The proprietors of a now-shuttered Southwest Missouri boarding school are facing a new lawsuit by a former student alleging trafficking across several states, coerced labor, isolation and sexualized punishment while she was underage.
The lawsuit was filed last week in the Western District of Missouri Southern Division court by Javairia Yankowy, who says she spent four years at Wings of Faith Academy after being placed in the custody of the school’s owners, Debbie and Percy “Bud” Martin. The lawsuit alleges the couple trafficked Yankowy while running Wings of Faith, which operated alongside Agape Boarding School, another Southwest Missouri Christian boarding school that has faced extensive abuse allegations.
The Martins did not respond to requests for comment.
According to the lawsuit, the Martins held Yankowy in custody as a minor and “isolated her from her family, moved her from state to state, transported her into Mexico and obtained her labor and services through coercion, fear, humiliation, surveillance and punishment.”
Yankowy alleges abuse by the Martins beginning when she was 14 years old. The lawsuit says she was “required to strip naked in front of defendants under the claimed pretense of ‘security.’”
The lawsuit also alleges the Martins forced Yankowy to eat pork after being told that, because of her upbringing, she did not eat it. After she vomited, the lawsuit states, “Debbie Martin told her to eat the chunks out of her vomit from the plate.”
More broadly, the lawsuit alleges the Martins used “corporal punishment in a way that was degrading and sexualized. Debbie Martin struck girls with a long leather paddle while Bud Martin watched.”
Jarrett Johnson, who is Yankowy’s attorney, said his firm has represented dozens of Missouri victims of boarding school abuse.
The allegations land as lawmakers debate how much oversight Missouri should require for religious residential facilities.
The state legislature is considering a bill that would make it easier for unlicensed Christian residential facilities to receive state placements of foster children. Instead of obtaining a license from the state, facilities could register with the Missouri Association of Christian Child Care Facilities.
Bud Martin was a board member for the Missouri Association of Christian Childcare Facilities as recently as 2021, state records show.
Chat Puckett, president of the association, said he was “unfamiliar with Percy ‘Bud’ Martin’s legal troubles,” and added, “it is a no-brainer that additional protections for children and actionable tools to safeguard them, legislatively, are incredibly important, and I will continue to come to the Missouri Capitol to work for meaningful reforms and results.”
The suit also comes amid renewed scrutiny of Wings of Faith after the school was mentioned last month in court filings related to the release of Jeffrey Epstein records.
Yankowy joins a growing number of ex-Wings of Faith students who have spoken out against the Martins in recent years, including Eliza Lamm, who highlighted alleged abuse as part of her testimony before a Missouri House committee in 2021.
“Bud and Debbie Martin are predators who prey on the most vulnerable in our society, innocent children, for their own personal financial gain,” Lamm said at the time.
Jordan Evans, who attended Wings of Faith when she was 15 years old, alleges similar abuse. During an escape attempt, Evans says she injured her legs and hands on barbed wire.
“When I got back to the school they made me strip down and hosed me off,” she said. “They made me pour alcohol all over.”
Multiple former residents of Martin-associated facilities have similar stories. One former resident at Wings of Faith, who asked only to go by her first name, Heather, attended the school when it went by the name Refuge of Grace.
Heather said her experience left her deeply skeptical that Missouri’s oversight system will ever hold operators like the Martins accountable.
“I don’t have much faith at all in our justice system. Specifically the justice system in the State of Missouri, where the state has allowed this type of thing to happen over and over and over,” Heather said. “That’s why the Martins chose Missouri, because of the lack of oversight into these so-called at-risk teen therapy boarding schools.”
Heather said she was “kidnapped” and taken to Wings of Faith at age 15, where she spent 19 and a half months. Now 34 and working as a paramedic, Heather said she was drawn to the field to help vulnerable people and abuse survivors because of what she endured there.
“I want to be the person I so badly needed,” Heather said.
She also offered encouragement to Yankowy.
“I want to say, get ‘em, girl. You go, girl. You don’t stop until you receive justice,” she said. “Carry on, be strong. Be brave. Do it for you and do it for the rest of us. And thank you; thank you for standing up against them.”
