Jozlyn was 13 and searched like an offender

Jozlyn was removed from home at 13 because of her parents' addiction. She was placed in a juvenile facility instead of foster care. She says she was treated like an offender.

On More Than Just Luck, hosted by Greg Wier, she describes a traumatic search conducted on a girl the system did not know where else to put. She was, in the episode's own frame, completely innocent of the thing that moved her. Her parents' addiction was the reason. The search treated her body as the suspect.

Imagine being 13 years old, completely innocent, and subjected to a traumatic search simply because the system didn't know where else to put you.

Watch Voices Unmuted Podcast Series on More Than Just Luck YouTube

Foster care and a juvenile facility are not the same door. One is supposed to be a home. The other is built for kids the court has decided offended. Jozlyn says she was sent through the second door for a family problem she did not commit. The punishment, in her telling, started with the search and continued as a daily assumption that she belonged among offenders.

Greg Wier lets her describe the placement without translating it into a policy briefing. Voices Unmuted is the series, and this episode is one of the cleaner illustrations of how a child-welfare decision becomes an institutional one. A 13-year-old is removed for her parents' addiction. The building she lands in already has a theory of her, and the theory is guilt.

A civil lawsuit filed in Wayne County Circuit Court in April 2026 named six plaintiffs who say they were abused as minors while living at Vista Maria between 2000 and 2025. More than 100 former residents have come forward this year. More Than Just Luck has documented more than 25 stories of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse, unsafe conditions, and negligence at the facility.

Jozlyn's point is not complicated. She was a child. The search was not care. The facility was not a foster home. The system used the only bed it could think of, and then treated her as if she had earned it.

Hosted by Greg Wier, the author of "More Than Just Luck," a no-nonsense, real-life memoir about ambition, betrayal and triumph, this episode is part of "Voices Unmuted." The series keeps each account at full length because a short clip leaves out the part that matters: what the guest says the place was supposed to be, and what she says it was instead. Jozlyn was 13 and searched like an offender is that account, written out so it can be read on its own.

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