As always I hate using CNN to show everyone the news I want to share, but again they are the onlyones sharing these stories. We have to remember what Russia is doing to Ukraine and its people. Yes we have horrible problems at home but the Russians are targetting civilians and terrorizing the people just as the mass shooters are in the US but to a larger degree. This is a school, a college and not a military target. We must stop this and we could. Hugs
A pedagogical university in Kharkiv, Ukraine, was hit by a Russian missile strike. CNN’s Alex Marquardt walks through what remains at the scene of destruction.
Notice at about 3:11 the police detain / arrest and take a 13 year old girl with out telling anyone why including the child or her mother that was right there. Even when asked the police refused to talk to the mother. The police questioned this child with out a parent or lawyer present according to the mother. Police just rounding up kids wearing pride flags protesting for the right of control over their own body? Notice also that the police did not arrest, detain, nor remove anyone else or any adult. They took the kid wearing the pride flag. What does that tell you? Hugs
This is long but describes an incredible intertwining of the religious fanatic justices with the religious legal hate group arguing cases in front of them to restrict rights for others and expand them for religion. Things the court then did. Also when the court has refused to restrict protesting at abortion clinics they did severely limit demonstrations at their court establishing an exclusion zone that this religious group had headquarters with in. This is where the long game came in, the religious right just kept working their way in until they won. Hugs
A right-wing evangelical activist was caught on tape bragging that she prayed with Supreme Court justices. The court’s majority cited a legal brief that her group filed while overturning Roe v. Wade
Peggy Nienaber, left, the vice president of the Faith & Liberty evangelical group, prays outside the Supreme Court in 2009. Next to her is the Rev. Rob Schenck, who led the group’s predecessor organization, Faith and Action, for years before leaving in 2018.
Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images
At an evangelical victory party in front of the Supreme Court to celebrate the downfall of Roe v. Wade last week, a prominent Capitol Hill religious leader was caught on a hot mic making a bombshell claim: that she prays with sitting justices inside the high court. “We’re the only people who do that,” Peggy Nienaber said.
This disclosure was a serious matter on its own terms, but it also suggested a major conflict of interest. Nienaber’s ministry’s umbrella organization, Liberty Counsel, frequently brings lawsuits before the Supreme Court. In fact, the conservative majority in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, which ended nearly 50 years of federal abortion rights, cited an amicus brief authored by Liberty Counsel in its ruling.
In other words: Sitting Supreme Court justices have prayed together with evangelical leaders whose bosses were bringing cases and arguments before the high court.
Nienaber is Liberty Counsel’s executive director of DC Ministry, as well as the vice president of Faith & Liberty, whose ministry offices sit directly behind the Supreme Court. She spoke to a livestreamer who goes by Connie IRL, seemingly unaware she was being recorded. “You actually pray with the Supreme Court justices?” the livestreamer asked. “I do,” Nienaber said. “They will pray with us, those that like us to pray with them.” She did not specify which justices prayed with her, but added with a chortle, “Some of them don’t!” The livestreamer then asked if Nienaber ministered to the justices in their homes or at her office. Neither, she said. “We actually go in there.”
Nienaber intended her comments, broadcast on YouTube, to be “totally off the record,” she says in the clip. That’s likely because such an arrangement presents a problem for the Orlando-based Liberty Counsel, which not only weighed in on the Dobbs case as a friend of the court, but also litigated and won a 9-0 Supreme Court victory this May in a case centered on the public display of a religious flag.
The Supreme Court did not respond to a request for comment. Liberty Counsel’s founder, Mat Staver, strenuously denied that the in-person ministering to justices that Nienaber bragged about exists. “It’s entirely untrue,” Staver tells Rolling Stone. “There is just no way that has happened.” He adds: “She has prayer meetings for them, not with them.” Asked if he had an explanation for Nienaber’s direct comments to the contrary, Staver says, “I don’t.”
But the founder of the ministry, who surrendered its operations to Liberty Counsel in 2018, tells Rolling Stone that he hosted prayer sessions with conservative justices in their chambers from the late-1990s through when he left the group in the mid-2010s. Rob Schenck, who launched the ministry under the name Faith and Action in the Nation’s Capital, described how the organization forged ministry relationships with Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and the late Antonin Scalia, saying he would pray with them inside the high court. Nienaber was Schenk’s close associate in that era, and continued with the ministry after it came under the umbrella of Liberty Counsel.
Louis Virelli is a professor at Stetson University College of Law who wrote a book about Supreme Court recusals. He’s blunt in his assessment: “Praying with a group that filed an amicus brief with a court,” he says, “is a problem.”
Peggy Nienaber, right, at an event outside the Supreme Court led by Christian faith organizations on the eve of the Supreme Court arguments on President Obama’s health care legislation in 2012.
Jacquelyn Martin/AP Images
In the shadow of the high court, across the street from its chambers, sits a cluster of unassuming row houses known only to the initiated as “Ministry Row.” The strip is host to evangelical political groups that have spent the past several decades pushing Beltway conservatives to embrace the religious right’s political causes — and, most of all, reverse Roe v. Wade. The street view offers few clues as to what transpires behind the painted brick facades, save for a granite slab inscribed with the Ten Commandments planted in the grassy patch before a modest cream-colored Victorian with maroon trim.
The home serves as Faith & Liberty’s headquarters. The Ten Commandments statue had been placed there by Schenck, an evangelical minister famous for orchestrating high-profile anti-abortion stunts, such as shoving an aborted fetus in a plastic container into the face of former President Bill Clinton during the 1992 campaign. Schenck had opened the ministry in the 1990s as Faith and Action in the Nation’s Capital, a nonprofit dedicated to ending federal abortion rights. The organization operated on a “utopian ‘trickle-up’ theory” of influence: building access “higher and higher up within the government, until we got to the top, my ultimate target — members of Congress, U.S. senators, cabinet secretaries, Supreme Court justices — even presidents,” Schenck wrote in his 2018 autobiography.
The group established a strong foothold in both chambers of Congress and, eventually, the White House. But Faith and Action ultimately directed its energies toward the judicial branch. “There were no pro-life groups directly approaching the judges and justices, who shaped abortion law simply by their precedent-setting decisions,” Schenck wrote. “We knew we were stuck with members of the federal bench — they were appointed for life — so why not convert them while in office?” (Schenck has since reversed course: He is now a fierce critic of evangelical politicking and says Liberty Counsel assumed Faith and Action’s operations in 2018. He says he has no knowledge of the group’s inner workings after he left.)
At first, the high court regarded Faith and Action and its peer organizations as nuisances, according to Schenck. “Justice Thomas would say to me, ‘You know those groups outside? Are they crazy or are they good people?’” Schenck recalls in an interview with Rolling Stone. When Schenck first began his approach in 1994, prayer activities on the Supreme Court’s property was considered an act of demonstration, and therefore illegal. Eventually, Justices Alito, Scalia, and Thomas would embrace Schenck, he says, and pray with him in various corners of the high court’s grounds — including, occasionally, in their chambers. (Chief Justice John Roberts, meanwhile, remained more guarded and skeptical of such groups’ influence.)
