Education reporter Julia Merola and health reporter Nick Stonesifer join “Beyond the Headlines” to talk about their recent investigation into the Rockford Center, a private behavioral health hospital in Newark which has been cited by state regulators in recent years for giving children medications without their or their parents’ consent.
Julia and Nick discuss their more than six month process to develop this report. They share how they connected with the families and employees featured in the article, why investigations like this take so much time, and detail their fact-checking process. Finally, they reflect on how reporting these kinds of stories impacts them personally as journalists.
The podcast was hosted by Director of Community Engagement David Stradley.
This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
We’re going to spend most of our time today talking about your investigative process rather than the results of that process. But for anyone who hasn’t read this article, can one of you just share the high-level findings?
STONSIFER: Sure. This is a story about the Rockford Center. A larger portrait about some of the medication and sedation practices we had been hearing about in the facility from families of patients, patients and former employees.
What led the two of you to start looking into the Rockford Center? Who found this story?
MEROLA: I had originally seen a Facebook post made by one of the parents who we ended up talking to and including in the story, and it was just detailing her daughter’s experience at the facility. I had sent it to Nick, and I just said, “I think this is a story that looks at both of the things we cover.”
I cover education, but that has to do with children and their families. Nick, he’s our health reporter, so he looks at these facilities all the time. It just seemed like an ideal combination for us to tag team this story.
Nick, in 2025 you worked on several articles detailing problematic experiences at another psychiatric hospital, MeadowWood. How was it different working on this investigation with a reporting partner?
STONESIFER: It’s definitely a lot better. You know, there’s a lot to these stories. A lot of people you have to talk to, a lot of extra research you have to do. So, wherever you can get an extra set of eyes — an extra set of hands — take it.
And I have to imagine these are intense interviews. These are stories about a mother finding her 22-year-old son at a Christiana Care emergency room shortly after he received a powerful sedative cocktail at Rockford. Stories of a mother calling Rockford 45 times within one day to try to get an update about her 8-year-old daughter.
Lots of experiences being shared. Is it helpful to have two sets of ears listening to those stories?
STONESIFER: Yeah, for sure. Not everybody can absorb everything in those longer interviews. You’re absorbing a lot very quickly trying to juggle the questions you put together ahead of time, also trying to think of stuff on the fly. So it’s nice to have somebody who’s not focused on leading the interview, kind of thinking on the fly about those questions.
This investigation took more than seven months to report on. Can you walk us through your reporting process? Why did it take so long?
And Julia, I’ll start with you here, since you’re the one that found this initial person.
MEROLA: Part of it was we’re talking to families that have multiple children. Life in general is hectic for anyone. So just literally scheduling interviews and finding a time that worked for the parent and also both of our schedules took a little bit.
Nick had done a FOIA request before we even started reporting this and he got 30 different files, and each file was at least three pages long. So there were a lot of state reports that we had to look through and take notes on.
One of the things that we felt was really important was speaking with an independent psychiatrist who could tell us, “Hey, these are the typical side effects that you would see if you’re giving a child this medication,” or “This is what the standard of care typically looks like in a psychiatric facility.” But it took us a very long time to actually find a psychiatrist.
And then both of the times when we thought we were just at the finish line, it was during holiday season, which, again, you’re talking to families who have multiple children. Holidays are chaotic for literally anybody.
So I just feel like there’s a few things in there that made the story take longer than it typically would have. But, you know, it was a process that worked out in the end.
You found the first family through a Facebook post. This was Julia Bailey, whose 8-year-old daughter started having hallucinations shortly after her time at Rockford, hallucinations that told her to harm herself.
There were multiple other families, some on the record, some just on background. What was your process for finding those other families who had these experiences?
STONESIFER: Earlier this year, I had put out a post on Reddit soliciting people’s experiences in these facilities, specifically Rockford. And we got a lot of feedback at the time. Actually, so much so it was kind of hard to keep up with.
We had done a lot of off the record and background interviews with people, just to help inform our process. People who did tell me they wanted to go on their record, I had sent lines to, but you go cold sometimes for months and then out of the blue they text you and now you’re hot on the trail again.
With stories like this, it’s not really uncommon. It’s usually why they take so long sometimes – just trying to track people down.
Julia, you found Tia and Darrian Wright, the family that leads the story. Darrian is a 22-year-old who has an intellectual disability that limits his cognitive function. He voluntarily admitted himself to Rockford after telling his mom, Tia, he wanted to die, and woke up in an emergency room less than 48 hours later.
During his short stay at Rockford, he received multiple medications on top of a combination shot meant to subdue patients during outbursts. How did you get connected to Tia and Darien?
MEROLA: Pretty much the same as the process of finding our original family. I feel like I just randomly saw a Facebook post. I reached out to Tia. She gave me her number.
I think I called her and left a voicemail and told her I’m a reporter at Spotlight Delaware. We’ve been looking into this for a few months now. We really just want to talk to you and hear about your son’s experience.
We set up a call from there. But yeah, I just really stumbled upon this Facebook post.
STONESIFER: The work never stops. You’re never off the clock mentally, even when you’re scrolling.
