“Noah” Bevin, the son of former Gov. Matt Bevin and his estranged wife, Glenna Bevin, is back in the United States after being abandoned at an abusive school in Jamaica , according to a nonprofit foundation working on the case.
Chelsea Maldanado, a consultant and researcher with 11:11 Media Impact, said 17-year-old Noah, which is a pseudonym, did not come back to Kentucky, but would not reveal where he is due to privacy concerns. He returned to the U.S. in May.
“He is currently safe and doing well in his new placement,” Maldonado said. “I think he’s still processing his experiences, but he seems to be doing well and I know he’s cared for.”
The foundation was founded by celebrity Paris Hilton, a survivor of an abusive youth treatment facility, to bring more attention to the “Troubled Teen” industry. It has been working with several children who were abandoned at the Atlantis Leadership Academy in Jamaica, which was shut down by authorities in April 2024 after allegations of abuse and neglect, according to a July 13 story in the London Sunday Times.
In April 2024, five employees of the school were charged with child cruelty and assault. Staff were accused of beating children, placing them in stress positions such as a plank for hours at a time, and forcing them to work out until they vomited.
Neither Matt Bevin nor Glenna Bevin has commented on the situation. Noah is one of four children they adopted in 2012 from Ethiopia after the state of Kentucky turned down an adoption request to add to their five birth children. Their experience trying to adopt in Kentucky was a key point of Bevin’s campaign for governor, and during his four years in office he was a fierce advocate for improving the state’s adoption and foster care system.
Noah was one of three adopted children left at the school in Jamaica after it closed. They were taken into custody by Jamaica’s Child Protective and Family Service Agency, which arranged the new placement, Maldonado said. Only one boy is still in Jamaica.
In March, Jamaican officials held a court hearing for the boys left at ALA. Maldonado said in an interview on Thursday that Noah directly told her and the London Times reporter, Decca Aitkenhead, at the time that he was the son of the former Kentucky governor.
The new placement was arranged by lawyers and Jamaican officials. Maldonado said she believed the Bevins would have had to be a party to the agreement.
“It is my understanding that to do the legal paperwork, his (Noah’s) parents had to agree to it,” said Maldonado, who is herself a survivor of another abusive treatment facility in Jamaica. “Otherwise, it would not be enforceable.”
‘Depressed and dejected’
Dawn J. Post is an attorney in Manhattan who specializes in broken adoptions. When the news about the ALA school broke, she flew to Jamaica to offer her pro-bono services to the three adopted boys, who signed retainers for free legal advice.
Post said she contacted Glenna Bevin, who told Post that she, Glenna, would have to speak with her husband. During the third court hearing last spring, the ALA attorneys made a complaint about Post on the Bevins’ behalf, and she was asked to leave the courtroom.
But Post confirmed the Bevins would have had to sign off on a transfer of guardianship for Noah to be moved to the U.S.
“This particular young man is the one I was most concerned about immediately after meeting him,” Post said in a phone interview on Thursday. “In contrast to some of the other boys who were energized to see Americans and get basic necessities even though their parents had not shown up, he appeared to be so depressed and dejected and so hopeless and helpless looking,”
Post said she was also told the boy was doing much better now.
She questioned whether Kentucky’s child protective services were investigating the case. Officials with the Cabinet for Health and Family Services were not immediately available for comment on Thursday.
Randall Cook, the founder of ALA, who allegedly fled Jamaica last spring, gave a statement to Fox 56 News in which he said all legal obligations had been satisfied.
“My physical departure was required in direct proportion to death threats and other received content that came about due to reckless collusion by celebrities, activists and journalists,” Cook said. He called the raid an “empty, salacious accusation.”
Maldonado said Hilton and her foundation will continue to advocate for survivors from such facilities, some of which started abroad as early as the 1950s. “As someone went to a foreign program, it is mind-blowing you can have your child forcibly transported out of the country and imprisoned and that’s totally legal.”
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