To pray with the justices was to perform a sort of “spiritual conditioning,” Schenck explains. “The intention all along was to embolden the conservative justices by loaning them a kind of spiritual moral support — to give them an assurance that not only was there a large number of people behind them, but in fact, there was divine support for very strong and unapologetic opinions from them.” Prayer is a powerful communication tool in the evangelical tradition: The speaker assumes the mantle of the divine, and to disagree with an offered prayer is akin to sin. “It’s just not common to interrupt or challenge a prayer,” Schenck explains. “That’s not something a devout Supreme Court justice would ever consider doing.” That was true even for the devout Catholic justices, such as Scalia, who joined the evangelical Faith and Action members in prayer, Schenck says.
Sometimes the prayers would be general; other times, on specific subjects, such as ending abortion, according to Schenck. He says Faith and Action took assiduous care to avoid speaking blatantly about cases in the Supreme Court’s pipeline, discussing the political agenda only in broad strokes. Even so, under the time period Schenck describes, prayers with the justices occurred as Faith and Action signed onto several amicus briefs for landmark SCOTUS cases such as Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood, which ultimately upheld the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003.
Schenck walked away from his life on the Hill after receiving a late-career doctorate on the teachings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor who questioned the collaborative relationship between Adolf Hitler and 1930s German evangelicals. He drew parallels between the Republican Party and American evangelicalism, concerned that he’d weaponized worship to fuel a hate-filled agenda. No longer an anti-abortion activist, Schenck views his past efforts with regret. “Prayer is a positive exercise, until it’s politicized — and too many prayers that I and my colleagues offered in the presence of the justices were political prayers,” he explains. He also believes the work “contributed to the internal moral and ethical corruption of the justices at the court,” he says.
“I was sure, while we were doing it, it would be a positive contribution to our public life,” Schenck says. “It didn’t have the effect I thought it would. In some ways, it set the stage for the reversal of Roe, which I now think of as a social catastrophe.”
When Liberty Counsel absorbed Faith and Action in 2018, Peggy Nienaber, who had worked alongside Schenck since at least 2005, continued with the group. In a July 2021 conversation with Staver, Liberty Counsel’s founder, Nienaber described the group’s new incarnation as similar to Faith and Action’s mission. It’s “the ministry right here on Capitol Hill,” she said, devoted to “changing the hearts and minds of not only our elected officials, but the staffers all the way down.” Nienaber highlighted Faith & Liberty’s proximity to the court by pointing to the window of the conference room where the justices decide their cases. ”When you’re sitting in that conference room, you cannot miss those Ten Commandments,” she said. (Faith & Liberty sits so close to the Supreme Court, in fact, that it has been included in the “buffer zone” surrounding the high court, shut off to protesters and the public. There’s irony here, given that Liberty Counsel has for decades litigated to abolish buffer zones near abortion clinics.)
“There’s a lot of things that Faith & Liberty does — and that you do — that obviously we can’t put in an email, can’t put in a newsletter, can’t put in a press release,” Staver said to Nienaber during their chat, “because it’s private relationships that are spiritually transformative.” Nienaber’s social media accounts show her hobnobbing with high-profile Republicans such as Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) and former Vice President Mike Pence. She hung close to the confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018: She posted photographs from inside the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing room, as well as a screenshot of her invitation to Kavanaugh’s swearing-in ceremony.
Nienaber told Rolling Stone, “I do not socialize with the justices.” Yet she has posed for photos with Justices Kavanaugh and Thomas, calling the latter a “friend” in a Facebook post, praising him for “passing by our ministry center to attend church and always taking time to say hello.”
In addition to her proximity to conservative power players, Nienaber has championed the plaintiffs who have brought right-wing religious causes before the Supreme Court. Ahead of oral arguments, she prayed with Joe Kennedy, the football coach who recently succeeded in his suit to allow prayer during football games. Liberty Counsel also filed an amicus brief in that case, calling on the court to rule that the school district “engaged in viewpoint discrimination against Coach Kennedy’s private speech.”
Nienaber was recorded telling the livestreamer that she prayed with Supreme Court justices on June 27, the Monday after the high court issued the Dobbs ruling. She was at a celebration she helped organize with Sean Feucht, a prominent Christian-worship musician. Nienaber identifies herself only as “Peggy” in the footage, but she references the ministry she runs behind the court and its 850-pound replica of the Ten Commandments. For most of the interview, Nienaber is not on camera. But when the video pans on her briefly, she can be seen wearing the same dress and necklace she has on in a selfie with Feucht posted to Faith & Liberty’s website.
Last week, Rolling Stone spoke to Patty Bills, the director of constituency affairs at Faith & Liberty. Bills did not want to discuss Faith & Liberty’s ministry practices, citing privacy concerns. Bills would not, however, deny that Faith & Liberty ministers to Supreme Court justices. “I never said we didn’t — I just said we provide privacy,” she said.
Staver, in denying that members of Faith & Liberty prayed with Supreme Court justices, says that such prayers would have been inappropriate, especially given Liberty Counsel’s litigation efforts. “That’s why we wouldn’t do that,” he says. “And especially on cases that are pending before the Supreme Court, we would make a very clear firewall. We just would never do something like that.”
In a written statement to Rolling Stone, Nienaber says of her hot-mic comments: “I do not recall making such a statement. I listened to the livestream, and I did not hear such a statement.” She adds that Covid restrictions have limited public access to the Supreme Court: “The public has not been allowed access, and I am no different.” When she has had access to public areas of the court, she says, “I will generally silently pray for the justices, their staff, and the Court.”
But after this story was published, Nienaber acknowledged her remarks and conceded she has prayed personally with Supreme Court justices. Despite speaking in the present tense on the livestream, Nienaber asserted, “My comment was referring to past history and not practice of the past several years.” Nienaber added: “During most of the history up to early 2020, I met with many people who wanted or needed prayer. Since early 2020, access to the Supreme Court has been restricted due to COVID. It has been many years since I prayed with a Justice.”
Liberty Counsel was founded in 1989 by Staver. The organization is an uncommon hybrid of religious ministry and legal practice, dedicated to “advancing religious freedom, the sanctity of human life and the family through strategic litigation.” Staver is the organization’s senior pastor as well as its top litigator. This mix of law and religion is central to Staver’s career; he previously served as dean of the law school at Liberty University, founded by the televangelist Jerry Falwell.
Staver has argued numerous cases in front of the Supreme Court. He started in 1994 in a case that struck a blow against protest-limiting buffer zones near abortion clinics. In the court’s most recent term, Staver argued and won a 9-0 judgment in Shurtleff v. Boston, a case in which the court ruled a Christian flag couldn’t be excluded from a public flagpole that displayed a rotating assortment of secular flags.
Staver also wrote an amicus brief in the Dobbs case that purports to tie abortion and birth control to eugenics. Calling Roe “the low watermark in this Court’s history,” it argued that Dobbs was ”an ideal vehicle for the Court to finally overrule Roe v. Wade and its progeny, which have constitutionalized eugenic abortions as a fundamental right.”
