Judge orders juvenile official to pay legal fees for Heartland Christian Academy

HANNIBAL (AP) – A federal judge has ordered a Missouri juvenile officer to pay more than $808,000 in attorneys’ fees and expenses to a northeast Missouri school for troubled youths.

U.S. District Judge E. Richard Webber handed down the ruling Monday in Hannibal in the case involving nondenominational Heartland Christian Academy, which had sought more than $1 million from juvenile officer Michael Waddle.

Heartland also had asked that Lewis County and Sheriff David Parrish be held jointly liable for the payments, but Webber ruled that Heartland could only recover the money from Waddle.

Waddle was the juvenile official charged with removing 115 children from the school during a raid in October 2001. The removal followed a series of abuse allegations against Heartland, which relies on strict Christian doctrine and corporal punishment to reform wayward children and teens.

None of the Heartland officials named in the cases were ever convicted. The children were later returned to the school, about 150 miles north of St. Louis near the small town of Bethel.

In May, Webber issued a permanent injunction barring juvenile authorities from removing the school’s children unless they are “in imminent danger of suffering serious physical harm, threat to life from abuse or neglect, or (have) been sexually abused” or imminently face such abuse. The state still may investigate individual reports of abuse.

Heartland founder Charles Sharpe has strongly denied abusing any children at the remote, 20,000-acre religious complex and farm. Discipline there includes paddling, and in one case, forcing unruly students to shovel piles of manure.

Heartland’s general counsel, David Melton, told The Associated Press in May that Sharpe had spent more than $4 million on defending the school over the years.

Messages left at Heartland Christian Academy’s office and at Melton’s office after hours Monday night were not returned. Waddle’s attorney, John J. Lynch of the Missouri attorney general’s office, could not be reached for comment.

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