ASHLAND — The Mohican Young Star Academy has a storied past — some of it good, and some of it not-so-good — but has always dealt in providing correctional and rehabilitation services to Ohio’s youth.
Here’s a detailed look into the facility’s presence in the Loudonville area as the state investigates “serious non-compliance” issues.
On Nov. 20, the Ohio Department of Behavioral Health suspended admissions to Mohican Young Star Academy following The Marshall Project’s Nov. 6 article that documented violence, staff injuries and fights since an ownership change in November 2024.
Ohio DBH personnel have since “performed regular visits to monitor operations and ensure resident safety,” said Eric Wandersleben, a department spokesman.
The Suspension of Admissions Order will remain in effect “until it has been determined the violations that formed the basis for the order have been corrected,” he said.
Wandersleben did not address the specific violations and did not speak to what will happen to the juveniles already placed there. He also did not say how many juveniles are currently housed at the facility.
Terry Jones, the facility’s CEO and executive director, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
1935-2009
Mohican Young Star Academy is not a youth correctional facility. But it used to be.
Under the Ohio Department of Youth Services, Mohican used to be part of the state’s nine youth correctional facilities scattered throughout the state. DYS used to operate four high-security, four medium-security and one low-security facility.
Today, that number is three, and they all house boys between the ages of 12 and 21. DYS no longer has a dedicated facility for adjudicated girls. The state has departed from operating large youth prisons in favor of smaller facilities.
Mohican was part of the state’s downsizing between 2009 and 2011. In that time span, the agency closed three facilities and a regional parole office, and reduced its staff by 300, or 13.5%.
DYS Juvenile Prison Closures
- 1993: Buckeye Youth Center
- 2001: Maumee Youth Center; Training Institute of Central Ohio
- 2003: Riverview Juvenile Correctional Facility
- 2009: Marion Juvenile Correctional Facility
- 2010: Mohican Juvenile Correctional Facility
- 2011: Ohio River Valley Juvenile Correctional Facility
- 2014: Scioto Juvenile Correctional Facility
DYS plans to build four new centers in Cuyahoga and Lorain counties for $260 million in order to fulfill Gov. Mike DeWine’s juvenile justice reform goals.
Construction began this year and is expected to conclude by 2026 or 2027.
What’s in a name?
The Mohican facility, built in 1935, has gone through several name changes through the years, showing the evolution to juvenile correctional approaches.
- Mohican Juvenile Correctional Facility (MoJCF)
- Mohican Youth Center
- Tri-State Youth Authority
- Mohican Youth Academy
- Mohican Star Academy
- Mohican Young Star Academy
In the early days, the facility had 48 beds and residents were housed in log-cabin style buildings built in the 1930s by the Case Institute of Technology.
From an archived Ashland Times-Gazette article: “During the Depression, Civilian Conservation Corp. workers were housed in the Case Facility, which also served as the temporary location of the Wooster Presbyterian Church Camp in the late ’50s.”
By 1960, the facility began supervising itself under a new name: Mohican Youth Center. In 1963, administrative shifts began as the Ohio Youth Commission took over. OYC was a forerunner for today’s Department of Youth Services, which was created in 1983.
By 1967, the facility closed temporarily for renovations. The physical plant was expanded and remodeled into a new, 120-bed dormitory, a project valued at $900,000. (Today, the project would cost approximately $8.7 million, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics consumer price index.)
Between 1971 and 1995, the facility went through renovations and changes that focused on education.
The state built a new library there in 1971, and in 1984 the facility became accredited through the American Corrections Association, which preceded its subsequent accreditation as a “Juvenile Therapeutic Community.”
In 1986, the facility added on a special education center and 1995 was the year it built a new school and office building.
Two years later, in 1997, the state upgraded Mohican to a medium-security facility from a minimum-security status. A new fence was also erected. In 2000, a new operations center was constructed.
But by 2009, DYS announced the facility’s closure. In May 2010, it closed as a correctional facility and ownership of the 143-acre campus reverted back to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.
That’s when the Ohio Department of Natural Resources started looking for a lessee.
2010-2021
The facility sat vacant from 2010 to 2013. But by October 2013, Tri-State Youth Academy had moved into the space and dedicated the facility.
At the time, The Ashland Times-Gazette reported the private facility employed about 40 people and that it would “not house youth serving adjudicated sentences through juvenile courts, but rather from troubled homes across the state. Funding for the program comes through foster care funding streams.”
That changed, though.
In a September 2014 article, the T-G reported the facility, now operating under the moniker “Mohican Youth Academy” hosted an open house to meet “friends, family, case workers and others to see the facilities and meet with the 80 males that currently live there.”
Its website at the time stated the facility served male youths in custody of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services and “male youth that have been committed to the Department of Youth Services.”
