InvestigateWest

The Cruelest Lie: How Idaho allows rape, abuse and cruelty to flourish inside the state’s youth residential facilities

Wilson Criscione

Reporting from InvestigateWest exposed allegations of child abuse and neglect at state-licensed residential treatment facilities for youths in Idaho. The programs “capitalize on a nationwide foster care shortage and states’ failures to provide mental health treatment to youths,” Wilson Criscione reported.

One judge said: “Criscione has the receipts — not only the compelling, horrific narrative accounts but intensively researched data backing up survivor’s stories and, sadly, making clear that while each is unique, they’re all common to a criminally faulted system — a system changed by the cleansing light of investigative reporting.”