Exclusive: Christian school near Tri-Cities ordered closed. Owner faces sex abuse lawsuit

A faith-based boarding school 45 minutes east of Pasco that was shut down last spring after abuse allegations is closed for good.

A Walla Walla County Superior Court judge has issued a permanent injunction against Master’s Ranch West near Prescott to prevent it from continuing to operate without a license.

Pastor David Bosley and his wife Tresa opened the unlicensed home for troubled boys from across the country in early 2020. They already were running the Master’s Ranch Christian Academy in Missouri for at least seven years.

But before then the Bosleys have a long history in the Tri-Cities region and Washington state.

David Bosley has been accused of misconduct while he was a pastor in Prosser and near Olympia, and Missouri child welfare officials previously investigated complaints about treatment of children at his Master’s Ranch Christian Academy and the recently opened Master’s Ranch Girls Academy.

State lawmakers there are now trying to change the law to require more oversight of faith-based schools.

Just last week in Washington state, three sisters sued two churches in Prosser and Tenino, claiming David Bosley abused them as children. They claim church leaders did nothing to protect them.

Prescott investigation

Like its Missouri counterpart, Master’s Ranch West in Prescott was billed as a ranch for troubled boys and attracted kids from around the country.

The program was touted as a mentoring, military-like environment that integrated educational, spiritual and personal growth curriculum to help at-risk boys succeed in life.

But six months after the school opened, Walla Walla County sheriff’s deputies and state child welfare officers showed up to interview some of the boys and staff after parents and employees raised concerns.

A parent who spoke to the Herald last May said that she emailed and called numerous times to get regular updates on the status of her son, but received nothing during the few months he was there.

At least two employees told Bosley they were concerned over physical discipline of the boys, as well as the rigid environment, a former employee told the Herald last spring.

Deputies responded to the ranch seven times in 13 days, including to reports of several boys stealing a car and shoplifting.

One visit to the ranch by authorities was prompted by a former employee who contacted sheriff’s deputies about mistreatment of the boys.

After hours of interviewing boys there, state of Washington Department of Children, Youth and Family Services immediately took eight boys into protective custody and made plans to return the next day to remove 30 others or have them picked up by parents.

But before the authorities returned, the remaining teens had armed themselves with shovels and brooms in an angry protest.

Ultimately, state officials took the remaining students into protective custody until parents could get them.

Bosley responded with a rambling video that he posted from his car to Facebook calling the state’s move “poorly thought out,” saying that it converted a normally peaceful academy into “Lord of the Flies chaos.”

Police also arrested a 20-year-old employee on suspicion of molesting the daughter of a staff member. Maxwell Shelter has since pleaded pleaded guilty to communication with a minor for immoral purposes and was sentenced to three months in jail and probation.

As part of the state injunction, the Bosleys are not allowed to bring children from their other facilities to the Prescott ranch or even to Washington state without court permission.

It’s unclear if they are still buying the property that previously was the longtime home to the Jubilee Christian Academy owned by orchardists Ralph and Cheryl Broetje.

Walla Walla County Assessor online records show the Jubilee Foundation sold the ranch to First Fruit Farms in late 2018 for about $288 million.

First Fruit Farms said last spring that the Bosleys were under contract for the property but the sale had not closed. First Fruits still is listed as the owner and could not be reached this week on the status of the sale.

Even after the state removed the boarding school students in May, the Bosleys were using the facilities as late as September for women’s retreats, according to a Master’s Ranch post.

However, on a video posted to Facebook in October 2020, Bosley discussed shutting down his Washington ministry because, “Washington state is full of Nazis who don’t believe parents have any rights to their kids.”

Bosley also said that the Prescott ranch might open in spring 2021 but to continue to keep it open would bankrupt him. He said was hauling all the school’s equipment and furnishings in Prescott back to Missouri.

Washington state roots

David Bosley grew up in Dayton and graduated from Dayton High School in 1991.

Tresa grew up in Starbuck — a tiny rural community about 65 miles northeast of Pasco near the Snake River where her father was the pastor of the Starbuck Community Church.

According to a Walla Walla Union Bulletin wedding announcement, they were married in 1984 when he was 21 and she was 16.

The couple apparently stayed in the area while David Bosley worked as the pastor of the Touchet Community Church in the early 1990s.

By the mid to late ‘90s he was working for the Blessed Hope Baptist church in Tenino, Wash., then moved on to become a pastor of at least two Prosser churches — including Calvary Baptist Church and another he started himself.

At the same time, he was working at the now closed Umatilla Chemical Depot.

The Lighthouse Baptist Church that Bosley opened was dissolved in 2004, and Missouri state documents show he opened Master’s Ranch as a corporation in 2007.

It is unclear where else the Bosleys lived, though they spent at least some time in California where David Bosley worked as a real estate agent.

