The Parham Papers, is the work of private investigator-turned-journalist Christa Motley. Since 2022, she’s been documenting how the Virginia Association of Recovery Residences (VARR), the state’s accrediting body for sober living programs, operated in the shadows, controlling huge sums of taxpayer money with little oversight and plenty of conflicts of interest.
Full timeline at the end.
A Web of Influence and Self-Dealing
Motley says her reporting “really started with the money flow.” She began by pulling FOIA records from the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services, expecting to see public grants from the Virginia Association of Recovery Residences (VARR) going to a broad range of accredited providers.
Instead, she found that much of the money was quietly steered toward a small group of operators, many of them in VARR leadership, and their affiliated businesses. “Other accredited operators told me they had no idea there was money for program funding, or what they called capacity expansion funding,” she says. “It was for starting new recovery houses, but they never got the chance to apply. It was really kept secret in the beginning, and a lot of the money was just quietly dished out to board members’ organizations.”
Her FOIA requests revealed that some of these “exclusive” funding pools weren’t announced publicly at all, meaning competing providers never even had the opportunity to submit proposals.
Perhaps most troubling, she uncovered emails showing public funds meant to help indigent residents pay rent being redirected for other purposes. “There was one email that showed an organization using that money to just kind of pay themselves back, to recoup a loss, instead of actually using it to help a participant stay in the home,” Motley says.
That pattern, insider control of funding, secret grant processes, and loose oversight, became the foundation of her multi-year investigation. And, as she would later discover, it led straight to some of the most politically connected names in Virginia’s recovery housing network.
The Bagby Connection
Motley says the turning point came “as soon as VARR got their big $10 million allotment through the General Assembly… basically for funding over three years.” According to her reporting, then–Delegate Lamont Bagby played a central role in helping secure that funding. While some of the emails she reviewed referenced earlier appropriations, they nonetheless showed Bagby’s close involvement. In one December 2020 exchange, VARR’s then–executive director wrote that Bagby had “pushed this budget amendment through the General Assembly for us” and was pressing for the funds to be released more quickly. In another, VARR’s vice president noted Bagby was “working very hard to remedy” delays in getting money into their hands.
That public and behind-the-scenes support was followed by a more tangible alignment of interests. Almost immediately, key VARR leaders, including Bagby, joined together with lobbyist David Hallock Jr. and other board members to purchase a building in Richmond. The property became both VARR headquarters and office space for recovery organizations run by the same circle of insiders.
Bagby’s family also benefitted directly. Motley says VARR “gave a big chunk of that money to his brother, Isaiah Bagby, who started his own recovery house… and they just kept giving him money year after year.” The records she reviewed show that in Lotus Recovery’s first year, VARR covered roughly $90,288 in rent and staff salary, plus $64,822 in additional funding. Over the next two years, Lotus received another $195,202 in awards, along with VARR covering two to three part-time staff positions.
Despite that public funding, Isaiah still charged residents bed and administrative fees while living on-site “basically making a living off people’s bed fees,” Motley says. Former residents have alleged that Isaiah entered into a relationship with a court-ordered female resident, and that anyone who spoke about it “was just thrown out.”
Since then, VARR decertified Lotus Recovery. The organization did not say whether the decision was connected to Motley’s reporting or the allegations, but Lotus continued to receive money for years before its removal from the roster.
When asked about the matter during his run for party chair, Bagby told the Virginia Mercury he had only “given money to the recovery community” and declined further comment.
Inside Starfish Recovery & Wellness
If the Bagby case illustrated political influence, Starfish Recovery & Wellness shows what can happen inside the houses themselves when oversight is weak.
Owned by Frank and Stephanie Bellanger, with Stephanie later serving on VARR’s board, Starfish is the organization Motley says she’s heard the most about. “It is the one that I talk to people about the most. I’ve written four different stories on them, which I haven’t done with any other organization. That tells you how significant they are.”
What she’s heard from residents paints a troubling picture. “Frank has been accused by multiple women of sleeping with a female resident who was court ordered there,” she says. “He’s also been accused of sexual harassment in one case where he smacked a female resident at CrossFit, and others where he called people sluts and whores.”
Beyond the sexual misconduct allegations, residents have described volatile verbal abuse. “So many residents told me about him completely lashing out at them,” Motley recalls. “This wasn’t just in private, sometimes it was at all-house meetings, with everyone there. And these are people who might be a week sober, just out of jail, barely holding it together. They describe him as just coming along and unleashing his rage on them.”
The accounts also describe a psychological cycle. “They’d go back and forth between him screaming at them and then trying to pump people up with recovery hype,” she says. “It was a vicious cycle that went on and on.”
One former resident recorded one of these tirades; Motley published it in her second Starfish article. Ten days after being kicked out, that resident overdosed and died. “She had voiced her frustration with the way Frank treated residents,” Motley says. “It’s not totally clear why she got kicked out, but it was after that.”
Starfish also stands out for a different reason: the use of restrictive non-disclosure agreements. “They are the only organization I know of that has had employees and house leaders sign NDAs that preemptively silence them and threaten them if they speak about anything that goes on there,” she says. “The agreement was so restrictive that they couldn’t even tell anyone about the NDA itself.”
