Jonah Bevin, now living in Utah, said his adoptive father, former Gov. Matt Bevin, recently offered to return him to Ethiopia. (Photo provided)
He calls it, with irony, his “great escape.”
Three days after his adoptive parents — former Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin and his wife, Glenna — sent him to a youth facility in Jamaica, Jonah Bevin attempted to flee after witnessing staff brutally beat another youth.
“I got beat really, really bad,” Jonah said in a telephone interview with the Kentucky Lantern, adding that he was punched, kicked and struck repeatedly with a chair.
Jonah, then 17, said he had run to the nearby beach before staff caught him and returned him to the Atlantis Leadership Academy, located on a Jamaican beachfront and advertised online as “the perfect location for healing.”
After the beating, “I was bleeding from my nose, mouth,” he said. “They made me clean it up with a mop. They made me clean up my own blood.”
He added: “I was getting beaten every day.”
Escape wouldn’t come for several months until a year ago when Jamaican child welfare authorities — citing signs of abuse and neglect — swooped in and removed eight youths, effectively shutting the operation down. One Atlantis resident, 18, was sent home to the United States and the others, all minors including Jonah, remained behind as their cases were resolved.
Jonah, who was adopted at age 5 from Ethiopia by the Bevins, was among three adopted teens removed from Atlantis and placed temporarily in custody of Jamaican child welfare officials after no relatives immediately agreed to take them.
Now 18, and living on his own in the United States, Jonah said he decided to speak publicly about his ordeal for the first time in hopes of exposing the abusive conditions he endured. He also wants someone to be held accountable.
“I just want, to be honest, accountability to be taken,” Jonah said. “I want the people who did what they did to be accountable.”
He said he’s getting by working part-time construction jobs and finding temporary places to live in Utah, where he’s staying.
“I’m a little broke,” he said. “I have two pair of shoes, a toothbrush, my high school diploma and my passport. That’s the only things I have.”
The Bevins, who are in the midst of a divorce, did not respond to requests for comment for this article through their lawyers.
Jonah said he’s had no support from the Bevins, who are wealthy and live in Anchorage, an affluent enclave east of Louisville. Matt Bevin’s wealth, from a career in finance, was estimated in excess of $13 million when he ran for governor in 2015.
Nor has he had any contact, Jonah said — until recently when Matt Bevin unexpectedly called, offering to send him to Ethiopia.
Though surprised, Jonah said he was initially excited about the prospect, especially when he was told the Bevins had located his birth mother, who he had been told was dead, as well as other relatives in Ethiopia.
“I don’t have anybody,” he said.
But he backed out of a trip planned Feb. 22 after growing wary of the lack of details about the visit, the identities of his supposed relatives, when he would return and whether he could trust his adoptive parents he said abandoned him in Jamaica last year.
He was also concerned about the reliability of an intermediary, a man with connections in Ethiopia the Bevins had identified to accompany Jonah on the trip, and Matt Bevin’s insistence he needed to leave immediately, said Dawn Post, a New York lawyer and child advocate working with Jonah.
Post said she too was concerned about the lack of detail about the trip and the demand he leave immediately or forfeit the opportunity.
For now, she said, Jonah plans to remain in the United States while she tries to arrange a more suitable placement for him.
‘Nobody cared about us’
Jonah said he and two other boys at Atlantis, also Black and both adopted, were the last to leave Jamaica after their adoptive families took no action to help.
“At that point, I didn’t think nobody cared about us — especially the Black kids,” he said.
Outside advocates worked to facilitate their return to the United States, among them Post, who specializes in what she calls “broken adoptions” and an industry that has developed, purportedly to help such children.
“The issue of adopted kids being abandoned is much bigger than people realize,” said Post, who flew to Jamaica last year to provide free legal help to the youths removed from Atlantis.
Conditions at Atlantis first reported last year in the Sunday Times of London, attracted international headlines after celebrity hotel heiress Paris Hilton flew to Jamaica in April to aid the youths as part of her advocacy work to reform what she calls the “troubled teen” industry that victimized her.
Jonah said he had no idea of Hilton’s celebrity or advocacy but was grateful for her support and the attention generated by her visit.
“We had to go to court,” he recalled. “That’s when Paris Hilton showed up. It was cool. They told us some famous person was coming to help us out.”
Post works with advocates through Hilton’s foundation, 11:11 Media Impact, a non-profit founded to advocate on behalf of children in allegedly abusive settings.
