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UNION — It was Bible Bowl 2011 and Eric Miller, a home-school student from Illinois, did a good job answering questions about Scripture. By the end of the national meet, his name was selected for a week’s stay at Niños de México, a network of orphanages near Mexico City founded by Missouri missionaries.

“Luck of the draw,â€�Ìýsaid Miller.

The experience went well. He saved up airfare to go back to Mexico the following year, then again in 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2022. Eventually, as a Biblical Studies college student, his stays extended to three-month internships.

Many faithful go on weeklong mission trips to far-flung destinations, anything from building cinder block homes in Ciudad Juárez to singing with school children in rural Kenya. Miller yearned to answer God’s call as a full-time job, not just on an exotic break.

“My hope had always been to work at Niños,� he said.

But as he spent more time on repeated trips, getting to know the children, the more he learned about a troubling pattern. He said stories surfaced about children being sexually abused by staff and older residentsÌý— and leadership that didn’t do much to stop it beyond moving people around to different group homes and job assignments.

“Every time I went down there, I learned something different,� he said.

By the time of his last trip, in April 2023, he wasn’t staying at Niños anymore. He’s 28 now. He’s a whistleblower publicly claiming that Niños leaders in Mexico and the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ region have failed to protect vulnerable children in their care for years, while donors in the United States have been kept in the dark.

Over the course of several telephone interviews and emails, he made compelling cases, claiming that at least six former Niños employees sexually abused children or young adults with impunity. Alleged victims filed complaints with Mexican prosecutors against three of them in the past two years. One former house parent has been arrested.

David Javier Colosia, 37, is currently on trial in Mexico for aggravated rape of two teenage girls.

Miller said he went public in January 2023 because he thinks the problem is systemic. He devoted a to the saga, including links to his correspondence with Niños officials and others speaking out south of the border.

People like Olivia Paola Cuevas, who wrote about how Niños hired her in 2021 to develop better child protection strategies, but later resigned and went public with unreported allegations she discovered. Her active to Mexican authorities, titled “Justice for Boys and Girls Sexually Abused in an Institution That Should Care for Them!� has more than 7,200 signatures.

Another person speaking out, Wendy Cervantes, an alleged victim now 25, wrote on Miller’s blog and told the Post-Dispatch by telephone that she was sexually abused multiple times as a child by older residents at Niños and a long-time former medical director.

Miller has also hosted conference calls with a growing number of concerned parties. In an attempt to apply pressure on donors, he’s contacted churches in the United States that have contributed to the Niños mission for years.

And he’s called out a man he used to admire: Executive Director Steven Ross, who spends half the year in Mexico, the other half in Florissant.

“Going after Ross is like going after Santa Claus,� said Miller. “He’s big and jolly. Everybody knows him as somebody who loves children.�

In a lengthy telephone interview from Mexico with the Post-Dispatch, Ross, 64, hesitated to name and quantify how many former Niños employees had substantiated allegations of sexual abuse.

“We know about the case of Javier Colosia,� he said. “That is the one that’s the most prominent. And there are others that are now being investigated as well.�

What others?

“I don’t really want to go into that,� he said.

Rather, he said, Niños improved and established new protocols to substantially decrease the risk of harm to children. He said state and federal child welfare authorities in Mexico told them to make some of those changes during ongoing probes. He said Niños also continues to cooperate with criminal prosecutors.Ìý

Miller moved on from Ross to directly ask the Niños board of directors to request an independent review of the charity that goes well beyond Colosia.

“The number of victims that we know is just the tip of the iceberg,� Miller said. “The institution has to submit to a full investigation. It has to remove people who didn’t report abuse.�

In the beginning

In 1966, Meryln and Wanda Beeman, a young married couple from Franklin County, went to Mexico City to explore ways to meet needs and evangelize. After a lot of prayer, they formed what became Niños de México, or Children of Mexico. It’s aligned with independent Christian Churches of the Restoration Movement, which has “no creed but Christ.�

Starting small, they rented a home and began receiving children who had nowhere else to go. According to a timeline on the Niños website, they soon bought a three-bedroom house. Space was tight with 25 children, so they developed an additional one-room building on the property into something more substantial, and called it Genesis House. In 1975, they added Agape House. Three years later,Ìýthe Beemans returned to the U.S., and a brother-in-law, Don Bader, took charge.ÌýNiñosÌýkept growing, adding Bethel House, Hope House, Emanuel HouseÌý— even a school.Ìý

A corporate office opened in Union, Missouri, to handle the business side of things. Mexican child welfare agencies refer youths to Niños who don’t fit into traditional foster care or adoption settings, but nearly all the $1.8 million in program revenue comes from U.S. churches and donors who have been willing to invest in the mission.Ìý

At this point, facilities have been remodeled and adult alums have been recruited, including a medical director who stayed for years and others who helped plant small churches.