In the Dobbs majority opinion written by Justice Alito, he cited this brief to impugn the motives of pro-abortion-rights advocates, arguing that “some such supporters have been motivated by a desire to suppress the size of the African American population,” adding, “it is beyond dispute that Roe has had that demographic effect,” because “a highly disproportionate percentage of aborted fetuses are Black.”
When Roe v. Wade was reversed, Staver was triumphant: “I have dedicated my life to defend life and overturn the bloody decisions of Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey,” he wrote. “This global earthquake will impact the world.”
Prayer unto itself in no way presents a conflict of interest for the justices, says Russell Wheeler, a visiting fellow of governance studies at the Brookings Institution, not even with a group like Faith & Liberty that has business before the court. Justices are allowed to visit there with whomever they’d like in their private chambers, and have socialized with interested parties throughout the court’s history. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, for example, routinely played cards with the high court’s magistrates, and Scalia went duck hunting with former Vice President Dick Cheney. What would amount to an ethical concern would be if they’re discussing those cases as they pray — “or if the prayer sessions would influence how justices rule in a particular case,” says Adam Winkler, a Supreme Court expert at the University of California Los Angeles.
But even among legal experts troubled by the court’s ties, they acknowledge there are few remedies to address ethical conflicts. A federal statute governs when judges and justices should step away from cases, but the Constitution leaves questions of partiality to the justices themselves. Their general unwillingness to step aside isn’t necessarily a bad thing, Virelli, the Stetson law professor, says: When justices recuse themselves from a case, no one replaces them, a scenario that can create more problems than it solves. “The court changes shape,” he explains. “That makes the decision to recuse difficult.”
That the justices are their own keepers in regard to those rules creates complications, however, says Steve Vladeck, a constitutional-law expert at the University of Texas Law School. The relationship between Faith & Liberty and Liberty Counsel, as described by Rolling Stone, “could make a reasonable observer worry about the appearance of partiality,” he says. But the concerns the scenario raised shouldn’t be about recusal. “What that really reveals is how problematic it is that there isn’t an objective mechanism to resolve these sorts of questions.”
For Winkler, the greater concern is not prayers, but the “religious-themed” decisions he’s seen come down from the high court this term, pointing to not only the Roe reversal but also opinions that permit unchecked free exercise of First Amendment rights. “The problematic aspect isn’t whether they’re praying,” Winkler says, “but that several justices seem committed to reading their religion into the Constitution.”
Let’s just get one thing straight: there are 5 rogue SCOTUS justices and 1 more not too far behind them. They are going to take power away from state courts next year and that will be the end of democracy. And nothing is going to be done about it. So plan accordingly.
Distractions are working but more importantly the gravity of the situation either hasn’t hit with the right people or they don’t care/are in on it (Manchinema).
In this brilliant new rant for MeidasTouch, Texas Paul breaks down how GOP governors and leaders would make the the worst business leaders and CEOs. Texas Paul uses governors like Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis as examples and asks us to imagine a CEO who instead of solving the business issues facing the company, blamed the corporate problems on the LGBTQ community or immigrants instead of solving the problems before them and how quickly they would get fired. Texas Paul concludes by discussing the importance of competent leadership so that government can function for the people. It’s time to get rid of these incompetent Republican leaders.
CNBC’s Kate Rogers joins Shep Smith to report the Great Salt Lake in Utah is shrinking, and concerns it could be the equivalent of an environmental nuclear bomb.
Hello Everyone. I have not been able to face comments and using my reasoning part of my brain today after I read that story of the abused kids. But let me backtrack a few days.
My back has been really bad since Friday and I didn’t do anything to hurt it more, it is just gotten to a point where my medication is not covering the damage that keeps growing in my spine and the increasing muscle spasms. The steroid injections are / have worn off. I have been trying to walk (and Ron goes with me and then when I stop at home he keeps walking) in the morning around phase 1 of our development.
So far on days I can I have worked myself up to this route. We leave our home at 39 and walk to Jackson, then down to Geronimo to No Name, turn up Sam Houston, then down Jim Bowie back to No Name, going up to Church Drive, head back to Andrew Jackson to our home. Here is the entire park, which after making sure I am in the house Ron goes further into get his exercise. The map is not quite accurate as the church is directly behind our home.
I have better more detailed maps but this was the first one in my saved files that came up. So as I said Ron goes on after he makes sure I am in the house. So on Friday my back total went in to super bitch mode from normal bitch mode, and I was in extreme pain. My back has been really bad since I tried to carry those bags of soda three months ago. And so as the pain built higher and higher I needed more medication and my thinking got harder and harder. So I missed the comments.
Then I was wakened on Saturday morning by my Apple watch going off on my wrist crazy with a big red screen which had a heart on it saying my heart rate was dangerous at a sustained 133 and had been up and down all night. Ron said I had been upset in my sleep and rather active as I get when I am having a flashback nightmare.
So Saturday I felt like crap, Ron wouldn’t let me walk but we worked at getting my heart rate down which we did. But I was not feeling up to handling much. Sunday I was feeling better and during / after the Sunday News Shows I was answering comments and doing posts. Then came today where the vortex found me.
The Vortex. Some of the long time readers know what the vortex is for me and how scary it can be. The vortex is the thing that takes me to the void, the place my memories suck me into and take me that I struggle to leave, mostly losing for long period of time, sometimes weeks or more. It takes over my mind and body, I can not function, I cannot deal with life, I can not shut off my mind or the memories that are on a constant loop complete with all the feelings of pain / anger / despair & hopelessness / and deep frustrations. All the emotions and feelings that I felt when the bad stuff was happening to me as I relive it all over and over and over … The vortex in my mind is a huge tornado that catches me and tries to suck me in, I can feel / hear it coming and I am terrified of the place it will take me if it can …
Sorry had to take a break.
So with therapy and help I have learned to form in my mind handles to grab onto when the vortex starts to draw me in. Those handles can save me depending on how bad the shock / memories are in my mind. One of those handles was Randy. Back in 2014 when I started self harming again Randy my wonderful online brother who while working 12 hour shifts would watch my posts carefully for any signs of distress and either call me or take calls and talk to me for hours trying to fight off the vortex / memories. He lost a lot of sleep back in those years, but he kept me from a lot of new scars and possible suicide. I admire and love him far more than I can ever say.
That was when Ron set up the candle making stuff in my bedroom and I would stay in the bedroom for weeks make candles day and night. I never knew until later that Ron would box them up and store them because the doctor had told him to keep me focused on making the candles. Our bedroom has a bathroom and Ron would bring me stuff to eat and I just stayed in there making candles and sleeping. It was a dark time in my life, I was desperate to avoid / stop the memories.
