Glen Mills School: Abuse, Shutdown, Settlements, and Reopening

The Glen Mills Schools abuse scandal broke open in February 2019, when a Philadelphia Inquirer investigation revealed that staff at the nearly two-century-old Pennsylvania reform school for boys had beaten students for decades while administrators silenced witnesses and manipulated records. Within weeks, Pennsylvania ordered every child removed from the Delaware County campus. Within months, the state revoked all of the school’s licenses. In the years since, more than 800 former students have pursued legal claims, several settlements have been reached, the state has attempted reforms, and the campus has partially reopened under a new operator with a new name.¹

What the Abuse Looked Like

The Inquirer’s reporting, built on internal documents, court records, incident reports, and more than 40 interviews, described a culture of violence rather than isolated incidents. Staff punched, kicked, choked, and slammed boys into walls and doors. Students had jaws broken, scalps stapled shut, and were thrown through doors. Counselors singled out boys for minor infractions, and those who tried to report what happened were threatened with longer sentences or transfers to worse facilities.¹

Pennsylvania’s own investigation, conducted after the story ran, corroborated the pattern. Internal inspection reports from the preceding five years documented staff shoving a child’s head into a cabinet, striking students in the face in front of peers, breaking open a child’s head, sending a student’s elbow through a glass window, and choking students. In June 2017, counselors stepped on a boy’s face and broke his jaw so badly it had to be wired shut. Surveillance footage from the summer of 2018 captured two counselors slamming a 17-year-old to the floor, choking him, and punching him in the face.²

How It Stayed Hidden for So Long

For most of its modern history, Glen Mills was shaped by Cosimo “C.D.” Ferrainola, executive director from 1975 until 2007. He grew the school from fewer than 100 boys to more than 1,000, and he ran it on what he called “a system of social control borrowed directly from street gangs.”³ Students were required to inform on one another; a boy who saw a rule broken and stayed silent was considered equally guilty. Those who informed earned “status,” a currency that bought privileges. About 85 percent of counselors were former athletes rather than social workers.⁴

Warnings surfaced years before the eventual closure. In February 2000, state police and Department of Human Services agents arrived to investigate a student’s chipped tooth and chest bruising. Ferrainola and staff physically blocked officers from interviewing students; at one point Ferrainola leaned into a police cruiser to yell at a boy and the officers inside. Even so, eight boys reported being kicked, punched, slapped, or slammed into walls by 18 different staffers. The state demanded reforms, Ferrainola submitted a corrective plan, and by the end of the year the school was back in “good standing.” He dismissed the allegations as “lies from disgruntled former students” and died in 2011.⁴

State oversight was the other half of the picture. A follow-up Inquirer investigation in October 2019 found that over a ten-year period, the Department of Human Services substantiated only about two percent of abuse allegations at private juvenile programs. Inspectors routinely gave facilities advance notice of visits. When they arrived, they relied on facility-provided rosters to select students for interviews, which often took place in administrative areas within earshot of staff. Glen Mills officials mischaracterized injuries as sports accidents and coached students to stay quiet. Staff also used a regulatory loophole around the legal definition of “reckless” behavior to get abuse findings overturned on appeal.⁵

Inside the school, counselors who tried to report abuse internally were fired or demoted, and several filed wrongful-termination lawsuits. New-staff training was described by former employees as a sham involving simple, open-book quizzes. At the time of the investigation, Glen Mills was receiving $52,000 per year in taxpayer-funded tuition for each boy placed there by Philadelphia, on roughly $40 million in annual revenue. Executive director Randy Ireson received $336,000 in total compensation in fiscal year 2017 and repeatedly declined to be interviewed.⁴

The 2019 Shutdown

Philadelphia’s Department of Human Services began pulling its 51 remaining boys from the school in February 2019.¹ On March 25, 2019, the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services ordered all remaining youth removed.⁶ On April 8, 2019, the state revoked all of Glen Mills’ licenses, citing “gross incompetence, negligence, and misconduct in operating the facilities” and “mistreatment and abuse of children in care.” The state also found the school had instilled “fear in youth through coercion and intimidation” and had neglected the educational rights of students with disabilities and special-education needs.²

Criminal Cases

Criminal accountability has been thin. In September 2018, before the Inquirer story ran, then-Delaware County District Attorney Katayoun Copeland announced the arrests of two former counselors, Patrick Jameson Raquet and Christopher Medina, in connection with an alleged assault of a Philadelphia teenager on July 19, 2018.⁷ Charges against Raquet were dismissed by April 2019. Medina remained charged with aggravated assault, simple assault, reckless endangerment, and endangering the welfare of a child. When Jack Stollsteimer took office as Delaware County DA in late 2019, he pledged a “fair and independent” criminal investigation and said he would assess whether the case should be referred to the state Attorney General.⁸ The U.S. Department of Justice also had an “ongoing law enforcement proceeding” at the school as of October 2018.⁴

Civil Suits and Settlements

Two tracks of civil litigation followed the shutdown. On April 11, 2019, former students and families filed a federal class action, Derrick et al. v. Glen Mills Schools et al., in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania (Case No. 2:19-cv-01541). Defendants included the school, former executive director Randy Ireson, individual staff members, the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services and its former leaders, the Pennsylvania Department of Education, and the Chester County Intermediate Unit, which had been responsible for providing educational services at the school. The complaint alleged violations of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and state common law.⁹

In January 2023, the Chester County Intermediate Unit agreed to pay $3 million to settle education-related claims. The money was split between a Compensatory Education Fund to pay for or reimburse educational expenses and a Damages Fund for students who experienced or witnessed physical abuse during school hours or whose school performance was materially affected. Eligible students were those who attended Glen Mills at any point after April 11, 2017, or who attended before that date and were under 20 on April 11, 2019. Awards were calculated based on the number of school days attended, with additional allocations for students with disabilities and English learners.¹⁰

