Operation: Stand Down

Laura Holt
10 min readJun 4, 2021

Comrades,

My torrential rage against church-sanctioned child abuse has been slightly mitigated by this squishy breadcrumb of cautious optimism:

A couple of months ago, the Missouri Attorney General’s office announced an investigation into Agape Boarding School as a result of all the unchecked child abuse the school has allegedly committed during the last 20+ years.

If you’re not yet familiar with Agape and the Troubled Teen Industry (TTI), Agape is an incarceration facility for teen boys with behavior issues, including Autism, ADHD, ODD, PDD, and more. The compound is owned and managed by an Independent Fundamental Baptist (IFB) church, which is not, per its owner, open to the public during church service times.

The nonprofit religious facility reports revenue greater than 3 million dollars per year in tuition payments from parents and guardians.

A nonprofit religious organization, Agape Baptist Church (DBA Agape Boarding School) allegedly solicits and accepts charitable donations, both monetary and in-kind, to support operational expenses and other special activities incurred by the school, the church, the Clemensen family’s foundation, the Clemensen family’s trust, the church’s horse-selling business ministry, the two family land partnerships, and the two holding companies.

To be clear, your much-appreciated charitable donation will only be used to cover the expenses that the school’s tuition revenue, horse sales ministry revenue, real property transaction revenue, child-labor revenue, and tax-free nonprofit status don’t already cover, up to and including civil and criminal legal fees and civil lawsuit settlements.

But I digress.

Look, you guys. Don’t waste your time being mad about all their fraud. These independent fundamental Baptists probably do all sorts of fraud, like tax fraud, non profit fraud, moving assets to and from churches and foundations and trust funds and holding companies and stuff like that. Doing fraud is no problem as long as you are a church, tho.

Be mad, instead, about this: While the Missouri Attorney General investigation into Agape continues, more than 100 students remain extrajudicially imprisoned against their will at Agape’s compound in Stockton, MIssouri.

My heart breaks for them.

Criminal investigations can be inexplicably lengthy. There is no good reason for this, but it is a generally accepted fact that large-scale investigations of previously substantiated child abuse allegations take a very, very long time. Things get tricky when an unregistered, unlicensed, unrecognized-by-the-college-board religious school believes that *not* being allowed to assault minors is a violation of the school’s religious freedom.

Which means, unfortunately, that The Missouri Attorney General’s investigation of Agape’s child abuse offenses won’t be quick.

Which means that advocates for human rights and children’s rights have a lot of waiting to do.

Waiting sucks.

BTW…if you use any techniques that help mitigate this type of impatience-induced frustration, please feel free to share them.

Here’s one thing I do to make the waiting seem less awful. I imagine the glorious day the current Agape Boarding School students are freed from their incarceration. I hope it is a day of celebration.

I imagine a team of survivors waiting outside the gates to greet the students upon their release with hugs and high fives and all that happy joyful stuff.

There’s music. Happy music.

I know it won’t happen the way I imagine. But thinking of it makes me smile.

At some point, everyone would quiet down, in order to witness Jurasshole Clemensen, in Law Enforcement custody, getting hauled out of the building by his trademark dino-elbows, which are cuffed behind his back, as he sanctimoniously declares his rights are being violated because he’s never had to face someone his own size.

Were it up to me, I’d play When The Man Comes Around by Johnny Cash during the perp walk, because it would be heartwarmingly apropos. What song would YOU play?

My bet is that that godawful Sheldon dude (the alleged rapist who allegedly left Circle of Hope, the recently-shuttered home for troubled girls, for allegedly being too rape-y, only to find himself sexually frustrated due to the lack of violable underaged girls at the boys school, so he tortured boys until they were near death, vomiting, aspirating & siezing) will have fled the state already, so there will be some anxious tension for a few days while law enforcement tracks Ronnie the (alleged) chomo down.

But.

Something still sucks.

Because, for now, I must continue to remind myself to ***be careful*** in my reactions to Agape’s unrepentant assholiness. I want to call the staff and tell them to stop hurting kids. I want to message the school employees on Facebook and ask them to explain how they sleep at night.

