated, Nock alleged he was beaten by the same instructor for passing out.
He was then allegedly taken to an electric fence and forced to hold on with his bare hands for approximately 20 seconds, the suit reads.
At the time the suit was filed, Herman Fountain’s son, John Fountain, was the director of the academy.
He laughed at the allegations when approached for comment by the Clarion-Ledger, telling the outlet, “These are low-income families who want something for nothing.”
He also told the Sun–Herald the allegations laid out in the suit were “hogwash.”
“Some of them are so far-fetched, it’s almost funny,” he said.
One of the parents who filed the lawsuit, Cheryle Strueble, who removed her son from Bethel after just three days in May 2003, reacted with fury.
She told the outlet, “We don’t pay for torture. We are parents who can cough up $25,000. But we expect more than torture.
“[The lawsuit] is for all of those kids we don’t already know about. None of us want a dime. I want [the academy] shut down. It’s not what we paid for.”
The parents eventually settled out of court, records show. The details of the settlement were not disclosed.
Another lawsuit was filed against Bethel by an ex-cadet named Joseph Gabriel Paolillo, who had been at the camp during the late 1990s, and accused Bethel of torture.
In the suit, the boy’s father said his son was chased and bitten by a dog and beaten, “He had nightmares, he would push the blanket away like he was trying to get away from a wild animal.”
It was further claimed that Paolillo broke his arm after a fall but wasn’t taken to the hospital for two weeks.
A federal judge in Mississippi’s Southern District ordered Bethel and Knott to pay Paolillo $900,000 and his father $59,709.
Bethel rebranded as the Eagle Point Christian Academy in 2005, with John Fountain sharing that the decision was made to usher in a new era at the school and improve relations with community and state officials.
“I’m just trying to put a new face on our school,” John Fountain said.
“We’re just trying to do something positive. Along the way we might fail, we might not do everything exactly by the book, but we’ll sure try.”
Within two months, Fountain’s facility would be in the headlines again after a riot broke out inside the school in protest against Bethel’s harsh conditions and teachers restraining students with excessive force.
BREAKING POINT
For Bowsher, Knoll, and Edwards, help would not be forthcoming and the alleged abuses they were subjected to would go unchecked, despite occasional welfare visits from state officials.
Knoll said he tried his best to keep to himself but after being beaten up more times than he can count, he said he finally gave up and stopped trying to follow the rules.
“At that point, I didn’t care anymore,” said Knoll. “I told them either you’re going to kill me or I’m going to leave and that’s what happened.
“I was so tired of the terrible things I’d been witnessing and that were being done to me, and just said, ‘you can beat the crap out of me, you can kill me. I’m either going to die or leave here – but either way, I’m getting out.
“And once I didn’t care anymore they couldn’t get to me.”
Knoll spent two-and-a-half years at Bethel before he was shipped off to another troubled teen facility that was also later subject to a litany of abuse claims.
For Edwards, he said the alleged, abuse, torture, and culture of fear cultivated at Bethel was often too much for some to bear.
Referencing what he called the worst thing he’s ever witnessed, Edwards alleged that one of his friends became so upset and beaten down by the abuse he ran and “swan-dived” off a second-floor staircase in an attempt to kill himself.
“He went headfirst,” said Edwards. “He shattered his shoulder, his arm, and his collarbone, but luckily he survived.
“There were two kids who drank rubbing alcohol and one of them didn’t make it,” he further claimed.
“There was also a kid in there who was gay and was beaten within an inch of his life after he was found to have been doing something inappropriate in the eyes of instructors.
“There are so many things that stick out to me that were so horrible.
“We were just powerless to do anything about it.”
Bethel Academy Changes Name: 2005
The following story was published in 2005 via AP, documenting Bethel Academy's decision to change its name amid a torrent of controversy:
The Bethel Boys Academy in Lucedale has changed its name; in part, says its organizer, to dissociate itself with past allegations of mistreatment of youths left in its care.
The Bethel home is now called Eagle Point Christian Academy, a reform school for troubled youths.
