Three former residents of Show-Me Christian Youth Home in La Monte, Missouri, have filed federal lawsuits alleging they were forced into hard manual labor and subjected to sexual abuse as children at the facility. The suits land at an especially uncomfortable moment for the home's director, who has spent three years pushing state lawmakers to let facilities like his take in foster children without standard licensing from Missouri's Children's Division.
The three lawsuits, filed by Jerrica Brianna Perriguey, Brianna Fultz and Ashley Lemler, were lodged in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri, according to the Fulton Sun. All three plaintiffs say they spent time in the same Show-Me household between 2007 and 2012, and their attorney, Jarrett Johnson, is representing all three. A fourth former resident, Samantha Butler, plans to sue as well, while an attorney for a fifth former resident says a lawsuit is coming once medical records are obtained.
Fultz, who arrived at Show-Me in 2007 at age 12, alleges her house father groomed and sexually abused her, and that Show-Me officials did nothing meaningful to protect her even after she reported the abuse to the home's case manager, another staff member and a therapist. She says she was expected to perform hard physical labor — stringing barbed-wire fencing, hauling hay bales and timber — and was awakened at 3 a.m. to run in the dark and cold under threats of food deprivation, isolation or more work. Fultz described the labor as extremely distressing, and the same house father later pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree sexual abuse tied to a 2014 incident, per the same reporting.
Punishments, Surveillance and Silenced Disclosures
Perriguey, who came to Show-Me in 2008 at age 14, alleged that residents underwent sexualized discipline and inspections of intimate body areas, and that she was punished by being made to sleep under the kitchen table or on the laundry-room floor. Residents stripped of privileges were allowed only dry toast or peanut-butter sandwiches with milk or water, the lawsuits allege. Perriguey also said her disclosures to a therapist affiliated with Show-Me were revealed to staff rather than kept confidential.
Across the three lawsuits, former residents allege they were sexually touched, beaten while naked, surveilled in the shower, and punished for reporting abuse. Butler said she still carries long-term injuries from the abuse she says she experienced at Show-Me as a child, and told reporters no child should be placed there. Her attorney, Rebecca Randles, said children who report abuse should be listened to.
Show-Me Christian Youth Home denies the allegations. The organization has argued in court filings that the lawsuits violate the First Amendment by entangling courts in religious doctrine, policy and administration, and separately contends it cannot be held liable for harm allegedly caused by employees acting outside the scope of their employment. Chad Puckett, the home's director, said he could not comment on the pending lawsuits but said abuse by anyone in the public or private foster system should be exposed, and that he wants to partner with the Children's Division to weed out bad actors.
A Director Who Lobbied to Loosen Oversight
The lawsuits carry extra weight because of Puckett's other role: he is president of the Missouri Association of Christian Child Care Agencies, and for three years he testified in support of legislation that would let association-registered facilities apply for Children's Division foster care placements without standard state licensing. Founded in 1967, Show-Me operates a main campus in La Monte along with satellite group homes in Barnett, Galt and Mayview, using traditional family settings with trained houseparents and six to eight children per home.
State Representative Jamie Gragg sponsored the 2026 proposal, House Bill 2241, which would have created an advisory board within the Department of Social Services to register MACCCA-certified facilities, including Show-Me, for state placements outside normal licensing. The bill stalled in committee this year, and Gragg has said he does not plan to file similar legislation in 2027, calling the effort unlikely to pass. It followed earlier failed attempts — House Bill 764 and Senate Bill 525 in 2025, sponsored by Gragg and Senator Adam Schnelting — both of which stalled after opposition from child safety groups including the Missouri Network Against Child Abuse.
Under current Missouri Department of Social Services policy, children in state custody must be placed with providers licensed and contracted with the Children's Division, and faith-based organizations remain exempt from Missouri's foster home licensing requirements. Randles questioned the level of oversight the Christian child-care association actually provides, saying its lack of investigations and on-site monitoring was troubling. Lawmakers reviewing the legislation similarly questioned whether the association could adequately police its own members, and allegations against Show-Me were raised during public testimony before a legislative committee examining the state's foster care system.
A Familiar Pattern in Missouri's Unlicensed Homes
Randles said her law firm was approached in 2021 and 2022 by people alleging abuse at Show-Me — well before the current lawsuits were filed. Missouri lawmakers have wrestled with this exact tension for years: a chronic shortage of foster placements pushing officials toward faith-based group homes, against a track record of abuse scandals at facilities that operated with minimal state scrutiny.
Missouri enacted a 2021 law requiring registration for certain private residential and treatment programs, following earlier scandals involving religious youth facilities. Agape Boarding School, an unlicensed Christian facility in southwest Missouri, closed permanently in 2023 amid civil lawsuits and state scrutiny. Its former director, Bryan Clemensen, was found responsible by the Missouri Department of Social Services for one count of child neglect and four counts of physical abuse in 2022, though a 2022 ruling allowed him to stay off the state's child-abuse registry. Hoodline previously covered how the Epstein files reignited scrutiny of Missouri's unlicensed religious youth facilities, including Agape and Wings of Faith Academy.
The pressure behind proposals like Gragg's is real: Missouri faces a shortage of licensed foster homes statewide, a strain that has fed political appetite for faster, less-regulated placement pathways. Not every former resident opposes that approach — Katrina Woods, who lived at Show-Me as a child, testified before a Missouri Senate committee in 2025 that her placement there rescued her from severe poverty and domestic abuse.
According to the Child Welfare Information Gateway, congregate care settings such as group homes and residential facilities should be used only when medically or behaviorally necessary.
The Fultz, Perriguey and Lemler lawsuits do not resolve that policy debate, but they sharpen it: the same director who spent years arguing association-based oversight was sufficient now faces sworn allegations that his own facility failed to stop or respond to abuse under that very model.