But there’s an Attorney General investigation going on, and me getting all harrass-ey on Agape isn’t going to help.

And, ultimately, I’d feel like shit if I contacted Agape and pissed them off so bad that they felt compelled to cure their own frustration by plucking a student victim from the wall and forcing the poor 15 year old barely-verbal autistic kid to piss himself in the padded palace after 4 straight hours of concentrated nerve compressions performed by some juicing loser limpdick named Julio, who has such severe mommy issues that not even his tremorous and plaintive reverberant pleas to Our Heavenly Father can mitigate them.

Friends (read: good people of earth who oppose beating the shit out of children and teens). There is a lot going on in Cedar County, MO right now. Circle of Hope is shut down, it’s owners (trained by none other than the Clemensen Family of nearby Agape Boarding School) arrested on more than 100 counts of child abuse.

Investigations.

Arrests.

News.

And more news.

All have resulted in credible evidence that will likely lead to consequences for Agape Boarding School, its leaders, and the people who work there.

Do you know what this means?

It means they are scared.

Most of you already know that Agape Boarding School has acquired an impressive collection of assets and community influence in Stockton, MO during the last 20+ years while allegedly committing crimes of assault, neglect, false imprisonment, acts of torture, and war crimes against children and teens (chill the fuck out, yo. I said alleged. It’s right there, at the beginning of the sentence). To be clear, the law says you’re presumed innocent until proven guilty. Even if you’re Bryan Clemensen.

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Dude Bryan Clemensen is dumbass of the decade. Elbows McDinosaur gonna show off his bravery by allegedly assaulting an incarcerated kid while the kid’s back is turned because there is literally nothing more wholesome than a grown-ass man sucker-punching a teenager with his elbow.

Except for when that same grown-ass man allegedly asks his 3 best friends to help him hold down a 90lb. 13 year old boy in a padded room so they can all get hard-ons by gouging out the kid’s muscles and nerves for 4 hours. #sexy #YouDisgustingPervert

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But look, you guys. The Clemensen Real estate empire is at risk.

As is their massive collection of nonprofits, trusts, foundations, holding companies,

land companies, and other stuff.

At risk is their very freedom.

They are confused.

Here’s what else is real, you guys.

These Agape dudes are very, very scared.

They are afraid.

And, when violent, vengeful, self-righteous, scripture-picking smugfucks experience fear, they become dangerously unpredictable.

They are cowards.

Let’s remind each other to make sure that we’re not:

1. putting current students at risk

2. impeding criminal investigations

3. impeding civil litigation efforts

We cannot judge or suppress anyone else’s righteous and justified anger; Therefore, this is not a demand; Rather, it’s an appeal.

Let us continue to remind ourselves and each other to Do No Harm.

Avoid stepping foot onto the Agape Boarding School property. Avoid sending their staff members nastygrams via social media. No doxxing. No targeting. Just don’t go there. It’s not worth the risk.

Bryan Clemensen is so revered in that town that he can text a cop, and that cop will come and arrest you for any reason, or for no reason at all.

Elbows McDinosaur

Also know that Missouri Law Enforcement Agencies do NOT settle civil disputes. Settling civil disputes is the court’s job, so for real,

If you’re gonna get into it with Agape, you need to stay the fuck off their property for the sake of your own safety and take that shit to court. Or to the news. Or to a podcast.

These Agape motherfuckers have weapons. Two staff members allegedly open carry within the school. And, ffs, a Cedar County sheriff’s deputy is on Agape’s board of directors AND enjoys his own office. Literally. His own office. Inside the school.

Please stay away. Because if you go there thinking that you’re going to catch Bryan Clemensen acting like an asshole, you’re correct. BUT. And this is important. THERE IS NO LAW against Bryan Clemensen acting like a self-righteous douche on his own property.

Bryan Clemensen cannot be legally compelled, criminally or civilly, to STOP being a whiny, puffy-chested, closeted miscreant with daddy issues.