The school offered the same services as the Bethel, a facility that has been sued by families alleging child abuse. Complaints surfaced that students had been beaten, denied proper medical treatment and shocked with a cattle prod, and authorities had been investigating the boot-camp program, according to the lawsuits.
Academy director John Fountain said the recent name change also represents a new chapter in the school’s effort to help struggling teenagers. It is part of a move to improve relations with the community and state officials.
“I’m just trying to put a new face on our school,” he said.
Fountain said he does not tolerate abuse at the school, and is instituting changes to steer away from a rigid “boot-camp” approach. He wants to offer opportunities for vocational and technical training, and enter in sports competitions with other schools.
“We’re just trying to do something positive. Along the way we might fail, we might not do everything exactly by the book, but we’ll sure try,” he said.
The name change is not unprecedented with the academy, which was founded by Fountain’s father, Herman.
It was called the Bethel Home for Children in 1988 when it was raided by state welfare officials who removed 72 abused and neglected children. A judge shut it down in 1990 and Herman Fountain reopened it as the Bethel Boys Academy four years later.
“Life’s a learning experience, I’ve learned a lot from the mistakes my father has made and still learning everyday and wanting to make a change,” said John Fountain, who said he was not aware of the first name change.
Fountain called the abuse allegations “hog wash.”
“Some of them are so far fetched, it’s almost funny,” he said.
George County authorities cleared the academy of abuse allegations last year, but parents continued to complain of visible signs of injury to their children.
Fort Smith, Ark. attorney Oscar Stilley, who is representing parents of former cadets suing the academy in federal court, said the case is heading to trial and at least two similar lawsuits are to come.
Fountain’s attorney Trey Bobinger said even though the abuse allegations, which are two years old, are still the subject of a lawsuit, there are no pending legal issues with the state.
The school admits about 100 students, ages 11 to 17, whose stays range from eight to 12 months, Fountain said.
Bowsher’s experience was slightly different from Knoll and Edwards’.
Bowsher said he arrived at Bethel with a rebellious attitude constantly challenging authority until around eight months into his stay when he finally “gave up” and decided to work the program to improve his welfare and comply with the instructors’ commands.
His compliance led to him being promoted to the role of a senior cadet, a position in which he was manipulated into being an enforcer of the school’s rules and policies and incentivized with additional privileges, such as calls home and more food, for doing so.
Bowsher said he was required to punish, physically discipline, and physically abuse other kids.
“I got there and I tried to fight it,” Bowsher said. “I’d been in fights before and I had a real f-you attitude, but they’d break a person down very quickly in there physically, emotionally, and make them feel like they’re nothing so they lose all hope.
“It’s like breaking in an animal […] and eventually I broke, I said, ‘I’m not going to do it anymore’, and they eventually sent me home because they had no use for me.”
SILENT NO MORE
When Bowsher left Bethel he said he was overcome with anger, which later evolved into overwhelming feelings of guilt and grief.
He got into more trouble with the police than he ever had before he arrived at Bethel, and leaned more heavily on illicit substances to silence his demons.
All the while, he seldom spoke of his experiences inside the school for fear of not being believed and the shame he felt for being complicit in some of the abuse.
That changed in 2016 when he reconnected with Knoll after 20 years and the two men began openly discussing their experiences and memories from their respective times at Bethel.
The two men later launched a Facebook page for survivors of Bethel and other troubled teen schools to share their stories.
They also founded a non-profit called the Troubled Teen Advocate Group to provide counseling and financial assistance to former members of abusive troubled youth programs.
Bowsher said he had to have his fair share of uncomfortable conversations with other Bethel survivors who were at the school at the same time he was.
“One of the first people I spoke to that I remembered from Bethel showed me a picture and said, ‘You want to see what I remember about you?’ and then he showed me a picture of this scar on his arm.
“Talking about it just made my stomach drop […] but long story short, I owned it. We talked all night long and now we’re close friends.
“But it’s something that’s tough to deal with, but the sooner you can deal with this kind of trauma, the sooner you’re able to move past it and grow as a person – and that’s how I look at it.”
