Mother sues Missouri boarding school, alleging gang rape and abuse led to son’s death
The mother of a former Agape student is suing the now-closed southwest Missouri boarding school, saying the abuse her son suffered there — including an alleged gang rape — led to his death.
Kathleen Britt, of Idaho, filed the wrongful death lawsuit on behalf of her son, Jason, who died in February 2022 of multiple organ failure. Jason Britt, 28, had suffered from kidney disease for years and had tried repeatedly to be placed on a transplant list.
The lawsuit, filed Oct. 11 in federal court in Kansas City and amended on Monday, details several alleged incidents of physical and sexual abuse while Britt was at Agape Boarding School in 2010. It seeks a jury trial and unspecified damages.
“Agape Baptist Church, a cover for Agape Boarding School, and its officers and directors, ran a ‘school’ akin to a concentration camp or torture colony cloaked in the guise of religion,” the lawsuit says.
“Agape Baptist Church ignored the complaints of abuse, negligently failed to report the allegations to the Children’s Division, aided and abetted the abuse ... and engaged in other tortious behavior that caused Jason Britt harm.”
Jason Britt told The Star in a series of interviews in 2021 that his kidney disease was caused by high blood pressure which he attributed, in part, to the panic attacks and post-traumatic stress disorder he suffered from his time at Agape.
During the interviews, which spanned a total of five hours, Britt said that several months after he arrived at the Cedar County boarding school, multiple staff members held the 16-year-old face down on the floor while three took turns raping him. One, he said, used a plastic mop or broom handle.
“The best way I can describe it is like a group of savages going after their prey,” Britt told The Star. “I think it was just evil. I think they were trying to humiliate me in a way that I wouldn’t recover from, that would break my spirit.” But, he said, they never broke his spirit.
The lawsuit also details the alleged attack and what Britt said happened afterward.
“After the beating and gang rape, Jason was allowed to shower,” the suit says. “He was allowed warm water and a long shower. Usually, the showers were cool at best and limited to five minutes.”
The suit says Britt received a cut above one eye during the assault and was taken to a Stockton clinic for stitches. A staff member stayed near him the entire time, it says.
While at Agape, the lawsuit alleges, Britt saw staff physically abuse students, make them stand against a wall as punishment, force them to engage in excessive exercise and restrict their food and water. Staff also monitored students’ letters and failed to give Britt the regular care packages his mother sent him, it says.
It was one of those intercepted letters — in which Britt tried to tell his parents about the abuse — that led to the gang rape, the lawsuit says.
Agape’s attorney, John Schultz, declined to comment on the lawsuit.
Kathleen Britt, a former police officer, told The Star she was filing the lawsuit on behalf of Jason “because his voice needs to be heard.”
“There needs to be an answer for what happened to him and for what he had to watch others endure at Agape,” she said. “Those assigned to protect Jason failed from the top down. Jason felt if all he could do with his life was to stand up to the offenders and those who failed him and all the other kids there, it would be enough for him.”
She described her son as “a funny, kind, smart and giving person.”
“He was strong and brave,” she said. “I now have to live without him, and everything his life would have brought forth. ... But I will not let his voice be silenced. He was brave enough to fight, and I’m going to finish that fight on his behalf.”
Other defendants in the lawsuit include five former top staffers who are accused of participating in the sexual assault and other abusive behavior. It also names another former staffer who is accused of knowing about the physical and sexual abuse but doing nothing about it. The Star is not naming those defendants because they have not been criminally charged.
Additionally, the Cedar County sheriff and his department are being sued for allegedly failing to follow up on reports of abuse at the school.
The suit alleges that Sheriff James McCrary employed people who also worked at Agape and “maintained a policy or practice of refusing to investigate and/or report allegations of abuse at Agape, returning children to the school for further abuse.”
“Sheriff McCrary took no actions regarding the inherent conflict of interest that existed as his employees were some of the same individuals who had reports of abuse made against them,” according to the lawsuit.
McCrary did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.
Jason Britt told The Star he was at Agape for five months and when he returned home, he kept the alleged gang rape a secret for six years.
He became a powerlifter, attending — and winning — numerous competitions. He broke the 18- to 19-year-old world record at the United States Powerlifting Association competition. At 20, he broke the age 20 to 23 record at the National Powerlifting Championships. He also engaged in Mixed Martial Arts and Ultimate Fighting Championship boxing, the lawsuit says.
But during that time, “He began making life choices that caused his kidneys and heart to fail,” it says. “He took copious amounts of steroids in an effort to be strong enough to never again be subjugated and raped.” He needed a kidney transplant, the suit says, but was not a candidate because of his continued steroid use.
Britt told The Star in 2021 that he was speaking out more than a decade after leaving the school to protect the boys who were still at Agape from the high-level staffers who left him with wounds that may never heal. At the time of the interview, three of the staffers Britt said had attacked him were still associated with the school, and a fourth was at another unlicensed boarding school in Missouri.
He said then that he had recently spoken to a Missouri Highway Patrol trooper by phone and detailed what had happened to him in the early fall of 2010. The patrol was working with the Missouri attorney general at the time on an abuse investigation at Agape.
But Britt had said he didn’t anticipate much coming from that investigation — at least not for survivors of sexual abuse like him. The trooper told him that he would include his statement in his report, Britt said, “but don’t expect anything.”
Another former student, who did not attend the school at the same time as Britt, told The Star he also was “gang raped.” That student said five staffers attacked him in 2009 — the year before Britt arrived at Agape.
One of the men he named was also allegedly involved in Britt’s assault.
The Star has investigated Agape and other boarding schools in southern Missouri since late summer 2020. Many men who attended Agape in their youth said they were subjected to physical restraints, extreme workouts, long days of manual labor, and food and water withheld as punishment. They said they also endured constant berating and mind games and some were physically and sexually abused by staff and other youth.
Authorities launched a criminal investigation into abuse allegations at Agape in early 2021, and five staffers — including the school’s medical coordinator — were charged later that year with low-level felonies of physically assaulting students.
The cases of four of those five staff members have been resolved. Three pleaded guilty to lesser misdemeanors, and each got two years’ probation. The case of another staffer was dismissed after his alleged victim failed to show up to testify. And charges against the fifth were dropped because of “witness problems,” Cedar County Prosecuting Attorney Ty Gaither told The Star earlier this year.
Dozens of former Agape students interviewed by The Star said although the criminal investigation focused on physical abuse, for decades there had been a deep-rooted culture of sexual violence against boys that no one talked about.
Former students feared survivors of sexual assault wouldn’t be heard or see any justice from the investigation and that the staff members accused of rape would never be held accountable.
“If they don’t take this seriously, a lot of kids are going to end up right when they turn into an adult being incredibly messed up psychologically,” Jason Britt said. “It’s been a battle for me for 10 years, and it’s still a battle every day. “I mean, you’re taking someone’s chance at a normal life away. There’s not too much worse you can do.”
On Jan. 11, Agape’s former director, Bryan Clemensen, announced that the school would close on Jan 20. It became the fourth and final unlicensed Christian boarding school in Cedar County to shut down since September 2020.
The announcement came as Missouri’s new attorney general said he planned to continue the effort launched in the fall of 2022 to get a court injunction to close the school. Clemensen said the decision to close Agape was “voluntary” and “due to the lack of financial resources to continue caring for the boys.”
The school also has been the subject of dozens of lawsuits filed by former students, including 24 filed in federal court. Many of the lawsuits have been settled in recent months. The amounts of those settlements are not public.
