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Search warrants filed by the Transylvania County Sheriff’s Office said the boy was stiff and cold to the touch by the time first responders arrived, with his pants and underwear laying on the floor next to his shoulder.

According to the warrants, none of the staff with the boy could explain how his pants and underwear got there.

On Monday, N.C. DHHS wrote the camp’s leaders to demand the program stop accepting new participants, among other steps, in order to remain open during the investigation.

Monday’s letter from N.C. DHHS said the camp had kept investigators from seeing the remaining campers in the program for days.

The Transylvania County Sheriff’s Office has said the camp’s leadership was not cooperating with the investigation, a claim a spokeswoman for Trails Carolina has denied.

I absolutely think they'd not cooperate when this is the state of their camp.

When I was a teenager, I got shipped off to a military academy because I kept getting into trouble. There was horrible abuse. Give troubled teenagers authority over each other and not much adult supervision and watch chaos descend.

A kid with some rank decided that a kid from his company was gonna fight a kid from my company. The beating that happened was so severe that the kid from our company ended up in a coma. This is but the most extreme example I can give. I wish I had sued them when I turned 18 and got them shut down.

My mother, of course, never believed the wild stories I would tell her about the nightmarish conditions. She thought I exaggerated or simply fabricated stories. I finally escaped when I got a friend to drive several hours to help me sneak away. I didn't come home for a month and finally called her saying if she sent me back, I'd escape again and she wouldn't see me again until I turned 18. I was checked into a mental health facility that night.

The troubled-teen industry is a monster.