SPRINGFIELD (MO)
KY3 [Springfield, MO]
October 24, 2023
By Lauren Schwentker
Tuesday, a handful of people gathered at the Springfield Federal Courthouse for a moment of silence.
A mother is suing a shuttered Christian boarding school in Missouri, blaming her son’s death on a gang rape and other abuse he endured there.
Agape Boarding School has been subjected to a wave of litigation as a series of abuse allegations emerged. The case filed this month and amended Monday in federal court by Kathleen Britt is believed to be the first wrongful death suit.
Tuesday, a handful of people gathered at the Springfield Federal Courthouse for a moment of silence.
At the same time, they’re asking lawmakers to listen and make changes to help abuse victims.
“Hundreds, perhaps thousands of people who are sexually violated in institutional settings, don’t survive and end up taking their own lives,” said survivors group known as SNAP member David Clohessy. “He was younger when he was sent to the school and passed away at age 28.”
The gathering comes after Britt’s mother, Kathleen Britt, filed a wrongful lawsuit this month that was amended Monday in federal court.
The suit claims that mental health problems plagued Jason Britt after he left agape boarding school, where several staffers were charged with abuse.
Britt grew so despondent that he wrote a suicide note. But heart and kidney failure were what claimed his life in February 2022.
“In Missouri, the one particular law that’s most problematic is the statute of limitations,” said Clohessy. “There have been in the past, and there will again be in the next legislative session, a measure to extend or eliminate the statute of limitations.”
It’s something Lee’s Summit state representative Keri Ingle hopes to eliminate.
“Ideally, I would like to see all of these facilities licensed like we do with most other facilities,” said Ingle. “These specific ones have a religious exemption, and there are a lot of religious boarding schools across the state of Missouri that are licensed with the state of Missouri.”
Ingle, a social worker, helped pass Senate Bill 557560 in 2021 to make it harder for people on sex offender registries to have access to these facilities. She says she doesn’t plan on stopping there.
“I can’t go back and fix what happened to them, but we can, as legislators, ensure that it doesn’t happen to any other kids,” said Ingle.
More than a dozen other former students have settled lawsuits alleging they were abused at the southwest Missouri school.
When it shut down in January, it was the fourth and last unlicensed Christian boarding school to close in Cedar County since September 2020. The school’s former director, Bryan Clemensen, said the school, whose enrollment had tumbled, closed because it did not have the funding to continue.