A Girl Died at an Indiana Teen Challenge Program in 1979. Forty-seven Years Later, Nothing Has Changed.
The story was buried and the program continued operating. The same legal entity now faces a federal trafficking lawsuit, forty-seven years later.
Mindy M. Davis was born on March 23, 1964. She died on May 30, 1979, inside a faith-based residential program in Indianapolis, Indiana. She was 15 years old.
No one was ever charged in connection with her death. Not for murder. Not for manslaughter. Not for criminal neglect. The facility where she died continued operating. The organization that ran it never dissolved. Mindy Davis was not the last child to die in Teen Challenge's care without anyone being held criminally accountable. And in 2026, forty-seven years after Mindy died, nine women filed a federal trafficking lawsuit against that same organization.
The legal entity named in the 2026 complaint, Indiana Teen Challenge Inc. (EIN 35-1262844), is the same corporation that operated the Indianapolis facility where Mindy Davis died.
What the Program Was
Indianapolis Teen Challenge was founded in 1966 by Betty J. Violette, an Assemblies of God minister who had previously worked at Teen Challenge in Chicago. By the early 1970s it was operating out of a two-story brick building at 2542 N. Delaware, marketing itself to parents, juvenile courts, and law enforcement as the last line of defense for struggling teens.
The program accepted girls as young as 11 and 12. The residents were described by the program as serious cases included those struggling with alcohol, drugs, and crime… but also. advertised that they served those whose only documented problem was homosexuality. It claimed to rehabilitate physically, spiritually, and educationally, preparing them for “productive lives in society, frustration and rebellion gone.”
The facility employed no licensed physicians, no licensed therapists, and no licensed teachers. It operated under religious exemptions that shielded it from the licensing and oversight requirements applied to secular residential care facilities. Funding came primarily from churches and individuals via fundraising. It answered to no public agency.
While the program marketed itself as primarily being for drug addicts, the most common type of residents were teens with emotional struggles and real trauma.
Before I went in I was a Christian that had never done drugs or been on a date. I didn’t smoke etc. My mother, who had paid someone to take care of me for years didn’t want me back. I was supposed to graduate the program after the first year, but a week before graduation they pulled me into the office and demoted me saying I didn’t raise my hands in church and they felt I had lust in my heart. I was made to go to churches almost every weekend to “give my testimony” where I was the one behind the pulpit to raise funds.
— Deidre, Indianapolis Teen Challenge, 1978
None of us deserved what happened to us there. If we were acting out, why didn't anyone want to find out WHY? My older half brother was abusing the hell out of me, so yeah, I ran away, more than once. And landed my ass in that nightmare called TC at 15 because of it.
— Ann, Indianapolis Teen Challenge, 1971
The facility employed no licensed physicians, no licensed therapists, and no licensed teachers. It operated under religious exemptions that shielded it from the licensing and oversight requirements applied to secular residential care facilities. Daily staff were primarily Teen Challenge graduates, former residents who were convinced to stay or graduates from other facilities.
I can say this, there was some sort of brainwashing going on, I became a staff member, if that is what one would call a person with no training, education, in helping young people, then I have to live with memories, of watching people in the basement, and whatever other chores. They used me to help torment these kids.
— Kay, Indianapolis Teen Challenge, 1979
Survivors from the 1970s describe the physical environment in consistent terms: barbed wire fencing around the perimeter, basement isolation rooms, food used as punishment, residents beaten with wooden paddles and fists.
“The facility was barricaded with fence and barbed wire. We were imprisoned there and not allowed to leave unless our parents wanted to take us out… I was also drug free. But my mother thought I was being controlled by Satan and this would fix me.”
— Kathleen, Indianapolis Teen Challenge, 1979-1980
My "punishment" of over 4 months in the furnace room wasn't because of anything I had done. It was because I had been beaten to a bloody pulp by a staff member and they didn't want outsiders to know. And why would a staff member beat me up? Because she was bat shit crazy. She just wanted to. And not for the first time.
