Clark County establishes unique court for minors
Gold Mahan, 16, was homeless after the youth’s father lost custody and grandparents kicked Mahan out. Mahan frequently skipped school and even got in trouble with the law.
That’s how Mahan, who has autism, ended up in Detention Alternative for Autistic Youth Court (DAAY Court), a diversionary court that takes autistic children accused of offenses such as battery and sex abuse and puts them through an alternative path providing access to treatment services. Cases may be dismissed upon successful graduation as part of a legal deal.
It was in DAAY Court where Mahan met licensed behavior analyst Matthew Lehman. Due to issues getting the teenager proper treatment, Lehman started the process of adopting Mahan, and they’ve lived together since February 2024, Lehman said. Mahan went from “completely illiterate” before DAAY Court to now reading at a fifth-grade reading level, he added.
“I had a tough childhood after I had a struggle with my (biological) parents. But after, I got put in different foster homes and … DAAY Court, because of me doing stupid s—,” Mahan said. “With the better family, I’ve been doing the right thing because it’s the right thing to do, and I like helping people.”
Family Court Judge Soonhee Bailey has overseen DAAY Court since its inception in April 2018. Her next project is a new diversion court established in June for children with fetal alcohol syndrome. As DAAY Court is only cleared for youths with an autism diagnosis, many others fell through the cracks, Bailey said.
“They were coming back with suspected fetal alcohol syndrome,” she said. “If they weren’t coming back on the spectrum, we couldn’t do anything for them.”
‘Substantially more effective’
Since its founding, 127 kids have graduated DAAY Court, and it has an 11 percent recidivism rate, Bailey said. A significant part of the court’s effectiveness is in getting children access to treatment without suffering through funding wait lists as long as two years, she added.
“There’s no funding for these children,” Bailey said. “Often we’re the only people standing between them and homelessness or them in prison as adults.”
Lehman said DAAY Court “absolutely helped” get his soon-to-be child help. The alternative was going through the general mental health system, he added, which takes a more hands-off approach.
“(DAAY Court) has a substantially more effective, in my personal experience, ability to connect kids to resources, even though the connection is not necessarily as fast as we would like it to be,” Lehman said.
Court sessions aren’t always joyous affairs where a child finds an adoptive parent. In another recent case, an autistic 17-year-old teenager wearing an orange detention shirt was escorted into the courtroom by probation officers.
Bailey had a tense exchange with Chief Deputy District Attorney Ronald Cordes about this teenager’s proposed placement at a psychiatric hospital she said was too restrictive. She said it sounded like Cordes had been “set up” by a colleague due to not having sufficient information on the case.
Defense attorney Jonathan Chagoya represented the teenager, who got in a lot of trouble at an overcrowded shelter for abused and neglected children, he said.
“It’s overwhelming, but it’s especially bad for an autistic child,” Chagoya added. “And so every time he would go back there, he would just get himself in trouble again.”
Expanding beyond autism
When testing participants for DAAY Court, Bailey noticed many kids were coming back with fetal alcohol syndrome diagnoses instead of autism. She said Sen. James Ohrenschall, D-Las Vegas, saw a similar problem while working as a public defender in the juvenile system.
The pair spoke before the Assembly judiciary committee May 9 regarding a bill sponsored by Ohrenschall and Sen. Lisa Krasner, R-Carson City. The bill sought to amend the original law establishing DAAY Court, expanding its scope to include neurobehavioral disorders “associated with prenatal exposure to alcohol or a controlled substance.”
This classification includes fetal alcohol syndrome and neonatal abstinence syndrome, caused when a fetus is exposed to addictive drugs in the womb.
Assemblymember Alexis Hansen, R-Washoe County, was listening to the presentation as part of the committee. She said it reminded her of a conversation she had with a doctor about the danger different addictive substances can pose to unborn children.
“In his course of being a doctor and dealing with babies who have been born to addicted mothers, one of the ones that was the most concerning to him, in his years of practice, had been fetal alcohol syndrome,” she said.
Hansen approached Ohrenschall after the hearing to ask about jointly sponsoring the bill, which she did. She also spoke with Bailey about looking into establishing similar specialty courts in Washoe County, and the judge offered to be a resource, Hansen said.
“That’s a goal of mine in the interim, that I wanted to reach out to some of the Washoe County folks in the juvenile system,” she added.
Gov. Joe Lombardo signed the bill into law on June 5.
A new court
Instead of adding kids with fetal alcohol syndrome to DAAY Court, Bailey helped create a new program: Neurodiverse Education and Advocacy for Treatment in Court (NEAT Court).
Similar to the autism diversion court, children can qualify for NEAT Court if they’re accused of an offense while having an applicable neurological disorder.
These cases come from the “delinquency” side of family court. Some children in NEAT Court are also diverted from the “dependency” side, referring to custody situations often involving accusations of parental abuse or neglect. Even if these children aren’t accused of any offenses, participation still provides them access to services.
“If children with (fetal alcohol syndrome) diagnoses appear in dependency proceedings, the court can flag them and say, ‘Hey, actually, this child is probably a good candidate for NEAT Court’ as a way to keep them out of the delinquency side,” Chagoya said.
During one of NEAT Court’s first sessions, a 12-year-old boy sitting in front of Star Wars figurines had to choose which gift card he wanted as a reward for good behavior. Included among many options were Little Caesars Pizza, Target and Taco Bell. The child decided on Target before Bailey invited him to choose another gift card, this time for a restaurant. He asked for Dairy Queen.
Lehman volunteers with children in both courts. One of his jobs is to replace behaviors that will get kids arrested, especially those involving verbal and physical aggression.
In many cases, Lehman said people with autism don’t understand what they’re doing is illegal. One example he gave was eating food at the grocery store without paying for it first due to not understanding the concept of money.
“When it’s a 3-year-old, it’s like, understandable and cute-ish,” Lehman said. “Five-year-old — sure. Fifteen-year-old, not so much.”
NEAT Court is very new, and much of it is still being established, Bailey said. But given enough time, the program will start to see graduates like Mahan and more than 120 others formerly in DAAY Court.
“After I graduated court, I felt happy that Judge Bailey actually helped me like feel better and find a good home that loves me and takes care of me,” Mahan said.
Contact Finnegan Belleau at fbelleau@reviewjournal.com.