GAYLE PALMER Part 2 of 7: The Price of Admission

0:00The wait is over. Dive into Audible's most anticipated collection, The Best of 2025. featuring top audiobooks, podcasts, and originals across all genres. Our editors have carefully curated this year's must-listens from brilliant hidden gems to the buzziest new releases. Every title in this collection has earned its spot. This is your go-to for the absolute best in 2025 audio entertainment. Whether you love thrillers, romance, or nonfiction, your next favorite listen awaits. Discover why there's more to imagine when you listen at audible.com slash best of the year. You may have heard of the sex cult NXIVM and the famous actress who went to prison for her involvement, Allison Mack.

0:45But she's never told her side of the story until now. People assume that I'm like this pervert. My name is Natalie Robamed and in my new podcast, I talk to Allison to try to understand how she went from TV actor to cult member and what she thinks of it all now. How do you feel about having been involved in bringing sexual trauma to other people? I mean, I don't even know how to answer that question. Allison, after NXIVM, from CBC's Uncover is available now wherever you get your podcasts. This episode contains disturbing content, including discussions of child abuse. Please take care while listening.

1:22Michelle Sutton was 15 years old when she enrolled at Summit Quest, a wilderness therapy program in St. George, Utah. Michelle was looking forward to the program. She thought she would spend a few months in nature, healing, that she would come home physically fit and with a newfound confidence. But in just over one week at Summit Quest, Michelle was dead. You may have seen their ads in magazines, wilderness programs, that say they can help troubled teenagers. A girl from Pleasanton named Michelle Sutton was one of those kids. Her parents thought a survival program would improve her self-esteem.

1:57But something went wrong out on that trail, deadly wrong. And now her parents are looking for answers. Gail Palmer told the Suttons that Summit Quest was a place for teens to come get help, guidance, healing. So what happened? What was really going on in that program? Finding answers to that would be difficult. So much of what Gail said about Summit Quest wasn't true. For instance, Summit Quest had not been operating for two years, as Gail told Kathy. It was reported that this was actually a brand new program. Michelle's group was the first to be sent out into the desert. This was Gail Palmer's very first trick, the very first outing.

2:40But if you look at her brochure, and of course her on the back of it shows her hugging her daughter, So it makes it look like that's from her program that this young person is running into the arms of the mother. And so they, yeah, there's a lot of fraud involved, a lot of marketing fraud. And what about the parental testimonials printed on the Summit Quest brochure? The ones with parents raving about their experiences sending their kids through the program? Well, it turns out the photos of Gail hugging her daughter and the parental testimonials, They were all taken from a different wilderness therapy program.

3:19It was called Challenger, and it was founded and operated by a man named Steve Cardesano. Cardesano, I think, certainly is seen these days as a con artist of sorts. And when you start maximizing profits, then other stuff kind of falls by the wayside. He's really charismatic. He can talk circles around you. Big smiling, like, things are going to be okay. hey, I know about this stuff. So Steve was poor and woke up one day and found himself upper middle class, you know, making a lot of money. And that can be very seductive to people. Summit Quest and Challenger were closely associated because Gail worked at Challenger before branching out and starting her own program.

4:08Challenger, we can assume, is where Gail learned everything she knew about wilderness therapy. I mean, Summit Quest was a knockoff of Challenger. So I think some of those people from Challenger went and worked at Summit Quest. Gail Palmer left her managerial position with Challenger to start a program called Summit Quest. The company's very first outing ended in tragedy. In the months after Michelle died, Kathy Sutton started to investigate Summit Quest. but it felt almost impossible to get information about what was going on with these kids out in the desert. So she started to learn about Challenger instead.

4:51And in making this season, that is also where I started. It is by speaking to people who attended Challenger that I began to learn about what happened to Michelle Sutton, because Summit Quest was born out of Challenger. Without Challenger, Summit Quest never would have existed. It was a total fraud. It was like we sent the kids there to be abused. It was just a scam. From Cast Media, this is The Opportunist. This is Season 7, Episode 2. Gail Palmer, The Price of Admission. I'm Hannah Smith.

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6:38The concept of wilderness therapy started to take hold in a variety of different forms in the 1970s. The idea was simple at first. Struggling young people might benefit from time in nature, away from modern distractions. Ben Dobbin worked for an early wilderness therapy program called Darrow Hall, which brought adjudicated youths on backpacking excursions, an alternative to juvenile detention. Those of us in the field, we were young college kids who were interested in being out there with these kids, teaching them some skills, and hopefully I'm offering them a better chance at something in the future.

