Man in Bayboro pleads guilty to trafficking opiates
BAYBORO, N.C. (WNCT) — On Friday, May 2, 2025, a man in Bayboro pled guilty to an active sentence for trafficking opiates.
It was announced by District Attorney Scoot Thomas and Pamlico County Sheriff Chris Davis that Montrell Cordess Curtis, 27, of Bayboro, pled guilty to four counts of Trafficking Opiates 4-14 grams, one count of Possession with Intent to Manufacture, Sell, or Deliver Opiates, and one count of Possession of Firearm by a Felon. Curtis received an active sentence of 70-93 months at the Department of Adult Correction as well as a $500,000 fine and court costs.
On March 30, 2023, investigators with the Pamlico County Sheriff conducted many controlled buys from Curtis. This led in 166 Fentanyl tablets being purchased from him. In April 2023, investigators were able to get a search warrant for Curtis' person, residence, and vehicle because of his previous drug buys. Since children may have been at the home, officers took Curtis into custody after he left his home. Once officers were able to safely search his home, they found a Spike's Tactical Hellbreaker AR style rifle, a glock handgun, and ammunition. Marijuana, a marijuana rolling tray, and a bag containing 112 blue pills were also found. The blue pills were confirmed by the State Crime Lab to be Fentanyl and weighed around 13 grams.
The case was prosecuted by Laura Bell, Assistant District Attorney, the Pamlico CountySheriff's Office handled the investigation, and Superior Court Judge Kent Harrell presided overthe matter.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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D.C. teens needed rehabilitation to keep the city safe. They languished in a violent detention center instead. Washington's juvenile justice agency appeared to finally be reformed. After decades of court monitoring, a judge declared in late 2020 that the long-troubled Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services could return to the mayor's control. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) promised 'a focus on restorative justice, love, and empowerment' that would 'serve and improve the lives of our young people, their families, and our entire community.' Instead, progress at the agency — charged with setting serious and repeat teen offenders on a better path — unraveled as youth crime spiked, a Washington Post investigation found: The agency has taken months to provide many teens with comprehensive treatment plans, violating a law that requires it to do so within 17 days of a judge sentencing a youth to its custody. In fiscal year 2022, the first after the city regained control of the agency, it completed planning for 93 percent of teenagers within three months, according to agency metrics. The next year, less than half had plans in the same time frame. The District's detention center, where children are held while they wait for their plans, is overcrowded. Fistfights break out often. Police come to quell the violence, while ambulances whisk away the injured. Last year, at least two teenagers tested positive for fentanyl. Since 2021, the number of dangerous incidents at the center has nearly quadrupled, meaning chaos has become a near-daily reality for the high-risk young people held there. two teenagers tested positive for fentanyl. Since 2021, the number of dangerous incidents at the center has nearly quadrupled, meaning chaos has become a near-daily reality for the high-risk young people held there. Children committed to DYRS while awaiting treatment should be transferred to a rehabilitation program within 30 days, the agency director has testified. But the average wait time saw a nearly fivefold increase, to 62 days in 2024 from 13 in 2018, The Post found. Some teens waited more than six months for treatment. Many delays are caused by a shortage of beds for teens at residential programs that contract with DYRS. Bowser didn't pursue a 2022 proposal to create a psychiatric residential treatment facility in the District, The Post found. That left DYRS relying on a dwindling number of facilities with long wait lists. They often reject D.C. youth or have been accused of serious misconduct. Last year, the agency sent 14 children to a Pennsylvania nonprofit where two staffers had been charged with sexually assaulting children — including a teen from D.C. — at one of its centers. where two staffers had been charged with sexually assaulting children — including a teen from D.C. — at one of its centers. Because time spent waiting for placement doesn't count toward their stay in a rehabilitative program, children have routinely been kept away from home for much longer than intended. Attorneys and teens commonly refer to this wait period as 'dead time,' which advocates say can be logistically and psychologically harmful to a young person. 'You want to stop crime in the city, as Mayor Bowser says?' said Will Mount, a lawyer who has represented hundreds of teens in D.C.'s juvenile justice system over the past nine years. 