Unintended Consequences of a Proposed Ohio Bill

Child sex abuse prevention advocates worried about proposed Ohio parental notification bill
Morgan Trau, Ohio Capital Journal, Nov. 19, 2025. 

Ohio violence prevention advocates worry that teens who have been sexually abused would have to get parental consent to get emergency and temporary mental health services under proposed legislation.

Some of the most heinous crimes have the most vulnerable victims.

“I’ve responded to child sexual abuse victims at 2 a.m. in the hospital,” said Emily Gemar, with the Ohio Alliance to End Sexual Violence. “I’ve held their hand throughout the night.”

Thousands of kids in Ohio are sexually abused per year, she said. State data shows the majority of all reported sexual assaults happened to children under 18.

But many cases go unreported, Gemar said.

“It takes some time to build trust with that counselor, that mental health provider, to allow for a setting where somebody feels like they can disclose what’s happened to them,” she said.

And she was thrilled when Gov. Mike DeWine expanded his crisis mental health program. When a child calls the 9-8-8 hotline, they get emergency access to support — free of charge.

The program also lets teens 14 and older get temporary help, including six weeks of counseling, without consent from a parent or guardian.

Gemar said that’s important in sex abuse cases.

“We know that anywhere from 35% to 93% of child victims, one, knew their perpetrator, and, two, that perpetrator was a parent or caregiver,” she said.

But grandfather and conservative activist John Stover said the program keeps families in the dark.

“There is no situation whereby a parent should not be notified that their 14-year-old is dealing with mental health issues,” Stover, who runs the organization Ohio Value Voters, said.

Some Republican state lawmakers agree with him.

Ohio House Bill 172, sponsored by state Rep. Johnathan Newman, R-Troy, would require parental approval for minors to get the temporary support. It repeals the current state law allowing for this care.

“We should all want to see students who suffer with mental health struggles receive the help they need,” Newman wrote in his testimony for the bill’s first hearing.

“This bill seeks to do that, maintaining that the students’ parents cannot be left out of the picture because the parents are the child’s authority and most important and essential part of the student’s recovery.”

His bill is meant to mirror language from the last General Assembly’s H.B. 8, legislation requiring schools to notify parents if the child identifies as LGBTQ+ or has a mental health issue.

“You cannot have two unique programs where parents are notified under one circumstance if it’s in the school, and they’re not notified if it’s another circumstance outside the school,” Stover said.

Stover said the bill wouldn’t stop abusers from being caught. He said mandatory reporting requirements would go into effect — mental health professionals would have to tell police, who would then investigate the parents.

“There is no argument there,” Stover said.

But Gemar warns cases don’t always work like that.

“If a 14-year-old is being raped by a parent, they would have to ask the parent who is raping them for consent to go see a clinician,” Gemar said.

“There could be punishment, there could be threats or more physical or sexual abuse that occurs because of that.”

If the bill becomes law, she said, that is a door closed for teens to be able to safely seek help.

The Ohio Domestic Violence Network is expected to testify against the legislation, along with Gemar, this week.

The Ohio Newsroom reports on Mohican Young Star Academy

A year into new ownership, violence still plagues Ohio’s largest youth treatment center
Kendall Crawford, The Ohio Newsroom, Nov. 18, 2025. 

Mohican Young Star Academy, a youth residential treatment facility an hour northeast of Columbus, Ohio, is surrounded by a state forest.

Several years ago, the state tried to shut down the Mohican Young Star Academy 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 April 4th, we discovered the largest kind of outbreak of violence. I interviewed staff who had described prior instances where kids would get in arguments or get in scuffles or whatever, but nothing like this, where the entire campus had kind of erupted into something that they could no longer contain.”

“Kids were climbing over walls into other rooms. They were free to move across campus. They were picking up rocks and things. You have kids as young as maybe 11 and then kids as old as 18. Some of those older kids are six feet [tall]. Some have a criminal background, some are just there because there aren't foster families who are equipped to take a kid like that. And they're all in one place. And it seems like the folks who are running [the facility] are not able to contain it.”

On what local law enforcement say 

“When I had started reporting on this story, I noticed that the state had attempted to shut this facility down twice. And during that time, the Ashland County Sheriff also gave up jurisdiction and said, ‘We're not doing this anymore.’ So I called the Ashland County Sheriff, who is a different sheriff, Kurt Schneider, and he said, ‘Look, we don't have jurisdiction, but we're down there two, three times a week still. We're still exhausted, we're still looking for kids in the woods.’ He was the one who was like, 'Things have gotten worse. Things are worse under this new leadership.’”

