What this page is now

The original article alleged that leadership at Scioto County Counseling Center, Inc. — which operates as The Counseling Center, or TCC, in Portsmouth, Ohio — concealed a 2018 incident, failed to make legally required reports, paid roughly $90,000 to prevent disclosure, and falsified accreditation submissions.

On August 13, 2026, Aaron Wagner, TCC’s chief operating officer, sent a detailed correction request identifying three factual errors. Checking those three surfaced others. What follows is the complete result of that review: what checks out, what does not, and what the public record actually establishes.

This is a longer and more specific correction than was asked for. That is deliberate. A correction that addresses only the points someone happens to raise is not a correction.

Corrections

Each item states what the original article said, what verification established, and where it can be checked independently.

1. Ed Hughes is not the founder of The Counseling Center

Original: “Founder Ed Hughes.”

Verified: Not accurate. Reporting in the Portsmouth Daily Times on Hughes’s career identifies the organization’s founder as Rem Glass, states that Hughes came to The Counseling Center in 1989, and describes him as “employee number seven.” He subsequently led the organization and, per the most recent Form 990 available, served as board chair. “Founder” is wrong and has been removed.

2. The Counseling Center is not accredited by The Joint Commission — and is not required to be

Original: “There are also allegations that Joint Commission disclosures were falsified or incomplete. If accurate, this could have allowed the facility to maintain accreditation under false pretenses.”

Verified: Not accurate, on two counts. The Counseling Center does not appear anywhere in The Joint Commission’s directory of accredited organizations; a full enumeration of that database returns 712 accredited organizations in Ohio and three in Portsmouth, none of them TCC. The organization’s accreditor is CARF, which lists it at 411 Court Street as first accredited in 2005 and currently holding a Three-Year Accreditation.

Second, Ohio’s behavioral health regulator recognizes three national accreditors — CARF, COA, and The Joint Commission — and providers select one. Not holding Joint Commission accreditation is not a deficiency; it is one of three permitted options. There were no Joint Commission submissions to falsify. The claim is withdrawn in full.

3. Aaron Wagner is not clinically licensed, and is not the CFO

Original: “CFO/COO Aaron Wagner,” and a characterization of the named individuals as “all licensed professionals themselves at the time.”

Verified: Not accurate. Wagner’s credentials are MS and CIH. CIH is Certified Industrial Hygienist — a workplace hazard and safety credential issued by a national certification board, not a clinical or behavioral health license from any Ohio licensing board. No Ohio clinical license for him appears in public registries. He is chief operating officer, listed as VP of Operations on the organization’s most recent Form 990; the chief financial officer is a different person.

The “all licensed professionals” characterization also did not come from the source document, which states the opposite in its own words: “The exact license of each is not known for the period of the references.”

4. The description of Ohio’s incident reporting requirements was inaccurate

Original: “Under Ohio law, licensed caregivers and their employers are required to report any incidents involving harm, use of force, inappropriate relationships, or actions that result in termination.”

Verified: Not what the rule says. Incident reporting by Ohio-certified community behavioral health providers is governed by Ohio Administrative Code 5122-26-13, which requires reporting only of the categories enumerated in the rule’s Appendix A. Every staff-conduct category in that appendix is defined as conduct directed toward a client. There is no category covering conduct between staff members with no client involved, none for “inappropriate relationships” between employees, and none requiring a provider to report that it disciplined or terminated someone. The single appendix category containing the word “termination” concerns ending a client’s services without proper notice.

The external obligation also runs to the certified provider organization, not to individual “licensed caregivers”; a staff member’s duty under the rule is to report internally to their executive director.

This bears directly on the article’s central accusation. TCC states the 2018 matter did not involve clients or client care. If that is so, the reporting duty the article described would not have been triggered. The passage is withdrawn.

5. Ohio’s whistleblower statute does not work the way the article described

Original: “Complaints can be submitted anonymously and are protected under public whistleblower laws.”

Verified: Not accurate. Ohio Revised Code 4113.52 protects an employee who learns of a violation in the course of their own employment, against retaliation by their own employer, and only where a strict sequence is followed: oral notice to their supervisor, a signed written report to that supervisor, a window for the employer to correct the matter, and only then an external report. The Ohio Supreme Court has held that strict compliance is required. The statute does not extend protection to an anonymous complaint filed with a state agency by a person who does not work there. The sentence is withdrawn.

6. The leaked email was mischaracterized

Original: “a leaked internal memo written by COO Aaron Wagner was obtained and published by Scioto County Daily News. The memo described operational instability, financial shortfalls, and service cuts throughout the organization.”

