Lawyers spar as southwest Missouri judge again delays Agape Boarding School closing

Five days after a southwest Missouri judge signed an order to close Agape Boarding School and remove students over concerns they weren’t safe, he again delayed that action Monday.

Officials with the Missouri Attorney General’s Office and the Missouri Department of Social Services were prepared to present evidence at a hearing in the Cedar County Courthouse on why the embattled school should be shut down. Two former students and a DSS employee who investigated abuse at the school near Stockton were ready to take the stand.

But Judge David Munton refused to allow either former student to testify — one who was at the courthouse Monday and the other who was going to join via video conference. Munton then continued the hearing until Sept. 21 to allow Agape’s attorney, John Schultz, of Kansas City, to depose the second teen who lives in California.

Schultz told Munton there was no proof that there is an “immediate health and safety concern” for students at the school. Allowing former students to testify, he said, was just a show for the media, not to illustrate current harm. He pointed to the fact that “there’s a bunch of media sitting here” and questioned the AG’s motive for wanting to interview past students.

“That’s simply for publicity,” Schultz said. “And we’ve had enough bad publicity.”

Justin Smith, chief of staff for the Missouri Attorney General’s Office, shot back:

“The AG is here for the kids, not the press.”

Several top officials with DSS and the Attorney General’s Office made the trip to Cedar County to push for the closure of Agape, which they thought was going to happen last week.

Now, it’s not clear when the judge will make any decisions on the school.

“The office did everything possible to present evidence and witness testimony including that of victims of alleged abuse to prove the pattern of abuse at Agape Boarding School,” said Chris Nuelle, press secretary for the Attorney General’s Office, who attended the hearing. “The office still intends to present that case at the soonest possible opportunity, and has secured an agreement that allows DSS to continue around the clock monitoring of students at Agape Boarding School.

“Our fight to protect the students at Agape continues.”

Also at the hearing was Agape director Bryan Clemensen, who sat next to Schultz, and several others from the school.

The Attorney General’s Office and the Missouri Department of Social Services filed a petition in Cedar County Circuit Court on Wednesday asking for an injunction to immediately close Agape and remove students, citing concerns about their safety.

The petition stated that on Wednesday, DSS added a current Agape staff member to the state’s Central Registry after the agency found by a preponderance of evidence that the staffer had committed child abuse at Agape.

Munton signed the order to immediately close the school and remove students Wednesday evening. But by Thursday morning he put that on hold and sent Cedar County Sheriff James “Jimbob” McCrary to Agape to determine whether the staff member was still working there. Clemensen told McCrary that the staffer had been fired the previous day but still lived on the property.

New law used

A new Missouri law prohibits someone from working at a residential care facility if the person has a substantiated finding of child abuse or neglect or is placed on the Central Registry.

During Monday’s hearing, Schultz said the terminated employee also no longer lives on Agape property.

Workers with the Children’s Division were inside Agape through the weekend to ensure the safety of the students. That was a plan worked out late last week between the child welfare agency and the judge.

On Friday afternoon, the AG and state child welfare leaders filed an amended complaint saying students must be removed from Agape because of a long pattern of abuse.

The complaint contained additional details that the AG’s office said provided explicit evidence of systemic abuse of students that has gone on at Agape for years. Those new details also included allegations that Agape had provided “incomplete information” to the state in recent days.

The AG’s filing Friday also said that multiple people still working at the school are appealing their substantiated findings from DSS that they physically abused students. State law allows the staffers to keep working while they appeal the findings.

The Star has learned that Clemensen is one of those staffers notified by DSS that he had a substantiated report of abuse against him. Sources said that Scott Dumar, the school’s longtime medical coordinator, also is among those appealing a substantiated DSS finding. Dumar is one of five staff members charged last year with physical abuse of students.

Early last week, The Star reported that DSS had confirmed 10 findings of physical abuse involving Agape staff. Those findings are final dispositions, and the workers involved have been placed on the state’s Central Registry and do not currently work at any boarding schools in Missouri, DSS officials said.

Those 10 represent the number of abuse findings, DSS said, not necessarily the number of people investigated. In other words, one person could have multiple findings.

On Friday, DSS officials confirmed to The Star that with the Agape employee who was added to the Central Registry on Wednesday, there are now 11 substantiated findings related to the Cedar County boys boarding school.

Officials with the AG’s Office stated multiple times during Monday’s hearing that having staff still at the school who DSS found hurt students shows a pattern of abuse that has existed at Agape for years. But the judge wanted current examples of abuse to show that irreparable harm exists today.

