16-year-old girl missing from children's facility

HOUSTON (FOX 26) - A woman not only wants her missing daughter back, she also wants answers from the southwest Houston facility from where her daughter disappeared. There are a lot of questions regarding 16-year-old India Ford. Where is she and how could she disappear when she was supposed to be watched 24 hours a day at Odyssey House, a facility for children with behavioral problems or issues of substance abuse.    

Ford has been missing since Thanksgiving Day. She was ordered to stay at Odyssey House Texas for three months after missing too many days of school. Now two months into her stay, she is missing.

"There are questions that are unanswered," says Erica Atkins, Ford's mother. "So you don't know where to go, where to start. Just the pit of your stomach just falls to the floor because that's any parent's worst fear." Atkins also says Odyssey House called her shortly after 9 p.m. on Thanksgiving day, telling her that her 16-year-old daughter had disappeared. Less than two hours earlier, Atkins says her daughter called her from a front office in the facility where children are not allowed to use the phone and she says her daughter seemed sad.  

Atkins says calls are typically supervised and are only allowed on Wednesdays.

"7:25 p.m. was the last time we spoke with her," describes Atkins. "She sounded down and out.  We thought maybe it was because it was a holiday and she is not at home."

A missing persons report has been filed with the Houston Police Department, but even investigators haven't been able to find the missing teen.    

Atkins says her daughter did not have internet access in the facility nor a cell phone and she was locked inside Odyssey House under what's said to be constant supervision, so how did she vanish? 

"My daughter was supposed to be protected here," says Atkins. "She was supposed to be safe here. They were supposed to guide her in the right direction and they did not. They dropped the ball."

Atkins also says Odyssey House Texas, which is a Cenikor Foundation program, is telling her that surveillance video at the facility for some reason stopped one hour before Ford went missing.

An Odyssey House spokesperson tells FOX 26 News that the company is not commenting on the case.