7:16In the 1970s, Brigham Young University introduced their own wilderness therapy program for college students. It was started by Zeke Sanchez and Larry Dean Olson. Olson later went on to start the Anasazi Foundation, a successful and well-respected wilderness therapy program. Here he is speaking about the power of wilderness therapy. People began to notice that life-changing occurrences were happening to them. And people began to notice that young people especially were being helped while they were with me. And so we did a little experimenting with students who had flunked out of the university, and it just grew from there.

7:54The program at BYU consisted of sending students into nature for one to three weeks. Students were encouraged to reflect on their goals and to connect with themselves. They were also taught basic survival skills. BYU claimed that after students went through the program, they started to perform better at school and they were more pleasant at home. Steve Cardesano participated in the program while he was a student at BYU. He loved it so much, he started working for the program. But in 1975, tragedy struck. 24-year-old Kathleen Walton was a star student who wanted a survival adventure. She died of dehydration on an outing near Hanksville.

8:38Kathleen Walton died from dehydration, and BYU discovered something inescapable. The wilderness can be very dangerous. They shut down the wilderness therapy program. But Steve Cartesano was just getting started. In 1987, he founded his own spinoff program called Challenger. This is Steve Cartesano being interviewed by Sheila Hamilton, who at the time was a local journalist. Colleagues said Cartesano recognized the potential market of desperate parents dealing with drug and alcohol addicted teenagers, and he wanted to market the program nationwide. My mother was a heroin addict. My father was abusive.

9:19I've always had a gift working with kids. I can understand them. I've been there. I mean, they want to tell me about their problems. I'll say, OK, let's compare, pal. You want to talk about a life, a rough life? You know, let's go through it. And I've been able to overcome that. So can you. Steve Cardesano was the first person to take a program like this and market it on a national level. He made the rounds on national talk shows and targeted upscale advertising to wealthy families in crisis. And with every one of those appearances, dozens of families from across the nation flooded Challenger's phone lines.

9:54While the concept of wilderness therapy always included an aspect of challenge, Steve intensified it. He had a military background, and his program became more of a boot camp. It was authoritative, punishing. He started recruiting as many kids as he could. I've heard that at times, Challenger was bringing in between 50 and 60 kids every month. And for each kid, they were making about$15 ,000. But why would a punishing, authoritative program be so popular among parents? Well, this was the 1980s, a time in which there was a pervasive fear that young people in America were being perverted by rock music, Satanism, drugs, and sex.

10:40Utah is a conservative state, and there was a hunger for programs that claimed to correct the youth, to put them back on the right track for adulthood. Steve Cardesano had a no-nonsense, gruff attitude. It was all part of his marketing. His message to America was, are you having trouble controlling your teenager? Well, send them to Challenger, because we can handle it. And the marketing worked. In its first year, Challenger reportedly made over$3 million, That's almost$7 million in 2023 dollars. But in reality, most parents didn't know what went on in the program. Challenger rarely turned away clients.

11:21And in this brand new, unregulated industry, they could present the program however they wanted to. They started taking in all kinds of kids, many of whom would not do well in the program. The Challenger program, what they said they did, was confrontive and strict and demanding. But the degree with which they took it, I don't think parents ever could have imagined. And who was there making those calls to parents, signing up all of those teens? Well, it was Gail Palmer, working in the admissions office. Gail Palmer was born Gail DeGraff in 1945. She grew up in Utah, Montana, and Oregon. and was raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

12:07After graduating from high school in 1962, Gail attended Brigham Young for approximately three years. Shortly after, she married and had five children. When concerned parents called Challenger to ask about the program, it was Gail's voice that greeted them. She worked in the office, but I think she also was the one speaking to parents and recruiting parents and sending their kids. She was relatable, a parent herself. She has been described to me as a natural saleswoman. She was able to convince desperate parents that the hefty price tag was nothing compared to how much Challenger would help their child.

12:50When Deborah McMahon called Challenger to see if the program could help her son John, she was hopeful. But she told me the program was not what it claimed to be. And John hasn't been the same since. It's just sad. He's, instead of Challenger helping him and Booth, instead of it being a springboard to the rest of his life, it's been a downhill slide.

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13:58The first Challenger story I heard was actually from a mother, Deborah McMahon. She told me that her son John was smart and gentle. But as a teenager, he began struggling in school and hanging out with kids Deborah didn't approve of. Small acts of teenage rebellion, like taking the car on a joyride without asking or starting to experiment with drugs, had Debra and her husband, John's stepdad, worried. They weren't sure how to help John. He was just starting to get kind of wild. I mean, not as interested in school. But then Debra heard about a wilderness therapy program called Challenger, based in Escalante, Utah.