'The solution is to get these kids the services they need now, or otherwise, you reap what you sow.' Bowser declined multiple requests to be interviewed. She has publicly touted her administration's progress on youth crime, telling a local media outlet last year that DYRS is 'fantastic.' In April, she announced that violent crime arrests were down 26 percent over the same time last year. Carjacking arrests were down 50 percent. Lindsey Appiah, the deputy mayor for public safety, defended the administration's handling of the agency in a statement. 'The District is working to hold young people accountable for wrongdoing—especially violence—even as we try to build pathways to rehabilitation and growth,' she said. 'The Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services works consistently to ensure the safety of its young people and of the general public.' Sam Abed, the agency director, also declined to be interviewed. The Youth Services Center, where young offenders are held before their court hearings and while they wait to be placed in rehabilitation programs, in Northeast Washington. (Valerie Plesch/For The Washington Post) In an emailed statement, DYRS spokeswoman Turnesha Fish said the agency is committed to delivering 'comprehensive rehabilitative services to the young people in our care while ensuring community safety.' 'We are enhancing these efforts by strengthening existing partnerships and collaborating with our contracted providers to expand a robust continuum of care,' Fish said. 'The safety of the youth in our care is paramount, and we are dedicated to taking all necessary measures to safeguard and support the youth and families we serve — principles that have long guided our work.' Fish said that as of March 6, 22 teens were waiting at the agency's detention center for spots at treatment programs, alongside the dozens of teens held at the detention center before their trials. The number of youths waiting for treatment beds was as high as 41 in February 2024, according to city data. The DYRS spokeswoman said the March figure 'reflects our ongoing efforts to streamline case management and ensure timely placements.' Fish said the agency had reduced the number of children waiting for programs even as it saw a 30 percent increase in young offenders committed to the agency's care from fiscal years 2024 to 2025. A Post analysis of internal data shows an agency struggling to prevent young people from returning to crime: More than 70 percent of juveniles who were committed to the agency from 2018 to 2022 were accused of new crimes or violating other court orders within two years of release. The rate is in line with national patterns, but likely an undercount because it does not include teens rearrested and charged as adults. D.C.'s juvenile justice pipeline This series examines the District's juvenile justice system, a constellation of agencies tasked with preventing children and teens from becoming caught up in crime and rehabilitating those who have violated the law. Click on the tabs to learn more about key parts of the system, including public schools, the police and the youth detention facility, which are overseen by Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D). Schools Police Courts Detention Rehabilitation Youth Services Center perpetually overcrowded Juveniles may be detained in the Youth Services Center, which is under the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services and overseen by Director Sam Abed. The facility, which is often overcapacity, holds children who are awaiting court hearings, as well as teenagers who are waiting to be transferred to a group home or treatment facility. To investigate DYRS's performance, reporters gained rare access to the city's juvenile justice system, which is shielded from public view to protect children's identities. The Post conducted an analysis of internal data obtained from the agency through Freedom of Information Act requests, enabling reporters to track more than 500 children as they moved through the system from 2018 to 2024. The Post also received permission to observe dozens of court hearings typically closed to the public; reviewed internal documents and confidential files detailing juvenile court cases; and interviewed scores of current and former DYRS employees, lawyers, judges, advocates, juvenile justice experts, and families and children who have navigated the system. One of those young people was N.H., who was 17 when he was charged with at least nine felonies, including unauthorized use of a vehicle and carjacking, in 2023 and 2024. The teenager — who is being identified by his initials to keep his juvenile record confidential — was committed to agency custody by D.C. Superior Court Judge James Crowell last year. N.H. had been abused by a relative as a young child, according to records and interviews. The District's child welfare agency investigated allegations of neglect by his mother. He floated in and out of foster and group homes in D.C. In 2022, his brother died of a fentanyl overdose while incarcerated. The next year, N.H. was arrested and charged for the first time. He was rearrested on charges of carjacking in 2024 and sent to the detention center. There, he began to wait — for services, for treatment, for help. 