Not even when the entire town knows he’s been propped up all his life by an old Abusive Adoptive Father who’s now pissed away his faith in his own son for being stupid enough to come so close to losing the family fortune to lawsuits and criminal investigations.

An old power-hungry bastard who will die wondering how his own damned kid could possibly be stupid enough to have NAMED the sissiest, most yellow-bellied sucker-punch ever, after a fucking dinosaur movie.

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Like, seriously, If you’re going to hit a kid while his back is turned, consider NOT bragging to your friends that you just (yet again) performed your cleverly inspired world-famous jurassic-elbow maneuver, lest the internet discover your gluttonous lust for sadism and turn your stealthy sparkling fantabulous arm-dance weapon into a dinosaur meme.

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For real, though, you guys. Let’s do our best to stay legal and not fuck up any investigations, any lawsuits, and, most importantly, let’s not put the current students or other survivors at risk.

Survivors are free to speak (or type, as it were) as much truth as possible about the hinge-bursting closeted Agape Staff through therapeutic (or hilariously gut-busting) dialog with each other.

But we can’t threaten people with violence, even when they are horrible, evil people. And we can’t harass people, even when they deserve SO much worse than a smattering of virtual ultimatums. It’s illegal.

You know what IS legal, though? Participating in a Facebook group conversation and expressing your distaste for staff members who like to air hump students in their underpants. It’s totally legal for you to have (and share) your opinion about that.

Threatening to break into a building? Nope. Don’t do it. Just don’t. That is illegal.

Also legal: Speaking out about your experience at Agape, or any other school that uses assault and/or abuse to force obedience. Speaking or writing about what you saw.. What you heard. Being a witness. Using the names of the adults who hurt you. Totally legal.

Survivors are justifiably outraged. And I will never know the degree to which this affects you. I am an outsider. I will never fully understand.

What I can do is try to help. And I will sometimes fail at that. And for those failures, I’m sorry.

And so here I am, my arms open, with a plea.

Please try this: instead of bottle-rocket launching your justifiably righteous anger, either generally, against the evildoers of the TTI industry, or against other survivors, let us continue encouraging each other to expend energy on activities that are useful, necessary, helpful, and just.

Nearly every Survivor in the TTI community is making a reasonable effort to do no harm. This demonstrates strength and badassery so incredible that there are no words to describe it.

There are a select few survivors, however, who are making no such effort.

A handful of survivors is making threats of violence against Agape-affiliated individuals.

Still others are attacking fellow survivors publicly, on social media, and privately, by making fraudulent calls to law enforcement and CPS in an effort to avenge some perceived slight they experienced from a Facebook thread.

Were you ever forced, at your school, to harm other students? That isn’t your fault.

But making a choice to harm another survivor now that you’re out from under the thumb of your jailers is abominable.

There is nothing ok about it.

While I sympathize, I cannot empathize. I will never fully understand a survivor’s experience.

I am a mother whose 8yo child with autism, adhd, sensory issues, and behavior complications is the ideal target for the TTI industry’s marketing machine.

If something ever happens to me, what happened to you at these loathsome institutions could very likely happen to my child. And this knowledge crushes heavy on my soul.

I want these institutions of abuse to be exposed and shuttered. And I’ll be goodgoddamned if imma watch you guys tear each other apart with your fraudulent CPS calls, your video nastygrams on TikTok, and whatever else you’re doing to keep yourself so bunched up that you feel compelled to target other survivors on purpose..

I am not a survivor. I can not, and will not, pass judgment on the experiences of a survivor.

Therefore, my final plea to those few individuals who choose to exact vengeance against other survivors is this:

Please stop.

Stand down.

Focus your righteous anger on serving justice to those who pretended to fix you while undertaking a massive effort to break you.

Do.

No.

Harm.

There are kids depending on you.

With Love,

Laura

No Stone Unturned Federated Church

nsuchurch.org

Photo of young MJ, born July 14, 2000. Died June 30, 2019 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound after enduring constant torment and abuse at Agape Boarding School.

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Laura Holt

I am an at-home mom in the Midwest United States. I have two amazing children, 8 and 5.