A disabled woman was rescued from harm. Guardian says Triangle agency failed.
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Orange County DSS received multiple reports about autistic and nonverbal woman’s case.
- Advocates sought information about her safety and cared for her
- Advocates and reporters raised questions about DSS procedures and transparency.
Lexi Abernethy, who is both autistic and nonverbal, couldn’t let anyone know how bad things could get at home with her adoptive mother.
She couldn’t sound the alarm to social services about the nearly ceiling-high mounds of garbage piled up in one Chapel Hill apartment, described in court records reviewed by The News & Observer.
And she couldn’t speak up on her own behalf when administrators at her school asked her adoptive mother for doctor’s notes explaining why she disappeared from school in 2022 — missing so many days that she was removed from the roster, court records show.
Despite people seeking information about her safety and at least two formal reports voicing concerns about her health and well-being to the Orange County Department of Social Services, Lexi remained in a risky situation.
That is until December 2023, when Katherine Abernethy, Lexi’s adoptive mother, agreed to allow her daughter’s former elementary school teacher to care for her temporarily during a crisis.
That allowed Krista Caraway, the former teacher, and others to document Lexi’s physical condition, including low weight, an inflamed eye, bruising on her back and matted hair.
After a Chapel Hill police lieutenant saw that and a police report describing a trash-filled apartment where Lexi and her mother had lived, Abernethy was charged with felony neglect.
Two months ago, Abernethy pleaded guilty to criminal charges and was banned from contacting Lexi, now 21, and Caraway, her new legal guardian.
But for Caraway and others, the push for accountability isn’t over. They are still calling for a full review of Lexi’s case and Orange County’s DSS policies and practices, including those related to home visits, and expanded training for staff. So far, there are no public indications that has happened.
“No family should be left alone to clean up the consequences of the county’s failures,” Caraway told The N&O. “And no system should claim protection as its mission while abandoning the very people it is meant to serve.”
‘Very inquisitive, curious, funny’
Abernethy declined requests from The N&O to be interviewed for this story. Court records — which do not include an interview with Abernethy — reveal little about her life but describe some of her history with Lexi, whose conditions make her highly dependent on caregivers.
Lexi joined the Abernethy family in the summer of 2011, say court records, which note that she is also sometimes called Alexis Beaver. Abernethy reported in Lexi’s medical history, which was reviewed by the court, that she may have been removed from her biological family due to neglect and abuse.
Caraway met Lexi as her special education teacher in the third and fifth grades at Rashkis Elementary School in Chapel Hill.
Lexi was “very inquisitive, curious, funny,” Caraway told The N&O. Over time, Caraway transitioned from being Lexi’s teacher to a respite care provider, someone who relieves primary caregivers for short periods, outside of school.
During outings with Caraway in that period, Lexi rode horses, attended a ballet performance at the Nasher Museum of Art and visited Chapel Hill’s Haunted Hill, according to program notes taken during Lexi’s care from 2019 and 2020 included in court records.
Lexi was thriving and happy. She was enjoying her activities “smiling ear to ear, laughing and spreading her infectious joy,” Caraway later reported to court officials during her petition to become Lexi’s legal guardian.
But things changed.
Lexi’s appearances at activities she used to be eager to attend, like Special Olympics swimming lessons, became sparser and sparser until she wasn’t showing up at all, Caraway told The N&O.
“That was a red flag,” she added.
A mother needing help
Abernethy’s adult daughter told Lexi’s court-appointed guardian ad litem that she was estranged from her mother, whom she described as having “had a pattern of leaving houses in a mess and being evicted for owing back rent and money for damage.” And that friends would try to help.
Court records describe that in November 2021, at least three friends of Abernethy’s visited her Shadowood apartment in Chapel Hill. They had met Abernethy and Lexi through anti-racism protests, but communicated mainly through text messages and online community groups, the court records say.
Heather Redding, one of the people who helped after being contacted by a friend, “felt a state of paralysis because its condition was so overwhelming” when she entered Abernethy’s apartment, she recalled in court records.
The apartment was “stacked from floor to near-ceiling with items” like furniture, boxes, fast food garbage and medication. The smell was “beyond describable” and reeked of cat and human waste, court records detail.
“Lexi’s bedroom was unusable, filled to the brim and filthy,” the court documents say. Professional cleaners who were hired to help “brought two dumpsters and two trailers just to clean the apartment,” court records show.
Abernethy’s friends paid over $17,000 to clean the apartment. They also paid for a U-Haul to move her furniture, a storage unit, car repairs and vaccinations for her cats, court records show. They also paid for an eight-month hotel stay from November 2021 to July 2022 and another room in December 2023.
“Support totaled $51,141.91,” according to court records. Some of that money paid for Katherine Abernethy’s inpatient and outpatient psychiatric care, court records show.
Worries about Lexi swell
In 2022, a social worker, a nurse and a teacher at Lexi’s school were working to figure out why she wasn’t showing up and what was causing her condition when she did make it to class, according to court records.
