Sorenson's Ranch School: History, Abuse Allegations & Survivor Accounts
Latest News and Updates
Staff member at Utah troubled teen school charged with showing students pornography 2025
RICHFIELD — A former staff member at a school for troubled youth in Sevier County is facing criminal charges accusing him of showing students pornography.
Daniel Stoddard, 45, of Richfield, was charged Thursday in 6th District Court with four counts of distributing materials offensive to a minor, a third-degree felony.
On March 25, a sheriff's detective was told by three students of Sorenson's Ranch in Koosharem that Stoddard showed them a pornographic video on his phone while he was working
Utah ranch for ‘troubled teens’ could lose its license for subjecting kids to forced labor, ‘repetitive walking’
2021
Sorenson’s Ranch School must retrain its staff and abide by state rules or close.
A Utah ranch for so-called troubled teens could lose its license for forcing kids to chop wood, shovel manure or walk for hours on end as a punishment.
Officials with the Utah Office of Licensing say that two years ago Sorenson’s Ranch School, based in the central Utah town of Koosharem, said it would stop using what it called “Mountain Camp.” School administrators described it as a “low level” camp where students haul wood, improve the land, and complete “therapy assignments.”
Sorenson’s Ranch didn’t stop, the state wrote in a “notice of agency action”
Ex-instructor at Utah ranch for troubled teens pleads ‘no contest’ to charges of sex with minor
2017
KOOSHAREM, Sevier County — A former instructor at a Utah ranch for troubled teens plead “no contest” to multiple counts of molestation at a court in California, according to the Visalia Times-Delta.
Utah resident Wendi Sorenson, 37, was charged with multiple counts of having sex with a minor in December 2015. She recently plead “no contest” to at least three counts of unlawful sexual intercourse with a person under 18, four counts of oral copulation of a person under 16, contact with a minor for sexual offense, meeting with a minor for lewd purposes and arranging a meeting with a minor for lewd purposes.
STATE REGULATORS REVOKE LICENSE OF PSYCHOLOGIST ACCUSED OF ABUSE
1991
State licensing regulators have revoked the license of a psychologist accused of sexually molesting and assaulting male teenagers under his care, an order said.
Laurence C. Reiser, now living in Salt Lake City, was a therapist for the Sorensen Ranch and Rowlett Group Home in Sevier County when he had sexual contact with nine juvenile patients between 1989 and 1990.
Police Raid Home in Koosharem for Child Pornography.
2021
Officials with the Sevier County Sheriff’s Office and the Attorney Generals Office raided a home in Koosharem. The raid was in response to a warrant on Roger Jackman Jr., age 54, who was suspected of downloading and distributing child pornography.
The Attorney Generals Office provided a mobile lab to the scene where officials were able to process evidence at the home, taking items into custody that contained evidence and leaving behind items that did not.
Due to the fact that Jackman already had a history with child pornography he was taken into custody. He is being held in the Sevier County Jail on $75,000 bail and the Sheriff’s Office is debating going federal with the case
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