Abuse lawsuits target Christian home whose director backed Missouri foster care bill

A children’s Christian residential facility whose director has spent three years urging Missouri lawmakers to allow unlicensed religious organizations to care for foster children in state custody is being sued in federal court by former residents who allege they were subjected to forced labor and sexual abuse.

Three lawsuits filed against Show-Me Christian Youth Home allege that the former residents were forced to perform heavy manual labor under threat of food deprivation, isolation or more work. The lawsuits also allege the three plaintiffs, who each spent time in the same Show-Me household between 2007 and 2012, were touched sexually, beaten while naked, surveilled in the shower by their “house father” and punished when they reported the abuse. 

The lawsuits were filed in June in the U.S. District Court of the Western District of Missouri. The allegations against Show-Me Christian Youth Home were also raised last week during public testimony before a legislative committee examining the Missouri Children’s Division and the state’s foster care system. 

An attorney for a fourth former resident told The Independent she also plans to file a lawsuit against Show-Me once she receives medical records needed for the case.

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Show-Me Christian Youth Home, which is based in La Monte, denies the allegations. In Aug. 24 court filings, the organization also argued it cannot be held liable because any alleged harm was caused by employees acting “outside the course and scope of their employment.” It contends the lawsuits violate the First Amendment by asking the court “to rule on or excessively entangle itself in religious doctrine, policy and administration.”

The facility’s director, Chad Puckett, also serves as president of the Missouri Association of Christian Child Care Agencies. 

Puckett has for the past three years testified in support of legislation that would have allowed facilities registered with the association — including Show-Me — to apply to receive state foster care placements from the Missouri Children’s Division, the part of the Department of Social Services that oversees the foster care system. 

Although faith-based organizations are exempt from the state’s licensing requirements for foster homes, department policy requires all children in state custody to be placed only with providers licensed and contracted with the division.

In an interview about the legislation in March, Puckett told The Independent he wants to partner with the division to “weed out the bad actors” in private residential facilities and the state foster care system.

“If they’re within my system, if they’re within the public system, let’s expose the evil of anybody that abuses a child,” Puckett said.

Puckett said in an email to The Independent that he could not comment on the pending lawsuits.

The legislation stalled in committee this year after lawmakers questioned whether the association could adequately police its members, pointing to abuse uncovered at unlicensed Christian boarding schools that once belonged to the group.

Among them was Agape Boarding School, the subject of a series of Kansas City Star investigations beginning in late 2020. Puckett told The Independent in March that he was unaware of abuse allegations against Agape when he removed the school’s director, Bryan Clemensen, from the association’s board in 2007 for noncompliance with association standards.

“I’m not sure when these abuse allegations even started coming out, but we had parted ways long before that,” Puckett said.

The department in 2022 said it had substantiated five preponderance of evidence findings against Clemensen — one count of child neglect and four counts of physical abuse. Agape closed in 2023 amid state scrutiny and mounting lawsuits from former students. 

Republican state Rep. Jamie Gragg of Ozark, who sponsored the legislation this year, told The Independent he will not file legislation to allow foster placements in unlicensed group homes in 2027.

“I don’t think it’s going to be something that we can pass,” Gragg said. “There are definitely other avenues that we can take to help our foster system when it comes to finding more placement opportunities.”

‘No one’s going to believe me’

The allegations in the three lawsuits focus on the plaintiffs’ treatment while they were placed by Show-Me in the same household. The man who served as their “house father” later pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree sexual abuse for an incident that occurred in 2014, after the plaintiffs had left Show-Me, according to public court records.

In that home, Brianna Fultz, who arrived at Show-Me in 2007 at age 12, says she was expected to mend barbed wire fencing, unroll hay bales to feed cattle and cut and haul timber, according to her lawsuit. At times, it alleges, she carried “logs so large she could barely manage one at a time, back and forth across a distance close to the length of a football field.” 

The hard labor, Fultz told The Independent, “sucked. But what was going on in the house? That’s what really messed with my brain.”

Fultz recalled being awakened at 3 a.m. and ordered to run in the cold until she was told to stop because she hadn’t put all the dishes away correctly. 

Her house father “groomed and sexually abused her,” according to her lawsuit, which alleges he touched her breasts, bit her and watched her in the shower.

Fultz said she did what she could to protect herself.

“When I wore dresses or skirts, I wore shorts underneath them,” Fultz said. “I wouldn’t walk up the stairs first. I tried not to be alone with anybody.”

“But each time I was trying to protect myself, I felt like, ‘Why am I protecting myself? No one’s going to believe me,’” Fultz said.

After Fultz told the organization’s case manager, another staff member and a therapist about the physical and sexual abuse, her lawsuit alleges, Show-Me officials “did nothing meaningful to protect her” and Fultz was “subjected to intensified discipline for having spoken.”

Jerrica Perriguey, who came to Show-Me in 2008 when she was 14, told The Independent she was made to sleep under the kitchen table or on the laundry room floor as punishment, with only a blanket and a pillow.

“I found a way to fold myself up like a burrito to where I would be off the tile as much as possible,” Perriguey said.

Like Fultz, Perriguey remembered being awakened at night to run in the dark and cold.

“If one girl stole Ritz crackers or a Pop-Tart or a protein bar, every girl would get their lights flipped on while being screamed at, told to get up and hit the track,” Perriguey said.

When residents were “off privileges,” Perriguey said, they were only allowed to eat dry toast or peanut butter sandwiches and drink milk or water while the rest of the household had full meals.

Perriguey’s lawsuit also alleges what it describes as “sexualized discipline, exposure and inspection.” 

“After bathing,” according to the lawsuit, residents “were subjected to inspections of intimate areas — ‘smell checks,’ including scrutiny of the crotch — to judge whether they were clean.” 

When Perriguey told a therapist “used by or affiliated with Show-Me” about her mistreatment, her lawsuit alleges, her disclosures were revealed to staff and “passed along in ways that served the institution and undermined her.”

“I was in huge trouble,” Perriguey said, “and I was called a liar.”

In a statement to The Independent, Samantha Butler, the former resident who plans to sue Show-Me, said she has “long-term injuries” from abuse she experienced there as a child.

“I believe that no child should ever be placed at Show-Me Christian Youth Home and certainly not those in the foster care system,” Butler said.

‘When children speak out, listen’

Rebecca Randles, Butler’s attorney, said that while Puckett might not have known about alleged abuse at Agape while Clemensen was part of the association, his account raises questions about how much oversight the association actually provided. 

“The fact that they didn’t do any kind of investigation, that there weren’t any kind of on-the-ground foot soldiers going into these homes to check and see what was happening there, is troubling,” Randles said.

The three plaintiffs’ attorney, Jarrett Johnson, who has represented many Missouri victims of religious boarding facility abuse, does not comment on pending litigation.

Randles, who has handled numerous cases against unlicensed Christian group homes in Missouri, said her law firm was approached by people who said they had experienced abuse at Show-Me around the time litigation against other facilities began in 2021 and 2022.

Former students at Circle of Hope Girls Ranch and Agape told The Kansas City Star at the time that they tried to get local authorities’ attention for years before charges were filed.

“When children speak out, listen,” Randles said. “And if you have more than one that’s speaking out, saying the same thing, really listen.”