child abuse

The Stockton-based boarding school faces mounting allegations of staff physically and sexually abusing students, but its doors have remained open even as the Missouri Attorney General and local prosecutors pursue criminal charges.

House Speaker Rob Vescovo is calling for the U.S. attorney’s office to get involved because he believes local officials ‘either turned a blind eye to, or helped to cover up’ abuse at Agape Boarding School.

Judge David Munton initially ordered Agape be shut down last week at the request of the state Attorney General and Department of Social Services. The state’s petition claimed that an Agape staff member had been placed on Missouri’s child abuse and neglect central registry for physically abusing a student.

A Missouri Judge's ruling in the court case over child custody jurisdiction between former Gov. Eric Greitens and his ex-wife, Sheena Greitens, found that there has been no pattern of domestic violence by either parent. The judge sealed her ruling but it became public in Texas.

The injunction came in response to a request from the Missouri Attorney General’s Office and the Department of Social Services for the Christian boarding school to be closed, but the order remains on pause until a hearing Monday.

The Christian reform school in Stockton faces mounting accusations of abuse, lawsuits and calls for its closure by former students, who described being physically restrained, sexually abused, starved as a form of punishment and taken off prescribed medications while reassured that “God would fix them.”

A Missouri doctor charged late last year with more than a dozen felonies on suspicion of child sex abuse now faces a civil lawsuit from a 14-year-old boy.

Advocates praised the law, which prevents underaged survivors from being charged with prostitution and requires law enforcement to immediately report suspected cases to the state, as a step in the right direction.

With almost 900 kids in foster care and just 19 social workers, Jackson County's Children’s Division is short hundreds of workers and has the worst case-overload problem in the state.

Maggie Drew, who attended Circles of Hope Girls Ranch from 2007-2013, alleges the now-shuttered boarding school illegally took her inheritance money and required her to endure forced labor, and that the school's co-owner sexually abused her.

Judge’s order sets deadline for filings three days after voters will go to the polls in hotly contested U.S. Senate race.

Former boarding school students are making noise about politicians and elected officials with connections to unlicensed religious reform schools, state-contracted youth residential facilities and summer camps that have faced allegations of abuse and neglect.