So I have learned to develop handles to grab onto, to hold my mind / emotions from being sucked into the vortex. That is what I used today. Ron seen my distress after I read that article and he knew I was upset and struggling. So we went for our morning walk even though he was worried about my heart rate. James set my phone to contact his phone if my heart rate gets too crazy. After our walk I forced myself to stay busy which helps, I helped Ron with our 4th of July lunch which was typical hamburgers, hot dogs, and french fries. I even managed to eat well which is hard for me to do when the vortex takes me too far into the void. Then all day I immersed myself in videos and laundry. Ron asked me to lay down for a while with him as I was getting a bit manic and over wrought. I tried but it was a no go and making things worse for me so I got up.
Between loads of laundry I watched videos and read news sites while posting like there was a reward for the most posts. I had to do that to keep my mind focused on anything but the vortex and the kids I read about this morning. I watched, read, posted with all my mind, and when I went to deal with the laundry I kept my computer headphones on or my phone earbuds in. Ron understood. But by about 4 PM after even two early sets of medications my back gave out entirely. I could hardly walk yet still felt driven to move or I would jump out of my skin. So Ron seeing I was still agitated and getting worse tried to distract me, tried to keep my mind on computer stuff, even recommended I take one of the mood stabilizer meds I hate so much. I don’t react well on them, I have had several doctors try to put me on them. Now Valium is called Diazepam and it is one the doctors have tried to put me on and I refuse to let any doctor prescribe them to me. I disassociate while on them.
The problem is they make me slow down to where I can not function. Now as an adult everything moves too fast when I am on them. It is like I am in a deep fog, moving so slow like I am wading through chest high water, and everyone is talking too fast for me to understand or deal with. I hate it, I am like in super slow motion while the world seems on speed.
In my childhood I was put on heavy doses of Valium to keep me compliant with my abuse because the adoptive parents insisted and the doctors complied, no one looked into the medical history of abuse I had, the broken bones or other things. I would be given the first dose in the morning, go to school and after an hour or two I would either fall asleep at my desk or tell the teacher I needed to lay down. There was a cot setup behind the library shelves where I would go and sleep, at lunch time I would be wakened if still sleeping and taken to lunch then be given my pills by a teacher after eating, and after a hour or two I would go back to lay down behind the shelves. I spent most of my 2rd to 6th grade school years that way. I missed so much schooling. It was accepted but I still don’t know why. Only one person tried to get me to tell them what was going on at home and help me. He even befriend my adoptive parents to do as much for me as he could. But in those days a school employee did not have the authority they do now. On days the police picked me up to take me the ordered medical people I wouldn’t be given my pills so I would be awake and active, even hyperactive so they wouldn’t suspect abuse or blame the bruises on normal hyperactive child behavior. But my mind was still confused and even with what I could hazily remember I knew not to tell. Oh shit, Crap.
Sorry see I told you about the vortex, it sucks you in and keeps your mind and memories lock in the past, in the bad times. I only realized where I was in my mind and what I was writing when I got up to get another soda. Damn, it is insidious. I don’t want to think of those days, I don’t want to go back there, I did not want to write about it. Yet I did because that is where my mind is. Shit, I have to reread this to see where I was in my writing on what I wanted to say. The meds are starting to take effect and things are starting to move faster than I can deal / function with them.
So I have kept myself busy and as focused as possible, and another day has gone by without me answering the comments. Sorry I like the comments, but when I am as upset as I have been I just can not focus enough to reply to them, if I try to do them my mind wanders too much. But now with my mind slowing down I am going to try to get to some of the older ones.
Sorry to bring everyone down on a holiday weekend. I hope everyone has had a great 4th of July and remembers all the great things in their life. I wanted to tell everyone something else but I can not remember what it is. Hugs and loves. Scottie
Sorry but I just realized at least 2 hours have gone by since I wrote this and proofread it. I have been sitting here at my desk staring at my other monitor and it just went off. I have no idea what it was showing let me look. Oh it is something I want to post. I have to watch it again, I don’t remember much of it. Hugs
The U.K. Embassy in Washington, D.C., shared a playlist to commemorate the United States’s Independence Day on Monday, including only one song on repeat by the band Player: “Baby Come Back.”
“Baby come back, any kind of fool could see/There was something in everything about you/Baby come back, you can blame it all on me/I was wrong and I just can’t live without you,” Player sings in its iconic 1977 song.
The playlist, called “Fourth of July,” features a photo of Jonathan Groff portraying King George III in “Hamilton,” with a caption underneath reading “You’ll be back” in reference to a song from the musical.
Both the song and photo choices are a cheeky nod to the relationship that England had with its American colonies, which declared their independence from the British in July 1776. King George III, then the ruler of England, vehemently opposed the move and oversaw his country’s failed fight to retain the colonies in the Revolutionary War.
U.K. Ambassador to the U.S. Karen Pierce also joked in a tweet on Monday that “Without the UK, none of this would have been possible. You’re welcome.”
It is not the first time that the British embassy has cheekily nodded to the two countries’ former relationship on the Fourth of July.
The embassy posted a tweet on July 4 in 2017 that read “Being British in America today. #FourthOfJuly” and included a GIF of actress Emma Watson looking uncomfortable while trying to smile.
This is horrifying, scary, and what is in the future for Florida and the country if the religiousnationalist get their way. Look this is long, it is terrifying, I am really struggling after reading this, I am crying, having trouble breathing, several times my pulse has skyrocket according to my apple watch. I had to pause several times but that seemed to make it worse, so I just finished reading it. But please read what you can. Each kids story is a real defenseless person who was tortured and sadistically abused in the name of religion and profit. Local authorities cooperated with it because it was religion and they were doing the work of god. Too many memories in my head right now. I went to throw up. Damn it we can not let the country become this. We just can not. I won’t be highlighting or color changing any of it, it is all too important and I just can not face reading it again, it is too much for me and too much in my head. I just took a short walk but it did not help. This happened and it must not happen anymore, all in the name of faith, god, and profit. Power for the sake of having power over others, abusing others simply because you can and it makes you feel good. Been there on the receiving end of that, lived that in my life. Damn it! Hugs
** Seriously I have calmed down some but be in a safe mindset if you read this. It will tear you up even if you are prepared, if you are not it will hurt you bad. Best Wishes and Hugs. **
Former residents of Agapé Boarding School opened up to The Daily Beast about claims of systematic abuse as they demand the state immediately shut down the Baptist facility.
Kate Briquelet
Senior Reporter
Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast
Listen to article40 minutes
In southwest Missouri, a Baptist compound for troubled teen boys promises redemption on its bucolic 200-acre campus. Behind the facility’s arched gate, children will find a swimming pool, sports fields, and ranch for horses and exotic animals. Agapé Boarding School “is truly a place where miracles happen,” one piano-filled commercial boasts.
“At Agapé, we lovingly, patiently, and biblically teach your child the importance of submission to authority and the joys of being an obedient law-abiding citizen,” a soft-spoken voiceover actor says while images of smiling teenagers flash across the screen. “Mom and Dad, we want to support you in your effort to rescue your son from himself.”
