Investigations

Reckless Ben infiltrated Provo Canyon School as a student, documenting allegations of abuse

Hidden-camera footage shows a staff hire who failed a background check, a 30-year-old admitted as a teenager, and a billing call after the YouTuber escaped.

In Provo, Utah, YouTuber Reckless Ben infiltrated Provo Canyon School as a student while a friend joined the staff with a hidden camera. He posted the footage on Aug. 15, 2026.

Provo Canyon School is a for-profit residential program for teenagers, with campuses in Provo and Springville. Paris Hilton was sent there as a teenager in the late 1990s and has spent years trying to shut it down. This summer two families sued the school and its owner, Universal Health Services, accusing staff of delaying emergency care. In July, Utah revoked licenses for both campuses.

A former student contacted Ben and told him he would rather go to jail than return. Ben went in to film what daily life looked like. Without cameras, he said, the allegations were just stories, and the school's public reviews stayed five stars.

He sent a friend named Sheldon to apply for a mental health technician job. Sheldon never finished high school and has a criminal record that includes stealing a car. The interview came down to one question about breaking up a fight. A supervisor asked whether Sheldon would be willing to "get your hands a little bit dirty" in a restraint. He was hired and started work before a background check came back.

Utah's Office of Background Processing later found Sheldon "not eligible to have direct access to children and/or vulnerable adults," according to a state notice. The school kept him on the floor anyway. "Normally you fail a background check and you're fired," Ben said.

Trainers told new hires the campus was a locked program where most students did not want to be. Almost all of them, a trainer said, had made serious suicide attempts, and some had stayed five or six years. Staff described mechanical, chemical, and physical restraints, and said the campus averaged 250 to 300 restraints a month for about 140 students. When a boy would not switch chairs, a trainer said, staff went hands-on. Another joked that staff had been "lovingly slamming them to the ground."

New hires were told not to speak to reporters. Trainers said a previous employee had been a private investigator wearing camera glasses, and that the company suspected Hilton had sent him. The rest of training was restraint drills and claims that Hilton had lied about her time at the school.

A required medical exam was not a real test. An instructor walked the class through the answers while talking about fruit and dogs. Sheldon left with an American Heart Association certificate.

Ben, who is 30, then checked himself in as a student. The school took no one older than 17. A fan played his father on the phone. On intake forms and in calls with admissions, they said the boy was having "gay thoughts."

Staff training had called the campus LGBTQ-friendly, and Utah bans conversion therapy. Admissions took the case anyway. Nobody asked for a birth certificate. They asked for a note from a doctor or therapist, and several therapists refused to recommend the school. One eventually signed a letter citing "sexual identity confusion, which has been described as unwanted."

The school sent a packet advertising a swimming pool, a high ropes course, and a class schedule. Tuition was about $1,500 a day, with $49,400 due at admission, two months in advance. Ben did not have the money. He presented a card that declined, said a bank had flagged the charge as fraud, and told staff he was leaving that day on a trip with no phone service. They booked him for that evening.

Inside, the brochure did not match the grounds. A manager said the pool was "just a big hole in the ground" with a crack in it and was not reopening. A staff member said the ropes course had not been used since the 1980s.

Classroom time often meant students watching short videos. One staff member put children to bed at 7:30 p.m. because he did not want to deal with them any longer. Food included expired products, and one Thanksgiving meal, Sheldon said, was two frozen Uncrustables. A nurse argued on camera that a person cannot overdose on Tylenol.

Isolation was routine. Staff and students called the seclusion unit "the gulag." One student who tried to escape was held there about two months. Another was locked in for stealing a bag of chips, a week if he behaved and longer if he did not. Ben spent his first 30 hours in that room.

The classroom was no better. A teacher told him school would be "demeaning and embarrassing," threatened restraints, and told students not to ask for the bathroom. Ben went 17 hours without using a toilet rather than ask.

On a recreation break he threw a basketball over a mesh fence, climbed a hoop, and ran through neighboring yards. Two days later the school called the number it had for his father. The first subject was not a missing student. It was the declined card. Hours later, staff said he had jumped the fence and that police had been notified.

Still posing as the parent, Ben set conditions for the boy's return: repair the pool and ropes course, serve edible food, teach classes, and stop locking children up over a bag of chips. The calls that followed went to voicemail. When someone picked up, the subject was the unpaid balance. A staff member eventually claimed to have no information on the student. Ben closed by promising a second part.

Ben was not the first to describe the school this way. Hilton has alleged beatings, forced medication, strip searches, and isolation during the 11 months she spent there as a teenager. She testified in Congress and called the campus "the worst of the worst."

In June, two families joined her in Provo to file suit. One says a 13-year-old was slammed onto his head in May and suffered a fractured jaw and intracranial bleeding. The other says a teenage girl vomited for days and was given ibuprofen. Her treating doctors later identified acute kidney injury.

On July 6, the Utah Department of Health and Human Services revoked the license for the Springville campus, citing a failure to protect clients, unnecessary restraint, and unreported incidents. On July 17 it revoked the Provo campus license. That notice named pain-compliance holds, discipline meant to frighten or humiliate, and deprivation of water, rest, and toilet access. The last item was the one Ben went 17 hours without. The Provo campus was ordered to stop services by Aug. 16.

Neither the school nor Universal Health Services has commented on the video.

Source video: I Went Undercover in a Troubled Teen Facility