Claims of abuse

The opening of the Master’s Ranch Girls Academy in Missouri is what prompted three sisters to file a lawsuit over alleged sexual abuse by David Bosley in the mid-1990s, said their lawyer Melanie Baillie.

Last week, the women now in their 30s and living in Idaho, sued Calvary Baptist Church of Prosser and Blessed Hope Baptist in Tenino.

“I decided to come forward because Bosley is still out there running children’s programs,” said one of the women in a news release. “He needs to be stopped.”

The women claim church leadership failed to protect them from abuse by Bosley, who was pastor of both churches. However, Bosley is not named as a party in the lawsuit.

Bosley told that Kansas City Star he was “appalled” and “shocked” after reading the lawsuit on Tuesday.

“I categorically deny the truth of those things,” he said.

While the Tri-City Herald does not usually name sex abuse victims, Baillie said Jessica Dudley, Ashleigh Burchard and Shannon Evans wanted to come forward publicly.

“They want to make sure they are heard and their stories are heard,” Baillie said.

The complaint says that the Bosleys met the young sisters in the early-1990s. They moved to Washington with their mother to where their father was living and attending the Tenino church, which is no longer operating.

The lawsuit says David Bosley “groomed” the girls ages 10 to 14 who attended the church and its school, also run by Bosley.

By 1998, the Bosleys got a restraining order against the girls’ parents and were awarded nonparental custody by the state of Washington. While the girls were never legally adopted, the Bosleys retained custody until they left the home as adults.

While Bosley was working in Tenino, Touchet church officials reportedly told Tenino church leaders about alleged abuse allegations there when he was as pastor.

Tenino officials confronted Bosley, and he ultimately left and took a job in Prosser, the suit alleges.

While the Touchet church isn’t identified in the complaint, a story by the Walla Walla Union Bulletin in 1991 shows that Bosley was the pastor of the Touchet Community Church.

At the time, the newspaper reported that Bosley and the town were embroiled in a battle over church and state on the ability to hold a Bible club inside the school. And he often took to the streets of downtown Walla Walla at late hours to reach the “drunks and dopers.”

At Calvary Baptist Church in Prosser, he was confronted once again about his relationship with the three sisters and ended up forming his own Prosser congregation. The lawsuit claims Calvary Baptist Church leadership never contacted legal authorities about the concerns.

In 2004, the Tri-City Herald wrote about Bosley, who was pastor at the Lighthouse Baptist Church in Prosser, because of his involvement in a lawsuit over his reported exposure in 1999 at the Umatilla Chemical Depot.

He and several dozen other workers reported becoming violently ill and had continuing medical issues and suffered from post-traumatic stress. At the time, he told the Herald he was having unstable emotions along with anxiety, and his wife said he had tried committing three times.

Court records show that the case was dismissed in 2005 by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in Portland.

Reform schools

The Master’s Ranch is Missouri is now the part of a a larger issue in that state where a nearly 40-year-old law allows faith-based residential facilities to operate without a license or little interference from the state.

According to the Kansas City Star, two Washington faith-based schools were among many that moved to Missouri after being investigated or shut down in other states for abuse or neglect.

Missouri has almost no oversight for private schools, the Kansas City Star has found.

Teacher certification is not required in Missouri and there is no requirements for length of school days or school year and only a narrow set of subjects are required to be taught.

Another boarding school that used to operate in Othello, about 60 miles north of Tri-Cities, also relocated to Missouri.

The Agape Boarding School was in Othello from 1992-96. A Tri-City Herald story from 1996 said that Franklin County officials ordered the facility to close for code violations over removing and burying asbestos-containing material on school grounds.

The school permanently closed in 1998.

Agape’s owner James Clemenson told the Herald in a letter in 1996 that he was working on buying property for another boarding school, and that his family, staff and 63 students had relocated to Stockton, Mo., where they were living in a complex of small buildings.

According to the Missouri Department of Social Services, two reports of neglect were substantiated since 2010 at Master’s Ranch in Couch, Mo.

The Child Residential Home Notification Act proposed in Missouri would require all faith-based boarding schools to register with the state, including the Bosleys’ current schools in order to monitor students’ welfare.

The bill would require federal criminal background checks for all employees and volunteers, and that the schools adhere to state fire, safety and health regulations, including requiring schools to allow authorities access to children who are believed at risk of harm.

Washington state already requires private schools to meet a set of minimum standards to insure the health and safety of all the students, as well as a sufficient basic education to meet graduation requirements such as certified classroom teachers and basic subject matters.

State documents obtained by the Herald show the Prescott facility did not have certified teachers or maintain an educational curriculum.

Although its website promoted its academics, parents and former staff members who have contacted the Herald also disputed that students were receiving educational instruction.

The state sought an injunction after the ranch said it intended to operate as an unlicensed facility despite telling officials that it was ceasing operations, according to court documents.

This story was originally published February 10, 2021 at 2:53 PM.