Also travelling to Jamaica last year was Philadelphia lawyer Michael McFarland, who met with Post and some of the youths he now represents in a series of federal lawsuits.
Former residents have filed more than a dozen lawsuits in federal court in Florida, where Atlantis obtained private accreditation as an online school. The pending lawsuits allege extreme abuse, neglect and human trafficking for what the lawsuit says was forced labor.
Youths at Atlantis “experienced cruel, inhumane, and despicable abuse, which included but is not limited to: being water boarded, tortured, physically assaulted, punched, slapped, and beaten, were deprived of food and water, were isolated from their family, were subject to torment and psychological torture, and were trafficked by being subjected to forced manual labor and involuntary servitude,” according to allegations in one of 13 pending lawsuits.
The lawsuit also alleges youths at Atlantis received none of the promised education or treatment for emotional problems they were supposed to receive.
Families paid Atlantis $8,000 to $10,000 per month, according to Chelsea Maldonado, with Hilton’s foundation, who also traveled to Jamaica to aid the youths removed from Atlantis.
Among defendants in the lawsuits against Atlantis are the facility’s founders, Randall and Lisa Cook, a husband and wife who have not responded to any of the lawsuits.
“Randall Cook allegedly fled the jurisdiction of Jamaican law enforcement authorities in April 2024 to escape prosecution,” the lawsuit said. It said multiple former staff members are facing criminal charges of abuse and neglect in Jamaica.
The Cooks could not be located for comment and the Atlantis phone number does not work.
Jonah said he met Randall Cook once, when he got off the plane in Jamaica.
“Hello, you’re going to do well in the program,” Jonah recalled him saying. Jonah said he never saw Cook again.
McFarland said the goal is to try to recover some compensation for what youths suffered at Atlantis.
“We’re fully prepared to be in it for the long haul to step in and do whatever it takes for these kids to get justice,” he said.
Post said Jonah has not joined the litigation but is considering doing so.
Post recently created a Gofundme account to try to raise money for Jonah as he tries to establish a new life in the United States.
“My observation when I first met them, that Jonah, that he was the saddest,” Post said. “He was hopeless. Absolutely helpless and hopeless. I was the most concerned about him.”
A ‘seamless transition’
After his return to the United States in May 2024, Jonah said he spent time in a residential program where he finished his high school degree. At Atlantis, he said, the promised online education was never provided.
When he turned 18, he said he left the program with no support and no immediate housing.
“I had to go to a shelter on my birthday,” he said.
Since then, he’s been staying with friends or in other temporary settings, he said.
Jonah was among four children adopted from Ethiopia in 2012 by the Bevins who then had five biological children.
Jonah said he was 5 when he came to the household from an orphanage, along with a sibling group of three children he was not related to that the Bevins also adopted. He said he grew up being told his mother in Ethiopia was dead.
In 2015, three years after the adoption, Matt Bevin, a Republican, conservative Christian and business entrepreneur, launched a campaign for governor of Kentucky, which he won, serving one term from late 2015 through 2019 before he was defeated in his bid for a second term by current Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat.
As governor, Bevin promoted adoption and called for sweeping improvements to the state child foster and adoption system he said had obstructed the Bevins’ effort to adopt a child in Kentucky.
“This is the driving reason why I made the decision to run, because it needs to be fixed,” Bevin said in a 2017 interview on KET.
Glenna Bevin made prevention of child abuse a primary focus as first lady.
Matt Bevin said in the KET interview the introduction of four Black children who spoke no English into his household went smoothly.
“It has been a very, very seamless transition,” Bevin said.
But by then, Jonah said he already had begun feeling like he didn’t fit into the Bevin household.
“It just didn’t work,” he said. By age 8, “I told them I didn’t want to be in that house.”
Jonah said he was still trying to master English, struggling with a reading disability and clashed with others in the house. He said he didn’t get along with Glenna Bevin, left largely in charge of the children by her husband who was away on business or politics.
“I was getting in trouble,” he said. “When I couldn’t speak English, if I did something wrong, I couldn’t understand.”
As a young child, Jonah said he attended a school for students with learning disabilities because of his difficulties with reading and writing.
When Matt Bevin launched his campaign, he sometimes took his nine children to political events which Jonah said he hated, believing the candidate did so “to boost himself.”
“If I was in politics, in general, I would not expose my kids in front of live TV with thousands of people you don’t know,” he said. “It stressed me out. I had a bunch of trauma from orphanages. I wasn’t good with large groups of people.”
