Posted on 10/25/2023 11:47:51 PM PDT by Morgana
n Idaho mother who says she trusted a now-shuttered Christian boarding school in Missouri to rehabilitate her son struggling with behavioral issues has filed a federal lawsuit alleging the abuse and brutal gang rape by staff members he suffered at the school caused his early death last year at the age of 29.
The mother, Kathleen Britt, said in court documents cited by The Springfield News-Leader that she sent her late son, Jason Britt, to the Agape Boarding School in Stockton, Missouri, in 2009 so he could experience a "safe, kind and Christian environment free from drugs and alcohol."
What Jason Britt experienced was something like "a concentration camp or torture colony cloaked in the guise of religion," the court documents state.
In an interview with The Kansas City Star when he was 27, Jason Britt told the publication that only months after he arrived at the school as a 16-year-old, several staff members held him face down on the floor while three members of the group took turns raping him with a broomstick.
"The best way I can describe it is like a group of savages going after their prey," he said. "I think it was just evil. I think they were trying to humiliate me in a way that I wouldn't recover from, that would break my spirit."
Prior to the school being shut down earlier this year, Jason Britt claimed students at the school would remain in danger if authorities did not act to address the abuse.
"If they don't take this seriously, a lot of kids are going to end up right when they turn into an adult being incredibly messed up psychologically," he told The Star. "It's been a battle for me for 10 years, and it's still a battle every day."
After removing her son from the school about a year after he began attending, Kathleen Britt said he turned to weightlifting and abused steroids to ensure he wouldn't experience abuse similar to what he suffered at the school again.
That move compounded his physical and mental health issues stemming from the abuse he suffered at the school, including PTSD.
Jason Britt died in February 2022 from organ failure triggered by his steroid use.
The lawsuit contends that even before Jason Britt left Idaho, Agape staffers showed up at his then-girlfriend's home in 2009 in the middle of the night and zip-tied his hands before shuttling him away to the airport. When he got to Agape, they shaved his head.
Among those named in the lawsuit are the school's former dean of students, Julio Sandoval, several staff members, and Cedar County Sheriff James "Jimbob" McCrary.
Kathleen Britt alleges that after she became aware of the abuse at the school, she alerted the sheriff in Cedar County, where the school is located, but officials failed to act, even when boys would run away from the school and complain to police.
More than a dozen other former students have already settled lawsuits alleging they were abused at the school. But when it closed in January this year, Bryan Clemensen, Agape's former director, said they closed due to a "lack of financial resources."
"For the past 30 years Agape Boarding School has provided over 6,000 boys with an opportunity to get their life back on track and toward a bright future," he said in a press release.
"Agape has made the decision to stop providing services to the boys in its care effective January 20, 2023. Agape's focus is on getting the boys who remain in the program safely transitioned to their parents or to foster care, other group homes or residential programs. Agape's decision to close is voluntary and solely due to the lack of financial resources to continue caring for the boys."
Representatives for the shuttered school did not immediately respond when contacted for comment by The Christian Post on Wednesday.
Rebecca Randles, Kathleen Britt's attorney, told KMBC that the abuse carried out by school staffers on students is some of the "worst things I've ever heard."
"[A]nd I've done sexual abuse cases for 30 years," Randles said. "His [Jason's] choices were self-destructive choices from the time he left Agape, and those choices led to his death."
Abuse Tracker
Daily guide to media coverage of clergy abuse worldwide . . . more than 100,000 articles blogged since 2006.
https://www.bishop-accountability.org/
I’ve yet to see such a lawsuit against a public school
Whatever else that boarding school was…. It wasn’t Christian
*IF*.
But that won’t stop you from posting hit pieces smearing non-Catholic Christians, will it?
Why don’t you post articles about all the abuse that goes on in the Catholic religion? Or is it only non-Catholics you want to bad mouth?
Ten bucks says it *never* happened.
IF. Any program that that parents desperately turn to for help with disruptive, rebellious, manipulative, violent or criminally troubled teens is going to have false allegations made against it and its employees even if run perfectly and entirely legally.
Pretty much every bratty kid out there has been taught they can make such allegations about their parents or any authority figure to get attention and relief from discipline and strict parenting- my friend’s daughter threatened to report her parents once during a temper tantrum but got called on it when her mom explained that it wasn’t the parents who would be taken away to jail, it was the kid who would be taken away to foster care and she wouldn’t get to take all her stuff or pets with her. That made her rethink her threat.
Also, any parents whose parenting has failed so miserably that they have to turn to outside help may have some mental issues themselves, especially if a program fails to change the kid’s attitude and they continue to use the drugs that often landed them there in the first place, or, in this case, years and years later the kid destroys himself. Grieving parents may. find it easier to blame others rather than themselves.
Caution is in order both ways- programs that deal with children are going to be attractive employment opportunities for pedophiles seeking unsupervised access to vulnerable kids, and kids whose past behavior may make them bigger targets because they are less believable. Pedophilia is real. And if the pervert is the sheriff? Yikes.
But the odds of troubled kids making such claims to get their way are very high, if not 100% guaranteed, so they cannot be accepted at face value without some corroborating evidence.
