Locked in a Small Metal Box (continued...)

By Carla Crowder
News Staff Writer (Rocky Mountain News 1-10-99)

Cops say Casper couple abused kids at ranch
Son accuses his parents of vicious abuse in pursuit of reforming troubled kids

CASPER -- At first, Gary Durham comes across like a shy prom date.
Neatly trimmed red hair and a matching goatee frame intense blue eyes
and fading freckles.

Then his boyish nervousness takes a dark turn as, once more, he dredges
up details from a bruised lifetime.

Last year, Gary, 18, got his thrills playing wide receiver for the Natrona
County High School Mustangs.

This year, he's a witness against his parents in a case built on horrifying
allegations of child abuse.

"I look at how other people have happy families, have good mothers," he
said last week."I always wanted a happy, tight family atmosphere. But I
never had that, and I hate it."

Instead, Gary says he grew up working like a slave around parents Francis
and Robin Beaugureaus' junky trailers on the bleak, windblown outskirts
of Casper. There, the Beaugureaus took in wayward kid and their families
and tried to reform them through hard work and beatings, police say.

Belts. Boards. Baseball bats. Kitchen spoons. A 4-foot long fiberglass
rod.

"If it leaves marks, they just keep you locked away until they disappear,"
Gary said.

Sometimes, kids were handcuffed to beds. The couple collected
everyone's shoes at night to deter them from running away.

"They say it's always been their dream to help troubled kids," Gary said.
"They thought they could change the way families worked for the better."

But two days before Christmas, authorities arrested the couple and
charged them with child abuse. Prosecutors say they anticipate finding
more victims and filing more charges.

So far, authorities say, the victims are:

A 10-year-old boy with a bed-wetting problem who was frequently
doused in urine and locked in a cramped box as punishment.

The boy's mother, whipped hundreds of times with a vacuum-cleaner
cord.

The Beaugureaus' 14-year-old daughter Sarah, beaten so badly her nose
bled and her clothes were torn from her body.

Gary said his mother and stepfather carried out their warped child-rearing
beliefs on their own children years before they took in other peoples' kids.

"Their favorite thing was, 'Spare the rod, spoil the child,"' he said. "That
was their justification to beat the ---- out of people."

Parents turning over their kids to strangers for discipline and reform -- it's
a phenomenon emerging across the nation.

Fifteen-year-old Matt Grise of Colorado spent five months behind barbed
wire in a church-run detention compound in Louisiana before his relatives
forced his release. A Utah company operates several detention facilities in
the United States and abroad for youths sent there by their parents.

The Beaugureauses called their place the Emanuel Maranatha Youth
Ranch. Emanuel means "God with us," Maranatha "Our Lord has come."

They passed out pamphlets, said the ranch was based on the Bible and
asked for donations in nearby Casper.

They started by taking in a half-dozen children. Sometimes, even the kids'
destitute parents moved in.

"Their plans and hopes and dreams were to have 30 kids out there in
dormitories and have complete and utter control," Gary said.

The property sits southeast of Casper, on a rural road that cuts through a
bleak stretch of land, all pale grass and scrub for miles. Trailers and
modular homes line the roadside.

A relentless bitter-cold wind pounds on the three trailers scattered across
the Beaugureaus' rocky lot.

The family lived in a gray double wide. Its Christmas tree and lights are still
up. Nearby, two small, rusty trailers, encircled by fences and sagging into
the ground, were supposed to become part of the ranch.

Detritus clutters the property. Heaps of rusty appliances. Tools that no
longer fix anything. Tires and broken bikes. Skeletons of furniture. Plastic
toys half buried in dirt.

The couple wasn't breaking any laws by keeping a few extra kids at the
raggedy place they called a youth ranch.

"As long as they're not trying to get state-paid placements, they don't need
a license," said Robert Landes, an administrator with the Wyoming
Department of Family Services.

Landes said he has no reason to believe that abusive, unlicensed youth
homes are rampant in Wyoming. But he can't say for sure.

"This kind of situation could crop up and nobody would know because
they're not trying to get state dollars," he said. "There could be a bunch of
them out there, and we don't have a clue."

For years, Gary Durham had tried to convince people around town that
things weren't right at home. No one seemed to believe him.

His mother, Robin, 37, had married Francis Beaugureau, 42, when he was
5 and Sarah was an infant. They lived in Arizona where Beaugureau
worked on oil rigs.