Despite these allegations, Frank and Stephanie Bellanger received both general VARR funding and access to “exclusive” pots of money that other operators said they never knew existed. “From what residents tell me, there’s an element of control there that’s just unlike at any other organization,” Motley says.
Medicaid and the Treatment Funnel
Motley says Medicaid expansion changed the recovery housing landscape in a major way. “Medicaid money is a huge part of this now,” she explains. “With Medicaid expansion, all these recovery house operators are opening up outpatient treatment centers and funneling their residents there.”
These programs, usually offering Intensive Outpatient (IOP) or Partial Hospitalization Program (PHP) services, are legally separate entities because recovery houses aren’t licensed to provide clinical care. But in practice, Motley says, the separation often exists on paper only. “A lot of them partnered with the former VARR vice chairman, Jimmy Christmas, who owns River City Comprehensive Counseling Services,” she says. “Initially, operators were sending all their residents to his program, and it’s been very strongly alleged there were kickbacks involved with that.”
Over time, she says, operators stopped simply referring residents to Christmas’s clinic and began creating deeper business ties. “Starting around 2023, they began opening new centers for IOP and PHP that they jointly owned with Jimmy Christmas or his wife, or that his organization had a stake in,” Motley explains. “So instead of sending them to his separate program and allegedly getting a kickback, now they just send them to the programs they have ownership in.”
The effect, according to Motley, is a closed loop where residents often lose their ability to choose their own providers. “There’s been a lot of concern about taking away residents’ ability to decide where they get care,” she says. “They’re directed to the place where the operators are going to make the most money.”
From Courts and Jails to Recovery Houses
Motley says court and jail referrals have always been a major pipeline into recovery housing. “They do get a lot of referrals through courts,” she explains. “Henrico used to have a program where it was a very formal process like if somebody was requesting bond, a judge could allow them to go to a recovery house while on bond, and both the recovery house and the resident had to sign an agreement.”
That agreement spelled out requirements: failed drug screens had to be reported, bed-to-bed transfers were to be facilitated, and the court expected detailed updates on a resident’s progress. But over time, Henrico officials began losing faith in the accuracy of what they were hearing back from operators.
“They told me they’ve stopped relying on recovery houses as much, or at least they’re not trusting them the same way they used to,” Motley says. “They were heavily relying on recovery house operators to give accurate reports about how a resident was doing, not just with drug screens, but their attitude, their effort, and that wasn’t always what was happening.”
While she hasn’t documented concrete wrongdoing in every jurisdiction, Motley points out that the relationships can raise eyebrows. “Former VARR leaders, at the very least, have a close relationship with Shannon Taylor, the Henrico Commonwealth’s Attorney,” she notes. “They’ve donated to her campaign and things like that. There are definitely suspicions of possibly improper relationships there, but nothing concrete I can say.”
Fallout and Reform
Motley says one of the most encouraging developments has been seeing her work contribute, at least in part, to real conversations about oversight. “It’s actually really encouraging,” she says. “It has at least contributed to some efforts by Henrico County, which led to the creation of a General Assembly mandated work group.”
That work group, created under Senate Bill 838, is tasked with delivering recommendations by November 1, 2025 on how to improve oversight, increase transparency, and strengthen residents’ rights in Virginia’s recovery homes. “They have a whole list of objectives they’re working through right now,” Motley notes. “If they follow through, it could make a big difference.”
Henrico County played a direct role in getting it on lawmakers’ radar. “Last September, Mike Feinmel, the deputy county manager for public safety, did a presentation to the Board of Supervisors on the issues with recovery housing,” she explains. “It highlighted a lot of the same stuff I’d been reporting, along with neighborhood concerns they’d gotten. They ended up taking that presentation to legislators, and Senator [Schuyler] VanValkenburg sponsored the bill, with others co-sponsoring.”
VARR itself has also undergone a shakeup. “Their leadership has changed dramatically in the last several months,” Motley says. “Three or four of the major people I’ve reported on David Rook, Anthony Grimes, Stephanie Bellanger, and Jimmy Christmas are no longer in leadership.”
She sees signs of a cultural shift, too. “Since the people I’ve covered have been stepping down from VARR leadership roles, I’m seeing a difference in VARR’s willingness to communicate and answer questions, especially since the new interim executive director came in on July 1,” she says. “For the first couple of years, it was mostly silence, almost no engagement or willingness to answer for anything at all. That’s changing, and that’s good.”
While there are no guarantees of criminal charges or formal penalties for past conduct, Motley sees progress in the small steps. “At least there are changes being made in increments, in ways that will hopefully help protect residents,” she says.
Why It Matters
Recovery housing is meant to be a lifeline, a place where Virginians at their most vulnerable can stabilize, rebuild, and get the support they need. “We’re talking about people who might be just out of jail, a week sober, detoxing, or court-ordered into treatment,” Motley says. “They’re in a position where they can barely form a coherent thought some days, just trying to survive.”
Her reporting shows how quickly that mission can be undermined when power is concentrated in the hands of a small group. “When the same insiders control the money, the rules, and the oversight, you’ve basically set it up for exploitation – financial and personal,” she says.
