KANSAS
Casper Star-Tribune
Associated Press
A California boy attends only four days at a Kansas military boarding school where he is tormented by staff and students after breaking both his legs in separate incidents. A Tennessee student’s stomach is forcibly branded as a rite of initiation. A Florida cadet breaks his hand fending off a student with a history of sexual abuse who tries to grope him, and school officials refuse to investigate or inform his parents of the attack.
These claims are the latest additions to a growing list of former cadets who allege in a federal lawsuit they were abused at St. John’s Military School in Salina, Kan. An amended complaint filed Friday in federal court in Kansas City, Kan., now includes six sets of named parents who have filed on behalf of cadets, plus one ex-cadet who is now an adult. The plaintiffs come from California, Florida, Tennessee, Colorado, Texas and Illinois.
The Episcopal boarding school, which charges families nearly $30,000 per year for students enrolled in grades 6-12, draws students from across the nation.
Two new defendants are named in the revised lawsuit: The Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America and the Episcopal Diocese of Western Kansas, entities which the suit says created the school.
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