'A huge relief': Lakeland Girls Academy closes, drew scrutiny for teen's death in 2020

LAKELAND — A Lakeland “restoration home” and school for teenage girls has closed a year after it drew attention for its handling of medical complaints from a student who died in 2020.

Lakeland Girls Academy closed on March 4, said Marilyn McGraw, director of human resources for Adult and Teen Challenge Southeast in Columbus, Georgia. The Lakeland facility was part of the Christian nonprofit Global Teen Challenge.

“We have decided to close that and move just to reopen in another location in Florida,” McGraw said. “It’s just not the general area that has really done well for us, so we're looking at relocating someplace else — opening up another adolescent girls’ center someplace else within the state of Florida.”

How it began: Faith-based Lakeland Girls Academy draws scrutiny after teen's death

Also: Former residents say Lakeland Girls Academy was like prison

Police investigate: No charges filed after Polk County Sheriff's Office closes Naomi Wood death investigation

McGraw declined to say whether the negative publicity surrounding the death of Naomi Wood affected the organization’s decision to close the boarding school.

Wood, a 17-year-old from Vermont, died on May 19, 2020, just over three months after entering the program. A medical examiner determined that Wood died of a seizure disorder, after an autopsy found no signs of trauma or illegal drugs in her system.

Wood’s death gained public attention last year, following the release of a report by the Florida Department of Children and Families. The report included a harsh assessment of the program’s methods in a case summary from the director of a Child Protection Team, a division of the Florida Department of Health.

The investigator, Dr. Carol Lilly, found that Wood had complained for weeks about abdominal pain but had not been given medical attention. Instead, the staff gave Wood repeated doses of Pepto-Bismol and said they would pray for her, Lilly wrote.

Wood began vomiting repeatedly on May 18, but the staff did not seek medical care for her until finding her unconscious in her shared bedroom the next evening, the report said. At that point, a staff member called for emergency help, and Wood was taken to Lakeland Regional Health Medical Center, where she was soon pronounced dead.

In her report, Lilly criticized Lakeland Girls Academy for inadequate supervision and medical neglect. She wrote that LGA did not have a method for evaluating illness or seeking medical care for residents.

Lakeland Girls Academy leaders told the state investigator that they had made changes to the program, creating a position of medical coordinator, who would assess girls' medical needs and document their treatment. The report said LGA would take residents to an emergency department or urgent-care center if symptoms continued for 72 hours and would refer girls to other providers for mental health treatment.

The Polk County Sheriff’s Office investigated Wood’s death and released a final report last November. The agency’s report described her death as natural, and PCSO closed the case without filing any charges.

Parents not informed

Lakeland Girls Academy served as a “restoration home,” a residential program for girls ages 12 to 17 considered to have behavioral problems. The girls were entered into the Bible-centered program by their parents or guardians.

The facility’s website says its students were girls “who have just gotten off track.” The site lists a range of issues residents typically have, including low self-esteem, academic struggles, rebellion, anger, defiance, theft, manipulation and promiscuity.

Wood’s parents, Al and Deb Wood, have said that they didn’t learn of the details surrounding her death until they read the case summary after seeing news coverage of the incident. The family retained Florida lawyer Glenn Goldman last year and opened discussions with Teen Challenge.

Al Wood and Nehemiah Wood, Naomi's older brother, told The Ledger on Friday that the family plans to file a lawsuit Monday against Teen Challenge on a claim of negligence. Nehemiah Wood said they will seek punitive damages.

The family has been in mediation with Teen Challenge, Al Wood said, but has not been satisfied with the progress of those discussions.

Legal action: Parents of teen girl who died at Lakeland Girls Academy consider lawsuit

Al Wood said his parents sometimes hosted Teen Challenge representatives in their home when he was young. Wood said he and his wife decided to send Naomi to Lakeland Girls Academy because of the trust they had developed in the program.

"We found out a lot of disturbing things that are not being dealt with appropriately, and people need to know about it," Al Wood said. "They haven’t taken any responsibility for Naomi’s death. That’s the bottom line. They could have done something. They didn’t do what they should have and now our daughter died because of it."

Al Wood said that during mediation discussions, someone mentioned an article published last October in The New Yorker in which former students raised claims of abuse and neglect at Lakeland Girls Academy and other Teen Challenge programs,

Wood said a representative of Teen Challenge reacted with scorn, saying the article would have no effect because readers of The New Yorker don't fit the demographic of potential Teen Challenge clients.

Nehemiah Wood said he and his parents and siblings visited Lakeland Girls Academy a week after Naomi's death. He said Dan Williams, the co-executive director, took them to her room and pointed to an upper bunk bed on which he said Naomi was found unresponsive before her death.

Wood said he later learned from the state report that Naomi had been found on the floor, leading him to question the truth of the account the family received from Teen Challenge's leaders.

"What seems to be a willingness to lie to us at a time when we were going through a sacred process of grief and death is really troubling and has been really upsetting to think about," Wood said.

Teen Challenge, a collection of nonprofits operating more than 1,000 facilities in the United States and other countries, has received tens of millions of dollars in state and federal grants, The New Yorker reported last year.