— Ann, Indianapolis Teen Challenge, 1971
One survivor kept notes about the abuse hidden in her socks because staff raided rooms while residents were in the bathroom. Runaways were frequent. Survivors allege the abuse was rampant, unchecked, and a part of every day life.
The boys’ program occupied a separate house nearby. A survivor from that side of the program described what daily life looked like:
“The refrigerator was locked with seat belts. There was feces floating in the shower in the basement, and we never got enough to eat. Sometimes our dinner was popcorn. I woke up last week screaming because I dreamed I was locked in the basement again. I was frozen with fear.”
— Cricket, Indianapolis Teen Challenge, 1978-1981
Children were placed in basement isolation areas for weeks at a time. Staff called these spaces “the hole” or “the furnace room.” A survivor who spent five weeks in the furnace room described being told she was demonically possessed and that the confinement was designed to break her.
“The furnace room was designed to isolate you from the community and break you. If you ended up in the furnace room, it was a good bet that you were deemed demonically possessed. Yes, there was the occasional exorcism at this program. When I first arrived there, it was painful for me to intellectually forfeit what I had learned and perceived to be truth and reason. I grasped early on that my life would be immeasurably better if I accepted their way of life… I ended up even more incarcerated after ‘straying from the program’ — the furnace room. Midway through the five weeks, I could take no more. That was the first time in my life that I felt ‘madness’ and complete and utter powerlessness.”
— Elizabeth-Nancy, Indianapolis Teen Challenge, 1972-1975
Another survivor described conditions in the isolation areas:
“I still have nightmares about being in the hole of the old house in the laundry room. I was in the corner between two file cabinets for six weeks. Rats would come in at night. That director still appears in my dreams flipping the switchblade with her long nails.”
— Tamme, Indianapolis Teen Challenge, 1979
Physical punishment was routine.
“They would take me to the basement for their so-called correction of my attitude. This consisted of me being beaten with their wooden paddle to the point I could hardly sit. This went on every week for the first two months I was there. Then one night, they took me out of my bed at midnight to go downstairs and re-wash all the dishes from supper. The water was so hot it turned my hands beet red. I told them it was too hot so they made me bend over the table and gave me 50 swats for my complaining.”
— Bonnie, Indianapolis Teen Challenge, 1973-1974
The Warning That Was Ignored
It’s been questioned why nobody reported what happened behind the walls of the facility sooner. The answer is that, they did, but nobody listened.
No one believed anything we said about TC. As soon as I got home, I started clanging the clarion bell about everything that was happening there. Not one single adult so much as flickered an eyelash. I came home clean and that was enough. My friends back in Indiana being abused, starved, beaten by staff...didn't seem to matter. I was clean. Case closed.
— Cami Hedrick, Indianapolis Teen Challenge, 1973-1974
But in June 1978, nearly a year before Mindy Davis died, the silence surrounding Indianapolis Teen Challenge was almost finally broken by a 15-year-old resident named Jeffery Misiano.
Jeffery realized that running away wasn’t enough; they needed to reach the law. He orchestrated an escape for three other teens, lowering them out of a window using bedsheets tied to bunk beds. He handed one of the boys a letter addressed to a judge with specific instructions: Do not run. Find a police officer, tell them where you came from, and hand them this letter.
“I told them not to run back to their home states... instead, I wrote a letter to a judge. I told all three: Do not run! The first cop you see, tell him that you all just ran from a place that your home states sentenced you to. Tell him you need shelter and to speak to a judge.”
— Jeffery Misiano, Indianapolis Teen Challenge, 1978
The plan worked. The boys were found wandering in Robe-Ann Park in Putnam County, Indiana. They followed Jeffery’s instructions and begged Putnam Circuit Judge Francis N. Hamilton not to send them back.
The following morning, the facility was flooded with officials from the health department, the fire department, and child protective services. Jeffery, who had stayed behind, was finally able to speak to a judge face-to-face. He described a house of horrors: moldy food, kids being “hog-tied” to beds in the basement, and an incident where his own hand was slammed in a large industrial iron.