14:41It sounded interesting. Maybe it was just what John needed to rediscover himself and gain confidence at this pivotal moment in his adolescence. My mother and my sister who live in Wenatchee saw it on Sally Jesse Raphael, and they recorded it and showed it to me, and it sounded good. And I also saw it in Sunset Magazine, the ads in Sunset Magazine. It just sounded wonderful. There was counselors there that had doctorates, psychologists. And I said, well, I don't want him punished or anything. I just think he needs to shore up his ego and he just doesn't seem secure in himself. I want him to be able to make better decisions.

15:29Challenger was promoted as a residential treatment facility with licensed therapists, nutritionists, outdoor experts and doctors on board. But Deborah McMahon didn't just rely on what she was told by Challenger. She also did her research before signing up her son, John, to take part in the program. So we called DSS in Utah and asked if there had been any claims or anything against Challenger. We also called Escalante Sheriff's Department and talked to the sheriffs there, which is where Challenger was based out of or near there. And they said they hadn't had any problem at all, that they thought it was a great organization.

16:13It is true that at that time in early 1989, there were no complaints against Challenger. But that would change very soon. Deborah told me that she and her husband paid$15 ,500 to send their son John to Challenger. They spent another$2 ,000 on equipment for him to use while he was there, out in the wilderness. John was expected to spend between two and three months in the program. Exactly how long he was there would be, at least partially, determined by his progress. We bought him a brand new camera, brand new hiking boots. We got him new clothes for the whole thing. So he had a suitcase full of new clothes, sunglasses, the whole thing.

16:59Soon, John was on his way to Utah. We didn't know if we were doing the right thing, my husband and I, but we hoped it would be a wonderful experience for him. But between the lines of shiny text advertising Challenger in the back of Sunset Magazine, there was another story, a much darker one. If Challenger had been what they represented themselves to be, I do think the program would work. But they weren't. John arrived at Challenger in the spring of 1989 with all of his new belongings. But they were immediately taken from him by the staff at Challenger. That's the last time he saw any of that.

17:41He never saw it ever again, any of it. And he never came home with it either. It just went downhill from there. All of those supplies, they were meant to be tools to help John survive out in the desert for months. And Challenger took it all away. This was the first red flag, an indication of the cruelty to come. But Deborah didn't know any of this. She thought everything was going well, that John was having a great time. We called about every day or every other day. We called every day to start with. and we were getting just wonderful reports. Oh, he's doing so good. He's so intelligent. He's just a great kid.

18:21He loves it. He's thinking about being a counselor. But I wasn't getting any letters or anything, and they won't let me talk to him because they said, well, he's out in the field. Deborah had to sign paperwork giving Challenger temporary custody of John. And while he was there, Challenger controlled all the communication between them. Debra had no way of knowing what was really going on. Her story was already eerily similar to Kathy Sutton's. Just like Debra, Kathy also had multiple phone calls with Gail during the time that Michelle was at Summit Quest. And every call left Kathy with the impression that Michelle was thriving.

19:02But Michelle wasn't thriving, and neither was John. Perhaps this is a technique that Gail learned from her days at Challenger. Tell the parents whatever they want to hear.

19:16Deborah was excited to be reunited with her son, and she expected John to come home happy and confident. But then, just two days before John was set to graduate, Deborah received a phone call from state officials in Utah asking her if she'd heard from her son John. And I'm just shocked. And I called up Challenger, and I said, what's going on? And they said, well, he's not here. And I went, what? Debra's heart was racing. Where was John? And they said, yeah, he ran away, and he's on the way home. And I said, on the way home? What, hitchhiking? You know, what's going on? Debra was told that John had escaped Challenger, and then Challenger found him and kicked him out of the program.

20:06putting him on a plane by himself flying to Seattle-Tacoma Airport. More questions flooded Debra's mind, but she had to end the call and rush to go pick up her son. This was 1989. They didn't have cell phones, and they lived over 150 miles away from the airport. John would be there waiting for her, alone. Well, after I picked John up, which was a rush, and he's scared to death at Seattle, I said, what is happening? He was really skinny, and boy, he was really, really skinny. And he was sunburnt, super, super sunburnt, really dehydrated. Just looked horrible. On the drive back to their little farming town in central Washington, John told his mother a terrifying story.