“I’m not planning on going way back in history,” Munton said. Both he and Schultz questioned why the AG’s office and DSS didn’t file for an injunction last year if they thought kids’ health and safety were in danger then.

Smith, the chief of staff, reiterated that the attorney general and child welfare officials took action as soon as the new law would allow. And that was when the employee declined to appeal his DSS finding in the time set by law.

Then, the AG’s office tried again to convince Munton of the importance of testimony from boys who had been at the school in the past.

While it was a hotline call that launched the investigation by the Missouri Highway Patrol in 2021, AG general counsel James Atkins said, “the behavior has gone up to the present” and the perpetrators “will no doubt abuse in the future.”

Schultz replied, saying the AG’s office needs to stick with “what is happening now, today. Not with what happened in 2021. … There is no abuse happening.”

After a short break, Maddie Green, an assistant attorney general for special litigation, called on the former student who left Agape in July 2021 after being at the school for less than a year.

Green told Munton that the teen would testify to being abused at Agape by staff members who are still working at the school. “It’s to show a pattern of abuse.”

Schultz objected to the teen testifying, saying he hadn’t been at the school in more than a year.

“I sustain the objection,” Munton said. And Green told the teen that they had to move on to the next witness.

But Munton didn’t allow that witness either.

The Star has investigated Agape and other boarding schools in southern Missouri since late summer 2020. Many men who attended the school in their youth said they were subjected to physical restraints, extreme workouts, long days of manual labor, and food and water withheld as punishment. And, they said, students endured constant berating and mind games, and some were physically and sexually abused by staff and other youth.

Prompted by stories of abuse at several unlicensed Christian boarding schools in Missouri, legislators successfully pushed for change in the state law to implement some oversight of the facilities. That law, which went into effect in July 2021, gives DSS, the attorney general or the local prosecuting attorney the authority to petition the court to close a facility if there is an immediate health or safety concern for the children.

Agape now has roughly 60 students, according to the AG’s petition — about half the population the school had in early 2021 when the Highway Patrol and DSS launched an investigation into abuse allegations. That investigation led to low-level felony charges against five Agape staff members, accusing them of 13 counts of abusing students.

Local connections

Munton has come under sharp criticism since putting his Agape closure order on hold Thursday morning. He also is the judge who is handling 22 civil lawsuits filed by former students against Agape Baptist Church, which oversees the boarding school, in the past 19 months. Those lawsuits all allege abuse, many saying the school used torture and starvation as punishment.

Munton also is handling a recent lawsuit filed against Circle of Hope Girls Ranch and its former owners Boyd and Stephanie Householder, who face 99 felony counts of child abuse and neglect, including statutory sodomy, rape and physical abuse and neglect.

And Munton oversaw five other lawsuits filed by former students against Circle of Hope and the Householders that were settled last year.

Sending Sheriff McCrary to Agape last week to confirm whether the staffer still worked there only intensified the ire against the judge.

That’s because McCrary and his office have numerous connections to Agape — which is overseen by Agape Baptist Church. Several people with ties to the school work for the sheriff’s office, including Deputy Robert Graves, who attended Agape as a student then worked at the school for years, including while he was a deputy. Until recently, he also served on the board of Agape Baptist Church.

Over the years, Graves has held several positions at Agape, including the school’s resource officer. He’s handled reports of crimes on campus and also responded to some as a sheriff’s deputy. And former students told The Star that on at least one occasion when Children’s Division workers came to the school to investigate a hotline call, Graves sat in on the interviews wearing his sheriff’s uniform.

He also is the son-in-law of Agape founder James Clemensen, and Graves’ daughter, Deanna Smock, has been a dispatcher for the Sheriff’s Office. Thursday’s court docket shows that a “D. Smock” signed for the judge’s directive for McCrary to go to Agape. Deanna Smock’s husband, Alex, has worked as a corrections officer at the Cedar County Jail, and her father-in-law, David Smock, was a longtime medical provider for Agape students. David Smock now is being held without bond in the Greene County Jail, facing 15 child sex abuse counts in Cedar and Greene counties.

Graves and another sheriff’s deputy also have worked off-duty for Safe, Sound Secure Youth Ministries, a company that parents can hire to transport their children to Agape. That company is owned by Julio Sandoval, a former dean of students at Agape, who has occasionally worked at the jail.

Last month, a federal grand jury indicted Sandoval, accusing his transport company of violating a court order by taking a California teen to Agape in handcuffs and against his will.