For years, Knoll and Bowsher tried to share the horrors they witnessed at Bethel with the media but were met with only silence.
The two men then began crowdfunding to develop a documentary series about their time at the school, which HBO eventually green-lit.
Knoll and Bowsher both appeared in the documentary and were brought on board as producers for the project.
The three-part documentary, Teen Torture Inc., aired on the streaming platform earlier this month, chronicling dozens of accounts of abuse at Bethel Boys Academy and other troubled teen facilities like it nationwide.
The troubled teen industry came under mounting scrutiny in 2020, following the release of Paris Hilton’s documentary, This is Paris, where she detailed allegations of abuse during her time at Provo Canyon, a Utah-based troubled teen boarding school.
Hilton has since testified in front of lawmakers about the abuse and has become an outspoken critic of troubled teen facilities.
Then, in March of this year, Netflix released its immensely popular docuseries, The Program: Cons, Cults and Kidnapping, chronicling allegations of abuse at New York’s since-shuttered troubled teen school, Academy at Ivy Ridge.
Knoll and Bowsher said they hope Teen Torture Inc. helps to bring sweeping reform to the troubled teen industry to help protect future generations of children from being exposed to the same horrors they witnessed and endured.
“I don’t have a time machine, so I can’t change what we went through, I have to deal with it,” said Knoll.
“But what we can do is make a difference with political change.”
Knoll and Bowsher have already lobbied for changes to the law in Missouri and Alabama, but they hope to make an impact at a federal level by making child abuse a federal crime, rather than leaving the fate of impacted children in the hands of the state.
The two men say they also hope the docuseries brings peace and relief to others, like them, who suffered for years in silence.
Bowsher shared, “The biggest validating thing we’ve had in this whole process is to see these people that haven’t been believed for so long and have had so much trauma in their lives finally get love and validation from the people they love and from those that once didn’t believe them.
“It’s great to have the truth come out and come together as a large voice to be heard and to be validated as a whole, that what we went through was real and we’re not liars.
“Because often that’s the narrative that gets spun, that when these kids get out and try to share what happened to them, they are called liars because they’re ‘bad kids’ and ‘troublemakers’.
“Well, they’re being heard now.”
‘CHANGE NEEDS TO COME’
Edwards did not participate in the documentary but said that he, too, hopes for sweeping changes to the law.
After leaving Bethel, Edwards fell into a life of organized crime and intravenous drug use.
After several stints in prison, Edwards rediscovered his faith and now runs a non-profit called Hospital for Souls Ministry that helps homeless former addicts get back on their feet.
He said he has forgiven his alleged abusers at Bethel and no longer holds any ill feelings about his past.
But he hopes that Teen Torture Inc. and other shows like it will protect other children from enduring the same hardships as he has.
“My time at Bethel took a massive toll on me physically and mentally, but, at the same time, it also made me who I am and I wouldn’t have the heart and the compassion or understanding of people that I do now,” Edwards said.
“But my hope and prayer is that if this documentary can shut down even one home, if this documentary can help shed light on how these facilities go unchallenged, and if this can keep even just one teenager from going through what we went through, it’s all worth it.
“This industry needs a system of checks and balances where parents are not allowed to take their kids across state lines and leave them someplace, they should have to be in the same state as their parents.
“There also needs to be outside contact and an independent body or a government body that oversees these programs.
“People shouldn’t be able to use their money and power and just do whatever they want to defenseless children.”
The U.S. Sun also spoke with two other former students of Bethel, Steven Caccamo and Colin Buckley, both of whom also attended Ivy Ridge.
Both Caccamo and Buckley attended Bethel in the mid-2000s and said while the more extreme punishments had been abandoned by instructors with state officials keeping a closer eye by that time, extreme physical punishment to the point of exhaustion remained a key philosophy of the facility’s curriculum.
Beatings and restraints at the hands of instructors and other students were also commonplace, they claimed.
Teen Torture Inc. is now streaming on MAX.