KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A southwest Missouri prosecutor said the attorney general wanted him to file dozens more charges against Agape Boarding School employees, but he didn’t believe restraining students violated the law.
Cedar County Prosecuting Attorney Ty Gaither said parents have the right and discretion – according to Missouri law – to discipline their kids. And when students are at the school, staff are acting in place of their parents.
“If the Missouri legislature wishes to change that, they have the power to do so,” Gaither told The Kansas City Star on Thursday. “Our job is to follow the law. The facts presented to me … would not justify a conviction for disciplining the children out there.”
Since the fall of 2020, as local and state authorities investigated two boarding schools in his county, Gaither has publicly said little more than “no comment.” He repeatedly has insisted that Missouri’s rules of professional conduct for lawyers prohibited him from speaking about cases.
But he changed course this week after Missouri House Speaker Rob Vescovo urged federal authorities in a Sept. 21 letter to intervene in the Agape case, labeling Gaither and other county officials as “undeniably corrupt.”
“Yes, it hits a chord,” the prosecutor said. “I believe it requires a response. … It is undeniably beneath the dignity of the office of the speaker to make unfounded allegations that I and other local officials are corrupt and complicit in human trafficking.”
In a 21/2-hour interview inside a Cedar County courtroom Thursday, Gaither said declining to file those charges related to 42 counts of student discipline has “deteriorated” his relationship with the attorney general’s office.
He did file charges against five Agape staffers. He accused the AG’s office and the Missouri Highway Patrol of cutting him off and refusing to help with those cases – by not providing contact information for the alleged victims or help in transporting them to southwest Missouri.
“If I’m not able to have the children transported here, if I’m not able to find those children, if I’m not able to subpoena those children, it seriously hampers our case,” the prosecutor said.
Chris Nuelle, press secretary for the AG’s office, said “history will prove that the attorney general’s office was on the right side of this issue.”
“When it became clear to us that the Cedar County prosecuting attorney’s office had no intention of actually seeking justice in this case, you better believe that relationship deteriorated,” Nuelle said. “It’s our understanding that some of the witnesses that Ty Gaither needs for his case were located at Agape Boarding School; all he needed to do was walk down the street.”
Gaither also, for the first time, discussed at length the circumstances surrounding the charges involving Circle of Hope Girls Ranch, another unlicensed boarding school in Cedar County. Gaither said he thought human trafficking charges should have been filed against Boyd and Stephanie Householder, former owners of the now-closed school.
The AG’s office said it stands by its case.
“In the Circle of Hope case, we filed 102 felony charges that ensures, if convicted, that both Boyd and Stephanie Householder will spend the rest of their lives in prison,” Nuelle said, “and will never be able to abuse another child ever again.”
During the interview, Gaither read from a four-page prepared statement and when asked questions often referred to notes on a legal pad. The only topic he declined to discuss was the current assault cases he is handling against five Agape staff members.
While Vescovo is the latest to raise allegations of bias and suggest small-town connections and corruption have hindered investigations in Cedar County, he’s hardly the first. Former boarding school students have blasted Gaither for not filing charges in 2017 against the Householders.
And those former students, along with lawmakers and child advocates, accuse him and the sheriff’s department of having too cozy of a relationship with Agape and the people who work there. One former student even filed a complaint about Gaither with the state Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel – which investigates allegations of misconduct against lawyers – accusing him of bias.
Vescovo’s letter took it up a notch. A Republican – like Gaither – the speaker wrote U.S. Attorney Teresa Moore of the Western District of Missouri last week, insisting that federal intervention may be the only way to protect the students currently at the school.
In his letter, Vescovo praised the efforts of Attorney General Eric Schmitt and state lawmakers but said local authorities in Cedar County — Gaither and Judge David Munton, who had delayed the case multiple times before the AG’s office successfully sought a new judge — have made closing the school seem like an “an unobtainable goal.”
Vescovo blasted Gaither as “one more in a long line of local officials who have either turned a blind eye to, or helped to cover up, the criminal actions of the staff at Agape.”
Gaither denied that and pointed to his record as Cedar County prosecutor for the past eight years.
“I have filed 278 charges involving assaults against children,” he said. “I have also filed 52 charges involving sexual offenses committed against children. I’ve won convictions in over 95% of these cases, and I carry with me the pain of not seeing the others convicted. I take very seriously all cases in which there is harm inflicted upon a child, and when presented with the legally sufficient facts and investigation from the police, I have not failed to pursue justice.”
The Star has investigated the close connections between the Cedar County Sheriff’s Office and Agape. Several people with ties to the school have worked for the sheriff’s office, among them former Deputy Robert Graves, the son-in-law of Agape founder James Clemensen. Graves attended Agape as a student then worked at the school for years, including while he was a deputy.
The Star has learned that Graves is no longer working at the sheriff’s office. His daughter, however, is still employed and has worked there for several years.
