He calls it, ironically, 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 beating 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 repeatedly hit with a chair.
Jonah, then 17, claimed he fled to a nearby beach before being apprehended and returned to the Atlantis Leadership Academy, which advertised itself online as “the perfect location for healing.”
“I was bleeding from my nose, mouth,” he said after the beating. “They made me clean it with a mop. “They made me clean up my own blood.”
He went on to say, “I was getting beaten every day.”
Escape would not come for several months until a year ago, when Jamaican child welfare authorities swooped in and removed eight youths, effectively shutting down the operation due to signs of abuse and neglect.
One Atlantis resident, aged 18, was sent home to the United States, while the others, all minors including Jonah, remained behind as their cases were resolved.
Jonah, who was adopted from Ethiopia by the Bevins when he was five years old, was one of three adopted teens removed from Atlantis and placed in the temporary custody of Jamaican child welfare officials after no relatives agreed to take them.
Jonah, who is now 18 and lives on his own in the United States, said he decided to speak out publicly about his ordeal for the first time in the hopes of exposing the abusive conditions he endured. He also wants somebody to be held accountable.
“I just want, to be honest, accountability to be taken,” Jonah told him. “I want the people who did what they did to be accountable.”
He stated that he is making ends meet by working part-time construction jobs and finding temporary housing in Utah, where he is currently staying.
“I’m a little broke,” he admitted. “I’ve got two pairs of shoes, a toothbrush, my high school diploma, and my passport. “That’s all I have.”
The Bevins, who are currently divorcing, did not respond to requests for comment for this article through their lawyers.
Jonah claimed he has received no support from the Bevins, who are wealthy and live in Anchorage, an affluent neighborhood east of Louisville. Matt Bevin’s wealth from a career in finance was estimated to be more than $13 million when he ran for governor in 2015.
Jonah said he hadn’t had any contact until recently, when Matt Bevin called unexpectedly and offered to send him to Ethiopia.
Though surprised, Jonah said he was initially excited about the prospect, especially after learning that the Bevins had found his birth mother, who he had been told had died, as well as other relatives in Ethiopia.
“I don’t have anybody,” he said.
But he backed out of a trip planned for Feb. 22 after becoming concerned about the lack of details about the visit, the identities of his alleged relatives, when he would return, and whether he could trust his adoptive parents, whom he claimed abandoned him in Jamaica last year.
He was also concerned about the reliability of an intermediary, a man with connections in Ethiopia whom the Bevins had identified to accompany Jonah on the trip, as well as Matt Bevin’s insistence that he leave immediately, according to Dawn Post, a New York lawyer and child advocate who works with Jonah.
Post expressed her concern about the trip’s lack of detail and the demand that he leave immediately or forfeit the opportunity.
For the time being, she stated that Jonah intends to remain in the United States while she works to find him a more suitable placement.
‘Nobody cared about us’
Jonah claimed that he and two other boys at Atlantis, both Black and adopted, were the last to leave Jamaica because their adoptive families refused to help.
“At that point, I didn’t think nobody cared about us — especially the Black kids,” he recalled.
Outside advocates worked to facilitate their return to the United States, including Post, who specializes in “broken adoptions” and an industry that claims to help such children.
“The issue of adopted children being abandoned is much bigger than people realize,” said Post, who flew to Jamaica last year to offer free legal assistance to the youths removed from Atlantis.
Conditions at Atlantis, first reported in the Sunday Times of London last year, drew international attention when celebrity hotel heiress Paris Hilton flew to Jamaica in April to help the youths as part of her advocacy work to reform what she calls the “troubled teen” industry that victimized her.
Jonah stated that he was unaware 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 explained. “That’s when Paris Hilton arrived. That was cool. They said a famous person was coming to help us.”
Post collaborates with advocates through Hilton’s foundation, 11:11 Media Impact, a non-profit established to advocate for children in allegedly abusive situations.
Last year, Philadelphia lawyer Michael McFarland traveled to Jamaica to meet with Post and some of the youths he now represents in a number of federal lawsuits.
