Last June, the Sentinel Group and its owner, Jeff Caron, signed a two-year contract for up to $10.7 million to run a small, temporary juvenile detention center in Middlesex and to help the State of Vermont design a larger, more permanent one in Vergennes. The latter facility is meant to replace Woodside, the troubled teen lockup in Essex that closed in 2020 amid accusations of physical and psychological abuse there.
Two other institutions that Caron operates have troubled track records of their own. Last month, a staff member at the Vermont School for Girls in Bennington was charged with sexually assaulting a 16-year-old student. In 2017, a math teacher there was convicted of similar crimes and sentenced to at least 12 years in prison. And Mount Prospect Academy, a nonprofit that runs residential treatment programs for youths in New Hampshire, is facing approximately 125 lawsuits from current and former students who allege they experienced physical, sexual and psychological abuse there.
The allegations raise questions about what steps Vermont officials took to vet Caron and his programs and whether the state is capable of providing adequate oversight for vulnerable youths in its care.
Vermont officials didn’t respond directly to Seven Days‘ questions about whether the state was aware of the issues plaguing Caron’s schools before it signed a contract with him, saying they could not comment because of the ongoing criminal investigation into the Vermont School for Girls employee.
“Whenever child and youth safety is impacted, we immediately investigate and act on the findings.” DCF CommissionerChris Winters
Instead, Department for Children and Families Commissioner Chris Winters provided a statement saying, “generally speaking, administering a program for youth in crisis or who have experienced extensive trauma is one of the most complex, demanding, and high-stakes jobs there is.
“That is why we have licensing standards, investigators, and are constantly monitoring these programs,” Winters wrote. “Whenever child and youth safety is impacted, we immediately investigate and act on the findings.”
Caron did not respond to requests for an interview. Instead, Lara Saffo, chief compliance officer for Caron’s programs in both states, wrote in a statement that the safety of youth “is our top priority.” The programs “have comprehensive policies in place, including background checks, staff training on trauma-informed care, regular audits, and immediate reporting protocols” that are continuously evaluated, Saffo wrote.
State Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (D-Norwich), Vermont’s education secretary from 2014 to 2018, said facilities such as these serve “complicated and vulnerable” children who have been failed by some of the adults in their lives.
“It is essential that they not be failed again,” Holcombe said. “That means we need to have extra oversight and extra vigilance in those settings.”
The Vermont School for Girls was known as the Bennington School when the state tapped Caron to take it over in 2013. The institution was facing potential closure because of financial mismanagement. (Its president, Matthew Merritt Jr., was convicted in 2014 on federal tax and health care fraud charges.)
Caron created a nonprofit, the Vermont Permanency Initiative, to run the school. He had helmed another program for troubled youths, Mount Prospect Academy in New Hampshire, since 2003.
Vermont School for Girls, also known as the New England School for Girls, currently serves 35 students ages 11 to 21 who have experienced complex developmental trauma and are in state custody. They live on campus, and Vermont pays Caron’s nonprofit $814 each day per student for round-the-clock care.
The school is meant to provide both an education and a safe, therapeutic environment. In Vermont, three state bodies regulate the Bennington institution: the Agency of Education, the State Board of Education and DCF. Similar entities in New Hampshire oversee Caron’s residential programs there.
Last month, 44-year-old Elvis Mata-Capellan, a former dorm supervisor at the Vermont School for Girls, was charged with 12 felonies, including sexual assault, sexual exploitation of a minor and obstruction of justice. He is being held without bail.
According to a police affidavit, Mata-Capellan engaged in sexual activity with a 16-year-old student in a dorm supply closet over several months. Mata-Capellan also allegedly provided the girl with vape pens and dabs, a form of cannabis. School administrators confronted Mata-Capellan in early December about “disclosures” that he was giving vape pens to students and disregarding “boundaries” with one student — who turned out to be the alleged victim.
But it wasn’t until January 6 that the school put Mata-Capellan on administrative leave — the day before the Bennington Police Department, acting on a tip from DCF, launched an investigation. The school fired Mata-Capellan on February 4, and he was arrested a month later.
According to a police affidavit in his case, the alleged victim had previously been abused by a foster parent who later died by suicide. Mata-Capellan, meanwhile, has a criminal history in New Jersey, including convictions for dealing drugs on school property, resisting arrest and shoplifting, as well as two probation violations.
State statute dictates that employees of public and independent schools must undergo criminal background checks. But it gives schools some discretion in hiring, as long as the person hasn’t been charged with a sex offense.
Saffo, the schools’ compliance officer, wrote in an email that all prospective employees undergo background checks and “any past criminal history is carefully reviewed … and [hiring] decisions are made based on the nature of the offense, time elapsed, and relevance to the role.”
Morris David Nelson, the math teacher at the school who was convicted in 2017 of sexually assaulting a 17-year-old student, also had a criminal record, for assault and distributing controlled substances. In 2021, the Vermont Permanency Initiative, the nonprofit that runs the Vermont School for Girls, paid Nelson’s victim, a New Hampshire resident, $250,000 to settle a civil lawsuit. The victim claimed the school was negligent in hiring Nelson and for failing to report abuse to New Hampshire’s Division for Children, Youth and Families. The school did not acknowledge any wrongdoing.
The allegations raise questions about what steps Vermont officials took to vet Jeff Caron and his programs.
Mount Prospect Academy, Caron’s other nonprofit, is named as a defendant in about 125 lawsuits brought by young men. Most were filed beginning in 2022. One former student claims he faced “anti-gay abuse,” was locked in isolation for up to 10 days and was beaten severely by staff. His suit also alleges that staff members gave the drug “spice,” cigarettes and alcohol to their favorite students.