Were any of the alleged abusers ever charged or were any convicted of sexual abuse? (Surely he knew and relayed to his mom who the three staffers were, or described them if her allegations are true.)
Did he have any medical exams that would back up or confirm childhood injuries from the assault or assaults she claims her son suffered?
Were there any medical exams backing up similar complaints from any other people alleging abuse?
Of the 6000 boys who went through the program, how many had negative outcomes and how many had positive outcomes?
Did any have anything good to say about the place or the staff? Did reporters seek out former attendees to see what the general opinions were about their experiences there? If not, why not?
A Church Divided Over Leaders
1 Corinthians 10
New International Version
10 I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought.
11 My brothers and sisters, some from Chloe’s household have informed me that there are quarrels among you.
12 What I mean is this: One of you says, “I follow Paul”; another, “I follow Apollos”; another, “I follow Cephas”; still another, “I follow Christ.”
13 Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized in the name of Paul?
14 I thank God that I did not baptize any of you except Crispus and Gaius,
15 so no one can say that you were baptized in my name.
16 (Yes, I also baptized the household of Stephanas; beyond that, I don’t remember if I baptized anyone else.)
17 For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel—not with wisdom and eloquence, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.
Preach it MM
Ahh, that good ole Organized Religion. /s
A child was raped and MM calls it a “Hit piece”
How about you both care about the child here and not what religion he was?
Yeah, pay enough damages to victims of your abuse, and you will eventually lack financial resources.
“But the odds of troubled kids making such claims to get their way are very high, if not 100% guaranteed, so they cannot be accepted at face value without some corroborating evidence.”
So you are saying that troubled kids can’t be abused? They are not to be believed when they are abused? This group is so easy to abuse because the abusers will say “they are troubled kids, they are lying”. Someone has to believe them. Someone has to believe they can and are abused.
Go bad and read this article again. The boy was 16 when he was abused and 27 when he took his life over the abuse.
Do you believe him now that he’s an adult? Do you believe him now that the pain finally killed him?
LOL!
Sexual abuse needs to be exposed, and abusers punished, regardless of what religion they hide behind.
Even yours.
Welcome to the party, pal.
Thank you North Mountain
Notice how the rape was called “IF” so now a rape victim is not believed just because it happened at a Christian Boarding School?
Yea that is why people hate Christians too. One reason anyway.
Here’s how it works:
If the accused abuser is from a religious or political background that one likes or approves, the accusation must be carefully vetted ... allegations must be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt and the accused must be presumed innocent.
If the accused abuser is from a religious or political background that one DISlikes or DISapproves, the accusation must be instantly believed and the accused must be hanged without a trial.
Reporting on abuse by members of disapproved groups is “honestly revealing the uncomfortable truth”; reporting on abuse by members of approved groups is “a smear campaign”.
We also need to expose criminal conduct at government schools. Those, however, are “approved” by the Big Media.
I’m not saying that it doesn’t happen anywhere or in any denomination.
The problem is the constant Christian bashing and the smearing of the Name of Christ that it engenders.
And the lopsided focus on the allegations.
If I were worried about the “lopsided focus on the allegations” I’d be railing against accusations of abuse committed by supposed CATHOLICS.
We’re FINALLY starting to see the filth in other locations be revealed.
If only we could uncover the absolute sewer that I suspect lurks in government ...
Welcome to the party, pal.
Nobody was ever in denial that sexual abuse happened in other places besides the Catholic church.
As you all have been told before, many times, some by me and some by others, the issue isn’t that the abuse happened, per se. Abusers will abuse and short of monitoring everyone 24/7 will manage to do it.
The big issue with the abuse in Catholicism is the way the Catholic hierarchy dealt with it. That’s the biggest scandal.
The fact that secular authorities had to get involved for justice to be done is a huge black mark on the face of Catholicism. Knowing that the abuse was happening and shifting priests around from parish to parish and giving them a fresh supply of victims, shows that the hierarchy was only interested in protecting itself, not its parishioners.
Scripture is very clear about how to deal with sin in the assembly and the Catholic hierarchy totally dropped the ball on that, which is even more appalling as they claim to have written the Bible. They don’t even follow the Bible they claim to have given the world.
Here’s the rest, since I hate long posts.
The other issue is the casual attitude so many FRomans have towards the whole thing.
In other churches where exposed sexual abuse usually includes words like *arrested*, *Jail*, *charges*, *removed from pulpit*, etc, the overall Catholic attitude I have seen posted regularly here is *Once a priest, always a priest*, *The sacraments are valid regardless of what the priest was doing in the last 24 hours as long as his *intent is pure*. SERIOUSLY????
You’d consider a man who’s sexually abusing minors to have pure intent in over seeing the mass?
Additionally, laity is not supposed to touch the host, but the priest is supposed to lay it right on their tongue. Why? Because the laity might defile it. Like the hands of that priest who has been molesting kids are HOLY?????? I wonder how many Catholics would be willing to receive that host if they had known what those hands were doing in the previous days.
Probably the worst excuse making is the *They are sinners, just like the rest of us*. If they are sinning like the rest of you all, then you all need to find better people to hang out with, because sexual sin against children and minors is not the same kind of *sin like the rest of us* like lying, stealing, slander, gossip, etc is.
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