Kingsley mother says court sent son to Missouri facility despite warnings

A Kingsley mother says Grand Traverse County’s juvenile court sent her 15-year-old son to a Missouri mental health facility even after she warned officials about abuse allegations tied to the place. Cheryl Karpinski says Aiden William Karpinski was placed at Lakeland Behavioral Health in Springfield after entering the care of the county’s 13th Circuit Court on charges, and that the court had four weeks to line up treatment before his release from juvenile detention.

Karpinski said she repeatedly warned the court about Lakeland before her son was sent there anyway, and she said she deeply regrets the placement. She also said police told her her son might receive help if she pressed charges, a reminder of how families can be forced into painful decisions when they are trying to seek both accountability and treatment.

The case lands in the middle of a larger pattern affecting Grand Traverse County. Three county children were sent to Lakeland Behavioral Health System in 2025, and later reporting said five children from Grand Traverse County were sent out of state for mental health treatment to a Missouri facility with a history of sexual and physical abuse allegations. Lakeland was already facing legal scrutiny: one lawsuit had been filed in 2024, and two more were filed on May 5 and May 7, 2025. By May 2025, at least three lawsuits and 32 plaintiffs had alleged child sexual abuse at the facility, including one suit with three plaintiffs and another with 28.

The broader picture is unsettling for Michigan families who depend on juvenile and behavioral-health placements. Out-of-state youth mental-health placements in Michigan have nearly doubled over the past decade, and as of September 2025, 152 youth in the state’s direct-placement program were living in out-of-state facilities. State spending on those placements topped $13 million in fiscal 2025, up from $9.7 million the year before, even as in-state options kept shrinking. Shawono Center in Grayling closed in February 2025, and Vista Maria closed in December 2025.

Karpinski has already testified in Lansing about the shortage of youth residential treatment beds in Michigan, telling lawmakers that her son was placed about 800 miles away because no beds were available in-state. Her complaint now puts a sharper focus on Grand Traverse County’s own choices: what officials knew about Lakeland, how they weighed abuse concerns, and how much oversight exists once a child is sent across state lines for treatment.