Former students told The Star that on at least one occasion when Children’s Division workers came to the school to investigate a hotline call, Graves sat in on the interviews wearing his sheriff’s uniform.
In addition, former Agape dean of students Julio Sandoval worked part time at the sheriff’s office, as did his son. Sandoval also owned a company – Safe Sound Secure Youth Ministries – that parents hired to remove their so-called “troubled teens” from their homes and transport them to boarding schools.
Sandoval was recently indicted by a federal grand jury for violating a restraining order — issued at the request of a minor boy against his mother — by transporting him against his will to Agape. The teen was dropped off at Agape in the summer of 2021 after a 27-hour drive from California, the indictment said, his hands cuffed behind his back the entire way.
Gaither agreed that when it comes to connections with the school, “I don’t think it’s very good optics if they’re involved in the sheriff’s department.” But he vehemently denied that any corruption exists in these cases.
“He’s basically called the circuit court, the circuit judge corrupt. He’s called the sheriff corrupt,” Gaither said. “That angers me. No evidence for that, other than I assume that he thinks it makes good headlines. … I can tell you this, if there was a libel suit or a slander suit brought, truth would not be his defense.”
The Star requested a comment from Vescovo. His office provided a statement from the speaker on Friday.
“From day one of my time in office, it has been my primary purpose to do all I can to fight for and defend kids here in Missouri,” Vescovo said. “To that end, I made a good faith effort to reach out to law enforcement through appropriate channels to ask for assistance in protecting vulnerable children.”
Four years ago, local and state authorities conducted investigations into alleged abuse at Circle of Hope Girls Ranch and reportedly begged Gaither to file charges. He refused. Then in the fall of 2020, after additional allegations about the school surfaced, Gaither asked the attorney general’s office for assistance.
Gaither also asked the attorney general to help with the Agape investigation last year. And after the Missouri Highway Patrol investigated abuse allegations there, the AG’s office recommended 22 staffers be charged with 65 felony counts involving 36 children. But in September 2021, Gaither, who had sole discretion over charging decisions, filed only 13 lower-level counts against five staffers.
Angry that Gaither didn’t follow the AG’s recommendations – and that he didn’t intend to “seek justice” for the children who were “allegedly victimized” by 22 Agape staff – Schmitt asked Gov. Mike Parson to remove his office from the investigation.
But the attorney general didn’t leave the case for good.
The attorney general’s office and the Department of Social Services have been trying to shut down the beleaguered school since Sept. 7. That day, they filed a motion for “injunctive relief” saying the safety of students inside the school was in jeopardy.
“In Agape, we tried multiple times to file 65 felony charges against 22 co-defendants for crimes of abuse that were related to the draconian restraints used on the students at Agape,” Nuelle said. “If a parent handcuffed their child for 100 hours straight, used a Brillo pad to try to scrub off a tattoo, or did anything close to what we allege that Agape did in our pleadings, they would rightly be arrested and prosecuted for child abuse.”
DSS officials had learned that a current staffer had just been placed on the Central Registry for child abuse and neglect, and state law doesn’t allow anyone with a substantiated report to work at a residential facility.
Within hours, Judge Munton signed an order calling for the immediate closure of Agape. But the next morning, as the AG’s office and DSS were prepared to execute the order, Munton put it on hold, saying he wanted to confirm that the staffer was still at the school near Stockton.
Munton sent Cedar County Sheriff James “Jimbob” McCrary to the school to find out, and Agape director Bryan Clemensen told McCrary that he had fired that staffer on Sept. 7 and the worker no longer lived on the school’s property.
Two hearings have been held since then and the AG’s office has had testimony prepared and recent students ready to take the stand and describe the abuse boys at the school endure. Munton refused to let those students testify and delayed action at both hearings.
The AG’s office requested – and received – a new judge who has scheduled a two-day hearing in mid-October to hear evidence on a petition to shut down the school. That evidence is expected to include allegations of abuse and neglect from current students and testimony from authorities who have investigated Agape.
Gaither revealed that the case began after a hotline call detailed a complaint against Agape staffer Everett Graves, brother of the former Cedar County deputy, regarding an alleged assault on a child.
“When that came to the sheriff, he took, and quite properly so, the position that there may be a conflict there.
“‘Let’s send this over to the State Technical Assistance Team, send this over to the Highway Patrol and ask them to investigate this,’” Gaither said, as he began to tap the table to emphasize each word. “I don’t see the corruption when you say, ‘Look, there could be a conflict, please bring in the power and the resources of the Missouri Highway Patrol to investigate this man. That’s not corruption, that’s doing your job.”
Everett Graves is one of the five staffers charged.
At one point in the interview, The Star asked Gaither if he saw Agape as a dangerous school.
“The Attorney General has a right under (the law) to bring a hearing in front of the judge. And I believe he’s done that,” Gaither said. “…Whether that school is a dangerous school, whether it should be shut down, is something that the judge has to decide. That is not my decision.”