'It's traumatizing there' The Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services was born out of turmoil. In 1985, a class-action lawsuit in D.C. Superior Court brought by several city youths alleged decades of abuse and mismanagement at detention facilities run by the agency's predecessor, the Youth Services Administration. Attorneys and their juvenile clients said that the buildings used to hold teens were uninhabitable and that the city agency was failing to deliver promised services to children. The following year, city officials entered a consent decree that required the agency to report to a court monitor as it completely overhauled how it approached criminal justice for young people. Across the country, juvenile justice agencies began moving away from a punitive system that seemed to ferry children convicted of crimes straight into adult jails and prisons. An emerging body of scientific research concluded that the part of the teenage brain responsible for good judgment and weighing consequences was still developing. That spurred reforms toward programs focused on rehabilitation. In 2004, the city dismantled the old agency, replacing it with DYRS and a new approach: Instead of holding children in large prisonlike facilities, the agency would release young people accused of crimes back to their families with community-based services or into secure residential programs aimed at providing comprehensive services to address underlying problems. Officials unveiled the Youth Services Center, or YSC, on Mount Olivet Road in Northeast as a way station to securely hold young offenders before their court hearings and after, while they waited to be placed in rehabilitation programs. The detention center, which opened with 80 beds and soon added eight more, replaced the decrepit holding facilities that had prompted the lawsuit decades earlier. Bowser had sought to end court oversight of DYRS since becoming mayor in 2015. She agreed to create the Office of Independent Juvenile Justice Facilities Oversight to monitor the YSC and New Beginnings, a longer-term rehabilitation program run by DYRS in Laurel, Maryland. But in the years after the agency exited court monitoring, the population exploded at the detention center. From October 2018 to the following September, the average daily population at the YSC was 40 youths, including teens who were awaiting trial. In May, it was more than 100. As more teens were arrested, DYRS added 10 beds in 2023. At the same time, the detention center has grown more chaotic and violent, according to data published by the oversight agency. A hallway at the Youth Services Center in Northeast Washington. (Valerie Plesch/For The Washington Post) In 2021, the agency reported 100 dangerous incidents at the center; in 2024, there were 394, according to data released by the oversight agency. The agency also reported more injuries in recent years: In January 2022 — the first year the oversight agency collected the data — DYRS recorded six injuries to youths. That jumped to 30 in January 2025. Mark Jordan, the executive director of the oversight agency, blamed the surge in violence partly on the increased number of children held at the center. 'Facilities like the YSC, in which the population changes frequently and there can be a lot of conflicts from the community that carry over into the facility, conditions are constantly changing,' he wrote in an email. 'The management response has to respond to the specifics of what's happening inside the facility.' In April 2024, seven teenagers were involved in a fight and all required medical attention, according to reports obtained by The Post. Later that month, when a guard left a door propped open, two teenagers assaulted another resident. Days later, guards found another teen with a shank fashioned from a nail and a face mask. The next month, a guard was escorting a Maryland man's son, then 17, and the rest of his unit through the halls of the facility when a worker opened a door to another unit. The man's son, whom The Post is not identifying to protect him from retaliation, and others rushed through the door and began to fight with teens in the room, according to an internal incident report. Though employees saw multiple teens beating his son for several minutes, the guards said they couldn't open the door to intervene because other youths were trying to rush in and join the fight, according to the report and a former employee who witnessed the brawl. His son was sent to the hospital with a swollen eye. Another teen went to the hospital with injuries to his jaw, according to the father and the former employee. 'I don't feel safe for anybody's kid, not just my own,' the father said. Beyond the violence in the facility, advocates and families have repeatedly sounded the alarm about a lack of services for youths. Mental health specialists are available at the YSC, but because the detention center is intended to be a temporary destination for teens, it does not offer intensive or regular therapy. It also does not provide access to as many behavioral specialists as dedicated rehabilitative facilities typically staff. Abed, the DYRS chief, said during testimony to D.C. Council members in December 2023 that the detention center is 'not a treatment facility.' D.D. Davis, a lawyer who has represented many teens who have been housed in the YSC, said that young people are confined for hours at a time to their rooms when there are any fights or disturbances, which are common. During these lockdowns, therapy is off the table. Instead of attending school, children are handed worksheets to complete. 