At first, Gary said, his mother was the main one treating him roughly, with
emotional abuse and beatings. But then his stepdad joined in, he said. At
12, the boy was placed in foster care for six months by child protection
officials in Arizona.

But Gary decided not to testify against his parents because he didn't want
to break his family apart.

Three days after he returned home, the Beaugureaus moved to Casper.

Francis Beaugureau got a job fixing oil-rig boilers. He found lots of work
on the Wyoming plains. They had two more children.

The couple began to pursue their dream of opening a ranch for troubled
kids.

In July 1995 they took in a single mother, Elizabeth Fisk, and her
10-year-old son, who has Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder.

The Beaugureaus latched onto them after the boy started following Gary
around the neighborhood. Fisk wasn't making much money selling gift
baskets around town, and the Beaugureaus let her live with them rent-free.

Gary said he still feels guilty about it.

Sheriff's investigators say Fisk and her boy became indentured servants to
the Beaugureaus.

The two families moved from a house in Casper to four acres of land nine
miles southeast of town. Three adults and five children began living in a
three-bedroom single-wide trailer.

The Beaugureaus put everyone to work fixing up the rocky lot.

According to their son, the couple believe that the biblical way of raising
children requires hard work, strict discipline and severe beatings.

"They claimed to home-school us, but they never did," he said. "All we did
was work. All the kids were forced to work, or were beaten."

Mostly, the kids dug holes. Holes to bury trash in. Holes to run pipes
through. Holes just to keep them out in the frigid wind. They also hauled
boards, cleaned house and worked on the family's boat -- a beat-up
houseboat.

"I learned to work good and hard and fast," Gary said. "But there's no
way I could finish the work, much less a 10-year-old kid (Fisk's son).

"They made him dig ditches in the dead of winter."

A five-page arrest affidavit filed in Natrona County Court lays out a litany
of horrors allegedly committed against Fisk's son, now 13.

He was so hungry he'd wait until everyone was asleep and sneak food late
at night. After he was caught, Francis Beaugureau made the boy sleep in a
metal box in the closet. The box was so small he had to sleep in a fetal
position and needed help walking in the mornings when they let him out.

"They padlocked him in there," Gary said. "If he made noise, they beat on
it with a hammer. He got beat for pulling a blanket through the holes."

The boy slept in the box about a month. Then the urine odor from his
bedwetting got so strong, the Beaugureaus feared he'd die from ammonia
fumes, so they replaced it with a wooden box.

When the bedwetting persisted, they blindfolded him and urinated on him
or poured urine on his head and face, according to the arrest affidavit.

The records detail two more injuries that eventually led to his being
removed from the Beaugureaus' care:

Robin Beaugureau forced him to run alongside the family van. He fell. A
cactus or stick punctured his abdomen. Robin stitched the wound with a
sewing needle because she didn't want doctors questioning how he'd been
hurt.

The boy also burned his left hand on a cutting torch after Robin
Beaugureau allegedly goaded him into putting his hand under it. The family
took him to Children's Hospital in Denver for medical care to hide the
injuries from Wyoming authorities.

In October 1996, someone outside the family tipped off the Wyoming
Department of Family Services about the boy's injuries. He was removed
from the home, but no charges were filed.

The boy now lives in a foster home in Gillette, Wyo.

Local law enforcement learned of the abuse allegations. But it took more
than two years for them to file charges against the Beaugureaus.

"The standard for placement of a child (in foster care) is a far cry from
criminal charges," Natrona County District Attorney Kevin Meenan said.

"Suspicions do not make a case. Both the Department of Family Services
and the Sheriff's Department, when they received the initial information,
began to work the case."

Meanwhile, according to court records, other children in the Beaugureaus'
care were being beaten.

The couple took in a 2-year-old boy and a family of seven -- five of them
young children. The Beaugureau's daughter, Sarah, told police the
2-year-old was frequently beaten.

The big break for authorities came last May when Sarah herself ran away
from home, sneaking out late one night. Friends with a car scooped her up
and headed to Texas, but police in Raton, N.M., stopped them.

Sarah then started telling police about conditions at home.

Sheriff's investigator Chuck Davis began visiting Gary at school in Casper.

In September, Gary and his stepfather got into a big fight. Gary said his
parents wanted him to switch to a private Christian school. He wanted to
stay at Natrona County High School and play football his senior year.

He said his stepfather pinned him to a bed and grabbed him around the
neck.

