The adopted son of former Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin claims he was used to boost public opinion of the Republican during his campaign for governor and was later abandoned, a report says.
In 2012, Bevin traveled to Ethiopia and returned with four children, including 5-year-old “Noah,” a pseudonym used to protect the minor, the British newspaper reportedThe times first reported. Noah, now 17, claims the Bevins sent him to a violent, troubled youth program in Jamaica.
When the Time When Noah was asked why he thought he was adopted by the Bevins, he replied, “Public image.”
Bevin served as governor of the state from 2015 to 2019. After Bevin lost the governorship in 2019, Noah was sent to a facility in Florida and later to the Atlantis Leadership Academy (ALA) in Jamaica.
ALA bills itself as an “affordable, structured boarding academy that serves young men who demonstrate strong leadership qualities despite having taken some wrong turns in their lives.” The Time' An investigation into the institution revealed that there were abuses and filthy conditions.
ALA was raided in February and the facility has been closed since then. But no one came to pick Noah up, he told the outlet. So a judge made Noah and two other abandoned boys wards of the Jamaican state.
Bevin's treatment of his adopted son stands in stark contrast to the focus of his gubernatorial campaign: improving adoption and foster care practices in Kentucky.
In 2015 he told the Louisville Courier-Journal that the state agency that oversees adoption “needs to be turned inside out” and called it “a complicated, backward, broken machine.”
Two years later, in 2017, he repeated this complaint to WKYT, adding that his plans to reshape these systems were helping his campaign for governor.
“We've made it so complicated, so bureaucratic, so confusing, so time-consuming, so frustrating that people are finally saying, 'Enough.' That's been our experience. It's part of the reason we're here. It's part of the reason I ran for governor,” he told the outlet in 2017.
Bevin and his wife Glenna have nine children in total: five biological and four adopted. Glenna filed for divorce in May, claiming the couple's marriage was “irretrievably broken,” according to court records.
The independent has emailed both Bevins' attorneys for comment.
