As a resident living next to multiple homes within Orange Park Acres that Newport Academy manages, on tens of occasions we have experienced children unattended for in the neighborhood, who have escaped or gone what is referred to as AWOL. When the children are accompanied, often vans will park illegally in the street or horse trails endangering others as well as the business they represent. Last Thursday a car was following a child after dark without their lights on (on a street with no lights or sidewalks) and came very close to our son retrieving the mail. Some AWOL children have been found screaming, crying and disarranged. Last summer a child visited a local grocery store, trying to steal alcohol. The same child was walking down the street with no shoes on in August of 2018 in 90+ degree weather on black asphalt.
I cannot believe this place is allowed to continue to operate! I'm reading story after story about the incompetence at this joke of a facility. How many more of these news events need to happen before some type of governing body decided to shut this place down? Here's the latest - the mom of that "Affluenza" kid tested positive for drugs in a Texas jail:
I'm not saying that Newport is responsible for this woman's drug addiction. The point is, if there was any real treatment happening at Newport, the "affluenza" teen might have had a fighting chance at turning around his life. Based on what my child experienced there, I'm not suprised by what I'm reading. This is a horrible place and shoudl be avoided. No therapy, no treatment. My son wen't in mildly depressed with a little bit of anxiety and came out suicidal.
I've been to treatment five times. The fifth time things really clicked for me. Now I try to be of service to other people.
One way I try to be of service is to share my experience, strength and hope, including my experiences in treatment. I try to be positive and not make judgements.
Anyway, I feel like I have to say that you do NOT want to go to this program. I don't want to say bad things because it isn't good for my sobriety. I will just say that my use got worse when I was in this program and right after.
Some of it is my fault, but I honestly got nothing from this program that helped. It really hurt me and set me back more than anything.
I never needed to be threatened or intimidated or called names. I just needed help. A lot of the people working for Newport Academy seemed like they needed to be in treatment themselves. Ask people who have actually been to a program before you go there and stay away from Newport Academy.
This is also the same place that the "Affluenza" kid was sent to. It's been made clear in the media how he turned out.
My wife and I had the misfortune of being sent to his program by a consultant, who later turned out to be a con-artist herself. She pressured us into enrolling our son. I think he would have been in better hands most any place else.
We pressed about missed family therapy appointments, our child being given the WRONG MEDICATIONS, the right medications in the WRONG DOSAGE, alleged illicit drug use in the house, the fact that our son started smoking for the first time while at Newport Academy, and perhaps most distressing, he started cutting himself.
Never did we get satisfactory answers. We finally were able to speak with the founder and the experience was a joke. He was flippant, arrogant, talked over us and treated us as the problem.
When I did a little research after the fact, I learned that he didn't have ANY CREDENTIALS to be providing treatment. He acknowledged that he doesn't even have a college degree. He told us that he knew what he was doing because he once used drugs and stopped.
When I asked him how that qualified him to treat kids with other issues, he said, "I surround myself with good people." Maybe so, but we never met any of them during the longest four weeks of our lives.
I was terribly let down by our experience at Newport Academy. I know that everyone is doing their best but for the money I was expecting much more, and far better results.
We wanted our son to learn some new ways to deal with the difficulties he was facing, and it seems clear that he was just kept in a very expensive holding pattern and came back no better equipped to face these challenges than when he left.
We didn't send him to merely be kept sober for 30 days; we wanted him to be given the guidanmce to keep sober going forward.
Worst experience ever! My daughter was traumatized by bullies at Newport. the bullies were both other girls and staff members. When she tried to tell me what was going on over the phone a counselor took the phone away from her. She convinced me that I was being manipulated and that my daughter simply wanted to come home. When I arrived for a family therapy session, I was shocked at how awful my daughter looked. She was thin, had dark circles under her eyes and as a mother I knew that she wasn’t eating or sleeping. When I asked her what was going on- she seemed afraid to say anything and kept looking at the floor. (This was not something that I had ever seen before.) When I tried to get her to talk- the therapist would keep redirecting us to talk about family issues and not what was happening in treatment. I’m ashamed to say that I fell for her ploy. Over the course of the next two weeks I had disturbing phone calls in which I could hear people fighting in the background. Every call felt like she was holding something back. Finally after four weeks, my husband and I checked her out of the program despite heavy pressure to keep her enrolled for another month. Once home, she had nightmares, problems eating and what we later learned were exaggerated reflexes. When I learned the specifics of her emotional abuse from both girls and staff as well as physical abuse from other girls, I called to express by concerns. I was again told that my child was manipulating. This time I was told that she was just trying to make me feel guilty for sending her to treatment. Another counselor told me that she needed to “toughen up”. I don’t want my kid to get tough. I want her to get well. She is now in a program where she has spent the first two weeks dealing with trauma of going to Newport. Nobody at Newport seems to care. Hopefully by posting in a public forum, I can get them care and/or save another family from going through what we did.
By the way - this is the same place that housed the "Affluenza" case kid (Ethan Couch). He was a drunk driver that ran over 4 people and instead of getting jail time, he was sentenced to a year at Newport Academy! His defense was that he didn't know right from wrong because he was brough up affluent! After a fll year of "treatment" he was released and was immediately back to his old ways. Last I heard, he was on the run from law enforcement and was eventually apprehended in Mexico! It just goes to show the lack of treatment that actually goes on in this place!