“A judge asked if I was Jeff Misiano. I told him everything. From the moldy foods to hog-tying kids to the bed in the basement to slamming my hand in the large iron they had. I told the counselor’s office... I kept telling them they’re gonna kill someone.”
Judge Hamilton ordered an investigation. County probation officer Mildred Hervey and child welfare worker Juanita Brooks toured the facility and documented unkempt living conditions and staff with no qualifying credentials.
However, the intervention hit a jurisdictional wall. Because the facility was in Marion County, Judge Hamilton forwarded the findings to Judge Valen Boring of the Marion County Juvenile Court. Boring sent health inspectors who looked only at building codes. They found minor repairs were needed, but nothing more. No action was taken regarding the “hog-tying” or the physical abuse Jeffery had reported.
Jeffery was eventually transferred to the Indiana Boys School for his own protection, but he never forgot his time at Teen Challenge. When news reached him a year later that a girl had died, the weight of the ignored warning was devastating.
“I was called into the counselor’s office and told that Betty [Violette] had allowed a young girl to die. Mindy Davis. I sat in his room and just cried. Why? I warned everyone. Jesus, why?”
No action was taken regarding the abuse allegations. No oversight was imposed. No licensing requirement was enforced.
Joyce, a resident during this period, described what staff did when they knew officials were coming:
“I kept notes in my socks about the abuse there, because they would ‘raid’ our rooms when we would be in the bathroom. They would take us on an outing, or hide us in the basement when the health department came for inspections — there were far too many occupants for the fire codes.”
— Joyce, Indianapolis Teen Challenge, 1976
The program continued operating unchanged. Eleven months after those two boys begged a judge for help, Mindy Davis was dead.
The Day Mindy Davis Died
In the spring of 1979, a local widower donated his late wife’s personal belongings to the program. The donation was not checked or inventoried. It contained potent prescription narcotics.
Mindy, described by her peers as “fragile” and “sweet”, found them. She was 15 years old. She took the drugs and overdosed.
A survivor named Kay was present that day. She described what happened:
“A man whose cancer-stricken wife died donated all her personal belongings to us. They were stored under the staircase, near Mindy, unbeknownst to anyone — there were strong narcotics in this lot. Mindy got a hold of these drugs and overdosed. Instead of taking someone’s precious child to the ER, as they should have done, they called poison control. To keep Mindy awake, they walked and cold showered her until they literally dragged her up and down the hall. When she could no longer walk, they laid her lifeless body on the floor. I can still see her laying there.”
— Kay, Indianapolis Teen Challenge, 1979
Kay also described the window when staff still could have called for help:
“Before I left that day, they already had knowledge she had taken these meds. She was alive and well, alert. I came back many hours later and you could tell she had got worse. This was so unnecessary.”
Staff members knew Mindy had ingested the medications while she was still conscious. Rather than call for emergency services, they called poison control and attempted to handle the overdose internally. They then forced two minor residents to administer saltwater in an attempt to induce vomiting. One of those residents was 13 years old. Her name was Tamme.
“I was with Mindy when she died. They made me and another girl Christie give her salt water to throw up the pills she took. I was thirteen years old. I have never recovered from that event. I ran away after the police questioned me. The staff hadn’t even called my parents to tell them what I had gone through.”
— Tamme, Indianapolis Teen Challenge, 1979
Christie was a resident at the facility from 1974 to 1980. In a later account, she described what she witnessed:
“I was locked in the basement for months behind a rollaway bed and a filing cabinet with not enough room to stretch out my legs. I also slept on a concrete floor in that basement, and not able to bath but once a week. I saw a girl (my friend) die, girls tied down to rollaway beds in that basement, and a lot more.”
— Christie, Indianapolis Teen Challenge, 1974-1980
When the saltwater failed, staff put Mindy in cold showers and forced her to walk. They dragged her up and down the hallways. When she could no longer hold herself up, they laid her on the floor.
She died in the arms of another girl.
“I was one that walked Mindy down that hall for the last time. I was the one upstairs with her when she passed. She died in my arms. I was in the closet right before they got arrested. They called it the hole — cold, dark, wet basement. I will never forget that place. I will never forget the day she died.”