Rocky Hall, the facility’s lessee, wanted to retire in 2017. That’s approximately the time Olga Starr expressed interest. The two had worked together — she as a business consultant in Columbus, he as the client who sought advisement on the sale of the facility.
From a June 2019 T-G article, Starr said: “I realized there were many good things about this place, and after months of consideration, agreed to purchase it from Hall. We registered the new name, Mohican Star Academy, on Oct. 24, 2017.”
Starr declined to comment for this story.
Under Starr’s leadership, the facility underwent cultural changes. For example, the residents became “peers,” a departure from more disparaging terms. The changes aligned with federal and state legislative shifts mandating that residential treatment centers provide education to the youth involved.
According to the T-G, administrators and staff were hired by the Loudonville-Perrysville Exempted Village School District, because the facility is located within the district.
“… the money to cover costs passed through the district to the Academy,” the T-G reported in 2019. The scenario was financially strapping for the district, though.
So Starr eventually connected with Lumin Academy, an Akron-area charter school, to offer vocational education programs to the facility’s residents. The partnership led to apprenticeships in businesses and industry in the Greater Mansfield area.
By 2019, staff there totaled 94 for the 67 boys enrolled. Starr indicated things were good, but expressed fear in expanding too fast and called a growing problem of “AWOLS”, or runaways from the facility, complicated.
She said state regulations cause dilemmas when staff are prohibited from physically stopping or confiscating a runaway.
“Imagine a child walking away into a woods filled with 20 inches of snow in sub-zero temperatures,” she said, talking to a T-G reporter in June 2019.
Starr then referenced an actual case, where a peer walked away during winter and suffered frostbite. (He was returned and continued the program.)
The facility made strides with its relationships in the community, with regular donations to the Mohican Area Community Fund and Mansfield’s Harmony House (a homeless shelter).
“Most of the boys here have come from horrible circumstances, and are used to the society treating them like thugs, mental cases or outcasts. The truth is, the boys here are just children who want to be loved. We teach them to be good to our neighbors, and to help those in need. Given the opportunity, they are eager to step up.”
Olga Starr, quoted in a December 2019 Ashland Times-Gazette Article
But the problem of runaways grew worse.
Police and sheriff call logs reveal there were at least 17 runaways reported in 2020 during a 12-month span. In one of those cases, two left the facility and were involved in a crash that led to injuries.
In another, “several” boys left the facility on Nov. 6, 2020 and were still being sought five days later. Two ended up allegedly stealing a car and driving it around 80 miles to Hocking County, where a chase happened.
The chase was called off and officers later found the car crashed and abandoned.
Starr told the T-G: “These regulations require our staff to follow runaways and attempt to verbally convince them to return, rather than physically stopping them. We are working with our licensing agents to secure permission to employ more effective preventative measures.”
The 2021 lawsuit
By 2021, the Ohio Attorney General sued for the facility’s improper use of restraints.
The suit followed a state inspection, with reports of “abuse and a gross lack of reporting of the use of restraints.” The state also sought to have the court remove Starr and hand the facility over to another youth services provider, Wingspan Care Group, immediately in a motion for injunctive relief.
Magistrate Paul Lange concurred and ordered Starr removed. But former Ashland County Common Pleas Judge Ron Forsthoefel reversed that decision the next day, saying it had been a mistake.
In a T-G article, Forsthoefel shared strong feelings about regulating the use of restraints.
“I don’t think the standard for restraining residents should devolve into a situation where because you’re afraid to act, other people in the room get hurt or are subject to severe injury,” he said.
Though the judge did find that the staff sometimes did not file perfect restraint reports and sometimes did not follow prewritten de-escalation plans to the letter, that did not present a risk to residents.
“Sometimes you don’t have time to read someone’s crisis management plan when they’re smacking you in the face, you have to react,” Forsthoefel said.
The state ended up appealing Forsthoefel’s decision with the 5th District Court of Appeals, but the judge upheld the original ruling.
2022 to today
Still, the fight didn’t end there.
The Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, the facility’s licensing agency, declined to renew the site’s license, citing 114 violations. A hearing was held in December 2021, but by then ODMHAS had dropped 96 of those allegations and a hearing concluded the matter in May 2022.
By then, the facility had continued to provide its services. The school district’s permanent appropriations show that it had earmarked $1 million to the Mohican Young Star Academy.
The school district served as the fiscal agent for the academy in use and administration of state and federal school funding.
A February 2022 memorandum of understanding between the school district and Westwood Prep outlined the agreement.
Westwood Preparatory Academy, a Columbus charter school, would provide educational services to Mohican and bill the school district. The school district would receive reimbursement through the state’s Title 1D program.
By November 2024, Starr resigned.
Jones now serves as the facility’s CEO and executive director. According to Mohican’s website, “his career includes key leadership roles such as Vice President of Midwest Development at Eastway Behavioral Healthcare, Director of Behavioral Health at CareSource, and Mental Health Compliance Director at Ohio’s Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (OMHAS).”