Lawsuit: Vista Maria Residential Treatment Facility

“Nearly 50 women and girls say they were sexually and physically abused inside a long-running metro Detroit residential treatment facility, and an attorney working with them says a civil lawsuit will be filed soon.

The allegations involve Vista Maria in Dearborn Heights, a nonprofit that has operated for 140 years and provides mental health services, foster care, adoption, and secure care for human trafficking survivors. The women who have come forward range in age from 17 to 44, according to the attorney.

Attorney Michael Jaafer said 47 survivors have spoken with him so far.

“At the beginning, I didn’t believe it. As an attorney, you know, I had questions and I, you know, basically said, I need proof. It’s not enough just for one person to say it, or even two people to say it. I need proof,” Jaafer said.

Jaafer said that changed as more women and girls described similar experiences.

“These girls that never met one another and they didn’t interact with the same employees there, but they were saying the same story,” he said.

One of the accusers, 17-year-old Sophia Knoblauch of Owosso, said she arrived at Vista Maria in 2020 when she was 12 while in foster care.

“I had nowhere else to go. I was in foster care. I, yeah, didn’t have a family or home to be placed in, so they just sent me there,” Knoblauch said.

Knoblauch said she expected to get help but instead experienced what she described as abuse and traumatic treatment. “I feel like it was like a never-ending hell, honestly,” she said.

Knoblauch described one incident in which she said she was stripped and placed in a behavioral management room.

“One of the most traumatizing events that happened was when I got stripped from all my clothes. I was naked, and they threw me into the BMR, which is a behavioral management room, and put me in front of a camera and held me in there for hours on top of hours,” she said.

Knoblauch also alleged a staff member bashed her head against a wall and poured chemicals on her. She said she woke up the next day injured.

“The next day I woke up with 13 bruises and my foot, like I couldn’t walk on it, so I’m pretty sure it was sprained,” she said.

Knoblauch said she repeatedly reported what was happening but was not believed. She said she lived at Vista Maria for four years and in 2024 received a call from her case worker saying a foster home had been found.

“Every day I would, like, lay in bed, like, praying that maybe one day, like, I’d finally get to leave and, or someone would listen to me and believe me and shut it down and save all of us and, you know, like, I was very, very happy to finally leave that place,” she said.

Jaafer said Knoblauch was the fifth girl he spoke with and that her account was difficult to hear.

“Midway through the initial interview, I asked her to stop talking. We couldn’t hear anymore,” he said.

He said the women and girls coming forward are seeking accountability and want to prevent others from experiencing similar harm.

“It’s about justice, obviously it’s about accountability, but what these girls have all said is they want to make sure that this doesn’t happen to any other little girl,” Jaafer said.

Vista Maria closed its residential care facility in October[2025], and all residents were transferred to other care facilities by Dec. 19. The Vista Maria website says “social systemic and regulatory factors” made it difficult to care for young people, though the organization continues to offer other services on its campus.”

Women, girls accuse Vista Maria treatment facility in metro Detroit of abuse
[Mid Michigan Now 3/3/26 by Courtney Bennett]

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