— Beth, Indianapolis Teen Challenge, 1978-1979
By all witness accounts, Mindy Davis died a needless death.
“They did not call EMS, they just prayed over her and she died.”
— Cricket, Indianapolis Teen Challenge, 1978-1981
“Should they have had a way to dispose of her, I think they would have.”
— Kay, Indianapolis Teen Challenge, 1979
“…they waited like 45 minutes after she passed before they called an ambulance.”
—Mary, Indianapolis Teen Challenge, 1976-1979
The Investigation That Changed Nothing
Police came. They investigated. They questioned the residents, including Tamme, who was 13 years old and had been forced to participate in the failed overdose response. The staff had not notified her parents of what had happened. Tamme ran away from the facility shortly after the questioning.
No criminal charges were filed in connection with Mindy’s death. Not against Betty Violette. Not against any staff member. Not against anyone.
The facility continued operating.
The official documentary record of Mindy Davis’s death has been effectively erased from publicly accessible sources. Indiana death certificates from 1979 are not digitized and require direct requests to the Indiana State Department of Health. No obituary has been located in any indexed database. No coroner’s report has surfaced. No news coverage of her death has been found in digitized Indianapolis Star archives from May and June 1979, despite survivor accounts confirming that police were present and the death was known.
What remains are the testimonies of women and men scattered across the country who were there, who have carried the memory of Mindy Davis for over forty years and committed it to survivor forums and memorial pages because no official record preserved it.
“Mindy was not like her family. They were like the Cleavers. Her problem could not be fixed at church. I think she should have been in a hospital.”
— Kay, Indianapolis Teen Challenge, 1979
“I believe they let her die. She was so young and so nice to me. I wonder why they were never charged with murder?”
— Cricket, Indianapolis Teen Challenge, 1978-1981
“I was in Indianapolis in ‘79 and ‘80 and had the same horrible experiences there. I was committed on my thirteenth birthday. I watched horrendous things happen there, and for anyone to downplay the emotional trauma some people suffered is just crazy. Imprisoning girls against their will and forcing God down someone’s throat is not the right way.”
— Anonymous Survivor, Indianapolis Teen Challenge, 1970s
“I’m going on 63 now and I still have nightmares. All these years I tried to block them, but they never go away. I think my main problem is no one would listen to me. But I thank you for listening.”
— Anonymous Survivor, Indianapolis Teen Challenge, 1970s
No charges. No oversight imposed. No licensing requirement enforced. The facility that had already been reported to a judge, investigated by welfare workers, and inspected by health officials remained open.
It would continue operating for another eight months before the next intervention. Yet, even then, it would not be Mindy’s death that finally forced action.
The Failure of the System
While the 1978 investigation by Judge Hamilton was stymied by jurisdictional lines, no further intervention came from outside the facility. The abuse continued. By early 1980, girls were being confined in a 5-by-5-foot utility closet… sometimes four or five at a time… for what staff described as minor disobedience. They were forced to remain there from 10 PM to 8 AM, a board propped against the door to prevent escape.
A resident named Cari had been confined in the closet multiple times. She received no counseling for drugs, for trauma, for anything. In early 1980, she was taken to a local hospital after hyperventilating to the point she could no longer breathe. She told the examining physician what was happening at the facility.
“I finally was taken to the local hospital because I was so upset I started crying and couldn’t stop so I started hyperventilating and couldn’t breathe. I told the doctor that examined me about what was going on there at the Indianapolis, Indiana program and that is when they took the director — called ‘mom’ — to jail.”
— Cari, Indianapolis Teen Challenge, 1980
Another resident describes…
“I was there. I escaped from the second-story window and was taken to a nearby hospital via ambulance... I told [the girl I was with] I couldn’t leave her alone and that I needed to go to the hospital. We walked back and she knocked on the door to the boys’ house. I left by ambulance… A few weeks before, the police arrived and found several of us locked in a utility closet. A few days later two women were arrested and charged with child abuse.”
