Published: September 23, 2026
MONROVIA – More Than Me Academy survived a rape scandal and the collapse of the charity that built it. On Tuesday, a court order sent its students, all girls, out into the rain.
Civil Law Court sheriffs evicted the West Point girls’ school from its Ashmun Street campus to enforce a judgment awarding the building to the Montgomery family, closing a property fight that the family says has run 15 years.
By Blamo N. Toe
“We want the government to do something urgent about this situation because this should have nothing to do with us,” a 12th-grade student told The Liberian Investigator.
The academy is unusual in Monrovia. Its operator, the Liberian nongovernmental organization Hilltop Schools, describes it as an all-girls, tuition-free school established to serve girls from West Point and surrounding communities, and says it enrolls more than 400 girls from kindergarten through 12th grade. Hilltop says it also provides two meals a day, medical care and psychosocial support. For many families in West Point, one of the capital’s poorest and most crowded communities, that is not a school so much as a lifeline.
Its location was part of the design. Sylvestine P. Gbessagee, Hilltop’s executive director, said the girls come on foot.
“Because the kids were coming from West Point, they wanted it to be at a school where they could walk,” she said. “So the children from all directions that come to this school walk to school.”
The school’s story began with an American charity and a contest. More Than Me opened the academy as a tuition-free school for girls in September 2013, after winning a US$1 million grant from JPMorgan Chase in a nationally televised competition decided by online votes.
Five years later, a ProPublica and TIME investigation revealed that Macintosh Johnson, a senior staff member, had sexually abused girls from West Point who had been drawn to the charity by the promise of free education, and that the charity had done little to prevent the abuse. The founder, Katie Meyler, resigned. The government opened a multi-agency investigation. Amid calls for accountability, students pleaded for their academy to remain open.
It did, for a while. In June 2019, the More Than Me board announced it would shut down operations, citing severe financial pressure and findings from two independent reviews. ProPublica noted at the time that the charity’s statement left the girls’ continued education an open question. Hilltop Schools, founded that year, stepped in to take over.
Through all of it, another question sat underneath the building itself: who owned it.
The writ that ended the school’s tenancy, issued Sept. 15 under Assigned Circuit Judge Nelson B. Chineh of the Sixth Judicial Circuit Civil Law Court, names Matu Kumba Montgomery as the plaintiff and the management of More Than Me Foundation, the Republic of Liberia through the Ministry of Justice, and the City of Monrovia as defendants. It commands the sheriff to “oust, evict and eject” them. The order rests on an Aug. 16, 2019, ruling by then-Assigned Circuit Judge Yamie Quiqui Gbeisay Sr., which the writ says the Supreme Court confirmed during its March Term A.D. 2026.
For the Montgomery family, Tuesday was the end of a long wait of its own. Erica Davies, a family spokesperson, said the family spent about 15 years trying to reclaim the property.
“We tried multiple times in the beginning to talk and see how we would be able to come together, but they didn’t want to talk,” she said.
Davies said the school dared the family to sue. “They said, ‘Take us to court. Take us to court,'” she said.
“So, we went through the process for the 15 years to take them to court, and we ended up winning, which we knew because we have proper documentation,” she said. “And they had to leave.”
She accused the school of dragging out the case on appeal. “They wanted us to spend more money and tire us out, so they took it to Supreme Court, and it spent like six years there,” she said.
Gbessagee sees it differently. She said the school occupied the building believing the government had handed it over for education, and she pointed to an inscription on the wall bearing the name of former President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and a date.
“It is the Liberian government that gave this building to that white lady,” she said, referring to More Than Me’s founder. “It was given by the government.”
The writ names the government as a defendant but does not say on what basis the building was turned over to the charity. That question, what the state gave away and whether it had the right to, may matter more than any other in the case, and no government official has yet answered it.
Gbessagee said she was never formally approached by the family or served a letter saying they were preparing to take possession, and that she did not fully grasp the dispute until she attended a court hearing.
“So I went to the hearing and then I asked, what’s going on with the building?” she said.
She framed the fight as a clash of interests. “All of us, we have interest,” she said. “I know she have interest in the money. But I’m interested in the human capital.”
“After government knew this building belonged to this woman and took it, right, and gave it to us, that’s a travesty to the children of Liberia,” she said. “And now the children are outside. That’s not fair.”
Gbessagee said she had heard that the Ministry of Education had spoken with the students and promised their schooling would continue.
“As we speak right now, we heard that the Ministry of Education spoke to the girls and told them they will get their education,” she said.
She said Montserrado County District 7 Rep. Emmanuel Dahn had stepped in to help, and she named a school facility on Front Street, within walking distance of West Point, as a possible new home if it can be renovated. No alternative site had been confirmed.
Some parents have threatened to take their protest to government offices if the girls are not back in class soon. The school’s supporters have done this before, too: in 2018, they marched to keep it open.
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