Son's death at camp prompts $45M suit

The last time Dawn Boyd Woodson saw her youngest child alive, he asked her to spray him with the perfume she kept in her purse.

"I said, 'What if the other boys make fun of you?'" Woodson remembered about their final chat. "He just told me, 'I don't care. It reminds me of you, Mom ... like you're with me."'

Fifteen-year-old Caleb Jensen had already been away from his mother and siblings for seven months. Following a bout with the law, the troubled Murray teen was taken into custody by the state juvenile justice system in the summer of 2007.

"It was emotional," Woodson said through tears during an interview this week. "My baby just wanted to come home."

Five weeks later, Caleb was found dead, bundled in a feces- and urine-soaked sleeping bag, according to an autopsy report. His death was attributed to a days- to weeks-old "large amount" of staph infection, a methicillin-resistant Staph aureus.

Now, Woodson is suing Utah County doctor Keith R. Hooker, the now-defunct camp Alternative Youth Adventures and its New Jersey-based parent corporation, Community Education Centers Inc. — all of which had been entrusted with her son's health while he attended a court-ordered, 60-day wilderness camp in Colorado. The lawsuit also names the Utah divisions of Child and Family Services, which had custody over Caleb, and Juvenile Justice Services, which had sent him to the camp. Neither division had been served a copy of the lawsuit as of Friday.

Woodson's 50-page lawsuit, filed Jan. 13 in West Jordan's 3rd District Court, seeks at least $45 million in total compensatory and punitive damages for the agonizing death of her son.

Caleb was not the first Utah child to have died in wilderness camps for wayward teenagers. Since 1999, three other children have died in such camps in Utah.

Christopher Greeder, spokesman for Community Education Centers, calls Caleb's death "a terrible tragedy," but he insists "there was no wrongdoing on the part of the company or staff.

"CED was at all times in full compliance with the regulations governing the wilderness program," Greeder said.

A Colorado grand jury disagreed, though, and in July 2007 indicted camp director James Omer, medical director Hooker and field EMT Ben Askins on charges of manslaughter and fatal child abuse.

A judge dismissed the complaints against all of the defendants except Community Education Centers. A trial is scheduled for March over the boy's death.