It’s past time for Missouri’s attorney general to take action against abusive boarding schools

November 20, 2024 | The Missouri Independent

Andrew Bailey has won re-election. For the next four years, he’ll be Missouri’s attorney general.

So he no longer has to worry about potentially alienating teachers.

Or conservative ministers.

Or those who believe in spanking children.

Or county sheriffs and other local law enforcement officials.

Or business owners and leaders who want to make a profit.

Each of these groups might have been upset or offended had Bailey done what he’s repeatedly been urged to do: investigate and take action against the dozens of “under the radar” Christian boarding schools where youngsters are often abused — physically, sexually and emotionally.

Had the attorney general done what victims have asked and dug into this controversy, each of these groups might have felt threatened and could have worked for Bailey’s defeat.

But none of them did, because Bailey did what many politicians do and sided with those who have influence and against those without it — in this case, the now young adults who have been hurt in these institutions and now mostly live out-of-state.

Doing nothing about the growing boarding school controversy was a smart electoral move. Bailey’s now been rewarded with another four year term of office.

But there’s an “up side” here. Bailey is freed up to do what’s right and what’s needed. He can take a long, hard look at those who resist — indeed, fear — accountability and scrutiny, the owners and operators of privately-owned, faith-based facilities for so-called “troubled teens.”

Relative to most other states, Missouri lacks any real regulation and oversight of these facilities. So our state has become a magnet for their owners. And these schools, in turn, are magnets for sadists and predators.

Do alleged offenses at some of these schools really merit the attention and intervention of Missouri’s highest legal authority?

You bet they do. Consider just one of these facilities, Lighthouse Christian Academy in Wayne County, which claimed to help students who were “troubled, learning-impaired or dealing with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder or other disorders.”

• Last month, the school’s former principal Craig Wesley Smith Jr. was charged by the prosecutor with forcing a teenage student to perform sex acts in the late 2000s.

• Also last month, a trial date was finally set for Missouri’s most notorious female abuser, who worked at two facilities and, along with her husband, was charged with 99 offenses against kids.

• In July, a Lighthouse teacher who was charged with abuse or neglect of a child for injuring a 15-year-old boy pled guilty and was put on probation for five years.

• In May, the school’s directors were jailed on charges of first-degree kidnapping for allegedly locking a student in a room,

Staffers at similar facilities — in several counties — face similar scandals, lawsuits and charges.

At Agape Boarding School in Stockton, for example:

• A longtime doctor faces 12 counts of child sex crimes including multiple counts of statutory sodomy, sexual misconduct, child molestation and enticement of a child.

• Federal kidnapping charges are pending against an Agape employee who forced a boy into a car” and “forcibly transported” him from California to Missouri “in handcuffs for over 24 hours.”

• Five Agape staffers were charged with felonies of assaulting boys. At least three of them have pled guilty.

All this in just the last few years, as more former students find the strength and courage to speak up.

“Three Christian boarding schools in southern Missouri have shut down since 2020 amid wide-ranging abuse allegations levied by current and former students,” reports the Associated Press.

And let’s remember that many crimes, especially against kids, go unreported or unrecognized for decades and victims do come forward, the bar for criminal prosecution is very high. So common sense and painful experience strongly suggest that perhaps scores more offenders at these facilities remain on the job or ‘under the radar.’

So what do boarding school victims seek from Bailey?

In letters, news conferences and meetings with his staff, they’ve asked the attorney general to write to prosecutors in the counties where these facilities operate and strongly urge them to launch investigations. They also demanded that he use his bully pulpit to warn parents who may soon send their children to these facilities or whose children are already in them; hold a Zoom call with at least a few dozen victims who have been so severely violated in these facilities; and ask school owners to allow unannounced inspections of their facilities by independent children’s groups and law enforcement personnel including, the Highway Patrol.

Bailey has ignored or rebuffed every single one of these requests.

There’s another reason now is the time for Bailey to act: In just a few months, the legislature will be back in session. So it’s an opportune moment for the attorney general to prod these mostly GOP lawmakers who loudly and repeatedly claim to be “pro-family” and “tough on crime” to draft effective and comprehensive measures to better safeguard kids in these worrisome facilities.

Put more bluntly, when it comes to the issue of the safety of the most vulnerable students in Missouri, in the state’s least regulated facilities, it’s time for Bailey to “put up or shut up.”