Youths’ Parents Back VisionQuest : Petition Defending Firm Signed by Juveniles’ Families

About 40 parents of convicted juvenile delinquents from San Diego County demanded Thursday night that their wayward children remain with the controversial reform program, VisionQuest, despite recent allegations of physical abuses at a VisionQuest wilderness camp in New Mexico.

The parents met at VisionQuest’s offices in Clairemont to sign a petition that they hope will help convince the Board of Supervisors to continue the county’s contract with the Arizona-based organization.

The supervisors have taken no formal position on the VisionQuest matter. However, many of the parents are fearful that an undercurrent of anti-VisionQuest sentiment among probation officers threatens to sever the county’s ties to the program.

VisionQuest officials have contended that county probation officers are opposed to the program because of professional jealousies. Company officials say that their run-for-profit methods produce a much lower rate of criminal recidivism than do more conventional government-run reform efforts.

Several parents, among them Frank and Barbara Shipp of San Diego, said Thursday night that they view VisionQuest as the only means of salvation for their troubled offspring.

“If they take this away from him, I see him going right down the rat hole of the state penal system,” Shipp said of his 17-year-old delinquent son, Frank III. The youth has a lengthy history of criminal offenses, including theft and assault, his parents said.

The younger Shipp recently was returned to San Diego County Juvenile Hall by county Probation Department officials after he was involved in a scuffle with VisionQuest counselors at the New Mexico camp. The 6-foot-4, 190-pound Shipp received a neck bruise during the altercation.

Probation Department investigators have alleged that the youth was abused at the camp, but his parents disagree, saying that their son--who they conceded does not want to return to VisionQuest--bruises easily.

“If you want to call it abuse, I guess it depends on where you’re standing when you say it,” Mrs. Shipp said. “All I know is that it was working for him and that if he doesn’t succeed in VisionQuest, it’s three years in the California Youth Authority.”

Wagon Train Treks

VisionQuest, perhaps best known for its cross-country wagon train treks, was developed in the early 1970s as an alternative to incarceration for wayward youths. The program stresses stringent discipline and challenging, outdoor activities as a means to motivate young offenders, many of whom are hard-core felons. There are about 600 teen-agers committed to VisionQuest, including nearly 90 from San Diego County.

The county pays about $27,000 annually for each youth sent to the program.

Some teen-agers in recent months have complained that they were physically abused at the VisionQuest camp near Silver City, N.M., where about 70 youths, including 30 from San Diego, had been housed before being moved to another VisionQuest facility in Elfrida, Ariz.

San Diego County officials had asked that local youths be transferred from the New Mexico camp, pending New Mexico’s licensing review of the minimum-security wilderness camp. New Mexico’s Health and Environmental Department later denied VisionQuest a provisional operating license, saying there were no state standards by which to gauge such a program.

16-Year-Old Died

It was at the New Mexico camp in April that a 16-year-old San Diego County youth, Mario Cano, died after staff members discounted his pleas for medical help. Cano had been sent to the VisionQuest program for receiving a stolen bicycle.

A county grand jury in New Mexico has cleared VisionQuest of any criminal culpability in Cano’s death. However, that incident and other allegations of youths being “roughed up” there continue to be probed by both federal and county grand juries in San Diego.

Meeting Called ‘Spontaneous’

While VisionQuest officials admit that they have received considerable adverse publicity lately, they denied this week that they had orchestrated Thursday night’s meeting, in which parents expressed overwhelming support for the program.

“I neither encouraged it nor discouraged it,” said R. Ledger (Bob) Burton, VisionQuest’s chief executive officer and co-founder. “It was kind of spontaneous.”

Several key county officials, including Presiding Juvenile Court Judge Napoleon Jones and Chief Probation Officer Cecil Steppe, were invited to the meeting, but did not attend.