ATHENS, Ohio — Jen Seifert, the former director of the Survivor Advocacy Outreach Program, is now involved in another lawsuit related to her latest venture. On Tuesday, Mosha Trout filed suit against Seifert in the Athens County Court of Common Pleas.
Trout is Seifert’s former partner at Rocksprings Wellness, a now-defunct mental healthcare campus near Pomeroy. She previously worked with Seifert as a board member and clinical director at SAOP.
Trout is a licensed counselor who oversaw clinical programs as the chief executive officer at Rocksprings Wellness. In the lawsuit, filed Sept. 8, Trout alleges that the business failed in part because Seifert made clients feel unsafe, including by threatening them, calling the police, and locking clients in the facility.
Trout paused all programs and suspended clinical services at Rocksprings Wellness after August incidents between Seifert and clients left residents wanting to leave the campus. On Aug. 12, Trout gave residents 60 days to vacate the premises, according to emails included as exhibits in the lawsuit.
The suit also alleges that while Trout was on temporary leave, Seifert attempted to transfer Rocksprings Wellness’ clients and operations to a legal entity under her sole control, part of her plan to take over the business and steal its proceeds.
The suit lays eight claims against Seifert, including breach of fiduciary duties and interfering with business.
Trout and Seifert opened Rocksprings Wellness in August 2025 at the former site of Fur Peace Ranch in Meigs County.
According to its website, Rocksprings Wellness was intended to be a welcoming retreat and care center for vulnerable people navigating histories of trauma, substance abuse challenges, and homelessness. It had a particular focus on serving LGBTQ+ clients, and offered housing, behavioral health programs and employment opportunities.
Legally, the entity that operated Rocksprings Wellness was Behavioral Impact Partners, according to the lawsuit. Ohio Secretary of State records show that Behavioral Impact Partners was established in April 2025 as a limited liability company with Trout as the statutory agent.
Rocksprings Wellness grew quickly. Between its founding in August 2025 and this July, its client list expanded from eight people to 23, according to the lawsuit.
Seifert was minority partner and chief operating officer at Rocksprings Wellness, managing non-clinical administrative tasks. Seifert and Trout began exploring the idea for Rocksprings Wellness shortly after Seifert was fired as director of the survivor advocacy group in July 2024.
Trout seeks more than $25,000 in damages, a temporary restraining order against Seifert, and a “court-ordered dissolution” of their business partnership and the property group that owns the 42-acre site south of Athens.
Seifert and Trout are each 10% owners of the real estate as part of Meigs Property Group. The rest is owned by Legacy Property Holdings, via investor Steven L. Dempsey, according to records included in the lawsuit.
Trout also claims in the lawsuit that she was unaware that a previous property transfer at the Rocksprings Wellness site was connected to Seifert’s alleged misappropriations of funds at SAOP.
The survivor advocacy organization, which sued Seifert the same month Rocksprings Wellness opened last year, alleges that she misspent nearly $1 million while director of SAOP. The group brought its claims against Seifert as a countersuit, after she sued the group for defamation about a year following her firing.
Trout and Seifert did not respond to requests for comment via phone calls on Sept. 9.
Problems from the start
The lawsuit depicts Rocksprings Wellness as beset by financial problems from its inception.
After Trout and Seifert each contributed $200,000 to the property group and secured a $1.6 million investment from Dempsey’s Legacy Property Holdings, they sought $500,000 in financing through Invest Appalachia. But Rocksprings Wellness never received the money after the investor declined support, allegedly due to Seifert’s ongoing legal issues, per the lawsuit.
While the lawsuit refers to a $500,000 “grant” and “grant funding,” Invest Appalachia told the Independent that they are not a grantmaker. “We primarily provide repayable financing and blended investment for local businesses and community development projects, not traditional grant funding,” reads a statement. The organization did not confirm whether Trout had sought $500,000 for Rocksprings as Invest Appalachia does not share applicant information.
A billing partner, who could charge Medicaid for services, also reportedly backed out. The lawsuit claims that “few organizations wanted to associate with…Seifert because of her alleged misappropriations.”
In her lawsuit against Seifert, Trout said she “was forced to obtain a line of credit on her personally owned real estate” to provide $75,000 in operating capital for Rocksprings Wellness around September 2025. Trout says she “continued to contribute cash” to the operation throughout the remainder of 2025.
Amid financial peril, Rocksprings Wellness shuttered for several weeks in November 2025 and furloughed employees. Those workers were brought back shortly afterward, per the suit. But two former employees, who were granted anonymity due to fears of retaliation, told the Independent their hourly rate was significantly reduced while they incurred greater responsibility.
At the same time, Seifert grew distant from the business and performed “very little work” throughout the year, Trout claims.
Despite problems, Rocksprings Wellness recovered, Trout claims.
Additionally, Trout claims the operation at that time was averaging more than $60,000 a month. All in all, the business was “thriving,” her lawsuit says.
In conversations with the Independent, however, former Rocksprings Wellness clients painted a less than rosy picture of the organization’s efficacy.
Two former clients of Rocksprings Wellness said in interviews they never received the care they were promised.
Seifert tried to steal the business, threatened clients, lawsuit says
In July, Trout took a leave of absence from Rocksprings Wellness due to a family emergency, her lawsuit says.