— Reverend LaTonia Simone Adams, Indianapolis Teen Challenge, 1980
20 years after being founded, this was the first time a director of the Teen Challenge organization faced felony charges.
By early 1980, Indianapolis Teen Challenge was under investigation on multiple fronts. The Indiana Department of Mental Health had opened an inquiry after receiving confidential reports that enrollees had been confined for extended periods in separate quarters. State certification had been temporarily suspended pending an assessment of the abuse allegations. The Indiana State Police were also investigating, and a superior told reporters that arrests of employees and administrators could be forthcoming.
A written report authored by a Mental Health Department assistant director of addiction concluded that the abuse charges could be substantiated, and that the conduct was “inappropriate and potentially hazardous to the physical and psychological well-being of the subjects.” A hearing to determine the program’s fate was scheduled at the Department of Mental Health. Violette instructed staff not to speak to the media.
On March 8, 1980, with the investigations ongoing, administrators were keeping quiet on the abuse disclosures. Assistant director Ruth Holman confirmed at least 85 students were enrolled on a per-day basis but declined to elaborate further, stating that Violette had directed staff not to comment because prior media reporting had not reflected what they had told reporters.
Joyce, the survivor who had kept notes hidden in her socks, described learning years later that the public record captured almost nothing of what had actually happened:
“I wanted to expose the two directors, but did not have the support I needed at that time. I was in college by the time they were arrested in 1980, and then my folks believed me. I only wish it had been me who blew the whistle, because I know the abuse continued even after I left up until they were arrested.”
— Joyce, Indianapolis Teen Challenge, 1976
A survivor described what she witnessed during the period leading up to the arrests:
“The director snapped and started putting 6 to 10 kids in a utility closet for 6 weeks at a time. While I was sleeping I heard yelling and screaming all night. One day the state came in and arrested the director and assistant. They put most everyone that was left there in a hospital for mental and emotional evaluation.”
— Tammy Sweigart, Indianapolis Teen Challenge, 1979-1980
Five counts were filed. Two were dismissed by Judge Boring before Violette was even arraigned.
The remaining charges were dropped after Violette submitted a letter stating she would no longer work with the program. County Prosecutor James Kelley considered her resignation sufficient. What the record does not reflect is that Violette's own attorney told reporters he expected his client to "get her life in order again" and continue working with children in Indianapolis. The charges evaporated. The intention to continue did not.
By November 1980, eight months after her arrest, Violette had established a new organization called Third Phase, Inc. in neighboring Hamilton County. But the organization had not simply emerged after the arrest as a fresh start. Survivor accounts place its construction during the final years of Indianapolis Teen Challenge's operation which means Violette was already building her next program while running the facility where Mindy Davis died. Former residents of Teen Challenge who aged out of the program were sent to Third Phase, meaning her connection and influence to Teen Challenge never ended. She ran it for 37 years until her death in 2019 at age 90. The authorized biographical account of her life makes no mention of the arrest, the charges, or Mindy Davis.
Despite the 1980 arrest and the overwhelming evidence of negligence in the death of Mindy Davis, Betty Violette and her assistant Ruth Holman (known to residents as “Ruthie”) were never barred from working with vulnerable populations. Instead, they simply moved their operations to Noblesville in neighboring Hamilton County.
While local media often portrayed the shelter as a success story, those who looked closer saw the same patterns of chaos and lack of professionalism that had defined their time in Indianapolis.
One person who encountered the pair later in life and researched their history, noted that the dysfunction was never corrected. Just relocated.
“Bettie and Ruthie moved to Noblesville and started a women’s shelter. It was very dysfunctional… They should have been charged with involuntary manslaughter at the least.”
— Rhonda Dybedock Crink
This sentiment that the directors escaped the legal consequences of their actions remains the central grievance for the survivors. Because no criminal charges were filed, Betty and Ruth were able to maintain a public image as humanitarians until their deaths, escaping earthly justice.
The original legal entity, Indiana Teen Challenge Inc., was never dissolved.