Miller said he was doing an internship at one of the churches in 2018 when a young adult told him that a female house parent was having a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old Niños resident. Miller said he obtained corroborating images of her and shared them directly with Ross. Despite an obvious birthmark, Miller said Ross wasn’t convinced. Two weeks later, Miller said he obtained a secretly recorded confession from the victim, which he shared with Ross, and, later, the Post-Dispatch. A defensive voice in the recording says the sexual encounters started when he was 16.

“He was visibly irritated,� Miller said of Ross when he heard it. “He told me that there was nothing that the authorities could do without the cooperation of the victim and then he said, ‘Well, you know, that this could shut down the organization.’�

One year after that case came to light, Miller said he was back in Mexico when a boy he’d financially sponsored in the program told him about being sexually abused by an older resident when he first arrived to Niños in 2015. He said the boy told him that he’d reported it to Niños leadership.

Miller said he’d like to talk to the boy again, but he’s missing.

“I have been looking for him the past two years,� he said. “He fell through the cracks. No one has heard from him.�

Miller said he was also told about a male auxiliary house parent who was witnessed raping a boy in his care in 2016 at Hope House. Miller said he was told that the victim and witness reported the incident to Ross and the administrative director at the time. Miller concluded from his inquiries that leaders didn’t report it to authorities and made their own determination that the child was lying. Miller said the auxiliary house parent was promoted to house parent before eventually being formally accused of a crime.

Formal accusations, charges

Since 2021, formal complaints have been submitted to Mexican state prosecutors involving three former Niños employeesÌý— the auxiliary house parent, long-time medical director and Colosia. Five cases against Colosia accuse him of a variety of offenses involving 11 youths, said Grecia Gonzalez Miranda, an attorney representing four alleged victims.

Gonzalez told the Post-Dispatch from Mexico that prosecutors so far found sufficient evidence to only charge Colosia with two counts of aggravated rape of two teenage girls in his care at Bethel House. Colosia allegedly raped a 17-year-old girl in her bedroom late one night in July 2020 and threatened to attack her sisters if she told anyone. The second case stems from a teenage girl who told prosecutors that Colosia raped her in the middle of the day in May 2020 in the house kitchen when she was 15.

Gonzalez said these are two specific incidents that she thinks she can most easily prove.

“The victims said this kind of stuff happened all the time,� said Gonzalez, 33.

Gonzalez said one of the complaints submitted to prosecutors alleges details from a Colosia incident were reported to Niños leaders but not immediately to authorities.

“If they would have taken it seriously, they would have separated him from them,� said Gonzalez.

Colosia, who is married with two children, couldn’t be reached for comment. Gonzalez said he remains in jail pending rulings from the bench in each of the two ongoing court cases. His attorney, Balaji Morales Alvarez, couldn’t be reached for comment.Ìý

Gonzalez said there are numerous allegations involving multiple possible offenders and traumatized victims. She said potential witnesses need to be tracked down going back decades. She said her hands are full representing four clients pro bono.

“There need to be more resources to make reparations,� she said.

Cervantes, who lived at Niños for 13 years, told the Post-Dispatch that the medical director and older residents periodically sexually abused her.

“For us, it was normal,� she said. “I think there are a lot of victims. Who knows how many.�

She said she filed a formal complaint with prosecutors in January about the doctor but hasn’t been back to see it through to the next steps yet. She said she has a young family and works a lot of hours for low pay cleaning used plastic storage bags. She said she suffers from depression and anxiety. She said Niños hasn’t helped her since she filed her complaint beyond saying she needs God in her life and that they’d pray for her.

At the Niños business office in Union, a framed 2004 article about Niños from The Washington Missourian includes a photograph of Cervantes as a young child at Bethel House. The photo is titled: “Home At Last.�

“How sad,â€� said Cervantes, claiming she’d already been sexually abused by then. “They have a photo but turned their back on me.â€�ÌýÌý

“Wendy Cervantes’ story alone is sufficient for Niños to hire an outside investigation,� Douglas Lay, 65, a Florissant pastor, adjunct English professor and former supporter of Niños, wrote in a July letter to donating churches.