'They get an hour a day or two hours a day of being free,' Davis said. Over the past year, the courts permitted The Post to attend confidential hearings in juvenile court. In some, DYRS officials told judges that teens were not receiving adequate services at the detention center. A health services manager at the YSC testified at a May 2024 hearing that detention center staff allowed a 14-year-old — upon his request — to replace his prescribed psychiatric medication with melatonin gummies. Staff also agreed to stop biweekly therapy sessions for the young teen after he 'expressed he was okay and did not want to talk to a therapist any longer.' The teen's public defender, Emily Sufrin, noted that these therapy sessions had taken place in a game room where other teens were often nearby. Sufrin said the teen had previously been attacked in this public space: 'It's traumatizing there.' D.C. Superior Court Judge Andrea Hertzfeld questioned Bruce Edwards, then the associate general counsel for DYRS, about the situation. 'You're telling me that meeting with a therapist a couple of times a week in the game space at [the detention center] and getting a melatonin gummy is sufficient rehabilitation for this juvenile?' she asked. Edwards, who has since left DYRS and is now a magistrate in Prince George's County, replied, 'I wouldn't qualify this as sufficient at all.' 'Dead time' The time teens spend waiting in detention for an opening in a rehabilitative program means that some are away from home much longer than intended. 'That 'dead time' is really expensive and it's damaging on its own account just for that kid,' said Tom Woods, a senior associate at the Annie E. Casey Foundation who has studied juvenile detention. 'There's sort of this unavoidable psychological harm to that.' DYRS has no requirement for how quickly young people must be transferred to programs after the courts commit them to the agency, according to a review of its policies and city law. But Abed, the agency chief, has testified at multiple D.C. Council hearings that children and teens should go to an appropriate program within 30 days — and ideally sooner. Yet today, young people are languishing for months at the detention center, according to a Post analysis of internal data. Teens waited for an average of about 60 days to go to a rehabilitation program last year, The Post found. Some waited six months or longer. From 2020 to 2024, nearly one-quarter of teens met the agency's goal of spending less than a month within the detention center. In those years, 36 percent of young people spent three months or longer at the center. The District is lagging behind neighboring states: Maryland and Virginia youths spent an average of 23 and 28 days, respectively, waiting to leave detention centers for treatment programs, data shows. A 2023 crime wave led some, including the mayor, to call for increased jail time and harsher punishments for offenders. In 2024, Bowser worked with the city council to pass a law giving judges more leeway to jail adults and some juveniles charged with violent offenses before their trials. Research shows that locking up juveniles leads to higher rates of rearrest than probation and other interventions that keep teens at home and in school. A 2015 study by juvenile justice researchers found that teens in Seattle who were arrested and incarcerated were four times as likely to end up in jail or prison as an adult, compared with other youths who were arrested but did not serve time in a detention center. 'You're putting that child in a horribly traumatic environment and the idea that we expect them to get any better without treatment is not logical and not at all consistent with what clinical best practices tell us,' said Jennifer Snow, the national director of government relations at the nonprofit National Alliance on Mental Illness. Former DYRS employees whom The Post is not naming to protect from professional retaliation say some of the delays occur because agency social workers are taking longer to complete rehabilitation plans. This is often a necessary step before sending a teen to a treatment program. The agency is required by law to provide treatment plans for teens within 17 days of referral from the courts. But former employees and advocates said it often takes several weeks or even months to complete the process. The agency doesn't report how many teens received a plan within 17 days. Instead, it reports how many young people have gone through a complete 'case planning process' within three months, according to annual summaries filed to the Office of the City Administrator. This process includes the courts sending relevant documents to DYRS; the agency completing an assessment that helps determine the proper treatment for a young offender; and staff convening a meeting to decide where to send the teen. The vast majority of young people — about 9 in 10 — had gone through this process within 90 days of commitment to DYRS custody in the 2022 fiscal year. The following year, less than half of teens had a completed plan