Alaska officials sent 16-year-old Richard DeMaar 4,000 miles away from his parents to a Texas psychiatric facility because his home state wasn’t equipped to handle his severe depression. Within six weeks, he had tied a bed sheet over the bathroom door, climbed up onto a trashcan and slipped the makeshift noose around his neck, strangling to death.

Richard was one of roughly 900 out-of-state kids sent to a Texas residential treatment center in the last five years — part of a national compact that allows states that don’t have adequate psychiatric or mental health services to send kids ...

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