Brenda McNeeley-Allen, a social worker at East Chapel Hill High School, was concerned about Lexi losing weight, missing classes and a lack of documentation from Abernethy for Lexi’s alleged illnesses. She twice submitted formal reports documenting her concerns about Lexi to Orange County Department of Social Services, the records say.
McNeeley-Allen’s reports were not accepted for “Investigative or Family Assessment” because they did not meet statutory definitions of abuse, neglect or dependency, the records state.
Lindsey Shewmaker, who became Orange County’s DSS director in November 2024, in an email said agency staff couldn’t discuss details about why the reports didn’t prompt an investigation due to state confidentiality laws.
“We cannot confirm or deny involvement in any particular case, nor can we release case-specific information,” the statement said.
Court records also detail school nurse Quinn Campbell’s realization that two pairs of child-sized, rather than adult diapers, were “cutting” into Lexi’s leg and causing bleeding. Despite the nurse telling Abernethy to send Lexi to school with only one pair, she still showed up in two.
After Abernethy said Lexi was too ill to be in school, school administrators asked her for doctor’s notes to verify she was getting treated. But school officials never received a single doctor’s note during 2022 or 2023, according to court records.
Abernethy emailed the school in April 2022, to inform administrators that she would be pulling Lexi from classes and was working with a neurologist to help her become a “homebound student,” court records show.
Campbell, the school nurse, emailed the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools superintendent “reciting in part that McNeeley-Allen filed two DSS reports over growing concerns,” and asked that someone from the district respond to Abernethy’s email.
Records show that Abernethy reached out to school administrators in June 2022 to ask why Lexi hadn’t received extra food benefits given out during the COVID-19 pandemic and that McNeeley-Allen told Abernethy that to be eligible, Lexi needed to be in class, which she hadn’t been despite being enrolled in school.
Moving to help Lexi
In November 2023, Caraway emailed the supervisor of The ARC of the Triangle, which provides respite care and other services for people with disabilities, about her concerns.
“Have you heard from or physically seen Lexi in a while?” Caraway asked in the email, included in court records reviewed by The N&O. Abernethy had canceled plans, like dance and swim classes, at the last minute, she wrote, and Lexi wasn’t attending school or other scheduled programs.
“I’m concerned. Feel free to call,” Caraway said in the email.
On Dec. 4, Caraway received a video taken inside Abernethy and Lexi’s former Chapel Hill apartment on Shepherd Lane — which she was listed as a reference for — and decided it was time to act, she said. She believed Lexi could be in danger.
The video, reviewed by The N&O, shows black plastic trash bags and cardboard boxes occupying most of the living room, while any furniture present was obscured by the trash. “That’s full too, pretty much halfway to the roof,” the person who took the video can be heard saying as they enter the bedroom.
The camera is shaky and points to the ground as the person behind it struggles to enter the kitchen over the mounds of garbage. Once they do, they find a similar sight.
The same day, Caraway and a group of women who had helped Abernethy in 2021, showed up at a different address where she and Lexi had moved to. They went to again help Abernethy get inpatient mental health treatment and provide a safe place for Lexi to stay in the meantime, court records show.
Caraway brought Lexi to her own home near Chapel Hill, while Abernethy sought mental health care, Caraway told the guardian ad litem.
Caraway and two of the women trying to help Abernethy took Lexi to UNC Urgent Care on Dec. 22. They told a nurse that they did so, even though Abernethy would not give her consent, court records say.
Nurse Stacy Scott, who attended to Lexi, told Lexi’s guardian ad litem that the young woman appeared to be malnourished and her blood pressure was low, “as was her BMI, which was 17%,” according to court documents. She took photographs, the documents say, of “bruising in the lower part of Lexi’s back.” The nurse referred the women to a hospital social worker, according to her interview with the guardian ad litem.
One of the group who took Lexi to the urgent care facility reported that she heard the nurse “say that she was reporting ‘the abuse’ to APS,” a reference to county adult protective services, court records say.
When interviewed by the guardian ad litem, the nurse later said that no one from Orange County DSS spoke to her about her findings or diagnosis.
Lexi remained with Caraway until Abernethy changed her mind about the arrangement at the end of December, according to Caraway.
She threatened to press kidnapping charges, according to Caraway, if she didn’t return Lexi to her care, which Elizabeth Waugh-Stewart, another member of what Caraway calls Lexi’s “rescue team,” corroborated.
“I called her bluff and said, ‘OK, we’ll meet at the police department,’” Caraway said.
Police, DSS get involved
Chapel Hill Police Department Lt. Gregory Taylor was the watch commander on Dec. 23, when a call came in for a request to observe Caraway returning Lexi to Abernethy, court records say.
“His information was that DSS’s Adult Protection Services (’APS’) needed Lexi to return to an unsafe environment or condition so that they could then investigate the unsafe condition,” according to court records.
Taylor read a police report from Dec. 4 that described a video taken inside Abernethy and Lexi’s former Shepherd Lane apartment, after the landlord filed a damage report. It described a bathroom filled with human waste, expired food and maggots.
