Posted at 6:19 PM, Sep 01, 2022. and last updated 4:46 PM, Sep 01, 2022. Jim Clemensen, a former California Highway Patrol officer, initially decided to open a group home in Stockton, California, before setting up Agap on an old Air Force base in Othello, Washington. We want to make it about the children's rights rather than taking away religious rights. They insisted everyone call them Brother Jim and Maam, and their son Brother Bryan.. Netflixs Outer Banks Buries Itself in Ridiculous Season 3 I pre paid him in February to cut yard 2x for months. Recently, individuals associated with Agap have been accused of a growing list of crimes. Stockton is located 130 miles south of Kansas City, a lazy drive down sunbaked roads lined with oak forests and rolling fields. All Rights reserved. So they were all, in my book, guilty of association, said Schrag. He says one told local police that he had escaped from a Nazi camp.. But under state law at the time, the schools didnt have to tell the government they existed, and it took years of complaints before child welfare officials shut down their operations in 2015, and prosecutors charged the owners and a counselor at the facilities with aggravated child abuse. Cedar County, Missouri, where Agap is located, is in the heart of the Bible Belt and Clemensen, his stepfather, Jim, who died in October 2021, and his mother, Kathy, long ago convinced the locals they answer to a higher authority. The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time When speaking with Rolling Stone, Clemensen denied the allegations against him and explained his approach to reform. Colton Shrag, age 16 on a home visit from Agap in 2008. One former student, Colton Schrag, claims he was beat up and slammed into walls during his four years at Agape. Nonetheless, the outcome of the civil suits is far from certain. He remembers verbal abuse, such as being told, the world didnt want you and says withholding food was a punishment., Staff members would slam you on the ground, slam you into walls, pick you up by the collar and just slam you around. On Dec. 21, a judge issued a preliminary injunction that will keep him off the list until he receives a full trial (with testimony and subpoenaed witnesses) or until further Order of this Court. In the meantime, Clemensen is prevented from having physical contact with students, but can continue working at the school. After abuse allegations at Circle of Hope Girls Ranch, a religious boarding school near Agap, began spreading on TikTok last spring, the Cedar County Sheriffs Department opened an investigation, which the state attorney general joined and is ongoing. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Clemensen said that the abuse allegations are lies, and suggests they are inspired by the political ambitions of State Attorney General Eric Schmitt who was elected to the U.S. Senate in November and a small group of disgruntled former students hoping for a big payday. What they are claiming would never be OK, he says. TOUGH-LOVE SCHOOLS CAN BE traced back to the 1950s, when a secular group called Synanon pioneered an approach to curing heroin addiction with isolation, humiliation, and sleep deprivation. Since then, former students testified at legislative hearings that they tried to report the abuse at Agape and the now-closed Circle of Hope Girls Ranch for years, but that Cedar County authorities and other officials did not respond to the . You can start to heal., For his part, Breshears is grateful to be free. The former director of Agape Boarding School pleaded with a Cole County judge on Monday to keep himself off the state's central registry of child abuse and . The foothills of the Ozarks sat in the distance. The Thrive program will provide housing and mentorship for young adults during their college or trade school career. Agape had 132 students 13 months ago, its lawyer, John Schultz said. The 200 Greatest Singers of All Time Riley Olson and His crew-help the students start and progress colts raised on the ranch, and each year they have a public auction and the young men that are a part of the program show the horse and ride him through the sale. The desire of 51:10 Youth Ranch is to provide a safe place for children, horses and families. Former Calallen ISD teacher Joseph Sandoval sentenced to 35 years in prison for sexual abuse . (Clemensen says this was a nickname the boys had for an elbow injury, and denies the abuse.) And its not just Missouri. She thought heavy metal was like witchcraft, he says. Youre never gonna make it out.. He ran the school on fear, says Colton Schrag, a former gang associate who attended the school twice between 2004 and 2010, and is not suing because the statute of limitations has expired. The plaintiffs in the newest cases, filed June 15 in Vernon County . Gaither says at this point, they dont know if there will be any charges. In November, a man who is reportedly a former Agap employee was charged with 215 counts of possession of child pornography. Circle of Hope was opened in 2006 by