Then-Gov. Matt Bevin, speaking to a National Rifle Association event in Louisville in 2016, was an ardent advocate for adoption and critic of the adoption system. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

As Kentucky governor, Matt Bevin said his overriding goal was to reform what he said was the state’s “broken machine” of an adoption and foster care system.

“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.

In that same interview, Bevin and his wife, Glenna, said their adoption of four children from Ethiopia grew from their faith-driven desire to provide homes for children in need.

“It is our desire to make Kentucky a model for the nation and the world,” said Matt Bevin, a conservative Christian and Republican who served as governor from 2015 through 2019.

But now, one of those adopted children, a 17-year-old boy, is at the center of international attention after he and seven other boys were removed from the Atlantis Leadership Academy in Jamaica in February, where authorities found horrific conditions, according to a lengthy article published July 13 in the Sunday Times of London.

In a case that has attracted the attention of hotel heiress Paris Hilton, an impassioned advocate for youths held in substandard treatment facilities around the world, Bevin’s adopted son is among those who endured unspeakable conditions, according to the Times story.

The Times story said the boys placed there, some from the United States, reported beatings, cruel punishments, lack of food and filthy, unsanitary conditions. They also reported lack of communication with families who had placed them there, going for months with no contact.

Academy rules “forbade telephone contact until a boy had advanced to a level that earned telephone privileges,” the Sunday Times story said.

Matt Bevin did not respond to an email request for comment nor did his lawyer. Glenna Bevin did not immediately respond to a request for comment through her lawyer, Mark Dobbins.

The Bevins, the parents of five biological and four adopted children, are in the midst of a contentious divorce after Glenna Bevin in May 2023 filed a petition to dissolve the marriage of 27 years she said was “irretrievably broken,”

‘The perfect location’

Located on an idyllic beachfront in Jamaica, the academy on its website promises a safe and structured environment for youth with a past history of behavioral or emotional problems.

“The perfect location for healing,” it said.

But the Times story reported a much darker picture of violence, abuse and isolation with one youth proclaiming “I’d rather die than go back.”

The academy did not respond to the Lantern’s request for comment through the website. The toll-free number it lists is out of service.

The Times said Jamaican authorities have not been able to locate the academy’s former director but reports that four staffers have been arrested and charged with child cruelty and assault.

The Times story said a boy it called “Noah,” a pseudonym, is the adoptive son of Matt and Glenna Bevin and he was placed in the school last year. The Times story, which used pseudonyms for other boys, reports that while some parents traveled to Jamaica to collect their children after the authorities intervened and closed it, no one immediately showed up for Noah or two other boys, also adopted.

When the reporter asked Noah why Matt Bevin had adopted him, the teen replied, “public image,” the Times story said.

The Times does not say how it confirmed Noah’s identity or who placed him at the academy.

Matt Bevin frequently mentioned the adoption of the four children from Ethiopia during his 2015 run for governor and after he was elected? as a reason for reforming the state’s adoption system.? An evangelical Christian, he also called on fellow members of Kentucky’s faith community to adopt and appointed a Baptist pastor as his adoption “czar,” reporting directly to him.

Bevin, after a controversial four years as governor, was defeated for a second term in 2019 by Democrat Andy Beshear.

Wards of the state

After a court hearing in Jamaica in April, the three remaining teens, including Noah, were made wards of the Jamaican state, the Times story said. It’s not clear where the Bevins’ son is now.

A staff member of the Paris Hilton foundation, 11:11 Media, which intervened in the Jamaica court proceedings on behalf of the youths and was able to arrange a custody arrangement for one, told the Lantern last week? that Bevin’s son is no longer in Jamaica but didn’t provide further information.

The U.S. Embassy in Jamaica, which initially was involved in the removal of youths from the academy, did not respond to a request for comment.

The Bevins are in the midst of a contentious divorce sought by Glenna Bevin in May 2023.