Former residents have filed over a dozen lawsuits in federal court in Florida, where Atlantis was granted private accreditation as an online school. The pending lawsuits allege severe abuse, neglect, and human trafficking for what the plaintiff claims is forced labor.
Atlantis’s young people “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 a lawsuit that is currently pending.
According to the lawsuit, youths at Atlantis did not receive the promised education or treatment for emotional problems.
Families paid Atlantis $8,000 to $10,000 per month, according to Chelsea Maldonado of Hilton’s foundation, who also traveled to Jamaica to assist the youths removed from Atlantis.
Randall and Lisa Cook, the facility’s founders, are among the defendants in the lawsuits against Atlantis. They have yet to respond to any of the lawsuits.
“Randall Cook allegedly fled the jurisdiction of Jamaican law enforcement authorities in April 2024 to escape prosecution,” according to the lawsuit. According to the report, several former employees are facing criminal charges for abuse and neglect in Jamaica.
The Cooks could not be reached for comment, and the Atlantis phone number is not working.
Jonah claimed he met Randall Cook once, when he stepped off the plane in Jamaica.
“Hello, you’re going to do well in the program,” Jonah remembered him saying. Jonah claimed he never saw Cook again.
McFarland stated that the goal is to seek compensation for the injuries sustained by youths 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,” according to him.
According to Post, Jonah has not yet joined the litigation but is considering doing so.
Post recently set up a GoFundMe account to help Jonah start a new life in the United States.
“My observation when I first met them, that Jonah, that he was the saddest,” Post recalled. “He was hopeless. Completely helpless and hopeless. I was the most concerned for him.”
A ‘seamless transition’
After returning to the United States in May 2024, Jonah stated that he spent time in a residential program where he completed his high school education. He claimed that Atlantis never provided the promised online education.
When he turned 18, he stated that he had left the program with no support and no immediate housing.
“I had to go to a shelter on my birthday,” he told me.
Since then, he has been staying with friends or in other temporary accommodations, he explained.
Jonah was one of four children adopted from Ethiopia in 2012 by the Bevins, who also had five biological children.
Jonah stated that he was 5 years old when he arrived at the Bevins’ home from an orphanage, along with a sibling group of three children he was not related to, whom they had also adopted. He claimed he grew up being told his mother in Ethiopia had died.
Three years after the adoption, Matt Bevin, a Republican, conservative Christian, and business entrepreneur, ran for governor of Kentucky, which he won. He served one term from late 2015 to 2019 before being defeated in his bid for a second term by current Gov. Andy Beshear.
As governor, Bevin promoted adoption and advocated for significant improvements to the state child foster and adoption system, which he claimed hampered the Bevins’ efforts to adopt a child in Kentucky.
“This is the driving reason why I decided to run: it needs to be fixed,” Bevin said in a 2017 interview with KET.
Glenna Bevin prioritized child abuse prevention during her tenure as first lady.
Matt Bevin stated in an interview with KET that the introduction of four Black children who did not speak English into his household went smoothly.
“It has been a very, very seamless transition,” Bevin informed the crowd.
But by then, Jonah admitted that he had begun to feel out of place in the Bevin household.
“It just didn’t work,” he explained. As a youngster, “I told them I didn’t want to be in that house.”
Jonah stated that he was still learning English, struggled with a reading disability, and had disagreements with others in the house. He claimed he did not get along with Glenna Bevin, who was left largely in charge of the children by her husband while he was away for business or politics.
“I was getting in trouble,” he admitted. “When I couldn’t speak English, if I did something wrong, I couldn’t understand.”
Jonah stated that as a child, he attended a school for students with learning disabilities because he struggled with reading and writing.
When Matt Bevin began his campaign, he occasionally took his nine children to political events, which Jonah despised, 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,” according to him. “It stressed me out. I had a lot of trauma from orphanages. I wasn’t good in large groups.
At the age of 13, Jonah claims the Bevins sent him to the first of several out-of-state youth residential facilities.
