Before Emily Carter called back her boss, she pressed “record.”
Jim Smidt, the owner of a residential facility for girls called Cornerstone Cottage, wasn’t happy with her, and he wanted to talk.
“We are going to go ahead and terminate your employment here with us at Cornerstone,” Smidt said.
“OK,” Carter said. “Could I ask why?”
“Um, we’re really not under any obligation to explain why,” Smidt said. “We just feel like it’s time to do that.”
Carter was sure she knew why. Days earlier, she and four other employees sent an 84-page complaint to Idaho state regulators detailing horrors against children at Cornerstone Cottage: a girl being sexually assaulted, another with autism purposely taunted in order to justify sending her to a hospital, and yet another girl who strangled herself repeatedly, nearly to death, while workers were told not to help until she passed out.
Carter, then a 23-year-old recent college graduate in 2021, knew that filing the complaint might cost her her job. But it would be worth it. Now, she thought, the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare would finally step in and put an end to the unspeakable things happening to girls at Cornerstone.
She was wrong.