But former students interviewed by The Daily Beast say the school was far from heavenly. Instead, they encountered a climate more like Lord of the Flies, where staff were given free rein to restrain and beat students, and where some kids were emotionally and sexually abused. They claim Agapé has functioned like a “cult” and “Christian torture compound” for decades, allowing adults to manhandle teenagers and withhold food, water, and proper clothing—apparently without most parents ever knowing.
Christian School Accused of Depriving Girls of Food Shutters
‘CLOSED FOR GOOD’
Pilar Melendez
According to these alumni, the school banned children from speaking to each other without adults present, censored their letters home, destroyed photographs showing anything other than happy faces, and admonished kids that if they ran away, locals with guns would hunt them down. As part of a “buddy” system, older students had authority to mete out seemingly arbitrary punishments to new students assigned to them.
Now they’ve joined a chorus of voices—including parents, lawmakers, and even heiress and boarding-school abuse activist Paris Hilton—demanding the state of Missouri shut down Agapé for good. “How much more do you need to see[?] … This needs to end!” Hilton tweeted to Missouri’s attorney general and governor on June 21.
Since last year, 19 former students have filed lawsuits against the school, alleging physical and emotional abuse, and in some cases, sexual abuse by staff and classmates.
Such accusations led to the arrest of the school’s ex-doctor, David Smock, who faces child molestation charges related to two alleged victims. He has pleaded not guilty. At a March hearing, one 16-year-old testified that Smock began abusing him when he was 13 and grooming him when he was 9 or 10, according to The Kansas City Star, which has extensively investigated claims against Agapé.
David Smock
Boone County Sheriff’s Office
Meanwhile, five staffers—including Agapé’s medical coordinator—are facing assault charges in Cedar County following an investigation by the Missouri State Highway Patrol and state attorney general. Three of those employees, the Star revealed, still work at the school, and two list Smock’s mansion as their address.
Advocates say these charges don’t go far enough, and that more Agapé staff should have been prosecuted. Cedar County Prosecuting Attorney Ty Gaither had requested assistance from Attorney General Eric Schmitt’s office, which recommended 22 staffers face a total of 65 charges. But last fall, Schmitt wrote Governor Mike Parson asking to be taken off the case, saying that Gaither “has indicated that he does not intend to seek justice for all of the 36 children who were allegedly victimized by 22 members of the Agapé Boarding School staff.” (Gaither did not return messages by press time.)
“I would rather have been dead than wake up and face more abuse.”
In a statement to The Daily Beast, a lawyer for Agapé Boarding School denied the accusations against the school, calling them “sensational.”
“For the past 30 years Agapé has provided over 6,000 boys with an opportunity to get their life back on track and toward a bright future,” Kansas City attorney John Schultz said. “Along with 24/7 supervision Agapé provides accredited academics, vocational training, mentoring, sports and many activities the boys enjoy. We are disappointed to learn of the sensational allegations that some of our former boys are making now—for the first time.
“We have read many specific allegations that we know could not have happened given the 24/7 supervision that extends to the sleeping quarter, shower bays, classroom, dining hall and all outdoor activities. We monitor the boys 24/7 for their own safety and the safety of every other boy here. We intend to file a response to these lawsuits, denying the allegations and look forward to a trial where evidence can be presented to refute these allegations.”
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Jill Toyoshiba/Kansas City Star/Tribune News Service via Getty
The school, which reportedly charges $48,000 a year in tuition, does not appear to have commented publicly about the accusations before. According to the Star, in fall of 2020, Agapé published a letter on its website that appeared to address the claims and said, “Sometimes we make mistakes, but our hearts are in the right place.”
“Most boys flourish here and go on to a great future,” the post read, “while a small number of other boys are just not the right fit and get bitter for being brought here.”
Robert Bucklin, one alumnus fighting to close Agapé, says he spoke to the FBI in late April about what he’d witnessed at the facility, but it’s unclear whether the feds are building a case. “They need to go in there and rescue the boys and worry about the investigation later,” Bucklin said. “These boys are in danger.”
In June, Bucklin shared a video from the late 1990s on Twitter that showed a staff member—identified by students as then-principal Brother Frank Burton—forcing a child in a bathrobe to run around a sand volleyball court and kicking him from behind. (Burton did not return messages left by The Daily Beast.)
“What the fuck is it going to take? Especially after seeing that video, what else is it going to take?” Bucklin said. “For bodies to stop dropping there?”
Last year, Missouri lawmakers passed legislation that gives the state more oversight over unlicensed religious boarding schools, including the ability to petition a court to close them if there are health and safety concerns.
Democratic Rep. Keri Ingle, who sponsored the bill, believes the state is waiting for a criminal conviction or official finding of child abuse from the Missouri Department of Social Services (DSS) before it files for an injunction to shutter the school.
“I can’t empathize with the survivors enough,” Ingle told The Daily Beast. “We’re so close and yet so far from getting justice for them.”
“It sounds like hyperbole,” Ingle added of the abuse claims. “It sounds like a Stephen King novel, and it’s not. It’s something that’s been happening to kids in this state and across the country for decades, and they’re using the name of God to justify it.”
The Daily Beast spoke to former students who say their experiences at Agapé left them with emotional scars and unprepared for life outside its walls. Some, including Bucklin, have attempted suicide. One former student, Joe Barnett of Kansas, killed himself and cited the school in a suicide note, his wife Michelle told The Daily Beast. He was 33 when he died in 2020 and left behind three young boys.
“The things they did to my husband are just unspeakable,” Michelle said. “Somebody with a known mental illness should never at the age of 12 be sent to a place where you cannot talk to any of your peers for a year. That alone, besides the beatings they got, being told he just needed to pray harder… They really messed him up.”
The effort to stop Agapé could depend on one California mother, who appears to be one of the only parents speaking out. Nicole Fernandes told The Daily Beast she was a single mom and desperate for therapy for her son, Corey, when she sent him to the school in February 2019.
Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty/Handout
Corey, then 14 and diagnosed with disorders including autism and Tourette syndrome, was spiraling after the death of his father. She’d applied to other residential therapy programs, she says, until an Agapé recruiter caught wind of her efforts and began selling her on the school. The broker claimed the boarding school had therapy with horses and a beautiful, serene campus. “As a mom, I just want to clearly state this is the hardest decision you have to make in your life. I was freshly grieving a loss, and they took full advantage,” Fernandes told The Daily Beast.
Fernandes tried to call Corey every other week but staff wouldn’t allow her to speak to him. About 4.5 months later, she and other parents visited the campus, where Fernandes alleges staff warned them: “Your children are the most manipulative group of children we’ve ever seen. They’re gonna come in here today and they’re going to tell you nothing but lies. Don’t believe them, because you’ll be failing your child if you take them out of the program.”
Hours later, when they brought out Corey, she didn’t recognize her son until he grabbed her shoulder and said, “Mom!” She cried when they reunited. “I did not recognize him whatsoever,” Fernandes said, adding that he had bags under his eyes and had lost weight, his clothes were filthy, and he was wearing size 12 or 13 rain boots that didn’t belong to him. Staff, she claims, gave his expensive Stephen Curry basketball shoes to another student.
Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty/Handout
“He can’t forget the blood-curdling screams emanating from the ‘Padded Palace,’ a carpet-covered room where staff allegedly threw kids around like ragdolls.”
She wonders whether her son was treated differently because of his visible special needs and claims that the school didn’t allow her son to get therapy, see a doctor, or take proper medications.
Fernandes said the school repeatedly denied her and other parents a tour of the facility. “The boys finally told us, ‘They won’t take you because they’re disgusting. There’s no stalls in the bathroom. There’s disgusting things all over the beds and the floor.’”
Three months later, after the school continued to deny her contact with her son, Fernandes pulled Corey from the school. When she collected him, she says, “He was really skinny, the sweats I had sent him with were just hanging off of him. He looked like he was straight from a concentration camp.”
Corey is still haunted by his experience at Agapé, talks about the school every day, and has nightmares about it, Fernandes said. “Agapé has caused nothing but damage for my son and my family,” she said.
Fernandes, who filed a lawsuit against Agapé this month, said she’s doing a forensic interview with local police, who she believes will relay the information to DSS in Missouri.
“He’s my baby. I didn’t send him away to be raised by someone else. I sent him away to get the help that he deserves,” she said, tearing up. “It affects us every single freaking day.”
“I just can’t imagine all the kids that are still stuck there right now. That’s why we’re speaking out. Not really for ourselves but for the kids that are still there.”
Robert Bucklin, who arrived at Agapé at age 13 in 2007, wonders whether political connections have kept the school running. In January, he contacted a state agency that regulates lawyers to complain about Gaither’s handling of Agapé cases. (This year,theSpringfield News-Leaderconfirmed there’s an open ethics investigation against the attorney, but Gaither declined to comment.)
Bucklin has raised questions about Gaither’s comments in the press that he once saw Dr. Smock—who was Agapé’s physician but ran his own medical office—to get a flu shot and thus referred Smock’s criminal case to another area prosecutor.
Cedar County Deputy Robert Graves, a former Agapé employee, is married to a daughter of Agapé’s late founder James Clemensen. According to the Star, Graves’ daughter was a sheriff’s dispatcher in 2018 and 2019. Former dean of students Julio Sandoval has worked shifts at the county jail and his son is a corrections officer, the sheriff’s office has said.
“Victims were coming forward before 2020, but no one listened to them,” Bucklin told The Daily Beast. “You had a staff member and his wife calling DSS, calling the state, asking them to look at Agapé. Nobody did.”
Clemensen, a former California Highway Patrol officer, and his wife Kathy founded Agapé in Washington state in 1990. They relocated to Missouri six years later, after the feds charged him with removing asbestos-containing materials from steam pipes and burying it on school property. Court records show that under a plea agreement, Clemensen pleaded guilty to one of three violations of the Toxic Substances Control Act, received a $1,500 fine, and was sentenced to three years of probation. (One former student told The Star that kids stripped the hazardous materials.)
Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty/Screenshot
In 2002, Clemenson told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that he brought his school to Missouri “because of its lack of regulation” and would leave if required to get a license.
Two years later, an 18-year-old Agapé student was charged with three counts of sodomy after abusing another student. He was convicted and sentenced to probation. “Where were the authorities when that happened?” Bucklin said. “They failed us then and they’re failing us now. They gave these monsters a safe haven.”
“Kids would faint from the heat, and they would just splash water on them and drag them around still be like, ‘Did I tell you you could faint?’”
The powers that be began to listen to Agapé alumni after the 2020 closure of nearby Circle of Hope Girls’ Ranch, which was founded by former Agapé employees Boyd and Stephanie Householder. They now await trial on a litany of child abuse and neglect charges and face a lawsuit from their own daughter, Amanda. “My dad just really thrived there because he could do whatever he wanted,” Amanda told The Daily Beast. “I don’t think Circle of Hope would have turned out the way it did if it wasn’t for Agapé.”
From Bucklin’s perspective, “Jesus would be ashamed of” Agapé staff, “who portray themselves to be Christians.”
On some occasions, Bucklin said, up to five staff member would restrain him, twisting his arms and legs, kicking his ribs, and jabbing his pressure points. One staffer allegedly attacked him as he got a haircut, wrapping the cord of the clippers around his neck until other students intervened. “I tried killing myself multiple times,” Bucklin said. “I would rather have been dead than wake up and face more abuse.”
Bucklin said he can’t forget the blood-curdling screams emanating from the “Padded Palace,” a carpet-covered room where staff allegedly threw kids around like ragdolls. Now in nursing school and working in a hospital, he says restraints are rarely used—nothing like at Agapé, where a kid could be confined for looking at a staffer the wrong way.
“I remember this guy in the dorm rolled a fake joint and these staff members restrained him for hours,” Bucklin said. “He came back into the dorm, his shirt was torn apart, he had blood everywhere all over him, his face was black and blue. And that happened constantly. I think the longest restraint when I was there was 9 hours. They literally had to do a shift change because the staff was getting tired. That guy couldn’t walk for days.”
Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty/Handout
Bucklin said that a fellow student sexually abused him, but when he reported it to the dean of students, no one took action. He claims his family wasn’t notified, and the student didn’t face consequences. “You learned how to survive every day,” Bucklin said. “We learned how to talk without moving our lips because you weren’t allowed to talk. You could get restrained for talking.”
James Clidence, a pastor who worked at Agapé from 2012 to 2015, told The Daily Beast his wife had called police and child protective services multiple times but no one seemed to investigate what they considered abuse at the school.
“One former student, Joe Barnett of Kansas, killed himself and cited the school in a suicide note.”
Clidence claims he was fired after refusing to sign a nondisclosure agreement, and after he was reprimanded for not punishing kids. The emphasis on beatings bothered him, as did “brown town” which was reserved for unruly or unfavored students. Under that sanction, kids would eat brown food for every meal, including cereal for breakfast and refried burritos for lunch and dinner. “They would probably be eating a total of around 450 to 550 calories in a day. These are teen boys. And then they do physical labor, exercise, exercise, exercise all day,” Clidence said.
“I saw some kids lose a very unhealthy amount of weight while we were there. That’s one of the things we did call the state about.”
Clidence said he witnessed staff slam students to the ground, while he opted for de-escalation techniques. “Some of these people should not have been within 10 feet of a kid, in my opinion,” he said. “They didn’t know how to deal with children, especially kids who were acting out.”
Like some students, Clidence calls the school a “cult,” one where staff were paid poverty wages while the Clemensens drove Range Rovers and collected a menagerie of exotic animals, including zebras who died in the Missouri weather. He said staff lived on campus and that their wives were required to volunteer at school facilities. As a thank you, the school would pay the husband about $132 for the wife’s work. Clidence’s wife, however, clashed with the Clemensens so he eventually stopped receiving that money.
While the school advertised counseling, Clidence says, the only counselor was a pastor who advised kids to let Jesus control their lives. “They are weaning kids off medication,” he said. “So the whole goal was to get these kids off the meds and get Jesus in them and then they would act better, so that I don’t know if they really believed in mental illness.”
