Investigations

Provo Canyon School closed as Reckless Ben posted extra footage of his escape

The campus shut down Aug. 17, 2026, a staff member told him another boy had been sent there for being gay, and he said he beat a pocket check with a second pair of pants.

Provo Canyon School closed on Aug. 17, 2026. Reckless Ben posted extra footage of his escape the same day on his second channel, Ben Schneider.

The tape is a debrief with Sheldon after they got out, not another undercover stay. His earlier investigation covered the infiltration. This one is the shutdown, a warning that programs like this rebrand, and what he said he could not film.

A fan named Jordan, who had put him onto the school, said troubled programs shut down and reopen under a new name. "What these places do is they shut down the program and then they open up under a new rebranded program," Jordan said. Ben said he was worried they closed because they were in hot water, and that if they came back the series would keep going.

After he jumped the fence it was about 25 degrees. He threw up in a bathroom. Sheldon picked him up and they went to an Airbnb. "Yeah, we made it," Sheldon said.

For most of the stay Ben had no camera. He talked it through while it was still fresh. Staff had held him in seclusion, the unit students called the gulag, for about 30 hours. "I was in there for like 30 hours," he said. The worst part, he told Sheldon, was sitting there with nothing to record.

A staffer in that unit gave him pants with no pockets and ran a pocket check. Ben said he was wearing a second, larger pair underneath that did have pockets. That was how he kept what he needed.

He described the fence as mesh over a wall. He said he ran it, climbed, and jumped about 15 feet. "I had to climb like the huge mesh and then I just jumped like 15 ft down." He is a rock climber. Sheldon said no student had gotten away for good before.

The clothes with the spy button sat in inventory. Staff told him five minutes, then 9 a.m., then noon, then 3 p.m., then Monday. He was in a thin shirt they had issued and said he was freezing. He never got the button. Most of what he captured after that was audio.

About five minutes before he ran, he told a staff member his father had sent him over "gay thoughts." The staffer said another boy had been sent by a Christian father for being gay, and that it was "not unusual." Sheldon asked if Ben had it. Ben said yes. Then he left.

Back on the unit they sat in chairs facing each other and were not allowed to talk. A student asked where someone was from. Staff shut it down.

Utah had already moved on the school. The state revoked the Provo campus license in July and ordered services to stop by Aug. 16.

On July 17 the Utah Department of Health and Human Services revoked that license. Ben said the building closed the next day.

He said viewers who thought he had dropped the Bricks and Minifigs investigation were wrong, and that a fourth video was still coming. If Provo Canyon reopens under a new name, he said, he will keep going.

Source video: Provo Canyon shut down