The Ledger s paramount objective is providing the service of information that impacts our community in a way that fosters change people want and deserve.
Last fall, I was reading a New Yorker exposé about Teen Challenge — a Christian organization that runs a network of residential programs for troubled teens — when a paragraph stopped me in my tracks. "In May, 2020, Naomi Wood, a student at the Lakeland Teen Challenge, died," the article said. "She had been throwing up, almost constantly, for more than twenty-four hours. On the last day of her life, Naomi, who was born in Liberia and adopted by a family in Vermont, stayed in bed, and the staff left her alone for long stretches without checking on her, according to students and staff I interviewed."