Could this be the end for unlicensed Missouri boarding schools? These lawmakers hope so

As Agape Boarding School closes for good, lawmakers say they’re working to ensure similar unlicensed schools never operate in Missouri again.

Two bills would require religious boarding schools to be licensed by the state — a 40-year-old statute allows an exemption for such schools. And another measure is being crafted that would strengthen a 2021 law that for the first time gave the state some oversight over the schools but fell short in ensuring that a problem facility could quickly be shut down.

All this in an effort, those legislators say, to stop the Show-Me State from being the haven for boarding schools that want to run their programs the way they see fit, without what they view as government interference.

“As long as these facilities are allowed to operate unfettered as they have been over the last few decades — and the judicial system and law enforcement are not able to shut them down efficiently — vulnerable kids are still continuing to be victimized,” said Rep. Keri Ingle, a Lee’s Summit Democrat, who co-sponsored the 2021 legislation. “(They’re) continuing to be victims of abuse and neglect.”

Agape’s former director, Bryan Clemensen, announced on Jan. 11 that the southwest Missouri school, which has been dogged by abuse allegations for years, would be closing, effective Friday. It becomes the fourth and final unlicensed Christian boarding school in Cedar County to shut down since September 2020.

The announcement came as Missouri’s new attorney general said he planned to continue the effort launched last fall to get a court injunction to close the school.

Clemensen said the decision to close Agape was “voluntary” and “due to the lack of financial resources to continue caring for the boys.”

Heather Dolce, spokeswoman for the Missouri Department of Social Services, said Friday that Agape contacted the state’s Children’s Division and said “there are no longer any students enrolled in the school.”

“With Agape’s closure, children would be returned to their parents unless the parent made alternate arrangements for their care and custody,” she said. “If custody is refused by the children’s parents, Children’s Division is prepared to work with the family and ensure the safety of the child accordingly.”

Former students, child welfare advocates and some lawmakers said the school should never have been allowed to operate without licensure in Missouri, where a 1982 law permits religious organizations to claim an exemption from the state’s licensing requirement.

The Star began investigating faith-based reform schools across the state in August 2020. It found that James Clemensen, Bryan’s late father, opened Agape Boarding School in 1996 after leaving two other states where his facility came under scrutiny.

Students who attended Agape over a period that spanned a quarter century recounted emotional stories of beatings, sexual abuse, physical restraints, long days of manual labor, and food and water withheld as punishment. Some said they reported the abuse but nothing happened.

Others told The Star that James Clemensen was attracted to Missouri because of its lack of oversight and viewed the state as “The Promised Land.”

‘Bad actors’ will find loopholes

David Patterson, of California, attended the school near Stockton from 2002 to 2003 and shared his experience with The Star in 2020. He said while Agape closing is “fantastic news,” there’s much more that needs to happen for kids across the nation to be safe.

“This is just the beginning,” Patterson told The Star in an email. “Until there is federal oversight with regular safety and wellness checks by third party social workers into these types of facilities, these types of abuses of children and potential fatalities will continue to happen in the future.”

The 2021 legislation that Ingle co-sponsored requires unlicensed schools to register with the state, conduct background checks on employees and undergo health, safety and fire inspections. The law also gives the Department of Social Services, 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.

But it doesn’t require them to be licensed and, as written, doesn’t prohibit people with an initial state finding of child abuse or neglect from working at a facility during an appeal.

In September, Missouri’s attorney general and DSS sought an injunction to close Agape, saying that students’ safety was in jeopardy. Under the new law, legislators and advocates thought that would quickly happen.

But between legal maneuverings by Agape and judges’ rulings – which allowed the school to continue operating as the case proceeded – the injunction stalled. And it’s still not resolved, even after the school has decided to close.

Though Ingle said she “doesn’t agree with the court’s interpretation” of the new law, she does see a few areas that could be tweaked to make it more effective.

“Bad actors will find holes,” Ingle said of Agape. “And until a law is implemented, you don’t know how far people will go to protect their criminal enterprise.

“They were willing to bankrupt themselves and shift people around and create new companies. It’s become a shell game, moving children around.”

‘I want kids to be safe’

Two other lawmakers introduced the bills that would require all residential care facilities in Missouri to be licensed by the state. The 1982 law requires state regulation of such facilities but allows exemptions for some, including those run by religious organizations. The statute also says the state can’t require those claiming an exemption to prove that they should be exempt.

Rep. Sarah Unsicker, a Shrewsbury Democrat, first introduced a licensing measure during the legislature’s special session in September. But it was not within the scope of the special session, which focused on tax credits and tax cuts, and never got a hearing. She filed the bill again in December.

Sen. Lauren Arthur, a Kansas City Democrat, has introduced a similar bill in the Senate.

“Religion doesn’t give anyone a right to abuse children,” Unsicker said when she filed the original bill. “The horrifying and persistent allegations of endemic abuse, neglect, sexual assault and even trafficking of children that has happened at these boarding schools for decades starkly illustrates the state’s need to supervise these facilities to a greater extent.”

Unsicker said under her proposal, the schools would have to apply for licensure, share information about their corporate structure and keep personnel records. They would have to report dangerous incidents, such as death or serious injuries of a child, any conditions affecting the health and safety of a child for a period of longer than twelve hours, or any event that requires emergency responders.

“I want kids to be safe where they are,” Unsicker told The Star this week. “We need to be licensing these facilities to make sure that they can be taken care of.”

She said she’s worried that Agape’s closure will take some of the pressure off lawmakers to regulate other schools where abuse might be happening.

“There are a bunch of other facilities right now,” she said. “I don’t know what’s going on at all of them. Nobody’s looking at them. Nobody’s looking to see what’s happening.”

Senate President Pro Tem Caleb Rowden, a Columbia Republican, told The Star this week that Agape was proof that similar schools need more oversight. But he would not say definitively whether he would support any specific piece of legislation.

Rowden rebuffed the assertion that Agape’s closure has taken pressure off the General Assembly.

“There was enough attention made and drawn to it from the media, from Democrats, from Republicans,” he said. “I think we know that that was a big issue. If there are other instances and other similar situations around the state, we should fix that.”

Not an easy fight

Requiring religious residential care facilities to be licensed, however, will be a tough sell.

Despite repeated attempts over the years to remove the religious exemption, that loophole has remained sacred for four decades because of intense pressure from opponents who argue that it would interfere with religious freedom.

Arthur said she filed the Senate bill “to close this loophole to keep all kids safe.”

“The horrible abuse that occurred at Agape must never be allowed to happen again,” she said. “To make sure that every child is safe, we have to hold all caregivers to the same standard.

“It is frustrating because it seems so obvious that we have a problem in Missouri. Too many kids are suffering because adults are not protecting them.”

Arthur knows there will be strong pushback on her bill.

“There are a lot of Republican colleagues who see this as overreach,” she said. “And in some ways, I suspect my colleagues will think we have done everything we can do.”

But she doesn’t think they have.

“Last year’s bill was great. We did pass something,” Arthur said. “But it was as far as some legislators were willing to go. It will be an uphill battle, but it’s definitely a battle worth fighting.”

Senate Minority Leader John Rizzo, an Independence Democrat, echoed similar concerns to reporters this week.

“I worry that there are more schools possibly out there in similar situations, and I’m also obviously worried about shell games, where one closes and somebody else opens up the same thing with different names,” he said. “We always have to be monitoring and watching and be very vigilant about those things.

“So yeah, I worry that we might have just scratched the surface of some problems that we have.”