Utah’s Three Point Center Residential Treatment Facility Closes in February 2025

“Three Points Center, a residential treatment facility for adopted teens, has abruptly shut down on February 14, offering families associated with the program only ten days to adjust.

The facility’s owner, Dr. Norman Thibault, announced the closure on February 4 in a letter to parents of children in their care. He called the closure “unexpected,” but did not provide further explanation. Multiple attempts to contact Dr. Thibault were made but were unsuccessful.

The closure comes two years after the Utah Department of Health and Human Services placed Three Points Center’s license on conditional status due to multiple violations.

According to the DHHS report, the facility engaged in “cruel, severe, unusual, or unnecessary” disciplinary practices, including improper restraints and punishment meant to humiliate children.

“Utah has the majority of these types of facilities, and there have always been issues in terms of Licensing and Regulation,” said Dawn J. Post, a child rights attorney who works on broken adoption cases, which lead her to begin looking into Three Points Center. “Institutions have been allowed to continue to operate even when there’s been significant abuse revealed, even when there’s been lawsuits.”

Three Points Center has long operated under scrutiny.

A 2022 DHHS investigation found staff used unjustified restraint, physically aggressive behaviors and verbally abusive language towards children. In one case, a staff member threw furniture at a child.

“During a physical altercation between staff 5 and client 1, staff picked up a table and threw it in the direction of a client,” the report said.

Another incident described staff as using “unnecessary physical intervention on a client who was not an immediate risk to themselves or others,” including that the child was injured as a result of the altercation.

The report contains a total of 14 violations.

Prior to the state’s investigation, advocates have raised concerns about the nature of the troubled teen industry and the number of residential facilities that have been shut down due to allegations of abuse, death of children in their care and suicide.

“Three Points Center has direct connections to WWSASP (Worldwide Association of Specialty Programs),” Post said, referencing a network of controversial facilities that were shut down following reports of mistreatment. “The center’s founder, Norm Thiebault, and its leadership team previously worked at WWASP-affiliated programs, including Cross Creek and Liahona Academy – both of which have been accused of abuse.”

Unvetted staff and a pattern of neglect

Since looking into the practices at Three Points, Post was contacted by a 15-year-old who stated a staff member at Three Point Center’s North Carolina campus had a history of child exploitation charges.

“This individual was charged in 2013 with possessing and distributing child abuse materials,” Post said. “And in 2024, he pled guilty to felony distribution of obscenity.”

We were unable to independently verify this individual’s employment at Three Points, so they have not been named — but reports like this raise concerns about the vetting and training of staff at facilities like Three Points.

“There’s not a lot of vetting of staff in general in these programs,” said Post, who has worked on similar investigations, including class action lawsuits in Oregon and West Virginia.

She also recently worked on an extensive investigation involving the Youth Division Academy in Jamaica that has connections to an abusive facility in the US.

“In the investigation I’m currently doing, I’m finding many people with just a high school diploma. They have no certifications, no background in this, and yet they are being advertised as therapeutic workers, when it should be practiced mental health workers,” Post said.

What happens now?

With little warning, it is unclear where current residents of Three Points will go from here.

“I worry that they are being shipped off to other institutions and not being evaluated to see what might have happened or occurred at Three Points,” Post said.

Troubled teen facilities are prevalent in Utah due to legal latitudes that allow children to be placed in residential programs against their will. Unlike states like California, where minors must consent to mental health treatment, Utah allows parents to keep their children in treatment centers until they turn 18 — whether they want to be there or not.

“Utah is a parents’ rights state,” Post said. “Kids do not have to consent to their mental health treatment. They cannot leave without a parent’s permission, and that makes Utah very attractive to families looking for a locked-down facility.”

Three Points is specifically advertised as a “helping troubled teens who are adopted,” potentially making the reporting and monitoring of the facility more difficult.

“I believe that the fact that children are adopted actually complicates the issue in terms of reporting,” Post said. “People will often look back at their foster care records and allude to other issues so you can’t believe what they say. There’s skepticism when it comes to investigating adoptees. . . What we’re talking about here is the warehousing of children and teenagers. My grave concern is they’re not being brough home and they’re not being checked on. They’re simply being transferred to another facility without really any oversight or check in by their adoptive families.”

Larger implications for Utah’s troubled teen industry

The closing of Three Points Center comes amid ongoing reform of residential treatment programs, both in the state and nationally.

In 2021, Utah passed new legislation to increase oversight on youth residential centers, following testimony from survivors, including Paris Hilton, who spoke about the abuse she suffered at Provo Canyon School.

The law requires more frequent inspections, restricts the use of restraints, and bans the use of “cruel, severe, or unusual practice on a child,” including discipline that is designed to frighten or humiliate, physical exercise as punishment, hitting, spanking, shaking, or aggressive physical contact, among many other limitations.

KUTV reached out to the owner of Three Points with the intention of gaining more clarity about the reason for the center’s closure. We planned to ask whether this was connected to past allegations or if there was another explanation for the sudden closure, like financial issues.

We did not hear back ahead of publication.”

Utah treatment center closes abruptly after history of violations and abuse
[KUTV 2/14/25 by Liv Kelleher]

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