I spent years exposing and getting fellow former students of Agape Boarding School to expose the rampant and vile child abuse and exploitation that went on there. We shutdown Agape together but many schools and troubled teen industry programs like it continue to exist today. In fact many of our abusers got away with it and are now working at other institutions abusing children to this day. Because of that fact it is important that we continue to remind people what life at Agape Boarding School was truly like and how horrific the abuse and exploitation of us so called “troubled teens” really was.
Its difficult to image for those of you who have not been dragged out of your homes, sometimes in handcuffs, as a small child or teen, taken thousands of miles away to a school in the middle of nowhere where they shave your head, put you in a uniform, strip you of contact with your friends, limit your contact with family, prohibit you from talking to your fellow students without staff monitoring the conversation, put you in the care of a “buddy” you must stay 3ft from at all times that teaches you all the rules and expect you immediately submit to this long list of strict and sometimes ridiculous rules without questioning them. Its difficult for most normal people who grew up at home and in supportive family environments to imagine what its like to not be allowed to have friends, to be made to do military style physical training (PT) exercises for hours until some of you puke, pass out etc. Its difficult for most people to imagine young children, sometimes as young as 11 and 12 being made to work sometimes 8 or more hour work crews doing hard manual labor in the hot Missouri sun with little to no water or breaks but that’s what we endured, some of us for years.
I personally have CPTSD and a broken back from the abuse I endured at Agape. I tell my story in my books and in some videos on this site.
Jim and Kathy Clemensen started Agape Boarding School in their home in Stockton Missouri 1990. The “school” was a Christian, Independent Fundamental Baptist of IFB program designed to turn stubborn, defiant teens into model Christian adults. They believed in corporal punishment and that hard work and the relentless reading and memorization of the Bible could “cure” these “troubled teens” of their sinful ways and help them be more like what their parents wanted them to be; what they claimed God Himself wanted them to be.
History and Locations
- Stockton, California (1990): The school began in the Clemensen family home, with students housed in bunks and educated in the garage. Jim Clemensen was a former California Highway Patrol officer.
- Othello, Washington (1992): The school moved to an old Air Force base, but was shut down by county officials in 1995 due to health and safety concerns, including rotting food, exposed wiring, and asbestos.
- Stockton, Missouri (1996): The school relocated to Missouri, a state that, at the time, had a law exempting religious organizations from state licensing and oversight. This lack of regulation was a primary reason for the move, according to former students.
This is what happened in Othello. James and Kathy brought these kids to a former Air Force base without running water, proper toilets, shelter, and made them work without proper equipment with asbestos and other hazardous materials in order to build a school where one didn’t exist before. Thankfully they were shutdown but I have talked to students who claim they now have lung cancer likely caused by this exposure to asbestos.
So what did they do? They relocated to Cedar County, to Stockton, Missouri to be precise; a place where they could conduct their child abuse in private without the pesky government or police interfering and with the help of the labor of the boys eventually created a vast complex where they not only housed the boarding school but also the workers of that school, their families, and a sprawling livestock business including a lucrative horse training and trading business.
Horse Sale: https://curtpatestockmanship.com/2018/06/17/agape-boarding-school-horse-sale/
Agape used these boys to break-in horses, train them, raise them, sell them for massive profits. Several of the people I knew at the school were seriously injured by these horses after being bucked off them and stepped on. They willingly put teens in harms way just to make an extra buck, exploiting their labor and putting them in danger of grave physical harm but that is perhaps the least disgusting thing they did to abuse and exploit us boys.
Over 50 lawsuits against Agape Boarding School have been filed for abuses ranging from sexual abuse to physical abuse, withholding of food, and neglecting students medical needs, etc. Here are just some of the articles and stories of students who have spoken about the abuse they suffered.
The Hammer Podcast is a great source of testimonies by former students, survivors of Agape Boarding School. There are dozens of accounts of forced labor, physical, verbal, and mental abuse, exploitation, even sexual abuse.
