Therapy or abuse? Controversial treatments may sink Cascade

Everett, who spurred the probe, has since recanted her story and now campaigns in support of Cascade. Everett told the Deseret Morning News in September 2002 that state investigators misled her during interviews.

"They took my statements totally out of context," she said. "Most of what I said was true, but they put little spots of lies into it. They made it sound like it was torture, and it wasn't."

Dee Thorell, an investigator with the state license division assigned to the Cascade case, declined comment.

In June, Cascade was sued by Cheryl Denise Ely Haws, who said that during therapy sessions she was led to believe she was lesbian and that she had been the victim of ritualistic, satanic abuse as a child. The lawsuit also alleges that Gwilliam recommended Haws discipline her seven children with physical restraint, and that if they failed to obey her, she could make them drink a large glass of water.

Haws was seeking counseling for depression and marital problems, but she said the sessions made her suicidal and destroyed her 20-year marriage. VanBloem said he would like to comment on the lawsuit but cannot because the matter is still in court.

Then there is a Web site — www.kidscomefirst.info — that implies holding therapy has caused the death of seven children and suggests that Cascade is at least partly to blame for the deaths of two of those children, including Krystal Tibbets, a 3-year-old Midvale girl who was suffocated by her father in 1997.

Her father, Donald L. Tibbets, who says he was trained by VanBloem, was released in 2002 from prison after serving a five-year sentence for child-abuse homicide.

VanBloem says he never told Tibbets to practice holding therapy in the home and says the man suffers a history of violence. He has sued the creators of the Web site for defamation.

"They want to stop us because they think we are akin to something evil. They fully believe we are doing harm to kids," he says.

VanBloem insists he doesn't lie on top of children and restrains only those children who kick and punch. Sometimes, his therapy sessions don't include holding at all. He has never hurt children, he says, or instructed others to.

"We were trained to be kind of harsh in our words, and I never did that well because I thought it wasn't that great," VanBloem says. "I never liked it because it was hard on kids. We don't do that anymore.

"We didn't leave that therapy because it wasn't working. We left it because there were less intense ways to accomplish the same thing. We wanted to make it as easy as possible on the kids. Now we approach kids in a more loving way."