Missouri Survivors Are Still Waiting for the Investigation They Asked For

For more than two years, survivors of abuse at Missouri boarding schools have been asking the state's attorney general to do one specific thing: investigate the facilities themselves, not just wait for individual criminal referrals to land on the office's desk. That request outlasted an entire attorney general's term. Andrew Bailey left office in September 2025 to become co-deputy director of the FBI, without ever opening the coordinated investigation survivors had repeatedly asked for. Catherine Hanaway, appointed by Governor Mike Kehoe to serve out the remainder of Bailey's term, has now been in the job for ten months. The question survivors are asking hasn't changed. It's simply been carried over to a second attorney general.

What Survivors Asked For, and What They Got

In 2024, advocates including Douglas Lay of the Missouri Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests delivered a letter to Bailey's office naming three specific facilities: Agape Boarding School in Stockton, Circle of Hope Girls Ranch in Humansville, and Kanakuk Kamps in Branson. The letter argued that ample evidence already existed in the public record showing these institutions lacked oversight and, in some cases, attracted people who went on to hurt children.

Bailey's office responded that the attorney general only steps into criminal cases when appointed by the governor or by local authorities, and pointed to a 133 percent increase in requests from local law enforcement and prosecutors to bring cases since he took office. That is a real number, and it reflects real casework. But it is also a description of a system that depends on county sheriffs and local prosecutors, many of them under-resourced and unfamiliar with how these facilities operate, to initiate action on their own. Advocates like David Clohessy, former national director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, have been blunt about the gap this leaves: their real ask has always been for the attorney general to write directly to prosecutors in the counties where these schools operate and press them to act, not to wait for a referral that may never come.

By November 2024, a Missouri Independent editorial put it plainly: Bailey had just won re-election and no longer had anything to lose politically by opening an investigation into "under the radar" Christian boarding schools where children have been abused physically, sexually, and emotionally. He didn't take that opening before leaving the office ten months later.

A Different Attorney General, a Familiar Set of Facts

Hanaway has said publicly that her approach will look different from her predecessor's. She's described wanting to focus on cases with an impact on individual Missourians, rather than the kind of headline-driven, culture-war litigation that defined much of Bailey's tenure. That's a notable shift in stated priorities, and it's one worth watching closely, because the facts on the ground haven't changed since 2024.

Agape Boarding School closed in 2023, but litigation against its former staff and physician is still active, and new lawsuits, including one alleging trafficking at the related Wings of Faith Academy, were filed as recently as April 2026. Circle of Hope Girls Ranch closed years ago, and its former co-owner has faced 21 felony counts of child abuse and neglect, a case survivors have pushed to see through to trial. Kanakuk Kamps in Branson continues to operate today, even after former campers alleged sexual abuse by a staff member and concealment of that abuse by the organization.

None of these are cold cases in the sense of lacking evidence. They are cases where the evidence is public, well-documented, and, according to the survivors who lived it, still waiting for the state's top law enforcement office to connect the dots across facilities and counties rather than treating each one as an isolated local matter.

Why This Matters for Families Right Now

A coordinated state-level investigation would do something individual civil lawsuits can't do on their own: it would create an official public record of the pattern, not just the individual incidents. That record matters for the families currently deciding whether to place a child in a residential program in Missouri, and it matters for survivors weighing whether Missouri's statute of limitations still gives them a path to justice.

We don't know yet whether Hanaway's office will take up what three attorneys general before her declined to. What we do know is that the facilities named in that 2024 letter, and others like them across the state, are not going to investigate themselves. Until Missouri's attorney general does, the work of documenting these patterns falls to survivors, advocates, and the attorneys willing to build the record case by case.

If you or someone you love was harmed at a Missouri boarding school, camp, or residential treatment program, McGonagle Johnson can walk you through your legal options in a confidential consultation.