Verified: Not accurate. The article in question is “Leaked Internal Email from The Counseling Center (TCC) Sparks Uproar,” by Mark Craycraft, Scioto County Daily News, January 26, 2023. The leaked email is a purchasing-control directive instructing a manager to require approval before purchases. It contains nothing about financial shortfalls, program closures, or staff departures. Those descriptions came from a separate anonymous employee complaint the newspaper published alongside it.

That same newspaper article also carried Wagner’s on-the-record response disputing the characterization, including his statement that there were no plans for large-scale layoffs. The original article drew on that reporting without including the response published with it. Both the mischaracterization and the omission are corrected here.

7. “Multiple sources” did not establish a $90,000 settlement

Original: “Multiple sources state that a financial settlement of approximately $90,000 was reached to prevent disclosure of the 2018 incident.”

Verified: Not accurate. There was one document, authored by a person who states within that same document that they are not a witness. That document does not assert a settlement occurred. Its words are that a payment “seems to have been accomplished,” and that it was “possibly as significant as $90,000.” Those qualifiers were present in the source and absent from the article. No evidence of any settlement, amount, payer, or recipient was located in any record. The claim is withdrawn.

8. “The event was never reported” overstated the source

Original: “The event was never reported to OHMHAS or to any certifying body. There is no record of an internal review. No disciplinary report. No explanation.”

Verified: The source document says the terminations “does not appear to have been reported” — a statement about what its author could observe, not a finding about what occurred. The sentences that followed appear in no source document. No records search supporting them was conducted. The passage is withdrawn.

The Counseling Center states that its legal counsel investigated the matter and that an executive manager resigned.

9. Statements about funding and public filings were unsupported

Original: “There is no indication this payout was ever reported in public filings”; “a taxpayer-supported, state-certified institution”; and a question about “whether donor or taxpayer dollars were used.”

Verified: “State-certified” checks out — the organization is certified by Ohio’s behavioral health regulator and displays that agency’s seal. The rest does not. No Form 990, audit, or ledger supported the filings claim. Separately, a confidential settlement with a rank-and-file employee would generally not appear on a Form 990 at all; the form has no general line item for settlements, and the one provision that can capture such a payment reaches only officers, directors, trustees, key employees, and the highest-compensated employees. The funding speculation had no evidentiary basis and is withdrawn.

10. Names, photographs, and a court case reference have been removed

The original article named three individuals as having been terminated. No witness statement, personnel record, testimony, or other primary evidence of those terminations was located in any source. Those are private individuals and their names have been removed from this page.

The article also cited a 2019 Scioto County divorce case number, drawn from the same unverified complaint document. No independent source connects it to anything else in the account, and it is a private family matter. It has been removed.

Photographs of Aaron Wagner, Ed Hughes, and Andrew Albrecht have been removed from this page and deleted from the site’s media library.

What the source document actually was

Because the original article relied on it heavily, an accurate description is warranted.

It comprised two documents, both dated March 23, 2024: a two-page complaint form for Ohio’s Bureau of Licensure and Certification, and a five-page narrative attachment. Neither was written by a witness or an employee. They were prepared by an outside consultant retained to assemble and circulate the submission, a fact the form states in its own text: “Writer herein is not a witness, a scribe asked to make/assist this submission.” The complainant field names no person; it reads “Multiple, utilizing scribe to assemble this Complaint filing.”

The narrative is qualified throughout. An event “appears” to have occurred. A payment “seems to have been accomplished.” An amount was “possibly as significant as $90,000.” The author states outright that the licenses of the named individuals were unknown. At one point the document disconfirms a claim it repeats: “A review of Scioto court records does not confirm any such filing.”

No underlying records accompanied it — no witness statement, incident report, personnel file, settlement agreement, ledger entry, court docket, or correspondence from any regulator.

A related document in the same packet establishes that the submission was part of a paid outreach campaign: the material was mailed to roughly forty local officials, courthouse figures, and media outlets, followed by phone calls. The consultant’s own status update records that no outlet ran a story and recommends no further spending on the effort.

A completed complaint form establishes that an allegation was written down. It does not establish that the allegation is true, that a regulator received it, that anyone investigated, or that anything was substantiated. Ohio’s behavioral health regulator does not publish complaint or investigation outcomes, and the governing statute makes investigation discretionary. The Counseling Center states it has confirmed with the agency that there are no historical or active complaints on this matter.

The Counseling Center’s response, in full

These are the corrections Aaron Wagner requested, in his words, unedited. Points 5, 6, and 7 were independently verified and confirmed correct. Points 1 through 4 are the organization’s account of internal events, published as its statement.