20:56He was deprived of food, of water. John lost almost 43 pounds during his time at Challenger. It sounded unbelievable. It certainly wouldn't be where you would want to send a child or a young adult. Besides the physical hardships, John told his mother that the counselors played mean games on the kids, like this one. The counselors would throw a handful of raisins onto the ground and yell, Raisins on the Path. Then they would watch and laugh as the starving kids scrambled and fought over the raisins. These are the people who were supposed to be helping John better himself. Instead, it seemed like they enjoyed torturing him.

21:42Did he ever get any counseling at all? No, none at all. He was criticized. He was ridiculed. He said it was the worst thing he has ever experienced in his life. Wow. I mean, how did that make you feel when you learned about it? Oh, horrible. It was just, you try your best to give what you can to your kid to be a better adult, and you certainly don't send them somewhere to be punished. John declined to speak with me, but encouraged his mother, Deborah, to tell his story. The whole ordeal has left him with lasting trauma, which makes an interview difficult. But I wanted to speak with someone who was actually there, who attended Challenger, to hear a firsthand experience.

22:35And I was able to track down another attendee who shared their experience in Steve Cartesano's program. My name is Tamara Lietal, and my pronouns are they, them. Tamira was what you might call a good kid. They did well in school. They never even tried alcohol or drugs. I was doing sports every season. I was on swim team and the track team and the varsity volleyball team, you know, getting nearly straight A's. But their home life was a different story. Around age 14, they started having a lot of conflict with their parents. Swearing, screaming, not talking to each other. And so at that point, somewhere in there, my parents got involved in the tough love movement and learned about how to physically control and assault your child without leaving marks.

23:27The tough love movement was popularized in the 1970s by therapists Phyllis and David York. They promoted authoritative measures in order to control teenagers who were acting out. The idea was that these bad teens would only improve by being forced to submit to authority. Often this meant using tactics of fear and physical pain. Most modern psychologists agree that this movement was ineffective at best and often abusive. But it became a popular approach in the 1980s, and Tamira's parents started to use these authoritative techniques. This only caused more tension, more problems between them. CPS got called to their house multiple times.

24:11Eventually, this culminated in Tamira's parents, sending them to Challenger. Anticipating that Tamira might resist going, their parents hired what is called a youth transport service. I was awakened by two, I think, really big guys in my room. I remember it being light out. You know, it was early in June. So for some reason, the number 530 in the morning is stuck in my head. Two large men came into Tamira's room while they were sleeping, picked them up, and carried them out of the house. It was a terrifying experience. And I was in like underwear and a bra. And I was like furious and scared and, you know, screaming and trying to fight these guys.

24:58Tamira was put into a vehicle and taken to the airport, escorted all the way from their home in Washington State to Escalante, Utah. The whole experience was dehumanizing and scary. And Tamira wasn't even at Challenger yet. So my first memory of Utah and Challenger is being in the pitch black around this giant bonfire being yelled at. And this guy yelling at us, saying, my name is Horsehair and making us introduce ourselves. The program started when the participants were driven 100 miles out into the remote desert in the middle of the night and dropped off at a huge bonfire. This audio is from a show called The Reporters, when journalist Krista Bradford visited Challenger.

25:45The man yelling is named Lance Jagger, but he went by the name Horsehair. He is one of the counselors who oversaw Tamira's stay in the program. them. Dazed, they gather around the bonfire and soon learn to show respect to those who will teach them how to survive here. My name is Horsehair. For the next 63 days, you'll be under my care, my staff care. Do you understand? Yes, sir. I can't hear you. Yes, sir. The so-called counselors are not trained child therapists. They are survivalists who seem to revel in their power to intimidate. I have a phrase that I use. Is, I love you till it hurts you.

26:29I love you till it hurts you. That was Lance Jagger, the field director at Challenger, the one in charge of running the program on the ground. I spoke with Lance on the phone. He declined to do a recorded interview, but he told me that this line was taken out of context. He said his intention was always to create a safe environment where the kids could face adversity and come out the other side stronger. He also said the program got to be too large for him to keep tabs on all the counselors, and he later found out that there were instances of abuse occurring. Just like Steve Cartesano, Lance also had a military background, but no training or experience in therapy.

27:13In fact, there were no therapists in sight or doctors. And so are you carrying, like, as if you were backpacking, do you have, like, your tent and everything in your pack? No, we didn't get a tent. We got a small tarp, and we got one wool blanket, and we got a strap and some string, and we had to roll it all up and make it into a backpack. And, yeah, there was no sort of padding, no sort of, we were totally exposed to the open air. There was no protection. They didn't give us sunscreen. They didn't give us hygiene products. We didn't have toothbrush. We didn't have toothpaste. We didn't have floss.