8 boys taken from boarding home
Officials received allegations of abuse, fraud, human trafficking at home near Bertram, sheriff’s office says.
Officials have removed eight boys from a boarding home in Burnet County as investigators look into whether it might have been using them illegally for a lawn care service and moving company, Sheriff Calvin Boyd said Friday.
The sheriff said that Gary Wiggins, the operator of the Joshua Home, has not been charged.
Officials had received allegations of abuse, fraud and human trafficking at the home near Bertram, the sheriff ’s office said in a news release Friday morning, but Boyd declined to comment on those allegations in his afternoon news conference. The release said the home, which is affiliated with a nonprofit called the Joshua Home Ministries, “purports to be a residential home for troubled boys.”
The boys who were removed from the home ranged in age from 10 to 17, and their parents all lived out of state, Boyd said. They have been placed with Child Protective Services.
Boyd said the facility in the 2500 block of RM 243 was unlicensed and included living quarters and a school.
Wiggins’ lawyer, Eddie Shell, said the parents of the boys at the home all had given permission for their sons to be there. He said the boys were questioned for hours by CPS and that “none of the boys
‘I know the allegations were that the boys were working without pay, but I don’t think there was any illegal activity going on.’ Eddie Shell Lawyer for Gary Wiggins, operator of Joshua Home
said anything to warrant filing a criminal charge.”
Wiggins, a Baptist preacher, had permission from the parents to “discipline” the boys, who came from homes where they couldn’t be controlled, Shell said.
He said he did not know if the boys were used to work outside the home in a lawn care service or a moving company. “I know the allegations were that the boys were working without pay, but I don’t think there was any illegal activity going on,” he said.
Shell said the boys did chores around Joshua Home as part of their responsibilities.
Wiggins moved the facility from Pineville, Mo., to the Bertram area in May, Shell said. The Kansas City Star reported in May that the McDonald County sheriff’s office was looking into whether there was anything illegal going on at the home that Wiggins ran in Pineville.
McDonald County, Mo., Sheriff Michael Hall said Friday that his investigators never found any violations at the home.
Hall said his office was asked to check on the well-being of a boy during the spring, but investigators did not find anything wrong after talking to him and the rest of the boys. “The kids seemed like they were fine, and the deputies cleared the scene,” Hall said by phone Friday.
He said there were no regulation violations at the home because Missouri doesn’t have any regulations for the type of facility Wiggins was operating.
Hall said when he learned in May that Wiggins had moved the home to Bertram, he notified the Burnet County sheriff ’s office. “I didn’t know if there were any regulations in Texas or if the guy had to check in or register with the state,” Hall said.
The Kansas City Star article in May also said law enforcement officials raided a home that Wiggins operated in 2016 in Robertsdale, Ala., after several boys ran away and told officials that staff had punished them with forced exercise, solitary confinement and the withholding of food. No charges were filed against Wiggins, the newspaper reported.
The Burnet County sheriff ’s office said it has been working with the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas Rangers, among other agencies, on a weekslong investigation into the home near Bertram.
The sheriff ’s office is asking anyone with information about Joshua Home, Joshua Home Ministries, Joshua Home Lawn Care, Joshua Home Movers or JJW Home Services to call the investigations division of the at 512-756-8080 or email cidadmin@burnetsheriff.com.