?In April 2024, Glenna Bevin obtained a court order barring Matt Bevin from her home after she claimed he kept entering her house without permission, refusing to leave. The couple have been separated for about two years, according to the divorce records.

Matt Bevin’s wealth, developed from a career in finance, was estimated in excess of $13 million when he ran for governor in 2015. He and Glenna Bevin live in separate houses in Anchorage, an affluent enclave east of Louisville.

The divorce filing indicates they have nine children, two of them minors. Glenna Bevin is seeking joint custody of the two youngest, with her as “primary residential parent.”

‘Shipped them off’

Hilton traveled to Jamaica in April for a court hearing to show support for the eight boys removed from the academy. She said it is part of her work through her foundation to draw attention to what Hilton said is a growing industry of abusive residential programs for so-called troubled children and teens.

Hilton said she is a survivor of such programs after she was placed in several in the United States starting at age 16 where she was treated violently, sexually abused, forcibly medicated and isolated.

She testified before a Congressional committee in June in support of federal legislation to provide resources meant to keep children out of institutions, citing her trip to Jamaica as an example of what can go wrong when parents send their children to such places with little information and limited or no contact.

Youths at the Jamaica academy were abused,? beaten, “waterboarded” and held in solitary? confinement, Hilton said in her testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee. Some were from adoptive families, she said.

“Their parents had adopted them when they were young, promised them a better life, and then shipped them off to an international facility to be warehoused there until they turned 18,” she said.

Her appearance at the Jamaica court hearing created a sensation when her motorcade pulled up at the courthouse, according to the Sunday Times story. It made the story front-page news in Jamaica.

“Every head turns as a blue-light police motorcade pulls into the car-park,” the story said. “A vision of blonde perfection emerges from a car, wearing the serious expression of a woman who means business. The boys get out of their bus, stunned, and one by one Hilton hugs them. She listens as they tell their stories about what they suffered at (the academy) before they are filed into the courtroom.”

No one showed up on behalf of three of the eight boys including Bevin’s son, the story said.?

Afterwards, the three are sent away with Jamaican child protection officials who try to reassure them.

“The boys stare at their feet, broken and lost,” the Times story said.

The ’broken machine’

In his campaign for governor, Bevin early on attacked the state’s adoption and foster care system, calling the agency within the state Cabinet for Health and Family Services, a “convoluted, backward, broken machine.”

Bevin’s chief complaint, one he cited often during his campaign and after he was elected governor, was that he and his wife were rejected as potential adoptive parents by cabinet social service officials because they already had five biological children at home.

The decision came, he said, after the Bevins sought state approval as adoptive parents in hopes of adopting a young girl in foster care their children had met on a local playground.

After the Bevins went through extensive work including background checks, home inspections and parenting classes at their own expense, they were rejected, Matt Bevin said,

“It was ultimately determined by someone with a clipboard and a notebook that having a sixth child in a family would not afford her with enough attention,” Bevin told a reporter in 2015 while he was running for governor. “I could not believe it.”

So the Bevins decided on an international adoption, the couple told KET host Renee Shaw in the 2017 interview after he was elected governor.

Initially, the Bevins had arranged to adopt a single child from Ethiopia but then changed their plans after learning of three siblings from that country also in need of a home. The adoption of all four children took place in 2012.

“Suddenly we had nine children,” Bevin said.

The four adopted children had no difficulty assimilating into the Bevins’ household—even though they were a different race and spoke a different language, the couple said in the KET interview.

“It really wasn’t a big adjustment,” said Glenna Bevin, who as Kentucky’s first lady took on improving adoption and foster care as her primary cause.

“Kids are amazing,” Matt Bevin said. “It really has been a very, very seamless transition.”

At some point? after Bevin lost his bid for a second term as governor in 2019, his teenage adopted son was sent away to a school in Florida, the Times story said. Last year, it said, the youth was moved to the facility in Jamaica.