‘It was a big shock’
Jonah claimed he had no knowledge of the Atlantis facility in Jamaica until he was taken there in handcuffs at the age of 17 by a “transport team” hired to relocate him from a residential facility in Utah.
Hilton has stated that such transport teams are a common factor in youths being removed involuntarily from their homes and placed in facilities that advertise themselves as experts in working with difficult children, an ordeal she claims she has personally experienced.
“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 testified before Congress last year about what she described as a poorly regulated, $23 billion-a-year industry.
“I was forced to take medications and sexually abused by staff. “I was violently restrained and dragged down hallways, stripped naked, and placed in solitary confinement.”
“You don’t forget the things you’ve been through. The stuff replays through your head.”
— Jonah Bevin
Jonah stated that he was told the new facility in Jamaica would offer education, activities, swimming, pets, and “fun stuff to do.”
Instead, when he arrived in December 2023, he discovered a climate of abuse and deprivation in ramshackle facilities where youths were isolated and had little to no contact with their families.
“It was a big shock,” he said.
In addition to violent beatings with fists, sticks, or belts, punishment included being forced to sit on a stool for days on end while staring at a wall. Meals could sometimes consist of meager portions of plain rice and water, or no meals at all.
Jonah, who stands 5 feet, 11 inches tall, stated that he weighed approximately 135 pounds when he entered Atlantis. He weighed 115 when he was removed several months later.
“I was the skinniest,” he explained, referring to the boys at Atlantis.
He stated that the boys began keeping handwritten notes to document their ordeal, and when they learned that one of the youths, who had turned 18, was being released to return to the United States, they gave him the notes in order to draw attention to conditions at Atlantis.
“I said, ‘If you ever get out, you’ve got to tell them everything,'” Jonah replied,
In a statement to The Post, Jonah describes beatings as well as other torments such as being buried in sand, being “waterboarded,” and having saltwater poured into 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,” according to the report. “They would make us fight each other for their own amusement and they would be drinking, smoking weed on shift.”
According to the report, staff routinely refused to provide youths with medications they were prescribed.
Other youths reported similar or worse treatment, including one who described staff rubbing salt and bleach into open wounds from a beating, according to Post’s notes.
When the teen with the boys’ notes returned to the United States, he notified a relative, who contacted the U.S. Embassy, prompting an investigation by Jamaican child welfare authorities, according to Post.
‘Are we getting out?’
On February 8, 2024, Jonah and the other youths were sitting in a circle reading books—the only educational activity permitted, he said—when they noticed vehicles approaching.
“I seen a bunch of government cars come up to the house,” Jonah recalled.
Official-looking individuals wearing badges around their necks emerged and approached the facility. Meanwhile, the employees 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 taken to a shelter while officials from Jamaica’s Child Protection and Family Services Agency worked out the situation.
However, the youths were not yet free.
At several court hearings, lawyers for Atlantis and some parents argued that the facility should be reopened and the boys returned. They argued that the youths were lying or exaggerating their treatment, according to Post.
Post was present at two of the court hearings.
Jonah stated that the uncertainty was terrifying.
“Court really messed with me,” he explained.
‘Trying to figure it out’
Four of the seven boys eventually returned to the United States, either with their parents or with others willing to take custody. Only Jonah and two other children, all adopted and Black, were taken into custody by Jamaican child welfare officials.
“All of them were just abandoned and trying to make it on their own,” the newspaper reported. “For vulnerable children, to be abandoned in such a way after experiencing more horrific abuse and neglect is unconscionable.”
The remaining three youths eventually returned to the United States in various settings, with Jonah going to a residential facility in Florida and then Utah.
Jonah stated that he isn’t thinking about the future right now.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m just trying to figure it out.”
He receives support from a group chat with his former fellow residents, but he can’t get away from memories of his time at Atlantis, which he claims left him with psychological and physical scars.
“It’s all kind of depressing,” he said. “You do not forget what you have been through. The events replay in your head.”