Newport Academy Reviews
As a resident living next to multiple homes within Orange Park Acres that Newport Academy manages, on tens of occasions we have experienced children unattended for in the neighborhood, who have escaped or gone what is referred to as AWOL. When the children are accompanied, often vans will park illegally in the street or horse trails endangering others as well as the business they represent. Last Thursday a car was following a child after dark without their lights on (on a street with no lights or sidewalks) and came very close to our son retrieving the mail. Some AWOL children have been found screaming, crying and disarranged. Last summer a child visited a local grocery store, trying to steal alcohol. The same child was walking down the street with no shoes on in August of 2018 in 90+ degree weather on black asphalt.
I cannot believe this place is allowed to continue to operate! I'm reading story after story about the incompetence at this joke of a facility. How many more of these news events need to happen before some type of governing body decided to shut this place down? Here's the latest - the mom of that "Affluenza" kid tested positive for drugs in a Texas jail:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/affluenza-teens-mom-texas-jail-positive-drug-test-124604633.html
I'm not saying that Newport is responsible for this woman's drug addiction. The point is, if there was any real treatment happening at Newport, the "affluenza" teen might have had a fighting chance at turning around his life. Based on what my child experienced there, I'm not suprised by what I'm reading. This is a horrible place and shoudl be avoided. No therapy, no treatment. My son wen't in mildly depressed with a little bit of anxiety and came out suicidal.
I've been to treatment five times. The fifth time things really clicked for me. Now I try to be of service to other people.
One way I try to be of service is to share my experience, strength and hope, including my experiences in treatment. I try to be positive and not make judgements.
Anyway, I feel like I have to say that you do NOT want to go to this program. I don't want to say bad things because it isn't good for my sobriety. I will just say that my use got worse when I was in this program and right after.
Some of it is my fault, but I honestly got nothing from this program that helped. It really hurt me and set me back more than anything.
I never needed to be threatened or intimidated or called names. I just needed help. A lot of the people working for Newport Academy seemed like they needed to be in treatment themselves. Ask people who have actually been to a program before you go there and stay away from Newport Academy.
This is also the same place that the "Affluenza" kid was sent to. It's been made clear in the media how he turned out.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/affluenza-dui-case-happened-night-accident-left-people/story?id=34481444
cnn.com/2016/04/13/us/texas-affluenza-ethan-couch/
My wife and I had the misfortune of being sent to his program by a consultant, who later turned out to be a con-artist herself. She pressured us into enrolling our son. I think he would have been in better hands most any place else.
We pressed about missed family therapy appointments, our child being given the WRONG MEDICATIONS, the right medications in the WRONG DOSAGE, alleged illicit drug use in the house, the fact that our son started smoking for the first time while at Newport Academy, and perhaps most distressing, he started cutting himself.
Never did we get satisfactory answers. We finally were able to speak with the founder and the experience was a joke. He was flippant, arrogant, talked over us and treated us as the problem.
When I did a little research after the fact, I learned that he didn't have ANY CREDENTIALS to be providing treatment. He acknowledged that he doesn't even have a college degree. He told us that he knew what he was doing because he once used drugs and stopped.
When I asked him how that qualified him to treat kids with other issues, he said, "I surround myself with good people." Maybe so, but we never met any of them during the longest four weeks of our lives.
I was terribly let down by our experience at Newport Academy. I know that everyone is doing their best but for the money I was expecting much more, and far better results.
We wanted our son to learn some new ways to deal with the difficulties he was facing, and it seems clear that he was just kept in a very expensive holding pattern and came back no better equipped to face these challenges than when he left.
We didn't send him to merely be kept sober for 30 days; we wanted him to be given the guidanmce to keep sober going forward.
Sadly, this is NOT what happened
Worst experience ever! My daughter was traumatized by bullies at Newport. the bullies were both other girls and staff members. When she tried to tell me what was going on over the phone a counselor took the phone away from her. She convinced me that I was being manipulated and that my daughter simply wanted to come home. When I arrived for a family therapy session, I was shocked at how awful my daughter looked. She was thin, had dark circles under her eyes and as a mother I knew that she wasn’t eating or sleeping. When I asked her what was going on- she seemed afraid to say anything and kept looking at the floor. (This was not something that I had ever seen before.) When I tried to get her to talk- the therapist would keep redirecting us to talk about family issues and not what was happening in treatment. I’m ashamed to say that I fell for her ploy. Over the course of the next two weeks I had disturbing phone calls in which I could hear people fighting in the background. Every call felt like she was holding something back. Finally after four weeks, my husband and I checked her out of the program despite heavy pressure to keep her enrolled for another month. Once home, she had nightmares, problems eating and what we later learned were exaggerated reflexes. When I learned the specifics of her emotional abuse from both girls and staff as well as physical abuse from other girls, I called to express by concerns. I was again told that my child was manipulating. This time I was told that she was just trying to make me feel guilty for sending her to treatment. Another counselor told me that she needed to “toughen up”. I don’t want my kid to get tough. I want her to get well. She is now in a program where she has spent the first two weeks dealing with trauma of going to Newport. Nobody at Newport seems to care. Hopefully by posting in a public forum, I can get them care and/or save another family from going through what we did.
By the way - this is the same place that housed the "Affluenza" case kid (Ethan Couch). He was a drunk driver that ran over 4 people and instead of getting jail time, he was sentenced to a year at Newport Academy! His defense was that he didn't know right from wrong because he was brough up affluent! After a fll year of "treatment" he was released and was immediately back to his old ways. Last I heard, he was on the run from law enforcement and was eventually apprehended in Mexico! It just goes to show the lack of treatment that actually goes on in this place!