Was part of the duration of this reporting process connected to earning the trust of these families? These are very vulnerable things that they’re talking about. Did you have to earn that or were these people ready to talk and ready to share?
MEROLA: I think it was a mix. There were definitely certain people who did not feel comfortable using their names, or only wanted to talk on background.
But people like Tia Wright and Julia Bailey, they both wanted their stories out there. They didn’t have any hesitation about using their names, and their children’s names. They were just very upfront about what they had experienced.
I think it makes sense considering I’d found them both on Facebook. It wasn’t like they were someone we had posted on Reddit and then they had reached out to us. We found them because they were so upfront about what they were experiencing. But there were definitely certain people who wanted to stay on background.
STONESIFER: Some people have never spoken with journalists before, so it’s good to just give people that runway if they don’t want to be quoted, but still want to help the reporting process. It’s always good to let them do that. And if at some point they come back to us and say, “Okay, I’m going to go on the record,” we’re happy to oblige.
For those parents that were ready to talk, was there any kind of care that you had to structure those interviews with?
STONESIFER: I’d say they were ready. They had already put out stuff on the internet. That’s more than a lot of people do.
When you’re getting ready to talk to a reporter, you know, you’ve already kind of done it in one way, but maybe not been asked questions about it and hadn’t thought about it much deeper than maybe when you first posted.
So sometimes for some people, that gets emotional. We’re careful we don’t push where we don’t have to. If there’s a question somebody doesn’t want to answer, we’re not pushy if it’s not needed.
People want to tell their stories. So it’s not like we have to set up too much care, but we’re respectful where we can be.
MEROLA: I think just to add on to that, they were very open and up front. But like Nick was saying, they’re not used to being asked all these follow up questions. And I think sometimes, there were moments where you could see the mothers getting choked up a little bit because they were talking about experiences with their kids.
We would just say, “It’s okay. Take your time.”
They would take a minute to themselves, and then we just went back into it from there.
In those moments, I would say it is having them guide you and see if that minute needs to turn into a five minute break and you turn off your camera. That’s fine. Like Nick said, we’re not going to push and poke, especially because it’s a more sensitive topic.
If I’m remembering correctly, in about the last month before the article was finally published, you two would show up at our morning editorial meetings and say, “Hey, we thought this piece was just about ready, but we just found someone else. Another patient, another family came out and wants to talk.” How did those sources influence the reporting?
STONESIFER: They were patients themselves. They were also health care workers. So it’s valuable context, it’s valuable additional reporting that otherwise might not have been in it if we had jumped to publish right when we thought we were at the finish line.
Once this article was ready to go, you took the step of sharing it with a media lawyer for their review. Why take that step on this article?
STONESIFER: It is not uncommon for bigger stories like this. A lot of outlets do it. It’s just to make sure our bases are covered.
It’s very impactful. A lot of claims are being made in the story, and we had to make sure stuff was properly attributed. We had to make sure we gave everybody proper runway to comment on stuff, which we did.
It’s not uncommon for reporters to do this, when they have that resource available.
When you talk about giving people runway to comment on the article — in this case that was specifically making sure Rockford had time to comment?
STONESIFER: Yeah, we had been in communication with Rockford for months. They had known the story was on our radar, as early as late last year.
We would come back to them any time there were new claims being made in the story and give them a chance to comment. At the end we’re like, “Hey, this is the last time we’re going to reach out. Anything else you wanna tell us?” Like, this is it.
It’s part of the process. We want to be fair and that’s part of it.
Once the media lawyer had reviewed it, were there any changes that you had to make to the article based on their feedback?
STONESIFER: No, there were no concerns about libel or anything like that. We had strengthened our reporting with other sources.
I would imagine that part of the reason why that media lawyer didn’t have any changes for you all was that you had done your due diligence, had done your fact checking. You hear a lot in the reporting world about fact checking articles. Can one of you talk us through what your process is on an article like this of fact checking?
MEROLA: Basically what we had done — because this is a bigger story in the sense that the topic is heavy, but it also was just a really lengthy story — we split it in half and each of us worked from top to bottom, met in the middle.
We would look at the quotes that we were using and comment the exact minute mark of the audio where that quote took place. If it was a paraphrase, we would say, this is a paraphrase of the quote that started at, like, minute 16 of our August interview with so-and-so.
If we had statements from Rockford, we’d include the whole statement in that comment. When we had our state reports, we would comment the whole section from the state report and the exact page and date of that state report, just so that you know if our lawyer — not that this happened at all — but if anyone had any questions of, “Hey, when did this happen again?” They could easily see this was from an August 19 interview at the 16 minute mark.
But again, like Nick said, there were no questions because we were so diligent. It’s best practice to be that diligent.
It also just helps you sleep better at night knowing that you can pinpoint exactly where every single thing is.
What you end up with is basically what looks like a very heavily notated, almost academic paper of just footnote, footnote, footnote?
MEROLA: Yeah. If you’re familiar with Google Docs comments and you’re putting way too many comments on a document, it’ll almost add pages. We were definitely adding pages because of the amount of comments. There were a lot of comments.
Do you do this for every article you write at Spotlight or is this a unique case?
