Newport Academy Newport Academy Founder Lacks Credentials; Staff Screwed Up Sons Meds California

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.