Jamestown Mother Fights for Answers Amid Legal Hurdles in Son's Case

Dawn Van Ballegooyen thought she was doing the right thing when she went to police for help with her 17-year-old son. Brady Alan Folkens, a Jamestown-area teenager described by those who knew him as a brilliant student, guitar player, and fiercely protective older sibling, had been caught with marijuana and skipping school. Van Ballegooyen, a single mother for 14 years at the time, worried about truancy charges and hoped officers would simply talk to him. Instead, Brady was taken in handcuffs to STAR Academy, South Dakota's juvenile correctional facility in Brookings, where he had been sent once before in 2012.

Brady was a healthy teenager whose only documented medical issue was acne. But in late 2013, he became ill inside STAR Academy. Van Ballegooyen drove nine hours to visit him on Dec. 21, unaware her son was in serious trouble. Within days, Brady was dead, a ward of the state.

The case drew renewed attention as part of a two-part investigation examining Brady's 2013 death while in the custody of South Dakota's juvenile correctional system. STAR Academy was later closed by the governor.

Van Ballegooyen has spent the years since pressing every available legal avenue. In 2016, she met retired doctor Lars Aanning at a medical board meeting in Sioux Falls, where she asked him directly: "Can you tell me why and how my son died?" Aanning became an ally in her search for answers, claiming a conspiracy to hide evidence behind the teen's death, a case that stretches across multiple agencies.

The legal journey has taken several turns and remains unresolved. For Van Ballegooyen, each procedural delay and closed door represents another year without a full accounting of how a healthy boy in state custody did not come home. More than a decade after Brady's death, the questions she first asked in that Sioux Falls conference room remain unanswered.