within three months. Then, in 2024, the rate was zero. In that report, the agency said that 'significant staff turnover' led it to abandon an assessment that was part of the planning process — and that the agency would stop reporting data on the treatment plans because, moving forward, they were going to use different standards. Critics have pushed the mayor's office to speed up placements: The Office of the Attorney General — which prosecutes cases involving youth crime — worked with Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) in 2024 to introduce a bill to make DYRS find beds at treatment programs for children within 30 days of commitment. The mayor's office and Abed, the agency chief, lobbied aggressively against the measure. They said that the timeline was unrealistic and that it failed to take a 'comprehensive' approach to the juvenile justice system. Nevertheless, the D.C. Council passed the Road Act late last year with an even more aggressive timeline: The new law requires the juvenile justice agency to begin the treatment planning process before a child is even committed. It also directs the city auditor to report on the agency's progress. 'There was a resistance on the part of the [mayor] to work with the council on this, which was unfortunate and also counterproductive,' Mendelson said in an interview. In the meantime, the delays have landed DYRS in court again. The District's Public Defender Service and the local American Civil Liberties Union office filed a federal lawsuit in October accusing the agency of a 'failure to meet the rehabilitative and treatment needs of children in its custody and the District's practice of needlessly and unlawfully extending the time children spend in jail-like settings.' 'DYRS continues to fail these kids, and a generation of kids are being lost.' — D.C. Superior Court Judge James Crowell The suit was brought on behalf of two teens who had each spent more than three months at the detention center. K.Y., a 16-year-old identified in the complaint by his initials, had been waiting since July for DYRS to transfer him to a treatment facility 'to get therapy.' In the lawsuit, K.Y. wrote that he had post-traumatic stress disorder that was going untreated as he waited at the detention center. 'There's nothing going on in here,' he wrote. 'They treat us like dogs and animals in here. If people were in our shoes, they wouldn't want to be here.' In response to the suit, DYRS has acknowledged that most youths committed to the agency will spend 'some amount of time' waiting in detention. The agency said these waits are dependent on several factors outside its control, including the details of each teen's case and whether space is available at a program. Days after a December hearing in the case, the agency transferred the two youths to rehabilitative programs. The agency did not answer questions related to the lawsuit, which is ongoing. 'Big ideas' In late 2022, as Bowser prepared to enter her third term, the mayor announced that she was looking for 'big ideas' to improve the city. The directors of three agencies that work with at-risk children decided to heed her call. Hilary Cairns, the head of DYRS at the time, said in interviews with The Post that she met with the chiefs of the Department of Behavioral Health and Child and Family Services Agency to make a proposal to the mayor. Together, they asked the Bowser administration to consider creating a psychiatric residential treatment facility in the District for teens. Known as PRTFs, these inpatient facilities provide comprehensive mental health services for children with complex needs. Some child welfare advocates oppose residential programs; they argue that children do best when they're treated in their communities, living with their families and going to their schools. Still, beds at PRTFs are typically in high demand. Opening up beds at a city-run facility, the agency chiefs suggested, would reduce the wait times at the detention center, while also providing psychiatric services for the District's most troubled children close to home. The District's need for more treatment beds had been widely known for years: Before the pandemic, other officials at DYRS and eight other local departments and organizations that work with children held the Inter-Agency PRTF Collaboration Meeting. In minutes from the March 10, 2020, meeting, attendees noted that treatment options were limited, writing that 'there are fewer each year' and that 'some providers on the list will no longer accept DC youth despite being a current provider.' Since then, the agency has struggled to find space not just at PRTFs but also at less specialized residential programs for youths, too. In 2013, it sent children to 31 residential treatment centers. By 2023, the number of rehabilitation programs working with DYRS had dwindled to 10, The Post found. Some facilities that D.C. used closed their doors after youth arrests started declining in the 2000s. More shuttered during the pandemic. In 2019, Pennsylvania shut down the Glen Mills Schools over allegations of widespread child abuse. Help us report on D.C.'s response to youth crime The Washington Post wants to hear from people affected by or with knowledge of the District's juvenile justice