Eight boys have been removed from a religious boarding home in Central Texas as authorities investigate allegations that include abuse, child labor, neglect and human trafficking.
Several local and state agencies searched The Joshua Home in rural Burnet County last week, about a month after a Missouri sheriff let authorities know that the group was moving there, KXAN-TV reported.
Evidence from the search led to eight boys, ages 10 to 17, being removed from the home immediately. They were placed in the custody of Child Protective Services until they could be reunited with their families.
Although the home "purports to be a residential home for troubled boys," according to the Burnet County Sheriff's Office, authorities are concerned that the boys' work at a moving company and a lawn care company operated by The Joshua Home Ministries could constitute abuse and human trafficking, Sheriff Calvin Boyd said at a news conference last week.
The Joshua Home's operator, Gary Wiggins, moved the group from Pineville, Mo., several weeks ago before McDonald County Sheriff Michael Hall could investigate similar allegations, The Kansas City Star reported.
"I just wanted to let Texas know what they had coming, if they had something they could check into," Hall told KXAN.
Wiggins previously ran the Blessed Hope Boys Academy in Alabama, where several boys who ran away from the facility accused him and other staff of punishing them by putting them in solitary confinement, making them exercise or refusing to give them food.
Lucas Greenfield told ABC's 20/20 that his mother sent him to Blessed Hope because he is gay and that Wiggins would beat the boys, saying "I'm going to get the demon out of you and make you straight."
No charges were filed after Alabama authorities investigated those allegations.
A lawyer representing Wiggins and his wife, Meaghan Wiggins, said that they had the consent of the boys' parents to discipline them.
"Anything that the Wigginses have done, they have done it with the permission of the parents," Eddie Shell told KXAN.
Texas authorities are continuing to investigate the Bertram home.
"There's no charges at this time," Boyd, the sheriff, said at Friday's news conference, adding, "I'm confident there will be."