CHARLESTON — Another lawsuit was filed against Miracle Meadows School after a student alleged abuse during their time at the school.
The lawsuit, like many before it, names Seventh-Day Adventist Church North American Division, Columbia Union Conference Association of Seventh Day Adventists Inc., Mountain View Conference Association of Seventh-Day Adventists, Miracle Meadows School and Susan Gayle Clark as defendants.
H.S. was enrolled and living at Miracle Meadows during the years of their enrollment and suffered abuse at the hands of the defendants. They were regularly abused, sexually abused and quarantined to a windowless room that at times did not have heating, lighting or air conditioning, according to a complaint filed in Kanawha Circuit Court.
The defendants violated child labor laws, failed to educate H.S. and caused them serious physical harm, vocational impairment and emotional and mental distress.
H.S. is seeking compensatory and punitive damages. They are represented by W. Jesse Forbes of Forbes Law Offices; R. Scott Long of Hendrickson & Long; and V. Paul Bucci II, Brian D. Kent and Gaetano D'Andrea of Laffey Bucci & Kent.
The case is assigned to Circuit Judge Carrie Webster.
Over the last several years, many cases have been filed against Miracle Meadows by students who claimed they were abused during their time at the now-defunct school.
Clark, founder and director of Miracle Meadows, was sentenced to jail time and probation in 2016.
Last year, a lawsuit involving 29 former students was settled for $51.9 million.
The former students in that case alleged that those who ran the Christian boarding school forced them to perform manual labor, beat them, starved them, kept them in isolation rooms for long periods of time and would chain and shackle them to beds.
“The abuse suffered by these children would shock the conscious of any West Virginian,” Jesse Forbes, the attorney for the plaintiffs, said at that time. “They were stripped naked, handcuffed, sexually abused and kept in a 5-by-8-foot room with a coffee can for a toilet. This is the stuff straight from a horror movie."
Kanawha Circuit Court case number: 21-C-894
