TRANSCRIPT:
I started the Ranch [boarding school] in New Mexico. It was a beautiful, beautiful place. I wanted to make sure that we provided the best environment we could for the troubled kids that came to us.
I contacted the secretary of education for the State of New Mexico. Got what was needed to comply with the state requirements. We complied with that. I met with County Health Director. She would come out frequently and look at what was going on at the Ranch as far as the wellbeing of the kids, the welfare of the children.
It was very important that the basic environment was the best it could be to help these troubled kids.
Our job was to lift up the teenagers who came to us out of the troubled life that had brought them to us, and help them learn how to make good choices in their life. Our goal was to help them become happy and have decent lives.
First time I saw Nathan Rich he was about eight years old. He was running wild in a horse pasture at [a] ranch at Palmdale, California. He was screaming, bumping into other kids and generally being out of control. I think in this day and age, he would have been labeled hyperactive. He came to the Ranch because he was being bounced from school to school. He had trouble sitting in a classroom; he had trouble getting along with others, including his family. He needed to have an environment where he could move around freely without hurting himself or hurting others.
Coming out to the Ranch, it was summertime, so maybe he could have an adventure and run out some of that energy that he had, so that he could be comfortable in a classroom. The alternative, for them, may have been that he would be institutionalized and separated from the family permanently, and that wasn’t a choice they wanted to make.
The next time I met Nathan, he was 14. He had come to the Ranch in New Mexico, I believe because he had been arrested for stealing and had some trouble with police. I’m not sure of the exact details on that. He was a smart and funny teenager. He was dressed in Gothic attire, black combat boots, black pants, black t-shirt, black trench coat, chains, spiked dog collar and black fingernail polish.
The day came when we were going to ride horses. I was teaching him to ride a horse. He got on the horse with all this—rattling chains and so forth. I suggested to him that the horse might be more comfortable if he took off some of his chains. He says, “Oh, okay.” So he did. He took some of his—he took his trench coat off. It was in the summertime. He took the chains off. He got on the horse and we had so much fun that day.
Later on that visit to New Mexico ranch, he did open up about some of the difficulties that he was having with relationships, with his other people—other teenagers there at the Ranch. He mostly was talking about his inner struggles with himself.
The last time I saw Nathan was around 1999. We had both attended a dance concert that his aunt and cousin performed in. After the concert, he and I met outside the dance studio and had a heart-to-heart talk. He was very emotional.
He was very troubled. He was having difficulty with relationships in his life. He was back in the environment where things had gone very wrong for him earlier in his life, and now he was having trouble again. I told him that, “That’s it. I am going to help you handle this once and for all. We’ll meet tomorrow and this will get handled.”
That night he made other choices. He decided to run away. In the middle of the night, he ran away. Ended up somehow in Albuquerque—was back on the street, doing drugs—very troubled young man.
This is the type of individual that Leah Remini and her gang prey on. He’s vulnerable. He’s susceptible to their enticement whatever they are. He’s troubled. He’s a former drug addict. He’s the kind of prey that she feeds on. It’s like a spiritual vampire.
