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Working as a reporter for this newspaper, I spent the summer of 2002 traveling the dirt roads of Missouri through unheard-of towns like Devil's Elbow, asking if this state might find reckoning with a group of abusive, and even deadly, religious teen reform schools.
Twenty years later, it still has not.
Not when workers at two schools -- Agape Boarding School and Circle of Hope Girls Ranch -- face a long list of criminal charges of physical and sexual abuse.
Not when the head of a Missouri-based "transport" company was indicted for shipping a California teen for treatment in a manner resembling a kidnapping. And perhaps especially not when parents continue to send their children to such programs against their better judgment due to a lack of state-funded options.
The same story repeats itself across the decades, across state lines, and across generations of broken families. And it will continue to, as long as Missouri remains a safe haven for a strict breed of teen reform ministries.
Back when I was reporting, interest in Missouri's religious teen reform industry spiked after a young man was murdered by peers at Mountain Park Baptist Boarding Academy in Wayne County.
Later, Heartland Christian Academy, a school founded by the...