Missouri Bill Would Let Foster Children Be Placed in Unlicensed Christian Facilities Despite Past Abuse Allegations

Missouri lawmakers are considering a bill that would allow children in state foster care to be placed in unlicensed Christian residential facilities. Rep. Jamie Gragg, a Republican from Ozark, sponsored the measure. Supporters say it would expand placement options for children in state custody. Critics worry it could shelter bad actors, following years of abuse allegations at unlicensed boarding schools in Missouri.

Ashlea Belcher, a former forensic interviewer who now directs the Children’s Center of Southwest Missouri, told lawmakers last month about young people who attended two unlicensed Christian boarding schools, Agape Boarding School and Circle of Hope Girls’ Ranch. She said those young people described being restrained by peers while staff watched, having food withheld as punishment, and having meals rationed according to the color of their shirts. Belcher said the abuse was possible because the young people were isolated. “These were consistent, detailed disclosures given in a forensic setting, disclosures that aligned across interviews,” she said. “That is how systematic abuse reveals itself, and it happened in facilities that operated without meaningful, consistent external oversight.”

The bill comes five years after a Kansas City Star investigation substantiated abuse and neglect at multiple unlicensed Christian boarding schools in the state. Under the proposal, such facilities would not need a license from the Children’s Division, the arm of the Department of Social Services that oversees foster care placements and investigates child abuse. Instead, they could register with the Missouri Association of Christian Child Care Facilities, a faith-based group whose website says members “choose to be accredited by their Christian peers.” Current department policy differs. Although faith-based facilities are exempt from the state’s licensing requirements for children’s residential facilities, the department says children in state custody can only be placed in facilities “licensed and contracted with the division for residential treatment services.”

Lawmakers imposed new requirements on residential facilities in 2021, after widespread abuse allegations emerged. Those rules required facilities for the first time to submit limited information about their operations to the state and to conduct background checks of employees. Chad Puckett, president of the association and director of Show Me Christian Youth Home in La Monte, said the bill could help address “too many children and too few homes” in the state’s foster care system. “I believe in all hands on deck in a crisis situation, and that is what we intend to do,” Puckett told The Independent. “We are just tired of kids falling through the cracks. The foster care system is being overwhelmed.”

As written, the bill would create a new “Child Protection Board” to oversee facilities registered with the association. The board would include a member of the association’s leadership, five representatives of faith-based child care agencies, a teacher, a nutrition specialist, two foster parents, a guardian ad litem and two members of the Missouri House. Puckett expects the bill to be amended to reduce the number of faith-based representatives and add the director of the state’s social services department, along with a faith-based liaison designated by the department. Those changes would have to be approved by a committee. Puckett also said the Children’s Division would keep its ability to investigate abuse allegations in registered facilities and could respond to substantiated allegations by revoking a facility’s registration. “We want to weed out bad actors,” he said. “They exist in the private system. They exist in the public system. And I will join forces with anybody that wants to weed those out.”

Some lawmakers and child advocates questioned whether a board dominated by people tied to faith-based facilities could provide meaningful independent oversight. They pointed to abuse at boarding schools run by former association members, including Agape and Wings of Faith Academy, and asked why the association had not acted to stop it. Gragg said he did not want to be the person who presented a bill that reached the governor’s desk and was signed, placing children in harm’s way. “I would not want to be the man who presented a bill that made it to the governor’s desk and [got] signed that put children in harm’s way,” he said. Here, the question of independent oversight for children in state custody is tied directly to the bill’s board structure, a matter of protecting the vulnerable (Psalm 82:3).

Puckett argued that residential facilities in his association could not seek state licensure without being pressured to give up beliefs that “biological male and biological female are an important part of who we are,” and that a “biological male, married to a biological female, as the head of our household” is central to their faith. Colton Schrag, who spent years at Agape Boarding School in southwest Missouri, where dozens of former students have described experiencing abuse, testified at a 2021 committee hearing. Puckett said he was unaware of abuse at Agape when he removed the school’s director, Bryan Clemensen, from the association’s board. According to state business filings, Clemensen has not appeared on the association’s board of directors since 2007.

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