The Same Organization, Half a Century Later
Indianapolis Teen Challenge continued operating under that same legal entity through the 1990s. Survivors from that decade describe conditions that had not changed.
“They refused to take me to the orthodontist or to the doctor. They told me if God wanted my teeth straight he would have made them straight, and that I needed to pray about the extreme itching I acquired once I got there. Come to find out I had scabies. I ran away several times because I wasn’t allowed to speak to my family by phone or mail. The first time or two they had the police bring me back.”
— Survivor, Indianapolis Teen Challenge, 1990s
“Years of nightmares that they were coming to collect me out of my home and drag me back. I’d scream and sob and explain I have a husband and child now and they can’t take me away. I’m 50 now. I was 15 when I was sent to Indianapolis TC in the early 1990s. One girl was in a relationship with a female staff counselor. I remember the night they were discovered. The girl left the program and the counselor was dismissed. No charges pressed.”
— Survivor, Indianapolis Teen Challenge, 1990s
In 2001, the organization moved locations and restructured, opening a new girls’ facility in Lebanon, Indiana, operating under the same federal tax ID (EIN 35-1262844) it had carried since 1972. The legal entity had never been dissolved, never been stripped of its certification permanently, and never faced criminal accountability for Mindy Davis's death. It only changed its name and address. The Central Indiana Teen Challenge for girls opened at 1015 N. Lebanon Street in Boone County, 30 miles from Indianapolis, in a different jurisdiction, under a new name.
In 1979, the horrors reported by survivors like the wooden paddles, the “furnace room” isolation, and the forced labor were categorized by the state of Indiana as “child abuse.” This classification proved to be a weak deterrent. Because Teen Challenge operated as a religious non-profit, they were often able to argue that their “disciplinary methods” were part of a protected spiritual curriculum. Local judges and health inspectors, restricted by county lines and narrow building codes, lacked the tools to see the systemic nature of the exploitation.
Half a century later, the legal lens has changed. A 2026 lawsuit filed against Central Indiana Teen Challenge does not just allege abuse; it alleges Human Trafficking under the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA).
On April 8, 2026, nine women who were residents of that Lebanon facility as minors filed a federal lawsuit, alleging systematic abuse, forced labor, and human trafficking under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act.
The allegations in the 2026 complaint describe practices that directly parallel what survivors documented at the Indianapolis facility in the 1970s: isolation rooms with no documented maximum duration, food used as punishment, no licensed medical or clinical staff, forced church fundraising appearances, communication with family monitored and blocked, staff framing psychiatric distress as demonic possession.
Survivors from the Lebanon facility describe those practices in specific terms.
“They locked me in a room and fed me carrots and water for 12 days. They created what was called level 0 because of me. I was not allowed to talk for over two months. They took me 7 days after my 13th birthday. One of the ladies, Mary, punched me in the face multiple times. Parading us to different churches in bright orange shirts to show us off. That place was pure hell.”
— Survivor, Central Indiana Teen Challenge, 2003-2004
“I worked at this place and it’s a mess. It runs on fear. There is no joy. There is verbal abuse and questionable discipline methods. Anything the girls enjoy gets taken away. They were forced to share their trauma to the whole staff, and if they didn’t, it was used as leverage against them moving forward in the program. They talk bad about parents and lie to them often. Overall, the place just seemed to be creating more issues for the girls to deal with later.”
— Former staff member, Central Indiana Teen Challenge
“They would exploit me to tell my ‘testimony’ at random churches over and over so they could make money off me. They dehumanized us and accused us of being bad kids, when really we all probably just need better mental health treatment. One time after trying to run away from the facility, they locked me in the ‘safe room’ with only a peanut butter sandwich and water three times a day for a week.”
— Survivor, Central Indiana Teen Challenge, 2010s
“They did ‘therapy sessions’ where I was sat down with an unlicensed counselor who just berated me and read Bible verses to me to ‘prove’ how bad of a person I was for my ‘sinful inclinations.’ Central Indiana TC constantly threatened the girls there with extra time if they didn’t cooperate or do and say what was wanted by staff. One girl was kept six extra months. My parents had convinced their church to fund my program stay through offering donations. I tilted the director’s blacked-out email toward the light and saw that she was misrepresenting me and my character, lying about me misbehaving, so I’d have to stay in the program longer. CITC saw endless dollar signs.”