The consequences aren’t abstract. Motley has documented residents who were verbally abused, pressured into relationships with people in authority, funneled into treatment programs for the operator’s financial gain, and even kicked out with little warning sometimes with tragic outcomes.
“You have an industry that’s largely left to self-regulate,” she says. “And when that happens, you’re going to see exploitation. The people in these houses are some of the most vulnerable in our community, and they deserve better than to be treated like revenue streams.”
An Ongoing Story
“There’s no end in sight,” Motley says. “I don’t know when it’s going to end. I have no idea. There’s so much, there should be ten people working on this project, because there’s so much and I can’t keep up.”
She explains that when she began looking into recovery housing back in early 2022, she never expected it to turn into a multi-year investigation. “When I first started kind of looking into this stuff, I had no idea it was going to turn into this big, multi-year project,” she says. “I was just trying to satisfy my own curiosity and see what was happening with that money.”
But each lead seemed to open two more. “I ended up getting connected to one person who had gone through a local recovery housing program… she referred me to somebody else, and that person referred me to two more people, and it just snowballed from there,” she recalls.
Now, three years in, the work hasn’t slowed. “Every time I think maybe it’s winding down, something else comes up,” she says. “It’s a lot for one person, but these are important stories. They need to be told.”
You can read The Parham Papers in full at investigate-rva.com.
photo by Evgeniy Smersh
Timeline of VARR, Recovery Housing Funding, and Political Ties
November 2020 – January 2021
- DBHDS begins processing VARR’s first legislatively directed funding: $500,000 over two years.
- Emails show VARR leadership citing Delegate Lamont Bagby’s role in pushing the budget amendment.
- On multiple occasions, VARR’s Anthony Grimes and Sarah Scarbrough referenced Bagby’s support while pressing officials for early access to funds. Bagby later said it wasn’t his amendment, though he supported the funding.
August 2021 – Special Session II
- The Virginia General Assembly approves a $10 million line item for VARR over three years.
- Then-Delegate Bagby admits to supporting VARR’s efforts, after meeting with VARR advocates Michael McDermott and John Shinholser. He described his involvement as limited, though he acknowledged helping ensure VARR got “their fair share.”
- Soon after, VARR awards $350,312 from the $10M to Lotus Recovery RVA, a newly formed for-profit company run by Bagby’s brother Isiah. The business was registered at a Henrico property owned by Bagby. Funding was distributed between late 2021 and mid-2024.
- October 2021: Bagby and then–VARR president David Rook present together at the National Alliance for Recovery Residences (NARR) summit in a session on “Building Relationships between Recovery Home Operators & Legislators.”
2022
- Early 2022: Journalist Christa Motley begins investigating recovery housing after hearing community concerns.
- FOIA requests to DBHDS reveal that significant public funds were directed to a small group of operators, including those connected to VARR leadership and affiliates.
- Mid–Late 2022: Motley finds that “capacity expansion” and other grants were not publicly announced, allowing some operators, not all board members, to benefit disproportionately.
- She also documents VARR leaders and affiliates co-purchasing a Henrico property. that became VARR headquarters and home to related businesses, with federal dollars covering rent and improvements.
- Bagby is slated to speak at the 2022 NARR summit in a panel titled “VARR: How We Did It (Part 2),” highlighting VARR’s rise from “very little state support” in 2019 to more than $14.15 million by 2022. He does not appear.
2023
- Motley publishes multiple exposés on Starfish Recovery & Wellness, uncovering allegations of sexual misconduct, verbal abuse, restrictive NDAs, and residents being funneled into online outpatient programs run by River City, owned by VARR vice chair Jimmy Christmas. Similar practices were tied to other operators with VARR connections, including True Recovery (then owned by Rook), WAR Foundation (run by Grimes’ wife), and Journey House.
- Henrico County officials reduce court and jail referrals to recovery houses, citing unreliable operator reporting.
2024
- August 2024: Motley reports on Lotus Recovery and misconduct allegations involving Isiah Bagby. VARR later decertifies Lotus, likely late 2024 or early 2025. The reason was not made public.
- September 2024: Henrico Deputy County Manager for Public Safety Mike Feinmel briefs the Board of Supervisors, echoing Motley’s findings.
- Late 2024: Henrico shares Feinmel’s presentation with state legislators.
2025
- Early 2025: Senator Schuyler VanValkenburg introduces SB 838, creating a state work group on recovery housing oversight.
- Governor’s proposed budget strips VARR of grantmaking authority, placing it under DBHDS effective July 1, 2025.
- March 2025: Lamont Bagby becomes Chair of the Democratic Party of Virginia.
- April–June 2025: Longtime VARR leaders exit — David Rook (Jan 2023), Stephanie Bellanger (2024), Jimmy Christmas (April 2025), and Anthony Grimes (June 30, 2025).
- July 2025: VARR appoints a new interim executive director. Motley notes greater willingness from the organization to answer questions and engage.
November 1, 2025 (upcoming)
- SB 838 work group deadline to present recommendations on recovery housing oversight, transparency, and resident rights to the General Assembly.
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