At age 13, Jonah said the Bevins sent him to the first of several out-of-state youth residential facilities.
‘It was a big shock’
Jonah said he knew nothing about the Atlantis facility in Jamaica when he was taken there in handcuffs at age 17 by a “transport team” hired to relocate him from a residential facility in Utah.
Hilton has said such transport teams are a common factor in youths removed involuntarily from homes for placement in facilities that advertise themselves as experts in working with difficult kids — an ordeal she said she experienced firsthand.
“When I was 16 years old, I was ripped from my bed in the middle of the night and transported across state lines to the first of four youth residential treatment facilities,” Hilton said last year in testimony before Congress about what she said is a poorly regulated, $23-billion-a-year industry. “I was force-fed medications and sexually abused by staff. I was violently restrained and dragged down hallways, stripped naked, and thrown into solitary confinement.”
Jonah said he was told the new facility in Jamaica would provide education, activities, swimming, pets and “fun stuff to do.”
Instead, after arriving in December 2023 he found a climate of abuse and deprivation amid ramshackle facilities where youths were isolated with little to no contact with families.
“It was a big shock,” he said.
Punishment, in addition to violent beatings with fists, sticks or belts, consisted of being forced to sit on a stool for days at a time, staring at a wall. Meals sometimes consisted of meager portions of plain rice and water — or no meals at all.
Jonah, who is 5-foot, 11-inches tall, said he weighed about 135 pounds when he entered Atlantis. By the time he was removed, several months later, he weighed 115.
“I was the skinniest,” he said, referring to the boys at Atlantis.
He said the boys decided to start keeping handwritten notes to document their ordeal and when they learned one youth who had turned 18 was being released to return to the United States, gave him the notes to try to get attention about conditions at Atlantis.
“I said, ‘If you ever get out, you’ve got to tell them everything,’” Jonah said,
In a statement he gave to Post, Jonah describes beatings as well as other torments including being buried in sand, being “waterboarded,” and having saltwater put in his face and eyes.
“The staff would bury us alive, putting sand in our mouth & eyes while we were screaming, laughing in our face while we suffered,” it said. “They would make us fight each other for their own amusement & they would be drinking, smoking weed on shift.”
“You don’t forget the things you’ve been through. The stuff replays through your head.”
– Jonah Bevin
Staff routinely refused to provide medications youths were prescribed, it said.
Other youths related similar treatment or worse, including one who described staff rubbing salt and bleach into his open wounds from a beating, according to the notes provided by Post.
After the teen with the boys’ notes was back in the United States, he alerted a relative who called the U.S. Embassy, triggering the investigation by Jamaican child welfare authorities, Post said.
‘Are we getting out?’
On Feb. 8, 2024, Jonah and the other youths were sitting in a circle reading books — the only educational activity allowed, he said — when they saw vehicles approaching.
“I seen a bunch of government cars come up to the house,” Jonah said.
Official-looking individuals with badges around their necks got out and approached the facility. Meanwhile, staff had fled the building and were hiding behind it.
“Are we getting out?” Jonah said he asked his friend. “We all knew from there we were getting out.”
The youths were removed to a shelter as officials with Jamaica’s Child Protection and Family Services Agency sorted out the case.
But the youths weren’t free yet.
At several court hearings, lawyers representing Atlantis and some parents tried to argue the facility should be reopened and the boys returned. They argued the youths were lying or exaggerating their treatment, Post said.
Post was present for two of the court hearings.
Jonah said the uncertainty was terrifying.
“Court really messed with me,” he said.
‘Trying to figure it out’
Ultimately, four of the seven boys returned to the United States with parents or others willing to assume custody. Only Jonah and two others, all adopted and all Black were placed in custody of Jamaican child welfare officials.
“All of them were just abandoned and trying to make it on their own,” Post said. “For vulnerable children, to be abandoned in such a way after experiencing more horrific abuse and neglect is unconscionable.”
Eventually, the remaining three youths returned to the United States in various placements, Jonah to residential settings, first in Florida, then Utah.
For now, Jonah said he doesn’t think much about the future.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m just trying to figure it out.”
He gets support from a group chat with his former fellow residents, but still can’t escape thoughts of his time at Atlantis he said left him with psychological and physical scars.
“It’s all kind of depressing,” he said. “You don’t forget the things you’ve been through. The stuff replays through your head.”
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