Parents of former students told The Ledger last year that Lakeland Girls Academy charged about $5,000 a month and did not bill through insurance plans. Girls typically remained in the program for 15 months, though that period could be extended if LGA leaders decided a girl needed more time, former students said.

Former students said that attendance had declined at Lakeland Girls Academy after the publicity surrounding Wood’s death. One of them, Sela Freuler, directed The Ledger to a Facebook group created by the mother of a girl who was in the program until its closing.

A post in the group, which has since been made private, suggested that the program had dwindled to four students and was closing for financial reasons. Freuler said the facility had 10 bedrooms, each containing two sets of bunk beds.

McGraw declined to say how many girls were in the program when it closed.

Dan Williams did not return a phone call left two weeks ago. A knock went unanswered Wednesday afternoon at the school’s office in South Lakeland, and no one could be seen on the campus.

Subscribers: Ex-students complain of inattention, extreme control

The facility was a member of the Florida Association of Christian Child Caring Agencies, based in Tampa. The association’s director, Mike Higgins, did not respond to a phone message last week.

FACCCA oversees several other restoration homes in the state, along with facilities described on its website as residential care, maternity and adoption and substitute family homes. The programs for teens are exempt under Florida law from regulation by the Department of Children and Families. Dan Williams is listed on FACCCA’s board of directors.

The private school at Lakeland Girls Academy was registered with the state. The school used an academic program from Edgenuity Virtual Academy, which is accredited through Cognia and the Northwest Accreditation Commission.

One former student, Hannah Teolis, said students were required to read a book by David Wilkerson, the Pentecostal preacher who founded Teen Challenge, as part of their studies.

McGraw said Teen Challenge’s leaders have not yet decided what to do with the roughly three-acre site on Carter Road. The property contains about 10,000 square feet of housing, according to the LGA website.

Methods criticized

Lakeland Girls Academy has become a target of criticism since Wood’s death among a network of former students who have used online advocacy with a goal of pressuring the facility to close. Former students, some of whom attended with Wood, described an atmosphere of harsh control and limited communication with their families, and some called the program a cult.

The state report raised concerns about methods the LGA staff used, including isolation and forced silence.

Former students said residents were not allowed to take prescription medications for anxiety, depression or ADHD, though many were dealing with mental-health issues. The ex-students and one parent told The Ledger that Lakeland Girls Academy did not provide the level of counseling that it promised.

In her report, Lilly said she found no evidence that Wood had received mental health services for her anxiety and the nightmares described by her roommates.

Officials with Lakeland Girls Academy and Teen Challenge have not given interviews since The Ledger first reported on Wood’s death. On its website, the facility said it offered individual and group counseling and did not use discipline to teach lessons and not to punish.

The site said LGA did not use corporal punishment, withholding or changing food allowances or physical restraint, except when a child posed an imminent threat to herself or others.

Former residents said the staff forbid any mention of cell phones, social media or secular entertainment, even punishing girls for humming music that wasn’t explicitly Christian. Residents were also barred from saying the names of girls who had left the program.

Lakeland Girls Academy briefly posted a statement on its website after the story of Wood’s death emerged: “We are being attacked online by anti-program activists adding dozens of fake reviews, using us as a test case with a goal to take down such programs for troubled youth across the nation.”

Talos Films, a production company, will feature Lakeland Girls Academy in a docu-series about "troubled teen" programs scheduled to premiere this summer on the streaming platform Discovery+.

Freuler, 29, attended Lakeland Girls Academy from 2007 to 2009 and describes herself as a “survivor” of the program. Now living in Missouri, she welcomed the news of LGA’s closing but said she is troubled that the program might reemerge somewhere else.

'Huge relief'

“I think it's definitely a success in terms of, you know, we don't have to worry about children's safety, at least there, on the micro level,” Freuler said. “So that's a huge relief. It shows them that we mean business, and that we do have an impact and we are being heard.”

After the report on Wood’s death, Lakeland Girls Academy updated its website to say the program did not accept girls who were suicidal or had attempted suicide or those who were medically unstable or diagnosed with severe psychotic disorders.

Freuler said Lakeland Girls Academy continued to accept those who had a history of suicide attempts or drug addiction. In video testimonials posted on the site, some students discussed their addictions to heroin and other drugs.

The LGA website features about a dozen testimonials from girls, identified only by first names, who said the program had helped them gain self-worth and overcome such problems as drinking, self-destructive behavior and addictions to drugs and sex.

Freuler said she and other activists are considering the filing of a class-action lawsuit against Teen Challenge over the program’s mishandling of alleged sexual abuse.

Freuler said activists will continue pursuing “justice” for Wood. She said they had contacted the embassy of Liberia, the African nation from which Wood was adopted. Nehemiah Wood, Naomi’s brother, said by email that he supports that effort.

“Liberia has in the past expressed interest in involving themselves in cases in which Liberian adoptees were abused or killed in the States,” Freuler said. “So Liberia has expressed interest in doing the same in this situation, and so that's exciting – especially because Teen Challenge, a lot of their clientele are adoptees.”

Gary White can be reached at gary.white@theledger.com or 863-802-7518. Follow on Twitter @garywhite13.

This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Lakeland Girls Academy closes, drew scrutiny for Naomi Wood's death