In another suit, a former student alleges that school staff physically abused him almost every day, including slamming his head against a bus and dislocating his shoulder during a restraint. The suit also alleges he was raped by a staff member at least two times, was sexually abused by a female employee and smoked cannabis with staff members 20 to 30 times.
In a third suit, a former student alleges that three or four staff members would hold him down, then physically assault him while he was being restrained. A female employee allegedly made the student engage in sexual acts on multiple occasions, and when he told his counselor and other staff about the abuse, they didn’t take steps to stop it, the suit alleges. The suit says the student eventually ran away from the school.
Nathan Warecki, a Manchester, N.H.-based lawyer representing many of the alleged victims, said Caron was president of Mount Prospect Academy when the alleged incidents occurred. Several employees were named by multiple victims as being abusive, Warecki said, but appear to have remained in their positions for years.
Saffo characterized the litigation as “complex, and in its infancy stages.” She noted that Mount Prospect is one of many residential programs named in the suits and said the school “remains committed to supporting children and families across New England, with a steadfast focus on safety and well-being in all of our services and at our facilities.”
In late 2024, Mount Prospect sued its insurance company for breach of contract, saying it failed to cover the school’s legal costs. In the complaint, lawyers argue that the school is entitled to coverage up to $5 million per claim under its “professional liability” insurance policy, which covers “bodily injury occurring in the course of discipline.” That suit is still pending.
Caron’s contract with Vermont was awarded to his company without a competitive bidding process. The 46-page document says the state will pay Sentinel about $343,500 per month to operate Red Clover Treatment Center, a four-bed “crisis stabilization program” in Middlesex. The facility, which opened in October 2024, is intended as a stopgap until the Vergennes campus is built, tentatively by the end of 2026.
Caron and other Sentinel staff can also earn as much as $250 per hour in consulting fees for helping to design the Vergennes facility — dubbed the Green Mountain Youth Campus — which is expected to house around 14 troubled teens.
Caron, meanwhile, has faced legal troubles of his own. After crashing his car into a utility pole on a weekday morning in Lebanon, N.H., he was charged with driving under the influence in 2016. A Mount Prospect Academy employee in the passenger seat was charged with five felony counts of possession of a controlled drug.
Caron was put on leave from work. He eventually pleaded guilty to reckless driving and transporting drugs in a motor vehicle. He was reinstated by the schools’ boards and returned to work eight months later.
Today, Caron and his programs appear to be thriving financially. The nonprofits’ most recent tax forms show that in fiscal year 2023, Caron earned $335,000 for his work at Mount Prospect Academy and $130,000 from the Vermont Permanency Initiative. That same year, Mount Prospect reported a net income of $10.6 million and Vermont Permanency Initiative took in $4.4 million.
Just five years before, the organizations were making far less: Mount Prospect took in $812,000 and Vermont Permanency Initiative netted $534,000, tax forms from 2018 show.
Saffo attributed the increase to both “operational efficiencies” and growth. During the pandemic, she wrote, the schools took in students from other programs that closed. Mount Prospect Academy also started a special-education day school.
“All funds are reinvested into programming, staff development, and facilities to better serve youth,” Saffo wrote.
The Vermont School for Girls has come under state scrutiny before, but it has faced no consequences. In 2016, spurred by Nelson’s arrest, the Vermont Agency of Education launched an investigation related to concerns about student safety but found no wrongdoing.
In 2018, the State Board of Education renewed the school’s status as an approved independent school for three years. But, ostensibly due to a backlog, it wasn’t until May 2023 that the school went before the state board again. The board seemed reassured by an Agency of Education report that documented two visits to the school, which noted that the school did background checks for all new employees and “fingerprint supported criminal record checks” for all staff.
Then-interim education secretary Heather Bouchey told the board that the school had “come a long way in the past five years and should be commended for that.” Board member Tom Lovett, who chairs the independent school approval committee, characterized its leadership as “phenomenal.”
“It’s actually a feel-good moment,” Bouchey said before the state board unanimously approved a five-year renewal.
Just over a year later, in June 2024, Vermont’s deputy DCF commissioner Aryka Radke signed the $10.7 million contract with Sentinel, Caron’s new for-profit company, to provide 24-7 care at a four-bed crisis stabilization facility for minors who are awaiting trial or “have been detained and committed by the court.” Due to privacy reasons, Sentinel refused to say how many adolescents are currently held at Red Clover.
It is unclear whether Vermont School for Girls will face any consequences stemming from the most recent arrest of a staff member. DCF said the state was “actively working with the school to ensure the safety and well-being of the children currently in their care.
“We take these matters seriously as part of our responsibility to protect Vermont’s most vulnerable youth,” a spokesperson wrote in a statement.
Asked about the allegations, the Agency of Education said it was not authorized to get involved until DCF finished any investigation of its own.
State board chair Jennifer Samuelson, meanwhile, said “the Board is following the situation closely and is committed to discharging its duties as they arise.”
Unless the state decides to take action against Caron, he could be around for some time. The contract he signed with DCF contains a provision that says once the Vergennes center is built, his company, Sentinel, could be hired to provide “administration and staffing needs of that Facility.”
The original print version of this article was headlined “Background Check | The man tapped to run Vermont’s new juvenile detention center heads programs where staffers face abuse allegations”
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This article appears in Apr 9-15, 2025.
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