Ohio lawmaker wants an adult inside youth treatment centers who will report abuse

What happened

Ohio state Rep. Crystal Lett has proposed giving the state more power to shut down troubled residential treatment centers for children. She now says closing them does not go far enough, The Marshall Project reported Wednesday. According to the outlet, Lett says children placed in these centers need access to a professional who is ready to report abuse and neglect to police and state regulators. The Marshall Project reported that Lett is a former mental health worker and that her brother died while living in a residential treatment center.

Her bill, House Bill 811, would take away the Ohio Department of Behavioral Health’s discretion after serious violations. The department would have to suspend admissions, deny license renewal or close the facility, according to earlier Marshall Project reporting and WCMH-TV (NBC4) in Columbus. WCMH reported this week that lawmakers are still considering it. Lett has pointed to the outlet’s investigations of two of the state’s largest facilities. The first is Mohican Young Star Academy in Ashland County, which the state moved this year to strip of its license. The second is Fox Run Center for Children and Adolescents in St. Clairsville, where The Marshall Project found unsafe restraints and medical neglect. The outlet also documented physical and sexual assaults there, and it found that many incidents reported by deputies appear to be missing from the state’s own oversight records.

Rep. Andrea White, a Kettering Republican who chairs the House Children and Human Services Committee, praised the bill, WCMH reported. She said children “already so traumatized should not be in places that revictimize them.” Addison Torrence lived at a Columbus facility as a youth and now works with the advocacy group ACTION Ohio. He told the station he wants a ban on restraints that can make it harder for a child to breathe. Others quoted by The Marshall Project called for better training and hiring at the facilities. In a written statement quoted by The Marshall Project, Fox Run said it “cooperates with state regulators and other oversight agencies, investigates concerns, and implements corrective actions whenever warranted.”

Several questions are still open. The Marshall Project reported in April that Mohican has since operated under a new name, but the coverage reviewed for this brief does not say how the state’s license case ended. It also does not say whether HB 811 will get a vote or how a reporting professional would be set up and paid for, and it quotes no opponents of the bill.

Our reflection

Start with the families. A parent signs placement papers because a child is in a mental health crisis and every other door has closed. They are told this is treatment. Then, by The Marshall Project’s account, some of those children were held in unsafe restraints. Others were assaulted or neglected, and much of it never reached the state’s own records. The child learns that telling does nothing. The parent finds out last, if at all.

Rep. Lett carries this as a sister. That deserves a moment of quiet before it gets any commentary.

Ezekiel 34 is God’s case against Israel’s shepherds, and most of the charge is about what they failed to do: the weak were not strengthened and the injured were not bound up. Then comes the line that lands hardest on this story. They ruled “with force and harshness.” Oversight is a shepherd’s job. A license is the state’s promise to every family that someone is watching. When nobody watches, the promise is only paperwork.

In John 10 Jesus adds the hired hand, who runs when the wolf comes “because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.” I will not aim that verse at one facility and walk away feeling clean. Plenty of us, in churches and in courtrooms, have wanted the hard kid somewhere else: out of the house, out of the youth group. We called it getting him help, and sometimes it was. Sometimes it was relief, and we stopped asking questions because the answers would have cost us something. That numbness is sin too, and it is ours to repent of.

Jesus went the other way. When his disciples argued about who was greatest, he set a child in the middle of them and said that whoever welcomes such a child welcomes him (Mark 9:36 to 37). He put the child in the middle of the room, not in a building two counties away that nobody visits.

The fix is practical. Lett is asking for one adult who does not answer to the facility and will carry a child’s report to police and regulators. Pair that with consequences the state is required to impose. Then add the restraint ban Torrence asked for, along with better hiring. I would add two more. Families should have a real say when the state decides the future of a place that held their child. And many young people would be better served close to home, by people who already know their names. Anyone who has sat in a detention visiting room knows a young person can tell you exactly who stopped coming. Visits are a form of oversight too.

Jesus told a story about a widow who kept going back to a judge until he gave her justice (Luke 18:1 to 8). Be that widow this week. If you live in Ohio, ask your representative where HB 811 stands. If you live anywhere else, ask your lawmakers who checks on the children your state pays to hold, and who those children can call.

The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the injured you have not bound up… and with force and harshness you have ruled them.

Ezekiel 34:4

Source: The Marshall Project, “Ohio Lawmaker Says Closing Troubled Treatment Facilities Isn’t Enough to Protect Children”