BETHEL, Mo. (AP) — Authorities removed more than 100 children from a school for troubled youths because of an allegation of child abuse, school officials said Wednesday.
It was the third abuse allegation involving Heartland Christian Academy in five months.
Authorities removed 115 children from the rural school in northeast Missouri on Tuesday and took them to a juvenile center in nearby Kirksville, according to a news release from Heartland on Wednesday.
Heartland attorney David Melton said the case started when a 13-year-old boy ran away and told Lewis County authorities another boy had been abused. Officials at the county sheriff's department would not discuss the case.
Melton said a boy who was about to be spanked for repeatedly fighting had fought with three staffers, punching and choking one staff member. When the staff member tried to break free he accidentally struck the boy in the ear, injuring his ear drum, Melton said.
Melton said Heartland refused authorities' requests to force the staff member to talk to police and to fire him. "That's what initiated everything that's going on," he said.
Heartland had about 240 students in kindergarten through 12th grade. Melton said all the 115 students removed Tuesday were troubled students.
In the first case against the school, in June, five Heartland workers were charged with child abuse for allegedly punishing misbehaving youngsters by forcing them to shovel animal manure in concrete-lined pits. The five all appeared in court Wednesday and pleaded innocent.
In addition, four people associated with Heartland have been charged with abuse for allegedly striking a teen-ager with a board.
Heartland officials deny any wrongdoing.
"It's just part of a pattern of harassment we've been undergoing and will apparently undergo in the foreseeable future," Melton said.
The 200-acre complex was started in 1995 by millionaire Charles Sharpe to treat troubled youth and adults by using a combination of work therapy and Christian-based instruction.