The suit alleges that while Trout was on temporary leave, Seifert moved to transfer Rocksprings Wellness business, clients, and funding to Nexus Network, a limited liability company wholly owned by Seifert. According to the legal filing, she allegedly terminated Trout’s access to company software and “made several mysterious transactions” from company accounts, totalling $30,000.
Trout claims that when she returned to the property on Aug. 5 to lengthen her leave of absence, she discovered Seifert “was attempting to remove program clients that were loyal to [Trout],” had told program clients not to contact Trout, and “offered to give program clients an equity stake in Nexus Network” if they assisted her in ousting Trout.
According to the lawsuit, Seifert tried to force client cooperation through threats. The suit notes that Rocksprings Wellness provided clients housing, employment and mental healthcare “when these clients had nowhere else to turn,” leaving the clients particularly vulnerable.
Seifert allegedly took numerous actions targeting at least eight clients during Trout’s leave of absence, which Trout said contributed to clients feeling unsafe at Rocksprings Wellness.
The lawsuit alleges that Seifert:
- Threatened to “call the cops” on a client to have that client “institutionalized.”
- Demanded that two clients “break into” the home of two other clients in order to recover a company laptop that contained “protected health information” and that Seifert believed had been stolen. (The laptop was mistakenly left in an art studio, the lawsuit claims.)
- Demanded that multiple clients make false police reports against other clients over the allegedly stolen laptop.
- Threatened retaliation against clients who did not comply with Seifert’s demands to file false police reports. The suit alleges that Seifert threatened to make a false report to child protective services against one client and to remove another from the property.
- “Trapped” multiple clients in Seifert’s office and refused to allow them to leave. The suit says that Seifert would only allow one client to leave if they complied with filing a false police report, and says the other client she allegedly trapped had “a panic attack” as a result.
After the incidents above, Seifert called the Meigs County Sheriff’s Office against the clients she falsely believed had stolen the laptop, the lawsuit says. A log from the Meigs County Sheriff’s Office, obtained by the Independent through a records request, shows Seifert reported two clients for alleged theft Aug. 5.
The log says the clients “have been removed from [the] treatment facility and will not leave.” An MCSO deputy supervised the clients packing and ultimately leaving the property, per the report.
Neither client faced charges in either the Meigs County Court of Common Pleas or the Meigs County Municipal Court, according to a search of the court dockets.
On Aug. 6, while conducting her own “internal investigation” into what had happened, Seifert reportedly locked all clients inside the property, according to the lawsuit. Clients seeking care at the site then became “afraid of continuing to reside at the property,” the lawsuit reads.
About a week after these events, on Aug. 12, Trout announced the closure of Rocksprings Wellness, per emails filed as part of the suit. She gave residents 60 days to vacate the property. With the closure of the program, clients will lose housing, employment and mental health services.
The lawsuit’s allegations about Seifert’s mistreatment of Rocksprings Wellness clients echo claims of a toxic workplace culture at SAOP under her leadership. Employees described a culture of overt retaliation for perceived noncompliance with Seifert. Workplace culture concerns contributed to her eventual termination from SAOP.
Trout worked with Seifert at SAOP when the latter was fired. Four months later, in November 2024, the Independent published an investigation about the workplace culture fostered under Seifert’s leadership at SAOP. Seifert and Trout met the next month with Ginger Gagne, the former owner of Lavender Ranch, about purchasing the same plot of land to start Rocksprings Wellness.
Connection to SAOP litigation
Before Seifert and Trout purchased the property, Lavender Ranch operated at what became the Rocksprings Wellness location under the direction of Ginger Gagne.
According to SAOP’s lawsuit against Seifert, Gagne purchased the property in 2024 with a $250,000 grant from SAOP, which Seifert allegedly directed to Lavender Ranch without proper authorization from the SAOP board. Gagne did not respond to a Sept. 9 email request for comment by press time.
SAOP’s lawsuit claims Seifert is connected to Meigs Property Group, but does not demonstrate Seifert’s ownership stake in Rocksprings Wellness. Gagne told SAOP she could not reveal the identities of those who’d bought the property from her (Seifert and Trout) due to a nondisclosure agreement.
SAOP’s counsel David Mott declined to comment in depth for this story, but told the Independent that SAOP’s filings in that case “lay out pretty much what SAOP knows.”
“It’s too early to tell what, if any, interaction there is going to be between the two cases,” he said.
Trout, who worked at SAOP when Seifert allegedly made the grant to Lavender Ranch, claims she learned about the arrangement only after SAOP sued Seifert.
On Sept. 9, the Independent called a Cleveland-based attorney representing SAOP in the nonprofit’s legal battle with Seifert. The Independent did not hear back by press time.
In June, SAOP amended its counterclaim with permission from the court to add defendants, including Gagne.
Seifert recently lost a motion asking the court overseeing her legal battle with SAOP to order the advocacy group to advance her defense costs.
Disclosure: Jen Seifert served on the board of Southeast Ohio Independent News, which publishes the Athens County Independent, from its inception in August 2022 through January 2023. An author of this story, Dani Kington, and the Independent’s editor, Corinne Colbert, worked with her directly.
Correction: This article was updated at 3:30 p.m. on Sept. 10 to clarify the nature of the financial support Trout allegedly sought from Invest Appalachia. The organization provides financing, but does not issue grants.
This article was updated at 3:30 p.m. on Sept. 10 to include a statement from Invest Appalachia.