system and the city's efforts to prevent and address youth crime. Have a tip? Reach our team using this submission form. Previous Next Some of the remaining programs no longer accept D.C. teens, saying they can't handle youths with complex needs or who have violent offenses on their records. The proposal from Cairns and other agency directors seemed to them to be an obvious solution to bed shortages. But nearly three years after the agency chiefs gave the idea to Bowser, no such facility exists in the District. Representatives from the mayor's office and the three agencies that developed the proposal all declined to answer questions about what happened to the plan. The Post filed several Freedom of Information Act requests for records related to the proposal. But government agencies refused the request, citing an exemption that protects internal deliberations. It is unclear how much such a facility would cost the District. But other states have set aside funds to create their own: This year, Maine awarded a $2 million contract to a nonprofit to run a PRTF. Cairns said staff had scouted potential locations around the region, including unused land near New Beginnings in Laurel. She said she knew that her request to the mayor's office was ambitious but that she believes it would have been worth it. 'It was an acknowledgment that it was expensive in the short term for a long-term investment,' Cairns said. The mayor asked Cairns to resign in 2023. Cairns, who helmed the city's juvenile justice agency for less than two years, said she was blindsided. She now works with the Office of the D.C. Auditor to set up a system to monitor the agency. She said she still does not know why the Bowser administration didn't pursue the project. Three months after The Post first asked city officials about the proposal, the D.C. Council added language to the Road Act, the bill from the attorney general's office that is now known as the Recidivism Reduction at DYRS Amendment Act. It requires the mayor to take steps toward opening a PRTF in the District. According to the new law, Bowser's office must submit a report to the council estimating the cost of a new facility in September. Mendelson, the council chairman, said he was not surprised the Bowser administration did not follow through on the 2022 proposal. He told The Post that the mayor's office thinks the 'best way to deal with crime is just to lock people up.' In the December 2024 memo outlining changes to the bill, he emphasized the importance of opening a local treatment center. 'The lack of a PRTF in the District is a barrier to the timely placement of children with psychiatric disorders committed to DYRS,' Mendelson wrote. 'As such, it is critical that the District seriously begin planning for such a facility.' A place for N.H. Everyone agreed that N.H. needed help. The teenager who came before Judge James Crowell last summer would benefit from the intensive services that a PRTF could provide, his lawyer told the court. He had first been arrested in February 2023, accused of stealing a car, according to his probation report obtained by The Post. Police picked him up on similar charges in March, April and May. That June, he was again arrested and charged with first-degree theft, unlawful entry of a motor vehicle and unauthorized use of a vehicle. This time, N.H. was detained for about a month, until the courts sent him to a shelter home. The case was later dismissed through a plea agreement. That fall, as part of a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation, a doctor recommended extensive therapy and psychotropic medication for N.H., writing that he 'will most likely continue to act out in the community, and that this will be the case until his condition is successfully treated.' In October 2023, N.H. pleaded guilty to several of his charges and entered a program that allowed him to return home. But a few months later, he was arrested on new charges of carjacking and again held at the detention center. When Crowell committed N.H. to DYRS custody last summer, the agency was already searching for a bed for him in a rehabilitative program. N.H. said he hoped the agency would quickly transfer him to such a program so that he could work through his issues and go to North Carolina, where his mother had moved. But every time he talked to Mount, his lawyer, N.H. learned that there was no space for him at a treatment facility. N.H. at the Youth Services Center on Oct. 3. (Valerie Plesch/For The Washington Post) In October, The Post attended one of the teen's hearings. He returned to Crowell's courtroom wearing the detention center uniform: a bright purple polo, slacks and rubber clogs. Four months after the judge had committed N.H. to DYRS custody, the teen had gone nowhere, his lawyer said. Speaking in front of a nearly empty courtroom, Crowell did not hide his frustration. 'DYRS continues to fail these kids and a generation of kids are being lost,' the judge said. 'It's been the exact same, time and time again. No one wants to call them out. No one wants to put light to this. But it's an absolute failure.' Locked up in detention, N.H. felt like 'an animal,' he told The Post. Sometimes he thought about the crimes that got him arrested. Adrenaline, fun and 'fast money' led him to steal cars, he said. He knew he was going to get caught. 