Here is an interview I did on that podcast:
Here is an interview I did on the Divorcing Religion podcast about Agape and schools and institutions like it:
Dr Smock was the only Dr. I was allowed to see. He famously told me to “shut-up if I know whats good for me” when I complained about severe back pain and leg pain that later turned out to be a fissured disc and sciatica. He was married into the Clemensen family and was used to cover up physical and sexual abuse. This is a man that had sexual abuse allegations against him in CA and AZ before he came to MO with the Clemensens. When they finally arrested him we exposed that he was still listed on Agape Boarding School’s website as their primary go to DR. They quickly erased that and then denied the association. He was training Scott Dumar, mentioned above, to do unlicensed medical work at the school, so that the students wouldn’t even have to leave the compound to be treated, further decreasing the risk the physical and sexual abuse would be discovered by outside parties.
He attempted unsuccessfully to flee and was eventually caught.
Agape had powerful friends, and Missouri has very lax laws overseeing religious schools and programs, so getting anything done on this and getting authorities to act or make arrests was exceedingly difficult. In the end very few of our abusers were charged at all and many of their chargers were reduced or thrown out allowing these abusers to continue to work with and abuse children.
Spinoff schools like Circle of Hope were started by former Agape employees where even more children were abused. The disease spread.
We watched in horror while those who swore to protect children, to protect citizens, abandoned us and protected and empowered our abusers.
After the death of Jim Clemensen his son Bryan Clemensen took over and the courts kept him off the child abuse registry because he said he wouldn’t be able to find work if they did. Never seen anything like it. One of the grossest miscarriages of justice I’ve ever seen and I’ve seen some things.
Agape Boarding School had ties to local law enforcement, who regularly ignored our calls when we tried to report abuse after leaving the school and hindered our ability to get Child Services to act.
Even the prosecutor Ty Gather made sure few staffers were charged and the ones that were got their charges reduced and their sentences lightened considerably. Even the state’s GOP AG Eric Schmitt, at that time, said that the prosecutor “didn’t intend to seek justice” in a feud that broke out publicly when he asked to be removed from the case.
https://www.aol.com/prosecutor-says-restraining-children-agape-183242155.html
https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/crime/article254471823.html
AG Eric Schmidt basically abandoned the lawsuit the state had brought against Agape to close the school and handed it to his predecessor Andrew Bailey, who also failed to do anything significant to close the school and spinoff schools like Circle of Hope.
President Trump has now elevated Andrew Bailey to Co-Director of the FBI, presumably for his defense of Christian child abusers and pedophiles. See my earlier blog about that:
As you can see us survivors of these Christian fascist concentration camps never had a chance. From lawmakers in MOleg to local cops, prosecutors, and worthless AG’s the schools and our abusers had all the protection from consequences they needed to get away with it making what they said to us when we were there all the more chilling; “You can scream but nobody will hear you. Nobody is coming to save you. You live here now.”
Even my own adopted dad, Bill Harper, ran a transport company, handcuffing and taking children to schools and programs like and including Agape. He was a former parole and probation officer and often hired off-duty cops and FBI to assist him.
So it may not be of surprise to some of you when I exposed links to law enforcement, lawmakers, called for protests outside of Agape the FBI came to my door to try and silence me. They told me that my posts were full of lies and could incite violence. They didn’t seem to care about the kids still at Agape being abused and exploited for labor. They didn’t seem to care about my permanent injuries or trauma. They just wanted me to be quiet. I refused. They harassed me for awhile and eventually, after I threatened to get a lawyer involved, stopped.
Sometimes in this cold dark world nobody is coming to save you and if you want something done you have to do it yourself. So thats what us survivors of Agape Boarding School did. We kept the abuse in the papers until they couldn’t continue to operate. Until the pressure made it so they couldn’t afford to stay open. We bled them dry of customers by letting parents know how horrible the place was, and thankfully, luckily, it worked because the authorities were never going to shut the place down.
https://apnews.com/article/crime-stockton-missouri-education-6d4bc69348f4349249e49b3ec7c29172
It would take a long time to go through every article and discuss the abuse and cover up of abuse in full detail. There are literally dozens and dozens of news articles that were published between 2019-2025. Here are some of the more infamous ones:
I will let you google “Agape Boarding School” for more videos, news, and information if you want to dive further and will leave you with this disturbing video of Bro Burton, the pastor of the church, chasing and beating a kid during a “boot camp” PT exercise routine. You tell me if this is abuse.
You can also see an archive on X of me fighting to expose Agape Boarding School and get officials, lawmakers and law enforcement to act here: https://x.com/exposingagape
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