— Survivor, Central Indiana Teen Challenge
“I remember they used to have a few of the girls work 12-hour shifts in the heat with only one 30-minute break each. I was 15 years old. I needed help, not to work myself away.”
— Survivor, The Refuge Girls Academy, 2022
“At Central Indiana Teen Challenge we were forced to do unpaid labor, including landscaping the former director Dawn Rose’s yard as punishment. This place has completely broken my relationship with my adoptive parents, so I have no family. I struggle to go to the doctor or seek real mental health help because of the fear this place instilled in me.”
— Survivor, Central Indiana Teen Challenge, 2005-2007
At the Lebanon facility, a survivor described what happened when she overdosed in 2019:
“I took 18 pills — 1,200 milligrams of dramamine. I began to feel my body overdosing around 3 AM, ran out of my room frantic, hallucinating and more scared than I probably have ever been. The next morning I told the staff the truth, I told them everything. They did nothing. They put me back in my room alone, shivering, throwing up, hallucinating. This was where I felt complete abandonment.”
— Survivor, Central Indiana Teen Challenge, 2019
Five months before the lawsuit was filed, the Director of the Indiana Department of Child Services appeared in a video on The Refuge Girls Academy’s Facebook page. Speaking in his official capacity, Adam Krupp encouraged Boone County residents to attend a fundraiser for the program and described it as a “safe, faith-based residential program.”
Krupp is not a peripheral figure. Indiana DCS is the agency responsible for receiving and investigating abuse complaints at facilities like The Refuge. His endorsement, delivered by title, carries institutional weight in placement decisions made by courts and caseworkers. For a child welfare director, “safe” is not generic praise. It is the specific standard his agency exists to enforce.
Public survivor accounts documenting conditions at Central Indiana Teen Challenge had existed for years before the video was posted. Only five months after Krupp called it safe, nine women filed a federal trafficking complaint.
A Pattern of Deaths and Medical Neglect Without Accountability
Mindy Davis is not the only child who has died in Teen Challenge’s care without anyone being held criminally accountable.
In 2020, 17-year-old Naomi Wood died at Teen Challenge of Florida after staff allegedly ignored signs of serious medical distress for days, substituting prayer and monitoring for emergency care. Her family’s wrongful death lawsuit was removed from the public courts and forced into private religious arbitration under a clause in the program’s admission contract. The full record of what staff knew and did remains sealed.
Naomi had been visibly ill for days. Staff members did not call for emergency services. Her father later described what the family encountered when they tried to find out what happened in the days before she died.
“What seems to be a willingness to lie to us at a time when we were going through a sacred process of grief and death is really troubling…”
— Al Wood, parent of Naomi Wood
The pattern of withholding emergency care was not limited to overdoses or illness.
Angela Vecera arrived at Indianapolis Teen Challenge in June 1978, the same month Jeffery Misiano warned a judge that someone was going to die. She was sixteen and pregnant. Staff placed her in isolation immediately.
“I was in the hole the first four days because they thought I would run. I was only in there because I was pregnant. I wore the same clothes for the 4 days I was in the hole.”
— Angela Vecera, Indianapolis Teen Challenge, 1978
Staff pressed her repeatedly to place her daughter for adoption. She refused.
Her water broke on December 26, 1978, around midnight. She told a staff member she needed to go to the hospital. Staff told her they had spoken with a doctor and she should wait until her scheduled appointment at 1 PM the following day. She did not believe they had called.
“They almost killed me and my daughter also… My water broke… I was in excruciating pain and told a staff member I need to go. They said they would call. To this day I don't believe they called because they came back and told me that the Doctor said to wait... I was screaming so they put me in the "hole" until we left. She was trying to come but I was too small. I overheard them say, "what will they do with the baby when she returns?”