Boyd Householder, a former Agap employee, as a school for rebellious teenage girls. He says he and others suffered frequent physical abuse, at the hands of at least a dozen staff members, and others didnt stop it. It was time to go. In the aftermath of the criminal case, the state enacted the Alabama Youth Residential Facility Abuse Prevention Act in 2017. For $3,250 in tuition per month, the school claims on its website that it can turn around defiant and rebellious boys through spiritual growth., Parents, who are only allowed to visit with two weeks notice, are warned in the school handbook they should never try and interfere with the policies or rules of Agap Boarding School. The legislation would require the schools to register with the state, and create paths for the state to conduct safety inspections of the facilities and shut them down after abuse allegations. The team at Agape Ranch said they wanted the youth there Friday night to know that they are valued. Robert Bucklin, 28, who is identified in the motion and lawsuit as R.B. After being charged with more than 100 felonies last year linked to allegations of child sex abuse, physical abuse, endangerment and neglect, the owners of a now-defunct Missouri girls ranch . James Clemensen founded the Agap Boarding School in the early 1990s. However, the Cedar County prosecutor says no students have been removed from the school. These courses are core requirements for Florida . Thanks to the generous support of The Frazier Family Foundation, Gala sponsors, Gala attendees, and the community, $369,402 was raised in support of the next two homes at The Ranch during the 2021 Legacy Gala: A Matter of Time! Anne Stych June 27, 2022. Among other things, the new state law allows state or local authorities to petition the court for closure of a facility if children's safety or health are believed to be in immediate danger. It will stop providing service effective Jan. 20, according to a statement from the school for boys. The result, experts said, is that in much of the country, no one from the government checks to ensure that these facilities, often in remote regions, meet basic standards before children are enrolled. Staff called it the intake room. Soon theyd be in a place where they were untouchable. Though he is 16, he is a freshman; Agaps curriculum is often not compatible with local requirements. Agape now has roughly 60 students, about half of the population the school had in early 2021 when the Missouri Highway Patrol and DSS launched an investigation into abuse allegations. A decent life.. DSS added . (Agap denies any knowledge of these allegations. / AP. By then, Circle of Hope had shut down after the state removed dozens of its students. The industry is a multi-billion dollar industry that claims to help or fix troubled teenagers . Operators advertise it as a national boarding school for at-risk or unmotivated boys. The Agap case is just the latest scandal to emerge from the billion-dollar troubled-teen industry, a loosely regulated network of therapeutic boarding schools, residential treatment centers, religious academies, and wilderness camps set up to help teenagers with drug addiction and behavioral problems. (Householder has denied that any abuse occurred at the ranch.). We are the best rehab . Editors picks (NBC News presented a copy of Clidences nondisparagement agreement to Agap to confirm or dispute its authenticity, but the school did not respond.). Missouri previously had virtually no oversight for religious boarding schools. That is blasphemous.. He is pleased to hear the Missouri attorney generals office is now investigating Agape Boarding School. After Schrag, then 14, refused to answer their questions, he said, one of the employees knocked him to the ground, and then others held him facedown, pressing a knee into his back and head. The video follows numerous allegations of abuse against Agape, a Christian reform school for boys, which until a new law in 2021, had virtually no state oversight due to its faith-based status. It now has 12. In 2021, Paris Hilton, who has also been lobbying in Washington D.C., testified at a Utah Senate committee hearing about her own experience in a troubled-teen facility there, alleging that she was verbally, mentally, and physically abused, involuntarily drugged, and locked in isolation. We are gathered here, former students,. Staff members at Agap don't have to go through background checks, and the facility is not required to document how or why children are restrained. They were marched downstairs, where things escalated, until, Breshears alleges, he was lying facedown with a staffer sitting on his legs and two others digging their kneecaps into his pressure points. Roloff was perhaps best known for starting boarding homes in the 1960s to reform youth he described as parent-hating, Satan-worshipping, dope-taking immoral boys and girls, utilizing corporal punishment and isolation for children who disobeyed. They would say, Youre nothing. 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