“Everything was completely based on spiritual manipulation. If you didn’t like something, it’s because you weren’t right with God.”
James Griffey was 15 when his family sent him to Agapé. It was 1998, and the school housed about 140 kids in military-style bunks, espoused a Christian curriculum with self-taught educational packets, and forced the children to work long days hauling armfuls of rocks from point A to point B—a discipline mentioned by multiple former students.
Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty/Handout
On his first night, Griffey says, he learned how dangerous Agapé could be. He was preparing for bed in the dorms when he spoke to another student, which was against the rules. “I told you, you can’t talk to anybody! Get down and do push-ups,” Griffey’s 17-year-old “buddy” commanded. The buddy ordered Griffey to do 25 reps, then demanded 25 more when he pleaded that he couldn’t. “In their mind, it’s not that I can’t do it, it’s that I’m not doing them,” Griffey recalled.
The buddy escorted Griffey to a twentysomething staff member, who took over. After the word “gosh” twice slipped from Griffey’s mouth as his arms collapsed beneath him, the chaperone screamed in his face, “Don’t use my God’s name in vain, do more push-ups!” He says the man pounced on him and began punching him in the face as students watched from their beds.
“Eventually three staff members came in and grabbed him off me,” Griffey continued, adding that no one apologized or took a report of the incident.
Griffey wouldn’t see his family, who lived in California, for two years. “I was just in such a dazed and confused state of mind,” Griffey told The Daily Beast. “I kept thinking that my family was going to come through the door any minute now, to come take me home, and be like, ‘Oh surprise, joke’s on you! I hope you learned your lesson.’”
“Kids got hurt all the time, and we were never allowed to tell people.”
“I just remember writing home, asking my grandma, ‘Hey, I love you, I miss you, I realize I made a mistake with how I treated everyone. I learned my lesson. How long am I here for? Am I here till I graduate?’” Griffey said. “I was just crying out, give me some kind of sense of what’s happening.” Griffey says his family wouldn’t learn how tyrannical the school could be until years after he left.
Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty/Handout
He completely conformed to the Agapé system to survive and briefly joined the staff after graduation. But he quit after higher-ups complained he didn’t punish kids enough. “It really kind of effed with my brain a lot,” Griffey said. “I really adapted and let them brainwash me into everything, believing all the stuff they teach. I had no other option.”
New students or those who misbehaved were ordered to spend their days in “boot camp,” where, according to Griffey, “They send you just to break your spirit.” That consisted of “hours of working out whether it was freezing and snowing outside or 100-plus degrees outside” at a volleyball court area called “the sandpit,” or performing unpaid manual labor on the property, he said.
After these workouts, Griffey said, staff made kids lie on their backs with arms and legs in the air and repeatedly scream, “I’m a dying cockroach!” If students weren’t loud enough, the staff member would stamp on them with their boots. .
“They’re dragging you around, throwing you around, pushing you, hitting you,” Griffey said. “Kids would faint from the heat, and they would just splash water on them and drag them around still be like, ‘Did I tell you you could faint?’”
Kids were also allegedly ordered to box each other or the employees. “Say one of the students was talking back to the principal, he’s like, ‘OK, you think you’re so big and bad, come on, we’re going to the sandpit and putting on the gloves’… and basically the staff would beat the crap out of him,” Griffey claimed.
Staff instilled fear into the students, who outnumbered adults. But Griffey remembers some kids were accused of trying to start a riot. “The staff defused it before it even happened, but I remember talking to one of the staff members afterwards,” Griffey recalled.
Griffey asked Brother Robert Graves, “Hey, man, like didn’t that scare you? There’s over 100 students.” The staffer, who earned the nickname “GI Graves” for wearing military pants and boots, allegedly replied, “Nope, not at all.”
According to Griffey, Graves then pulled up his shirt to reveal a handgun and declared, “Because if it comes between a student or my family, I will not hesitate to take one of these guys out.”
Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty/Handout
Griffey says that when he left Agapé, he was still “brainwashed,” thinking Satan was around every corner. He didn’t know how to interact with people or who to trust. He didn’t know what freedoms he was allowed to enjoy. He tried to kill himself by downing an entire bottle of gin and ended up in the emergency room.
Now 39, Griffey has a solid relationship with his family and friends, a good job in California, and works as a DJ on the side. Last year, he testified before the Missouri House of Representatives to support the bills creating state oversight over religious youth homes, and to speak out for current residents who might be silenced.
“We were kids that needed help.”
Josh Bradney was sent to Agapé in 2014 when he was 12, after his parents deemed him disrespectful and in need of guidance. The youngest child of four, Bradney says his adoptive mother was having trouble handling him while his dad traveled for work.
Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty/Handout
When he first arrived, Bradney says, staff strip-searched him and chucked his Bible into the trash. They told him he could only have the King James Version of the scripture.
Three days later, Bradney says, a staff member named Julio Sandoval began screaming and spitting in his face as he got a haircut. “I told him, ‘Hey, don’t spit in my face,’ and that’s when he grabbed my shirt, picked me up, and threw me to the ground,” Bradney said. “I was dragged out of the intake room and then went to the padded palace.”
For a while, Bradney says, he was the youngest student there. “It was scary because you’re the youngest guy against 15, 16, 17-year-olds. When you don’t know what they’re talking about, you’re a target for them.”
He said that within three months, other students began to sexually abuse him, cornering him in the showers as staff wandered off or looked at their phones. He claims one student later became a staff member and started molesting him, too. “And I couldn’t do anything about it,” Bradney said. “My whole time there, I was living in fear for my life, because I couldn’t trust anyone.”
Bradney, who is 20 and has a pending lawsuit against the school, said he still deals with the effects of his abuse. He double-checks to make sure doors are locked. He can’t give people full hugs. “I don’t really trust people,” he said. “I’ll give them a side hug. If I give them a full hug, I don’t know what they’re gonna do.”
“The things they did to my husband are just unspeakable.”
Bradney said that during a phone call with his parents, he mentioned that a staffer slugged a student with a football helmet, and after he hung up, a nearby faculty member slammed him to the ground and restrained him. “That’s how limited you are to communication,” Bradney added. “Even with your parents, you’re still living in fear.”
He remembers one occasion when Sandoval kicked him down the stairs and he needed stitches on his forehead.
“I was trying to get away from these students on the movie theater floor and the staff member Julio called me a faggot and then he kicked me down the stairs when I was trying to get away,” Bradney said. Agapé took Bradney to the hospital, where he says he was instructed to lie about what happened. “What I was told to say was I just got hit in football practice, and they said if I’d say anything else, I’d get hurt.”
Bradney said that Sandoval and other staff would accuse outcasts like him of being gay and encourage classmates to attack them, to “beat them up until they’re straight.”
Sandoval, who now works at Lighthouse Christian Academy in Piedmont, did not return messages left by The Daily Beast.
Bradney’s parents removed him from Agapé in 2016 and he spoke to police about his experience in 2021. He’s frustrated the school is still open and that more staff haven’t been charged.