The next day at school, Gary called Davis and said he'd testify against his
parents.

"They can't be doing this to any more people," Gary said.

He had nowhere to live. No coat, no money -- only the clothes on his
back.

The Beaugureauses have their share of defenders in the community. Some
suggest that the children are exaggerating, that maybe the cops are too
eager to make a big case.

"The aspect of them having to do chores from sunup to sundown, that's
not true because we saw them out there playing," said Samantha Bryant,
who lives two trailers from the Beaugureaus.

She said she was "just shocked" by the abuse charges. She's aggravated
that the news has turned her quiet rural road into a thoroughfare for
curiosity seekers.

Bryant's daughters, Rachel, 5, and Mindy, 7, used to play with the
Beaugureaus' youngest, a 9-year-old boy and a 10-year-old girl. Bryant
trusted Robin Beaugureau to take her kids on family outings.

She said the 10-year-old boy the Beaugureaus' allegedly beat, burned and
imprisoned was a troublemaker and a liar.

"He lied -- oh, did he lie," Bryant said. "He lied about his name and where
he lived."

She said the boy once broke into their travel trailer and trashed it.

"He ate a half-pound bag of candy and opened a can of green beans with
a triangle can opener and sucked them out," she said.

Some neighbors didn't appreciate all the junk on the Beaugureaus' lot,
Bryant said.

The neighborhood association, the Sandy Lakes Estates Improvement
District, rejected the family's application for a zoning change to allow the
youth ranch in the residential area.

"We didn't want any problems with stolen things," association president
Larry Jordan said. "And we didn't think they had the facilities."

Until the last few months, the Beaugureauseswere active members at
Christ First Missionary Baptist Church in Casper. Robin taught Bible
study. Francis was a deacon.

Three fellow church members attended the couple's preliminary hearing
last Tuesday in Natrona County Court.

"I've never seen nothing but love in this family," Louise Castenada said as
she sat in the courtroom. "All I know about them is good. That's the truth."

Longtime church member Augusta Young was in Robin Beaugureau's
Bible class.

"She talked about love and respect," Young said. "If they did do such a
thing, I wonder why. ... What were these kids doing?"

In court last week, Robin Beaugureau turned a pleading look toward her
son as he walked into the small courtroom. She mouthed something like, "I
love you. What are you doing?"

Gary tried to carry a stern, expressionless face into the hearing.

"She looks pitiful -- it makes me sick," he said, settling onto a hard,
wooden bench.

Her wrists shackled around her waist, Robin Beaugureau fidgeted. A large
woman with long hair, she blocked her face from the cameras with a
notebook during most of her two hours in court.

Her husband sat quietly in orange jail scrubs, a tight white T-shirt and
handcuffs. His thinning, gray hair was slicked back from his long face. He
told the judge he'd had troubled finding an attorney, partly because of
publicity surrounding the case.

Both waived their preliminary hearings and will be represented by public
defenders.

Francis and Robin Beaugureau remain in jail, unable to come up with $500
to post bond.

Each faces a maximum 10-year sentence if convicted of the two counts of
child abuse. Robin faces an additional six months if convicted of assaulting
Fisk.

Gary's satisfaction at seeing his parents in handcuffs is tinged with sadness.

His siblings are scattered. Sarah's in one foster home, the younger ones in
another.

After he fled his parents' trailer in September, Gary lived with Liz Baron,
who runs the Self Help Center Inc., a safehouse and domestic-violence
victims center in Casper. There was no place in the shelter for a single
18-year-old male, so Baron let the young man live with her for three
months.

"He was a wonderful kid, very respectful, very polite," she said. He helped
her out around the house. He built a skate board ramp for her son.

In years working with victims of family abuse, Baron said she had never
encountered anything like this.

Gary has just recently moved into an apartment with his 17-year-old
girlfriend and her brother. He's trying to finish high school through
correspondence courses.

He yearns for some sort of normal life. But he really has no idea what
normal is. Nightmares startle him awake.

Other members of Robin Beaugureau's family support what Gary has
done.

"I knew it was going on," said Tracy Fraze, 24, of Phoenix, Robin
Beaugureau's sister. "Her own kids have gone through trauma their whole
lives."

Fraze said she often heard her sister talk about big plans for the "Christian"
youth home.

"Making some young kid do pushups in the snow until their knuckles bled,
I wouldn't call that Christian," she said.

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