“After I talked to him, then I got a phone call from the Loudonville police chief. Then I got a call from the fire chief. And each of them were saying, 'Look, we're running out there. We are the first responders and we are so worried about the kids. Not only are we exhausted, we have limited resources. Every time we get pulled into this massive forest, we're not protecting the town. And it's not just one little call. It's everyone having to go and try and contain and de-escalate the violence inside that the staff don't seem to have a handle on.'”

“From there, it snowballed into staff calling me, neighbors calling me, an entire community really coming together and saying, ‘What's going on in the woods? We're really worried.’”

On what additional oversight is needed

“The oversight part of it is complicated. Like many states, we have different institutions, different parts of government that are all connected to facilities like these. Each county in Ohio has a children services placement agency. We have two state agencies that have different responsibilities. And, even as a journalist, trying to sort out those different moving parts took me quite a long time.”

“I spoke with Scott Britton with the Public Children's Services Association of Ohio. And what he pointed out is that caseworkers are saying all the time that they've never seen this level of trauma in youth before. And that there aren't enough employees in Ohio to do this kind of work. And the training is an issue. So it's kind of like a multi-part thing. And it's not clear at what point do you shut a place down?”

On the facility’s response

“We tried so hard to get the facility to talk to us. I sent multiple letters. I called the nonprofit that the owners also run separately. I called their cell phones. I finally eventually got Marquel Brewer on the phone and he just told us ‘We're not gonna comment.’”

“I do want to point out though, in state records, [the facility] said that they may need to rethink the types of clients they admit. Noting that, if they did that though, it would force more children out of state and tremendously increase the cost to Medicaid and Ohio taxpayers.”

Toledo Blade reports on Mohican Young Star Academy

Juvenile court reconsiders placement at youth treatment center after recent reports of fighting
Alex Bracken, Toledo Blade, Nov. 21, 2025. 

Lucas County’s juvenile court is reconsidering its relationship with an Ashland County youth treatment center after being made aware of recent reporting that detailed fights inside the facility.

The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization focusing on criminal justice, detailed five clashes between children at Mohican Young Star Academy since November, 2024. The most severe of those incidents occurred in April, when a fight in a classroom began rippling across the campus, involved more than a dozen students, and injured students and teachers.

Ohio’s Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, reviewing footage of the incident, found 18 areas of noncompliance at the facility. Mohican Young Star Academy did not respond to a request for comment.

County commissioners unanimously approved the contract with Mohican at their meeting Tuesday, allowing up to $150,000 of an Ohio Department of Youth Services grant to be used for placements at the facility.

The juvenile court’s administrator, Said Orra, said via email on Thursday that the court had placed a youth at the facility two weeks prior, but that “we have just become aware today of recent issues with Mohican in recent news articles and are considering alternative placement options for that youth.”

While the facility is currently licensed to operate, the Ohio attorney general in 2021 sought to remove its owners after “investigators determined that there was present danger to the health and safety of the youth residing at Mohican.” It has since changed ownership, but recent incidents have revived concerns over management’s handling of fights.

Before approving the resolution, Commissioner Anita Lopez asked in what situations juvenile court judges utilize the facilities, and Commissioner Pete Gerken asked if there were any similar facilities in the county.

“I always worry about the separation. Troubled youth can’t be separated from their families entirely; there’s a travel barrier if you take them across the state or to the south,” Commissioner Pete Gerken said.

Emily Simpson, the juvenile court’s general counsel, presented the contract at the meeting and said that Mohican Young Star Academy offers intensive treatment options that are sometimes determined to be necessary.

“I just know that [Mohican] services specific needs, so you have to balance keeping [children] away from their families with getting the support that they need. I know that the treatment programs are generally between six and 12 months,” Ms. Simpson said.

According to its website, Mohican Young Star Academy provides 6-12 month residential programs for mental health treatment, juvenile sex offenders, and drug and alcohol treatment.

County administration deferred to Mr. Orra for more information about the contract immediately following the meeting and made a similar statement deferring to the court on Thursday.

The court places youth at Mohican Young Star Academy “if there are no local facilities available to meet the placement needs of the youth,” Mr. Orra said via email. 

Mr. Orra said the court was notified of the attorney general’s legal action in 2021 but said it has not had issues with the facility. The juvenile court previously contracted with the facility from 2016 to 2019, and its most recent one-year contract was approved Tuesday but effective since July.

The juvenile court manages the county’s 32-bed youth treatment center, the pretrial juvenile detention center, and a nonresidential community treatment center, according to its website.