sexual abuse

Shawnee Mission North math teacher Alex Morris was booked into Johnson County jail on Wednesday. He is charged with five counts of sexual exploitation of a child.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The former Missouri First Lady laid out instances of physical abuse by her ex-husband Eric Greitens in emails to a therapist and a family lawyer.

The church’s report names pastors and youth ministers who have been convicted of child pornography, sodomy, solicitation and other crimes.

Former students of Agape Boarding School and Circle of Hope have sought to expose the operators of schools where they allege students were subject to years of abuse.

Adrienne Jensen’s former coach, Rex Haultain, pleaded guilty in 2013 to soliciting child pornography and was sentenced to 78 months in federal prison.