In August 2024, the Pennsylvania Department of Education and former DHS leaders reached a $450,000 settlement with the three named plaintiffs. DHS paid $55,000 to each of the three plaintiffs and $20,000 to the Juvenile Law Center. The Department of Education paid $240,240 into a compensatory education fund for the plaintiffs and $25,000 to the Education Law Center.¹¹ The Department of Education also agreed to maintain an Office of Program Monitoring and Accountability through at least January 17, 2027, create a formal complaint process for individuals at residential schools and programs, develop standardized data-collection procedures, establish triggers for unannounced site visits, and publish an annual public report on complaints received.¹² The department launched the new complaint system in January 2025, and by February 2025 the named plaintiffs’ claims had been voluntarily dismissed, effectively closing the federal case. The court had already denied class certification in May 2024, finding the “individualized nature” of the claims made a class action inappropriate even while acknowledging the “appalling incidents of widespread abuse, inadequate education, and disability discrimination.”⁹

The larger volume of claims moved on a separate track. A mass tort proceeding was consolidated in Philadelphia’s Court of Common Pleas as In re: The Glen Mills Schools Litigation, Docket No. 900, with more than 800 individual claims from former students alleging physical, sexual, or emotional abuse.¹³ As of August 2024, initial bellwether trials had been paused for court-ordered mediation. The presiding judge then set new dates for the first four bellwether trials, with the first scheduled to begin in February 2025.¹⁴

Pennsylvania’s Attempt at Reform

On July 31, 2019, Governor Tom Wolf signed Executive Order 2019-05, “Protection of Vulnerable Populations.” It created a new Office of Advocacy and Reform and a Child Advocate position charged with representing children’s interests before the state legislature, triaging complaints about government services affecting children in foster care and the juvenile justice system, and recommending system-wide changes. The order also directed DHS to overhaul licensing, standardize timelines for corrective action plans, and procure modern information technology systems for licensing and child welfare case management.¹⁵

Those reforms have been fragile. Because the Child Advocate was created by executive order rather than statute, the office lacks statutory authority and dedicated funding. Legislation to codify and empower an independent office was introduced but died in the Republican-controlled state Senate. Maryann McEvoy, the second person to hold the role, left in January 2026, and the Shapiro administration has not hired a replacement, citing the position’s lack of statutory backing. Secretary of Human Services Val Arkoosh has said the administration supports legislation to codify the office, calling such a bill “needed to make the position effective.”¹⁶

The Campus Reopened as Clock Tower Schools

The Glen Mills campus did not stay closed. Christopher Spriggs, who began at the school as a trigonometry teacher in 1994 and was named acting executive director by the Board of Managers roughly three months after the shutdown, proposed a small-scale pilot program.¹⁷ The state initially denied a license application by the new entity, Clock Tower Schools, in April 2022. In January 2023, DHS reached a settlement granting Clock Tower a provisional two-year license to operate a residential and day treatment program for up to 20 court-ordered boys, with the possibility of expanding capacity over time.¹⁸

The settlement imposed oversight that goes beyond ordinary licensing. Clock Tower must pay for an independent on-campus monitor, the organization Justice by Design, which has office space on the campus, full access to buildings and records, and authority to interview staff and children.¹⁹ The agreement bars Clock Tower from hiring former Glen Mills employees or contractors beyond eight named individuals — Spriggs and seven others — who were vetted and swore under penalty of law that they had no involvement in and no firsthand knowledge of the abuse.¹⁸

Children First, a Philadelphia-based child-advocacy nonprofit, opposed the reopening in a February 2023 statement, arguing the facility was being operated by “the same leadership and staff” responsible for the previous school. The group called DHS’s monitoring pledge “meaningless” given the agency’s failure to detect abuse during Glen Mills’ prior operation, and demanded 100 percent new staff, 24-hour on-site monitoring, and immediate suspension of admissions if any new complaint triggered an investigation. DHS officials described the settlement as setting “a new standard for oversight and accountability” and cited a “critical shortage of beds and facilities for juvenile care” in Pennsylvania, including a 29 percent decrease in secure facility beds over the prior three years, as a reason to allow the reopening.¹⁸

1
The Philadelphia Inquirer. At Glen Mills Schools, Boys Are Beaten, Then Silenced
2
The Philadelphia Inquirer. Glen Mills Schools License Revoked
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Main Line Today. The Glen Mills Schools Celebrates 190 Years
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U.S. House of Representatives. Glen Mills Schools Background Document
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The Philadelphia Inquirer. On Their Own
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Education Fund for Former Glen Mills Students. Background Information
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Delaware County Daily Times. Delco DA Not Handing Over Glen Mills Probe to State
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The Philadelphia Inquirer. Glen Mills Schools Delaware County District Attorney
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Education Law Center. Derrick v. Glen Mills Schools
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Juvenile Law Center. Chester County Intermediate Unit Approves $3 Million Settlement
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The Philadelphia Inquirer. Glen Mills Schools Settlement With State Agencies
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Juvenile Law Center. PA Settles With Former Glen Mills Students for $450,000
13
Berger Montague. The Glen Mills Schools Litigation
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The Legal Intelligencer. Glen Mills Schools Mass Tort Gets New Bellwether Dates
15
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Executive Order 2019-05, Protection of Vulnerable Populations
16
Spotlight PA. Pennsylvania Child Advocate Abuse Investigations
17
Pennsylvania Capital-Star. Meet the Man Charged With Bringing Glen Mills Back
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The Philadelphia Inquirer. Glen Mills Clock Tower Schools Reopening
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WHYY. Clock Tower Schools to Reopen Glen Mills Schools