When she was finally taken to her appointment, a nurse recognized the emergency and called a doctor in from lunch. At the hospital, an emergency c-section was performed. During the procedure, Angela told the doctor what she had overheard staff discussing: what would happen to her baby when she returned. He left the room and came back with one question: had she signed anything? She had not. He told her they could not separate her from her child, and she never returned to the facility.
And Indianapolis Teen Challenge was not the only facility in the network where pregnant residents faced pressure to surrender their children.
A 2021 New Yorker investigation by Rachel Aviv documented multiple cases at the Lakeland, Florida Teen Challenge. One resident was told by directors that surrendering her child was an ultimate sacrifice, like Mary giving up her son. When she tried to revoke her adoption consent within the legally permitted window, her movements were so controlled she could not mail the required form in time.
Angela’s account places the same pattern at Indianapolis more than three decades earlier. And we see other patterns repeat, again and again.
The same admission contract used in the 2026 Indiana case requires parents to sign over unconditional custody of their children to the facility. The same exemptions that allowed Indianapolis Teen Challenge to operate without licensed physicians in 1979 allowed Central Indiana Teen Challenge to operate without licensed physicians in 2018.
In these facilities, professional care is withheld or unavailable, and staff with no clinical training make life-and-death decisions about children’s health. When something goes wrong, accountability is absorbed by religious exemptions, private arbitration clauses, and victims voices are answered with deafening silence.
Mindy Davis died before any of the legal tools the 2026 plaintiffs are using were available. She died in a facility that had already been reported to a judge, investigated by welfare workers, and inspected by health officials. None of it was enough. The facility was still open when she died.
The organization where Mindy Davis died has operated continuously for sixty years, is currently named as a defendant in a federal trafficking lawsuit, and has never faced accountability for her death.
The 2026 lawsuit was made possible by the Eliminating Limits to Justice for Child Sex Abuse Victims Act of 2022, which removed the statute of limitations for civil forced labor claims brought by minors. That law does not apply retroactively to Mindy Davis, and no federal statute reaches back to 1979. No claim can be filed on her behalf.
In 1980, it took countless tries to get the police to finally open the door. Today, survivors are no longer jumping from windows; they are walking through the front doors of the federal courthouse.
In Her Memory
Mindy Mae Davis was born March 23, 1964. She was 15 years old. She was by all survivor accounts sweet, kind and beautiful. The girls and boys who knew her have never forgotten her sensitive and gentle nature.
Mindy's memory is maintained on the Hope Knows Your Name website. The memorial reads:
"This is the girl who died at the hands of the directors of the girls home.
I will never forget this day nor, will I ever forget her.
A child's life that was taken way too soon, a death that should have never happened."
Her gravesite has been virtually preserved and adorned with flowers.
Survivors of Teen Challenge Indianapolis can connect with fellow survivors at the Indiana Teen Challenge survivors group.
If you were a resident of Central Indiana Teen Challenge or The Refuge Girls Academy, CohenMalad LLP is actively investigating. Former residents may have legal rights regardless of how long ago they were there. Contact: (317) 751-0946.
If justice is not available to you, consider visiting the Teen Challenge Exposed archive and submitting your testimony to our database. Sharing your testimony matters now more than ever.
Learn more about Teen Challenge at our website, TEENCHALLENGE.EXPOSED
Sources: Hope Knows Your Name Ministries, survivor testimony archive; Larry Gibbs, Banner-Graphic, Putnam County, March 13, 1980; Indianapolis, March 8, 1980; DuPuis et al. v. Indiana Teen Challenge Inc., 1:26-cv-00700-MPB-MKK, S.D. Indiana; IRS Form 990 records, Indiana Teen Challenge Inc. (EIN 35-1262844); Pentecostal Gold biographical archive, Betty J. Violette; Indiana Capital Chronicle, February 10, 2026; some survivor quotes are sourced from the teenchallenge.exposed archive.
This is my home state! But I didn’t grow up in the church, so I had no idea this existed until a few years ago.