A Michigan couple is accused of sending their adopted child to a boarding school in Jamaica that was shut down over heinous child abuse allegations, then deserting the teen in the foreign country for months.
Thanks to the work of child welfare advocates, 17-year-old Elijah Goldman has safely returned stateside after he said he was left in Jamaica for months by his adoptive parents, Mark and Spring Goldman.
The Goldmans, a wealthy and conservative Christian couple, adopted Elijah and his little sister from Haiti in 2017 when he was 11, according to the Detroit Free Press. The children lived with the Goldmans and their two biological kids in a $1.7 million lakefront home in Traverse City, Michigan.
Elijah depicted his initial years with the Goldmans as bright, describing a nurturing and familial living experience where he felt loved and welcomed. In school, he made friends and was on the track team.
“Initially, my family was loving and helped me learn English and learn how to read,” Elijah wrote to the Free Press. “Then I became a teenager.”
Elijah wrote that rebellious behavior in his teenage years was the center of intense family conflicts. He bought personal cellphones without permission multiple times and uploaded pornographic images to the devices that his parents ultimately found. Elijah said he ran away after one argument with his mom escalated into a fight with his father, where he was beaten.
Two weeks later, the Goldmans sent Elijah to a special school for troubled boys. In the years that followed, he went to three different boarding schools until the Goldmans finally sent him to the American-run Atlantis Leadership Academy in Jamaica in September 2023.
Six months later, in March 2024, the academy was forced to shutter its doors after some horrific allegations surfaced that children at the school were being beaten, waterboarded, starved, and whipped. Four school officials were charged with child abuse.
Elijah said he was one of several students who suffered repulsive abuse at the hands of the school faculty members. He said he was cut with a razor and beaten in the back with a hammer. Other boys were stripped naked and violently beaten, had salt poured on their wounds, and were forced to join club fights for the betting entertainment of school staff and local police.
One month before the school finally closed, authorities removed Elijah and six other American boys from the academy and placed them in Jamaican custody.
The Goldmans never went to Jamaica to pick up their son or made travel arrangements for his return to the U.S. They never attended any court hearings on the school’s abuse allegations, either. Instead, Elijah was left to live in Jamaican group homes for seven months and face those court proceedings alone.
“I appreciate them for bringing me to the U.S., but they abandoned me,” Elijah told the Free Press. “They didn’t want me home. … And they didn’t believe me about the whole court thing … that they were abusing us. I’m staying strong, but it hurts.”
The school’s closing garnered international attention, and children’s rights activists caught wind of Elijah’s case, including celebrity and hotel empire heiress Paris Hilton, who is also a survivor of institutional child abuse. Hilton wrote to Michigan’s Department of Health and Human Services in May, advocating for Elijah’s return to the U.S.
A children’s rights attorney also visited Elijah in the spring and helped arrange his return to the States.
Following a harrowing year-long ordeal abroad, the 17-year-old made it back to America on Sept. 3.
He was put on a plane to Miami, Florida, where he met youth advocates and lawyers and a U.S. diplomatic official from Jamaica, but not his parents, and was left to weather the throes of complicated state custody proceedings.
Although Elijah wanted to return to Michigan, state authorities stated they had no legal authority to house him. The teen stayed one night in the custody of Florida Child Protective Services, then was put on a plane to Michigan, where he met CPS workers and his adopted father, who had made plans to send the teen to Utah, where he knew no one.
Elijah refused the plan, and his lawyers successfully placed him in the custody of Michigan Child Protective Services. According to the teen’s attorneys, the Goldmans don’t want Elijah living with them again.
The couple is now facing a formal complaint in family court, and Elijah’s lawyers are pursuing abandonment claims.
A Traverse City woman the Free Press identified as only “Teri” has stepped up to become Elijah’s foster mother as the teen prepares for a complex legal battle ahead. The Goldmans did not object to the teen’s new living arrangements.