'At the time, I wasn't thinking,' he said. His crimes had hurt people, he recognized. In one case, N.H. and other teenagers had pushed a woman out of her car. She had a bruised arm and pain in her right leg, according to the police report. N.H. said his actions warranted consequences. 'But having to be here without knowing when you're leaving, and just being under somebody else's power, is frustrating,' he said. As the months went by, N.H. and the other teens at the detention center followed a daily routine: schoolwork, followed by hours of watching television and playing cards. At times, they would get together for group talks, led by guards or their peers. N.H. was in therapy to process the abuse he experienced as a child until he was about 15, he said. He always knew he had a problem with anger. He would occasionally get therapy at the detention center, he said, but not on a regular basis. 'There was no programs there,' he said. 'We were just sitting there doing nothing.' Then, in September, agency officials presented Mount and his client with an option: N.H. could go to a facility run by Abraxas Youth & Family Services. The Pittsburgh-based nonprofit operates residential programs in five states. It was not an ideal solution, Mount said. The campus that N.H. would attend in Marienville, a rural community 100 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, had therapy and counseling. But it did not offer as much access to psychologists, social workers, therapists, nurses and counselors as a PRTF. The agency also did not tell Mount about another issue: Staff members at the facility had been accused of sexually abusing children in their care. In March 2024, an Abraxas dorm supervisor told the agency that a D.C. teen was one of multiple youths who had allegedly been sexually assaulted, according to an internal report obtained by The Post. Court records show that Ana Danielle Carlton, then 24, was charged with institutional sexual assault, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse and indecent assault of a minor under 16 years old. One teen told Abraxas staff members that the mental health counselor had sexual contact with five youths in the facility, according to a police report. Carlton has not yet entered a plea in the case. Her attorney called the charges 'unproven accusations' in an email to The Post. Erin Perez, whose 14-year-old was allegedly abused by Carlton in 2024, said in an interview with The Post that she was 'disturbed and disgusted' by what happened at Abraxas. 'They're horrible and I'd never send any kid there,' she said. 'They should be shut down.' Jeff Giovino, the president and CEO of Abraxas, said in an email that staff informed DYRS and law enforcement of the abuse allegations as soon as they surfaced. 'Abraxas treats all allegations of abuse and harassment with the utmost seriousness,' he wrote. The Abraxas Youth & Family Services campus in Marienville, Pennsylvania. (Jeff Swensen/For The Washington Post) It was the second time in as many years that a staff member was accused of sexually abusing a teen at the facility: In 2023, a 47-year-old woman was arrested after a youth told police they had sexual contact. The woman was later sentenced to state prison for disseminating sexual materials to a minor and endangering the welfare of a child. Last year, dozens of people who attended Abraxas facilities between 2003 and 2023 filed a lawsuit in Pennsylvania court saying they were sexually abused at the programs. Giovino told The Post that the claims in the lawsuit are without merit. Sixteen plaintiffs specifically accused employees at the Marienville campus of assault. Nevertheless, the District's juvenile justice agency sent 13 teens to Abraxas in 2024 after the incident was reported, records show. The agency declined to say whether it conducted an investigation into the sexual assault allegations or informed any families or attorneys they referred to Abraxas about the problems. Unaware of the allegations, Mount said he and N.H. decided it would be the best option. 'The client wants to leave the YSC as soon as possible, which I don't blame them for wanting to do,' Mount said. 'And we're offered an out-of-state placement option, and of course, we're going to take it, because the faster we take that option, the faster we can get them back home.' N.H. arrived at the remote campus in October, one of the few Black teens in the program. He no longer had visitors because he was so far from home: a six-hour drive from D.C., and even farther from his family in North Carolina. Still, the six-month program was better than the detention center, he said: He could open his own doors and walk from building to building. He was able to join the basketball team at a neighboring high school, practicing with his teammates most afternoons. At times, he would talk to a counselor, he said. N.H. was released to a group home in April, after spending a year away from home. Now 19, he said he isn't angry about his time with the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services, but said he didn't feel like the agency did its job. 'They're not rehabilitating nothing,' he said.
