Several years ago, the state tried to shut down the Mohican Young Star Academy over frequent 911 calls, runaways and the use of restraints in the 110-bed Perrysville facility.
Those efforts failed. But even after a year of new ownership, problems persist at the rural facility, which houses children with behavioral and mental health problems.
Brittany Hailer investigated the rising violence at the facility and efforts to address it in her reporting for The Marshall Project in Cleveland.
She sat down for an interview with The Ohio Newsroom.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
On the nature of the Mohican Young Star Academy
“This is the largest licensed facility in the state of Ohio. We learned that kids are brought into these facilities through different avenues. It can be through the foster care system. It can be that a juvenile judge is sending them there as a part of treatment after they intersect with the justice system. But these are children with very high needs. Whether it's a behavioral need or a mental health need, they're often coming from a traumatic background of some kind, and they are getting placed in a facility like this in order to rehabilitate or address those behavioral and mental health issues.”
On what inspection reports and body camera footage revealed
“We found that the facility itself could not contain violence without police intervention. Children were hitting each other, hitting staff, hitting teachers, staff were also hitting children. On April 4th, we discovered the largest kind of outbreak of violence. I interviewed staff who had described prior instances where kids would get in arguments or get in scuffles or whatever, but nothing like this, where the entire campus had kind of erupted into something that they could no longer contain.”
“Kids were climbing over walls into other rooms. They were free to move across campus. They were picking up rocks and things. You have kids as young as maybe 11 and then kids as old as 18. Some of those older kids are six feet [tall]. Some have a criminal background, some are just there because there aren't foster families who are equipped to take a kid like that. And they're all in one place. And it seems like the folks who are running [the facility] are not able to contain it.”
On what local law enforcement say
“When I had started reporting on this story, I noticed that the state had attempted to shut this facility down twice. And during that time, the Ashland County Sheriff also gave up jurisdiction and said, ‘We're not doing this anymore.’ So I called the Ashland County Sheriff, who is a different sheriff, Kurt Schneider, and he said, ‘Look, we don't have jurisdiction, but we're down there two, three times a week still. We're still exhausted, we're still looking for kids in the woods.’ He was the one who was like, 'Things have gotten worse. Things are worse under this new leadership.’”
“After I talked to him, then I got a phone call from the Loudonville police chief. Then I got a call from the fire chief. And each of them were saying, 'Look, we're running out there. We are the first responders and we are so worried about the kids. Not only are we exhausted, we have limited resources. Every time we get pulled into this massive forest, we're not protecting the town. And it's not just one little call. It's everyone having to go and try and contain and de-escalate the violence inside that the staff don't seem to have a handle on.'”
“From there, it snowballed into staff calling me, neighbors calling me, an entire community really coming together and saying, ‘What's going on in the woods? We're really worried.’”
On what additional oversight is needed
“The oversight part of it is complicated. Like many states, we have different institutions, different parts of government that are all connected to facilities like these. Each county in Ohio has a children services placement agency. We have two state agencies that have different responsibilities. And, even as a journalist, trying to sort out those different moving parts took me quite a long time.”
“I spoke with Scott Britton with the Public Children's Services Association of Ohio. And what he pointed out is that caseworkers are saying all the time that they've never seen this level of trauma in youth before. And that there aren't enough employees in Ohio to do this kind of work. And the training is an issue. So it's kind of like a multi-part thing. And it's not clear at what point do you shut a place down?”
On the facility’s response
“We tried so hard to get the facility to talk to us. I sent multiple letters. I called the nonprofit that the owners also run separately. I called their cell phones. I finally eventually got Marquel Brewer on the phone and he just told us ‘We're not gonna comment.’”
“I do want to point out though, in state records, [the facility] said that they may need to rethink the types of clients they admit. Noting that, if they did that though, it would force more children out of state and tremendously increase the cost to Medicaid and Ohio taxpayers.”