“The whole state of Missouri let us down. And at the end of the day, you know, it’s us survivors that are fighting to get the school shut down and get justice to protect these kids,” Bradney said. “Because that’s what matters right now is protecting these kids.”
Colton Schrag says he was 11 or 12 years in 2004 when his adoptive parents first sent him to Agapé. He lived at the facility over two stretches until 2010.
At the time he was enrolled, Schrag was struggling with the trauma inflicted by his abusive birth parents, whom he remembers using drugs and ordering him and his siblings to eat cigarette butts. Sometimes his mom would put out lit cigarettes on his skin.
“I was a fighter. I was very defiant, but I was taken out of a really bad situation and put into foster care,” Schrag said.
Still, he says he was completely unprepared for what he witnessed at Agapé during his first stint. “I was so young and everyone was so much bigger and older,” he said. “They were the ones who were getting thrown against the walls, elbowed in the face, slammed against the concrete. I did what I was told and obeyed everything.”
At age 14, Schrag was relieved when his parents took him home, but they soon revealed he was bound for a cheaper school in New Mexico, where his family lived. By then, Schrag had a chip on his shoulder. “All I knew is I had to be tough. Agapé made people violent. You had to be tough to survive.”
Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty/Handout
Schrag made friends with gang members at his new school and was eventually kicked out, so his parents sent him back to Missouri. “And within my first two weeks of being sent back to Agapé, a staff member had grabbed me by the collar and slammed me against the wall. I hit my head and basically, they restrained me for four hours. And that day, I decided … I’m not just gonna let them do this to me. I’m gonna fight back in whatever way possible.”
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“Essentially, to me, back then I was getting jumped by grown men,” Schrag said. “Now it’s grown men abusing a kid and the kid’s trying to survive in that environment. That set the precedent for how my Agapé teenage years went. Staff members were constantly yelling at us, cussing us out, calling us deadbeats.”
“If I just talked back, I could have said, ‘whatever,’ there was a good chance you were going to catch an elbow to the mouth and be slammed against the ground. That happened to me over 100 times,” he said.
Schrag claims that students should have been sent to the hospital for injuries including broken ribs on numerous occasions. Instead they were sometimes taken to Dr. Smock, a member of the Agapé church. “You couldn’t tell him what was going on,” Schrag said. “Kids got hurt all the time, and we were never allowed to tell people.”
“He had bags under his eyes and had lost weight, his clothes were filthy.”
When he was 17, Schrag says, he saw staff restrain one kid who drank GermX hand sanitizer after learning his mother died. “He didn’t know how to deal with it, and he got drunk and defiant. Those staff members restrained him for eight hours, and they made me sit there and watch it. They were just hurting him.” Schrag remembers the student had peed and vomited on himself, and staff were taking turns hitting his pressure points as punishment. “We ended up taking him to the hospital after eight hours of staff members rotating on him,” Schrag said.
Schrag refused to fall into line, enraged by what he’d witnessed. “There’s people that get broken and they submit and there’s people that fight the system. So when they started putting hands on me, and then I’d watch them slam other kids against the wall—I’ve seen kids’ heads get put through drywall—I made a decision. I’m gonna be here till I’m 18, and I’m going to walk out of here alive.”
Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty/Handout
At one juncture, Schrag commented to another student that there were about 200 kids and maybe 40 staff members. “Why don’t we take a stand and put a stop to this and take over the school?” Schrag asked, and shortly after, someone tattled on him.
According to Schrag, Agapé punished him every day for four months by forcing him to wear a large bathrobe and size 13 shoes with no laces or tongues, stand against a wall for hours, go without bed linens, and have meager meals: a small bowl of Cheerios with water for breakfast, one peanut butter sandwich for lunch, and a small salad with water for dinner.
The punishment also included working out all day, doing manual labor outside and hauling five-gallon buckets of rocks, with little water. Two other Hispanic kids were ordered to the same fate, and Schrag says they all discussed trying to flee the facility.
One night, a group of staff members allegedly dragged Schrag out of his bed and into a hallway, where he found one of those Hispanic classmates with a bruised face and bloody nose. His shirt was ripped open and he was weeping. Brian Clemensen, the head of the school, asked Schrag about the plot to escape. When Schrag denied knowing anything about it, Clemensen allegedly punched him in the face, and hit him three more times after Schrag swung back. (Reached by phone on Thursday, Clemensen said he was not able to comment and referred us to Agapé’s lawyer.)
“They were kicking us, calling us terrorists, pieces of shit. He said, ‘This is why we don’t let your type of people into this country.’ Just racist stuff,” Schrag recalled. “We had that X on our back for years.”
When he turned 18, he joined the military, having nowhere else to go. He remembered how Agapé belittled him, drilling into his head that he was gonna be dead or in prison once he left the school. “When I left for the Army, to pursue this life that I had no knowledge of, I made it a point every day just to wake up in the mornings and say, ‘I’m only gonna die today if it’s natural. If it’s supposed to be. I’m not going to go to prison today.’”
“I woke up every morning for almost 10 years telling myself that,” Schrag said, his voice wavering. “I cannot prove these people right, because then they win. All that pain I went through and all that abuse, if I end up in prison or dead because of something stupid, then all I did was prove them right. I can’t do that. I cannot give them the satisfaction.”
Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty/Handout
Schrag said he’s grappled with PTSD after Agapé. He had nightmares almost every night of being dragged out of his bed. He was jumpy. His marriage fell apart. When he saw a therapist, he told her, “I’m going to tell you a story you’re probably not going to believe, but it’s 100 percent true.” Speaking more and more about the school lifted a weight from his chest. He’d eventually leave the devil at Agapé behind.
But while the abuse was happening, no one believed him. He remembers running away from the school at age 15 and a local police officer picking him up. The cop handcuffed him and tossed him into the back of a squad car, announcing, “I’m taking you back to Agapé.” Schrag replied, “Why? They’re beating on us, dude,” to which the officer said, “No, they’re not, shut your mouth” and delivered him back to the compound.
“It’s like being trapped in a cult,” Schrag said. “You get free and you’re like, well, there’s so much more to life. But what am I allowed to do? Am I allowed to even go to Walmart, you know, like, can I go to this park? Or can I even acknowledge that this girl is super pretty. Because if I looked at a staff daughter, I was getting punched in the face and slammed on the ground. So it makes you very dysfunctional.”
Now 30, Schrag works in the oil industry and has broken out of his shell. He says he’s never met a stranger. “You know, life’s what you make it and I’ve done my best to make it better than what I had growing up,” he said.
In recent years, Schrag began to give interviews about Agapé and rally awareness on social media about the abuse he and others suffered. “I don’t want parents to only have one side of the story,” he said. “I want parents to know when they type in Agapé Boarding School, they have the option to see all of our stories.”
“But I also want the former students that were there, whether they just left or they were there in the ’90s to know somebody’s listening. It’s OK to ask for help and talk about it. Because there’s a whole lot of men out there that went to the school that are still hurting and they don’t know how to deal with it.”
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