1. The alleged incident did not involve clients or client care.
2. The alleged incident was investigated by TCC’s legal counsel, and in response, the executive manager elected to resign. No employee was terminated as a result of the report or investigation.
3. Because the alleged incident in question did not involve clients, no report to governing bodies was necessary or appropriate.
4. We have confirmed with ODBH (formerly Ohio Mental Health and Addiction Services) that there are no historical or active complaints relative to this concern involving The Scioto County Counseling Center (TCC).
5. Your article falsely reports that I am a licensed professional, I am not clinically licensed.
6. Your article falsely indicates that we failed to report the matter to our credentialing body, the Joint Commission. We are not accredited by the Joint Commission.
7. Your article falsely indicates that Ed Hughes is the founder of TCC, he is not the founder.

Wagner also noted that regional social media accounts had begun using the original article to characterize the organization, and that AI-generated search summaries were repeating its claims. That is precisely why this correction is published at the same address as the original rather than deleted. A removed page leaves the claims circulating with nothing authoritative to correct them; a correction at the original URL is what search engines and AI systems index going forward.

What the public record establishes

Documented, without characterization:

• Scioto County Counseling Center, Inc., doing business as The Counseling Center, is an Ohio nonprofit at 411 Court Street, Portsmouth, recognized as a 501(c)(3) since May 1984.
• Its most recent available Form 990, for the fiscal year ending June 2025, reports total revenue of approximately $56.3 million against expenses of approximately $54.7 million, with roughly 93 percent of revenue from program services.
• Andrew “Andy” Albrecht is chief executive officer and holds Ohio counseling licenses. Aaron Wagner is chief operating officer. Ed Hughes is listed as board chair on that Form 990 and does not appear on the organization’s current leadership or board roster.
• The organization is CARF-accredited, first accredited in 2005, with accreditation current through November 2026, and is certified by Ohio’s behavioral health regulator — renamed from the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services to the Ohio Department of Behavioral Health effective October 1, 2025.
• In January 2023, Scioto County Daily News published a leaked internal purchasing directive alongside an anonymous employee complaint about conditions at the organization, together with the COO’s response disputing the characterization.
• In August 2026, the organization reduced its workforce by 45 positions, attributing the reduction to declining census and insurance-related pressures, and stating it did not attribute the layoffs to federal or state budget cuts.
• An employment discrimination matter brought by a former employee proceeded through the Ohio Civil Rights Commission and, following a right-to-sue notice, was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio in June 2026. It is pending. A pending complaint is an allegation, not a finding.

Claims that did not survive verification

No record located in any source supports the following, and none is asserted on this page:

• That an incident occurred at the organization in 2018.
• That anyone was terminated in connection with one.
• That any report to any regulator was required or omitted.
• That any settlement, payment, or sum of money existed.
• That any accreditation disclosure was falsified.
• That any state agency received, investigated, or substantiated the 2024 complaint.
• That there was a cover-up.

What this review found about AI-assisted drafting

The original article was drafted with an AI assistant working from the source documents. Reconstructing that process line by line against those documents surfaced a failure mode worth publishing, because it is not obvious and it will catch other publishers.

The model did not hallucinate wildly. It did something subtler: it smoothed qualifiers into assertions. “Does not appear to have been reported” became “was never reported.” “Possibly as significant as $90,000” became “approximately $90,000 was reached.” “The exact license of each is not known” became “all licensed professionals.” It supplied plausible connective statements — that there had been no internal review, that programs had quietly closed — that appeared in no source. In intermediate drafts it generated quotations attributed to unnamed sources that did not exist. Asked to assess its own output, it rated the draft legally safe and likely to hold up under scrutiny.

Every one of those transformations improved the prose and degraded the accuracy. A model optimizing for confident, readable copy does this by default, and nothing in the output distinguishes a sentence grounded in a source from one the model supplied. Fluency is not evidence. The only reliable defense is a claim-by-claim reconciliation against primary sources, asking of every factual sentence: which document says this, and in what words.

That reconciliation is now a required step here. Nothing making a factual claim about a named person or organization publishes without a claim-by-claim check against primary sources, and the provenance of source material is recorded before anything is drafted from it.

Corrections and contact

If anything on this page is inaccurate, I want to know and it will be fixed. The Counseling Center’s response is published as requested. Anyone named in the original article who seeks further correction, or who wants a statement published here, can reach me directly and it will run.

Original article “When Rehab Leadership Fails: The Cover-Up at Scioto County Counseling Center” published August 19, 2025. Withdrawn and replaced with this corrected record on August 15, 2026, following independent verification against primary sources.