Taylor called Orange County DSS Supervisor Kim Lassiter-Fisher to see if anyone had checked in on Abernethy and Lexi at their current apartment. Lassiter-Fisher told him that she’d gone out but “didn’t go in,” court records say.
She said she would send someone and eventually reported back that the then-current residence was “relatively clean,” Taylor reported in court documents.
Caraway had packed eye medication for Lexi, her Christmas stocking and presents before she headed to the Chapel Hill Police Department to meet Abernethy and hand Lexi back into her care.
Caraway gave Abernethy a list of Lexi’s care-taking needs, which Abernethy “threw on the ground,” Taylor told the guardian ad litem. That disturbed Waugh-Stewart, who was present, as was the police lieutenant.
“I got increasingly concerned about Lexi’s safety based on Katherine’s behavior at that handoff,” Waugh-Stewart told The N&O. “She basically just kind of jerked Lexi into the car and before doing that, she forced Lexi to take off a warm coat that Krista had gotten for her.”
Waugh-Stewart, a social worker helping those facing eviction, said she was so concerned that she filed a report to adult protective services that day.
When Caraway texted the next day to ask how Lexi was, Abernethy responded: “Wonderful. So so happy.” She said in a text a few days later that she and Lexi were working with multiple agencies, including DSS and UNC Family Medicine, to get help and resources.
Four days after the handoff, Chapel Hill police served Abernethy with a warrant for her arrest. She “willfully, and feloniously did wantonly, with gross carelessness” fail to provide Lexi with medical and hygienic care, Rex Frederick, a District Court magistrate, wrote in Abernethy’s arrest warrant.
“As result of the defendant’s failure to act,” the warrant read, ”the adult suffered physical injury.”
After pleading guilty to assault on an individual with a disability and false imprisonment on Oct. 15 this year, Abernethy was placed on 36 months of supervised probation.
She agreed to receive mental health treatment and not contact Lexi or Caraway. And she was barred from paid or volunteer work with minors or disabled adults and from receiving any money or benefits related to her relationship with Lexi.
‘As a social worker, I was appalled’
Much has changed for Lexi since being removed from Abernethy’s home.
Lexi has lived with Caraway, her husband and their three sons since early 2023. Caraway became Lexi’s legal guardian in April 2024.
Their home is tucked away on a quiet cul-de-sac near Chapel Hill. The warm living room hosts an elevated swinging chair — Lexi’s favorite — and the view of a sprawling wooded backyard streams in through the large windows just behind it.
Lexi’s hair became so matted prior to coming to live with the family that a hairdresser “couldn’t put a comb through it,” and it eventually had to be shaved off, Caraway said. But now it’s shoulder-length.
And Lexi’s appetite is back, visible by the three or four pieces of candy Caraway’s husband, David, retrieved from the kitchen pantry for her on one day a reporter visited.
“She rides her bus to school,” Caraway said about Lexi, who is still in school under a program that guarantees public education for people with severe disabilities until the age of 22. “We go out to the movies, or the park.”
At home, Caraway’s three sons have become like brothers. Luke, the oldest, wakes Lexi up every morning.
These are the kinds of experiences Caraway and others say Lexi should have always had. Waugh-Stewart told The N&O she wanted to make it clear that she too believes DSS failed to act on behalf of Lexi.
“As a social worker, I was appalled that other social workers were not intervening,” Waugh-Stewart said. “I think the fact that she was non-speaking and could not say what was happening to her, that there needed to be an intervention because of that.”
For Caraway, it’s vital that someone is looking into what went wrong. A review of how the Orange County DSS responded to reports detailing concerns about Lexi is needed, she said. So is a wider review of how agency staff decide when to act is needed, she said.
“This case needs to be seen, heard in your considerations and changes need to be made so that this never happens again,” Caraway wrote in a 2024 email to members of the Orange County DSS Board of Directors.
Caraway hasn’t stopped talking about what she views as the county’s shortcomings related to Lexi’s case. Publishing regularly on Substack, her frustration with the system is on full display.
“Some stories don’t begin with violence, they begin with silence,” Caraway wrote in a late-November post. “Long before any safety intervention, long before courts or paperwork or consequences, the people around me had already chosen their side.”
It wasn’t Lexi’s, Caraway wrote.
Shewmaker, the Orange County DSS director, told The N&O through a spokesperson there is an internal review process “if a constituent concern is brought to our attention.”
“Because confidentiality laws prohibit DSS from sharing information, responding directly to inquiries, or even clarifying misunderstandings, that experience can feel disappointing,” the statement said.
When asked if Orange County DSS is conducting any review of its procedures related to intervening in a potential case of abuse for children and children with disabilities, Orange County Community Relations Director Wil Glenn didn’t respond.
EDITOR’S NOTE: If you believe a child, elderly adult or a disabled person is being abused or neglected, you can report concerns to your county’s Department of Social Services. Phone numbers for departments across North Carolina can be found here.
This story was originally published December 11, 2025 at 5:30 AM.
