Medicaid-funded caregivers in North Carolina must receive 80 hours of training and can’t have criminal convictions for drug trafficking.
Shoshana Walter
Reporter
Shoshana Walter is a reporter for Reveal, covering criminal justice. She and reporter Amy Julia Harris exposed how courts across the country are sending defendants to rehabs that are little more than lucrative work camps for private industry. Their work was a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in national reporting. It also won the Knight Award for Public Service, a Sigma Delta Chi Award for investigative reporting, and an Edward R. Murrow Award, and was a finalist for the Selden Ring, IRE and Livingston Awards. It led to numerous government investigations, two criminal probes and five federal class-action lawsuits alleging slavery, labor violations and fraud.
Walter's investigation on America's armed security guard industry revealed how armed guard licenses have been handed out to people with histories of violence, even people barred by courts from owning guns. Walter and reporter Ryan Gabrielson won the 2015 Livingston Award for Young Journalists for national reporting based on the series, which prompted new laws and an overhaul of California’s regulatory system. For her 2016 investigation about the plight of "trimmigrants," marijuana workers in California's Emerald Triangle, Walter embedded herself in illegal mountain grows and farms. There, she encountered an epidemic of sex abuse and human trafficking in the industry – and a criminal justice system focused more on the illegal drugs. The story prompted legislation, a criminal investigation and grass-roots efforts by the community, including the founding of a worker hotline and safe house.
Walter began her career as a police reporter for The Ledger in Lakeland, Florida, and previously covered violent crime and the politics of policing in Oakland, California, for The Bay Citizen. Her narrative nonfiction as a local reporter garnered a national Sigma Delta Chi Award and a Gold Medal for Public Service from the Florida Society of News Editors. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College, she has been a Dart Center Ochberg fellow for journalism and trauma at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and a John Jay/Harry Frank Guggenheim fellow in criminal justice journalism. She is based in Reveal's Emeryville, California, office.
North Carolina rehab under investigation for food stamp fraud
A rogue drug rehab program in North Carolina is being investigated for food stamp fraud, the latest fallout in an ongoing Reveal investigation.
This cafe serves food bought with rehab participants’ food stamps
There’s a reason Community Cafe’s prices are so low.
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Administrator at rogue NC rehab accused of sexually harassing clients
The sexual harassment allegations are the latest disclosure in an ongoing Reveal investigation into exploitative rehab programs across the country.
Inside a rehab empire
Reveal reporters Amy Julia Harris and Shoshana Walter have been uncovering the ways that some drug rehabs exploit their desperate clients.
Response to NC rehab investigation: ‘This is a horrific scheme that preys on people at their lowest’
North Carolina officials looked the other way for years until reporters began asking questions.
She said she’d free them from addiction. She turned them into her personal servants
“It’s like slavery,” said one rehab participant, “like we were on the plantation.”
Rehab featured in Reveal story being investigated for food stamp fraud
We found that the program required defendants to sign up for food stamps and then confiscated the cards.
Inside a judge’s rehab: Unpaid work at a local Coca-Cola plant
A judge started his own rehab where defendants must work at a bottling plant and other companies, under threat of prison if they don’t comply.
Accused of slavery, Arkansas politician’s company files defamation suit
The state’s Senate majority leader is accused of participating in “a pervasive scheme of slavery.”