A year into new ownership, violence still plagues Ohio’s largest youth treatment center
By: Kendall Crawford | The Ohio Newsroom
Posted on: Friday, November 21, 2025
PERRYSVILLE, Ohio (The Ohio Newsroom) — Several years ago, the state tried to shut down the Mohican Young Star Academy youth treatment center 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…
