WEST MELBOURNE (AUSTRALIA)
Washington Post
June 26, 2025
By Ben Brasch
A three-week Christian summer camp in Iowa was cut short when law enforcement removed 88 students after child abuse allegations.
State and county agents removed nearly 90 children from a Christian summer camp in Iowa this month amid allegations of abuse, according to local law enforcement. Camp leadership has publicly denied that any abuse occurred.
Kingdom Ministry of Rehab and Recreation’s three-week Shekinah Glory Camp in southeast Iowa’s Louisa County was cut short June 12 and 13, when law enforcement executed search warrants on the camp and another property owned by a Kingdom Ministry staff member. The camp serves youth from Myanmar’s Chin ethnic group who are struggling with substance abuse issues. The area is home to a significant Chin community, but youth came from around the country to attend the camp.
Deputies and agents with the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services’ Child Protective Services took 88 children attending the camp into temporary protective custody before returning them to their parents or guardians, Louisa County Sheriff’s Office Chief Deputy Ed Parker told The Washington Post on Tuesday. He said the search warrants are sealed to protect the investigation.
Alex Murphy, spokesman for Iowa’s health services department, declined to tell The Post the age of the children taken from the camp along with other details. A post on the ministry’s Facebook page indicated that people between 14 and 25 would attend the camp.
No one has been arrested during the investigation, Parker said. It may not stay that way.
“We are expecting charges, but it will be awhile,” Parker said, declining to provide more details. He said the charges may come from a state agency and not his department. Murphy, with the state, declined to comment on the investigation.
The investigation began after deputies received a report of “child abuse and endangerment,” according to a sheriff’s office news release. The church and David Nuam,the minister who owns the two properties that authorities searched, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
Victor Bawi, the son of a Kingdom Ministry minister, denied any abuse.
“If they want to investigate, they can investigate. We’re innocent. They’re not going to find any abuse or anything like that. We never abused anyone. You can ask any of the children as well. They were having a fun time,” Bawi told Iowa television station WQAD. He added that it was the first year the church had hosted a summer camp.
In an interview with Iowa station KCCI, Bawi said the report came from a 15-year-old Texan attending the camp who didn’t want to be there anymore. Parker declined to comment about the investigation or detail how it began.
“We never harmed that child. We loved him. We bought him shoes. We bought him, like, $400 shoes, clothing, everything,” Bawi told the station.
Kingdom Ministry is based in Columbus Junction, Iowa, which its website notes is the birthplace of Arthur E. Carson, who became the first Baptist missionary to spread Christianity to the Chin just before the turn of the 20th century. He and his wife, Laura Carson, translated many Christian works for the Chin until he died there in 1908, according to American Baptist Historical Society records.
Myanmar is largely Buddhist. But Chin state is a mountainous, poor and predominantly Christian area that sits on the country’s border with India. The Chin people have been subjected to religious discrimination for decades, according to the Chin Human Rights Organization, which works with the United Nations. It is estimated that thousands of ethnic Chin are displaced, mostly throughout Asia.
There are also a handful of Chin communities in the United States, including in southeast Iowa. As of 2013, about 500 of 2,000 residents in Columbus Junction were refugees from Myanmar, according to Cristina Ortiz, an anthropologist and Iowan who lived in the area and studied Chin refugee communities in the rural Midwest.
Kingdom Ministry was founded in 2018 in Columbus Junction, according to its website, which lists three affiliated ministers but no other staff. It does not have a church building but is renting five mobile homes and has housed 60 people, according to the fundraising page of its website. It is unclear whether the camp was using those mobile homes. The ministry says it is raising money for not only a church building but a house that can hold 100 people.
The homepage of the program’s website prominently displays photos of smiling children posing for pictures and flashing peace signs. A cached version of the camp’s website from a few days after the raid did not include those photos but advertised that people could change their lives if they attended the $500 camp.
By Ben Brasch
Ben Brasch is a National Breaking News reporter for The Washington Post. He is a third-generation native of St. Petersburg, Florida who spent seven years at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution before joining The Post in October 2022. He brings love of listening everywhere — from a frozen lake in Anchorage, Alaska to a burning landfill in Atlanta.follow on X@ben_brasch