Assault is a crime. Even when it happens at a boarding school in Missouri.
_________________________________
Jan 15, 2021 Update: Here are links to three testimonials from students who have recently left Agape boarding School. If you have a student at that school, please get him out.
Lucas’s Story (Student from 2017–2019)
Griffin’s Story (Student from 2019–2020)
Gabe’s Story (Student from 2017–2017)
_________________________________
I’m here to tell you about a horrific story I accidentally discovered while working on a research project.
A story so rage-inducing that simply bearing witness to survivor audio testimonials has left me utterly debilitated for nearly three weeks.
In a small town in rural Missouri, 160 boys are imprisoned for years without adjudication. They are assaulted. They become proselytes under threat of torture. They endure bodily harm, emotional abuse, and, occasionally, sexual abuse at the hands of faith leaders. There are no hugs. There are few visitors. There is no love.
Welcome to Agape Boarding School for Boys, one of many U.S. Independent Fundamental Baptist (IFB) Christian boarding schools for troubled youth.
Today you’ll find Agapé in Stockton, MO, having moved from Washington state more than 20 years ago to avoid oversight. Agapé is where, in the name of The Lord Our God, faith leaders strike, batter, concuss, withhold water, drown (face down), and aspirate (face up) students in their own vomit. They force physical labor, commit pressure point attacks (muscular gouging), demand stress positions for hours, days or months, compel submission positions, and beat the love of Christ into the developing brains and bodies of troubled children.
The practice continues today. In 2020. They call it discipline.
A student between the ages of 12 and 17 can be imprisoned and assaulted for hours in a room at the Agapé property called the “padded palace.” Gym mats line the floors and walls so that the boy’s skull remains intact in case he accidentally gets thrown into a wall. The padded walls help muffle his screams. The boy’s crime? Could have been anything. Not doing push-ups fast enough, for example. Looking at a staff member’s wife instead of averting his eyes.
In the “padded palace,” staff members use their arms, hands, elbows, knees and feet to concentrate the force of their own weight onto known pressure points on a boy’s body. It’s usually three to five attackers piled on top of one teenage boy, and never fewer than two. The boy is held down while he writhes in pain. He tries to turn his arms and legs inward so that he can assume the fetal position to protect his body from the pain and to protect his dignity from the ignominy, but he can’t. He is immobilized, and splayed, completely open to his team of assailants violating those areas on his body where the nerve endings meet the muscles. For hours.
Occasionally, a boy urinates through his clothing during the torment. Sometimes he vomits. Staff members threaten and chastise the boy as he aspirates. After it’s over, the boy’s limbs have nerve damage. His legs and arms don’t work right. Sometimes the damage lasts for months. Sometimes, it lasts forever.
At Agape, acts of assault against students are called “restraints.” This ensures that staff members remain in compliance with their non-violent intervention certifications from the Crisis Prevention Institute.
Students in “red shirts” are assaulted less often than newer students. In exchange for earning red-shirt safety and privilege, Red-shirts are required to deliver physical punishments to other students, such as 10-20 pushups, 10–20 “8-counts,” and other stringent but reasonable-sounding consequences per the Agapé Parent Handbook.
In addition to meting out handbook-approved consequences to other students, red-shirts must continue to obey staff orders under threat of punishment. This means the red-shirts are compelled to perform an entire menu of violent “restraints” against fellow students.
For example, if a staff member or faith leader (let’s call him Bryan), demands that a red-shirt slam another student’s head into a block wall with such force that blood bursts out of the kid’s face, the red shirt must obey the order, else the staff member (in this example we will continue to call him Bryan), will invent a more severe consequence for the red-shirt for his act of insubordination.
To be clear, red-shirts *must* take part in staff-directed assaults against other students. This is by far the most convenient method of assault against students at Agapé. By forcing red-shirts to perform assaults against students, staff leaders maintain plausible deniability.
Upon departure from the school, the red-shirt is so wracked with guilt that he simply cannot report the assaults he witnessed and experienced because he, despite having been coerced by trusted faith leaders and staff, feels deep anguish and remorse that he committed such regrettable acts and hurt his friends.
The assault descriptions in this post were gathered from first-hand survivor-witness testimonials. But don’t take my word for it. These boys (most are now men) have voices. It is the public’s duty to listen. Bear Witness. Immerse yourself in the interviews.
As you listen, imagine your own child’s face. I see my little boy, shrieking with terror and tears, his 12 year old body writhing in unmitigated anguish as he is held down by evil men, limbs splayed, immobilized, enduring these false prophets’ virulent sadism delivered in God’s name.
Agape has been operating without oversight for the last ~30 years. That’s a lot of witness testimony yet to come.
Today, there are 160 “troubled boys” confined to Agapé Boarding School in Stockton, MO. The school initiated a 30-day lockdown on December 21. No visitors allowed.
Troubled boys, indeed.
God help the authorities legally shut this facility down and relieve the boys locked inside of their torment.
#iseeyousurvivor
#ibelieveyousurvivor
#survivorturnedwitness
Sources:
Add your name or story to my unofficial witness registry
Exposing Agape Boys Ranch on TikTok
