Oregon Recovery Ranch Draws Abuse Allegations With No State Oversight

Fifteen former residents of 5Rock Ranch, a Christian ministry in rural Yamhill County, Oregon, told the investigative newsroom InvestigateWest that the organization harmed them instead of helping them, and that the complaints they filed over more than a decade produced no outside scrutiny because the facility is not licensed or regulated as a treatment provider.

The nonprofit has been led since 2006 by Scott and Christy Bradley, neither of whom holds a license or certification in mental health, social work or drug counseling. It houses mostly women seeking relief from addiction, shelter from domestic violence or a fresh start after an arrest, and it charges residents nothing — the ranch is funded through grants and donations. In exchange, residents follow a schedule built around prayer and Bible study, work afternoons running the property and its events, and agree not to leave or host guests without permission from the Bradleys.

It is not licensed by the state, and according to the investigation it is not regulated by Oregon public health or child welfare authorities, apart from a water system overseen by Yamhill County. Most of its staff are not licensed to provide mental health or substance use care.

What the residents described

The accounts published by InvestigateWest span nearly two decades. Michelle Caswell, who lived at the ranch from 2007 to 2011 fresh out of drug rehab and working as its women's ministry director, described her supervisor praying at her bedside and encouraging her to think of him as her father. Two former residents described unwanted touching and kissing by Scott Bradley, and six said he pressured them to share explicit details about sexual traumas during private counseling sessions or at events.

Several said they were denied permission to leave the ranch for mental health care or drug treatment, and others said they were cut off abruptly. Megan McCarty, who spent nine months there in 2018 and 2019 after being held captive on an illegal cannabis grow, said the Bradleys repeatedly refused her requests to leave for trauma counseling, that she was later diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, and that after she checked herself into a hospital she returned to find her belongings in trash bags on a porch. Lesli Lucier left this February with $8 in her bank account after the Bradleys revoked her permission to keep a cell phone she needed to reach her teenage son, the investigation reported.

Investigators also identified four people who were sent to 5Rock Ranch as a condition of probation or court-ordered drug treatment or anger management. The Oregon Department of Corrections told InvestigateWest the ranch is not on its list of approved probation programs, but courts are not required to send people only to vetted programs.

A 2012 report the board did not act on

The allegations are not new. In 2012, the nonprofit's board hired a mediator, Dr. Randall Kinnison, who produced a 17-page report that affirmed most of the residents' accounts. He concluded that Scott Bradley was not a "sexual predator" but that reports of sexual harassment and inappropriate touch were "significant" and would be grounds for firing at other ministries. He recommended an immediate end to "father/daughter relationships" on the ranch and urged the organization to define its mission more carefully.

Board members appeared to take the findings seriously. In a draft letter to Scott Bradley reviewed by InvestigateWest, the board said it believed he had "made decisions and taken actions that have caused harm and hurt to a number of people" and that he "can and likely will repeat these actions." Emails show the board told concerned residents it would close the nonprofit — then each member resigned before the process finished. By the fall of 2012 a new board had formed, and the ranch entered a period of growth.

When three former residents wrote to the board again in 2019, an attorney representing 5Rock Ranch replied with a single sentence: "We assure you that your concerns have been addressed internally."

What the ranch says

Scott Bradley, in a brief phone interview with InvestigateWest, called the former residents' complaints "lies" that had all been previously investigated and debunked, and declined to address specific allegations. "We have some disgruntled people, but we have way, way, way more people that their lives have been changed," he said, adding that the ranch invites people to visit rather than "just listen to vicious rumors." He declined a request to be interviewed on the property.

On a podcast this spring, Bradley described 5Rock Ranch as a safe community that works regularly with child welfare officials, local courts and law enforcement, and rejected the suggestion that it operates in isolation. Jake Sunderland, a spokesperson for Oregon's Department of Human Services, told InvestigateWest the agency does not refer people to the ranch, though some people receiving agency services have gone to live there, resulting in what he described as "minimal and limited contact" with ranch staff.

Except for Scott Bradley, none of the ranch's eight current board members agreed to be interviewed, and the couple who own the land — John and Marilyn Duke, who leased it to the Bradleys for $1 a year and last year transferred the property, assessed at $3.4 million, to the nonprofit for nothing — declined to comment.

The oversight gap

The story lands on a structural question that extends well beyond one Oregon property. Faith-based and peer-run recovery residences occupy a gray zone in most states: they are not clinical providers, so they fall outside licensing regimes built for residential treatment programs, yet they house people with addiction and mental health conditions who have few alternatives. Oregon, like many states, has long faced a shortage of both drug treatment beds and domestic violence shelter space — the two needs 5Rock Ranch says it meets.

The people who went there had recourse to only one body: the nonprofit's own board. Former residents said the ranch still operates, still recruits, and they do not know how many people live there today. Three single mothers who stayed between 2020 and 2026 told InvestigateWest they encountered the same instability and shame tactics described by earlier residents.

For families weighing a residential program, the practical difference between a licensed facility and an unlicensed one is who can be held accountable — inspections, staff credentialing, complaint systems and the ability to lose a license. Advocates of tighter rules for recovery housing have argued for registration requirements in several states; opponents counter that mandates would push small faith-based homes out of business in places that already lack beds.