MEROLA: I think this was a unique case. I mean, we always fact check our articles. When you’re a journalist, especially for simple stories, you know what was said. I don’t always feel the need to go minute by minute.
I always do a quick check of my transcriptions, but I don’t feel the need to comment on minute marks. I know that a typical story, it’s just going to be me looking at that fact check document. But for this one, it’s just best practice to have all of your I’s dotted and your T’s crossed.
It also shows your dedication to reporting, shows that you really care about putting out the most accurate story no matter what it takes.
STONESIFER: You want to point back to what you were able to do when anybody ever has questions about it. You want to be able to explain why every letter was typed the way it was, or every word is in the story. And that’s just part of your responsibility as a journalist.
In addition to the enormous technical reporting challenges in an article like this — creating that massive fact checking document — I have to imagine this reporting process was also emotionally challenging for the two of you. What are the human challenges for you as reporters of spending so much time hearing about these very painful experiences in the interviews?
STONESIFER: Some stuff sticks with you. You end interviews, but it comes back to you out of the blue one time you’re just not thinking about it. I have stuff I still think about from MeadowWood.
But, you find solace in the fact that you’re helping people tell their stories, share their stories, doing good investigative work, where otherwise nobody would’ve said anything. It feels good in that way.
It’s the journalist’s plight. Sometimes it’s thankless in that way. But this story, we got a lot of praise for the work we did, so that also pays off.
MEROLA: I think I would also just add that these are families who want to get their story out there. For some people this is the first time they’ve actually had someone really listen and ask questions.
It’s a human want — to be heard. I think this is something that they recognized — they meaning the families — recognized would help them through whatever kind of healing process they were looking at with their families.
I don’t think this was the type of situation where there needed to be really intense handholding with families. We’re not acting as therapists. We’re acting as people who are listening and asking the powers that be why this was able to happen the way it was.
And I think the families know that, and they see the value in that.
Was this another place where working on this as a reporting team was helpful? I mean, after a particularly intense interview, were you able to just connect with one another and be like, “Huh, that just happened.”
MEROLA: Yeah, I think there were definitely times where Nick and I would do a Slack huddle call after an interview and be like, “I can’t believe I just heard that.”
And it definitely is a little bit of weight off your shoulder to be like, “That was really intense. And I can’t believe we just talked about that for an hour.”
But at the same time, you know what the work is. You know what you have to do next. I feel like you’re not necessarily focusing on how it affects you. You’re more so just looking at how to tell this story accurately.
The night before the story was actually published — what’s going on for the two of you? Are you totally at peace that your reporting work was done to the best of your abilities, or is it a little bit more of a complicated night?
MEROLA: I’m honestly never at peace with the night before any story comes out.
If I’m being completely honest, it can be the simplest, dumbest story in the world, and I’m still freaking out. So I am never at peace. But we were both looking at the document, just reading through and reading through and reading through until probably like 11:00 p.m. We were texting each other, being like, “Oh my God, I can’t believe this is happening.”
So, yeah, definitely not at peace. But when am I ever?
STONESIFER: A very, very healthy dose of skepticism never hurt anybody, especially on stories like this. You’re kind of freaking out until the last minute.
Once it’s out in the world, I usually feel better about it. But it’s kind of right before the buzzer that is usually very nerve wracking.
Once the article is published, once it’s out in the world, what feedback did you hear from people either in the article or just from readers who reached out to let you know what they thought about it?
STONESIFER: People were thankful we had done this story. Kind of a similar thing to when MeadowWood came out last year. People have been talking about this in Delaware for a very long time.
And when they see stories about it, they want to share their experience. They are like, “This is what happened to me when I was there in XY year.”
Just a lot of people have just very positive feedback from the community on stories like this.
MEROLA: I would also say we saw someone who redacted their personal information, but commented their medical documents from when they stayed at the facility. And I just thought that was very jarring in the sense that someone would be so willing to share their medical documents without knowing us or speaking to us. And also putting that on social media. I did not expect to see that.
But yeah, like Nick said, it was just a lot of people sharing their personal experiences and thanking us for putting the story out there.
Seeing the response, seeing somebody being willing to publish their own medical records, does that give you the feeling of, “Hey, we did our job” or is that paranoia still alive and well?
STONESIFER: It feels like we’ve done our job. It feels comforting in a way to know that there are so many other people, this huge outpouring of people that had similar experiences that we didn’t even talk to or weren’t even on our radar. That kind of puts the mind at ease a little.
MEROLA: I would also say it’s kind of validating for us in a way, too, because I feel like when you’re reporting on a story for this long, you’re kind of like, “Is anybody really going to read this?”
But I think after seeing so many people commenting on different platforms and reaching out to us individually and sharing the posts, it just reminds you that these stories are stories that we need to hold people accountable and ask the important questions and figure out why things happen or how things happen.
It was just a reminder that, yeah, this story took forever, and at times I really wondered whether we were going to be able to put it out there. But you know, it’s something that needed to happen.
Thank you both for your thoroughness and care in reporting on the experiences of these patients and for letting us in on your process.
MEROLA: Thanks for having us
STONESIFER: Thank you.