News from the South - Kentucky News Feed
‘I don’t have anybody’: Adoptive teen son of a KY governor talks about life on his own

‘I don’t have anybody’: Adoptive teen son of a KY governor talks about life on his own
by Deborah Yetter, Kentucky Lantern
February 28, 2025
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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Kentucky Lantern is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kentucky Lantern maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jamie Lucke for questions: info@kentuckylantern.com.
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News from the South - Kentucky News Feed
Immigration drives population growth in Kentucky in 2024

by The Daily Yonder, Kentucky Lantern
April 24, 2025
Thanks to The Daily Yonder’s Sarah Melotte for providing Kentucky’s Census data to the Lantern.
Kentucky’s population grew in 2024, according to the latest U.S. Census Bureau estimates. And over 80% of that growth was due to the migration of people from other countries.
Migration to rural America resulted in population growth last year, census shows
The Census makes yearly estimates of population changes at the state and county level. Here are five items to note from the report on 2024:
Kentucky added a net 37,777 people last year, an increase of .8%. At the end of last year, Kentucky had a population of 4,588,372, according to the Census.Kentucky had more deaths (53,140) than births (52,248) in 2024. That loss was made up by a net increase in domestic migration of 7,294 people. (More people moved into Kentucky from other states than moved out.) The largest contributor to Kentucky’s population growth was international migration. The state gained 31,430 people in the net exchange of people between Kentucky and other countries. Over 80% of the net gain in Kentucky’s population came from international migration. Of Kentucky’s 120 counties, 38 lost population in 2024. A large number of these are places that have been dependent on coal mining.The state’s two largest counties (Jefferson and Fayette) both had decreases in domestic migration, but gained population overall because of international migration. For example, Jefferson lost just over 4,600 people to domestic migration, but gained 13,807 people from other counties. (Counties surrounding these two metro counties gained from domestic migration; some of that growth likely came from moving out of the large metro counties.)
The 2024 report is a snapshot of population trends. And in many ways, Kentucky is like the rest of the nation. For example, most of the population growth in the U.S. in 2024 was due to international migration.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.
Kentucky Lantern is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kentucky Lantern maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jamie Lucke for questions: info@kentuckylantern.com.
The post Immigration drives population growth in Kentucky in 2024 appeared first on kentuckylantern.com
Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Rating: Centrist
This article appears to be a neutral, data-driven presentation of Kentucky’s population growth, highlighting the impact of both international migration and domestic migration. The content focuses on factual information, such as population statistics and county-specific migration trends, without introducing political rhetoric or ideological stances. While the mention of international migration could potentially spark differing political views, the article does not advocate for any particular position or policy regarding immigration. It simply presents the Census data in a straightforward manner, making it centrist in tone and content.
News from the South - Kentucky News Feed
U.S. Education Department to restart defaulted student loan collections

by Shauneen Miranda, Kentucky Lantern
April 21, 2025
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Education said Monday that it will resume collections May 5 for defaulted federal student loans.
After pausing during the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic, the agency has not collected on defaulted loans in over five years. More than 5 million borrowers sit in default on their federal student loans, and just 38% of borrowers are current on their payments, the department said.
“American taxpayers will no longer be forced to serve as collateral for irresponsible student loan policies,” U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a statement Monday.
During last year’s presidential campaign, President Donald Trump criticized his predecessor and successor, President Joe Biden, for his efforts to erase student debt. McMahon resumed that line of attack Monday, blaming Biden’s administration for unreasonably raising borrowers’ expectations of forgiveness.
“The Biden Administration misled borrowers: the executive branch does not have the constitutional authority to wipe debt away, nor do the loan balances simply disappear. Hundreds of billions have already been transferred to taxpayers,” McMahon said.
She added that “going forward, the Department of Education, in conjunction with the Department of Treasury, will shepherd the student loan program responsibly and according to the law, which means helping borrowers return to repayment — both for the sake of their own financial health and our nation’s economic outlook.”
The department said the Office of Federal Student Aid will restart the Treasury Offset Program, which the U.S. Treasury Department administers, on May 5.
The Education Department statement said all borrowers who are in default will get emails over the next two weeks “making them aware of these developments and urging them to contact the Default Resolution Group to make a monthly payment, enroll in an income-driven repayment plan, or sign up for loan rehabilitation.”
The department said the Office of Federal Student Aid will “send required notices beginning administrative wage garnishment” later this summer.
More than 42.7 million borrowers owe more than $1.6 trillion in student debt, according to the department.
The administration claims that “instead of protecting responsible taxpayers, the Biden-Harris Administration put them on the hook for irresponsible lending, pushing the federal student loan portfolio toward a fiscal cliff.”
Kentucky Lantern is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kentucky Lantern maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jamie Lucke for questions: info@kentuckylantern.com.
The post U.S. Education Department to restart defaulted student loan collections appeared first on kentuckylantern.com
Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Assessment: Center-Right
The content primarily reflects a Center-Right political bias, as it focuses on the resumption of federal student loan collections and criticizes the previous administration’s attempts to implement student debt forgiveness. The statements made by U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon highlight a commitment to fiscal responsibility and emphasize the idea that taxpayers should not bear the burden of student loan defaults. Additionally, the language used aligns with conservative viewpoints that prioritize personal responsibility and criticize government overspending. The framing of the Biden administration’s actions as misleading further underscores a critical stance typical of a Center-Right perspective.
News from the South - Kentucky News Feed
Kentucky safe teen driving competition gives participants more than just a cash prize

SUMMARY: The Kentucky Safe Teen Driving Challenge aims to promote safe driving habits among teens, coinciding with new regulations allowing 15-year-olds to take permit tests. Inspired by a similar program in Missouri, the competition culminated in the announcement of winners, including grand prize winner Emily Emerson, who received $2,000. Despite being an experienced driver, Emerson faced challenges on the road, such as aggressive drivers and traffic violators. In light of the concerning statistics—13,000 injuries and 210 deaths from teen driving crashes in Kentucky over three years—state leaders emphasize the importance of safe driving and adherence to traffic laws.

A new statewide competition focused on teen road safety came to Kentucky, and prize winners say they walked away with more than cash prizes.
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