USA Unsolved 18 (CA) - Daniel Yuen

**Jessica** (0:00)
Hi friends, welcome back to episode 18 of USA Unsolved, where we look into unsolved cases involving those of Asian descent in the United States. Today we will continue to stay in California, for reasons I have already mentioned previously. But as you already know, there are various other cases spread across the country, and I will try to get to as many as I can in the coming weeks and months. If you happen to know of any cases I have not yet covered, please send me an email. Today's case involves a minor, a teenager. If alive, he would be my exact age, which is difficult to think about because so much has happened and changed between when he disappeared to present day. Not just personally, but worldwide. But as we know, teenagers can have a difficult time regulating their emotions, finding where they belong in the world. A minor inconvenience that we adults would not dwell too long on may seem like the end of the world.
They may also act more rashly. But of course, this also varies from person to person, depending on various factors. What is their home life like? What is their personality like? What kind of trouble are they facing? Today, we are looking into the unsolved disappearance of a teenage boy named Daniel Yuen. What happened? And where could he be now? Let's begin.
Daniel Yuen was born in New Jersey on August 20th, 1987 His parents are Lisa and Wayne Yuen. He also has a younger sister, four years his junior. Seeing his last name, my instinct tells me he is of Chinese descent. It doesn't really matter either way, but just wanted to provide some context.
During his teen years, he began to display signs of distress, suffering from mental health issues. He was said to have been depressed, showed aggression on certain occasions, and this may or may not have been brought on or worsened due to a breakup at the time. He's also had a history of running away from home, though I'm not very familiar with those circumstances. Either way, his parents were concerned as they should have been, so they began to look into getting him help. After speaking with psychiatrists and other professionals, one recommended the Yuen family the CEDU school or SIDU, which was at the time located in Running Springs, San Bernardino County, California. Yes, that meant that Daniel would have to leave his home on the East Coast and live at the school on the West Coast. But before we continue on with Daniel's story, we need to take some time to examine what exactly the SIDU school is. In short, this is a very sketchy quote-unquote school, but I'm going to try and give you the basics. The school was founded by Murl Wasserman and his wife Bridget around the year 1967 Murl was a former member of this new religious movement slash cult called Synanon, which was created by this guy called Charles E. Diedrich. I guess Murl took inspiration from his time at Synanon and decided to turn that into quote, helping the youth unquote. He started CEDU school as a nonprofit, initially located at a ranch in Richie Canyon. He had a bunch of young people between their early teens to late twenties living on this ranch, basically doing manual labor in exchange for room and board. The school ended up relocating a few times, eventually settling down and running springs, sometime in the late sixties and early seventies. From there, the school just kept expanding, both program-wise and location-wise. The Rocky Mountain Academy opened up in Idaho, then the Boulder Creek Academy, and eventually Northwest Academy. A program called ASCENT was set up as well, basically a 41-day wilderness survival program. This was not the only survival type program that they did.
Then, the CEDU Middle School was created on the main campus, where students between age 9 and 14 were accepted. So, that's the general history of this place. But what does it do exactly? On the surface, it was considered a therapeutic boarding school for troubled teens, encompassing wilderness programs and behavior modification courses. Basically, a group home with a fancy name. The supposed goal, I guess, is to rehabilitate teenagers who showed problems, helped them change for the better, and prepare them for the real world. It sounds ideal, right? But that's only on the surface. There were various sketchy reports surrounding this whole academy, such as employees secretly planning on kidnapping celebrity kids who attended the school, and students and their parents suing the academy for emotional and physical abuse. Allegations of fraud and negligence were also brought up during my search on the internet. The list goes on, but you get the idea. In 1998, the school was acquired by Brown Schools, Inc. for a total of $72 million. Seven years later, they filed for bankruptcy, which meant that all the schools, campuses and programs were shut down effective immediately. People lost their jobs overnight and students were sent home without warning. Between 1997 and 2005, the local police station received around 1000 calls about the school, over 300 reports of runaways and reports of various other missing teens and adults. But what stands out in regards to this episode is the fact that three students disappeared while attending the school. The first one was in 1993, John Christopher Inman. The second one was in 1994, a student named Blake Wade Persley. The third, Daniel Yuen. So back to Daniel's story. I'm not sure how much of his parents knew about CEDU and its reputation, but the year was 2004, literally a year before everything was shut down.