Julie Heifner, who is also collaborating with Miller, used to visit Cervantes when she was the Mexico-based spiritual development coordinator for Niños from July 2016 to April 2019. Heifner, 52, who now lives in the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ area, told the Post-Dispatch in lengthy interviews that she was alarmed that the same doctor had access to children for yearsÌý— and might still. She said she had suspicions about the doctor since he inappropriately touched her during a routine medical exam.

More concerns

Heifner said she heard about other possible offenders.

One time in 2016, according to notes she shared, Heifner accompanied a girl to an emergency meeting with Ross. It was about a former house parent at Bethel House accused of continuing to sexually abuse the girl despite previous complaints to leadership. Though the man’s job changed, he was still kept in the same home.Ìý

Heifner said the girl, who had learning disabilities, approached her after the meeting.

“Although she never disclosed the abuse to me personally before, she thanked me for helping her and told me that nobody believed her as she had reported it many times before,� Heifner wrote about the incident.

Later that day, she added in her notes, Ross had a meeting with the employee in question and fired him.

Heifner wrote about another former house parent accused in 2014 of sexually abusing girls at Agape House. A leadership decision was made to move him to Hope House, a home for orphan boys, where children later said he beat them. In 2017, some of the accusations spurred attention from Mexican authorities. Heifner wrote in her notes that the inquiry led to an emergency internal leadership meeting she attended Oct. 10, 2017. She wrote that the meeting leader panicked about possible jail time and being shut down.

“There was absolutely no concern expressed for the victims,â€� she wrote.Ìý

Heifner interviewed some of the girls. According to copies of her official written reports, one 15-year-old said the man in question sexually abused her at Agape House but didn’t want to discuss it. Another 15-year-old said she rebuffed a romantic or sexual solicitation from the man but “knew those things were going on� with her sister and another resident. “[She] didn’t want to say anything because she was afraid of him, especially at night.� The girl told Heifner that she’d seen the man partially undressed with a resident and witnessed him kissing girls as a husband and wife would. The reports also mention a 16-year-old who claimed the man touched her in private places and kissed her.

Heifner said she turned the reports over to the administrative director and Ross. A lot of time passed. She said the administrative director ultimately told her that the case was dropped after the girls turned 18.

“I had absolutely no faith in leadership,� she wrote.

Niños responds

In light of public scrutiny from Miller and others, Ross and Niños Board President Dave Smith wrote a joint letter to supporters on Jan. 26, 2023, about the mission’s current child protection procedures.

“Niños de México is here as the hands and feet of Jesus to let the children know that they are loved and cared for,� the letter says. “Our goal is to always protect them from the Evil One who had them in his grasp before they came to our homes. Unfortunately, there have been times when the Evil One has taken advantage of a child or children inside the organization, and this has broken our hearts.�

Ross acknowledged in the letter that during his tenure as executive director, “there have been accusations of different kinds of abuseÌý— whether physical, emotional, or sexual. We have addressed these accusations in different ways, ways we believed appropriate to the situation.â€�

Though the letter doesn’t mention Colosia by name, it mentions a few descriptions of his case. They said they were made aware of the allegations in 2021, the same year Niños started working in conjunction with Mexican authorities to “establish a clearer process for reporting any kind of violence or abuse.�

Among changes made in recent years, they said Niños installed cameras in public areas of each home; required a house parent be present for child medical exams; required background checks before hiring new employees and periodically for staff; completed sex abuse prevention training and reworked manuals for house parents.

“We now have a strict policy that ANY report of sexual abuse is to be taken immediately to the local prosecutor’s office with a report to our office that an accusation has been made,� Ross and Smith wrote, adding: “At the same time, the individual being reported will be removed from the home or organization immediately.�

In a Feb. 3, 2023, email to two Niños supporters, Ross addressed a different case than Colosia’s.

“Unfortunately, there was an allegation in 2015 that was not reported directly to the authorities,� Ross wrote, according to a copy of the note provided to the Post-Dispatch. “I am heartbroken about that. I now fully understand that reporting or not is not up to us and our feelings of validity of the testimony, rather it is up to the legal authorities to determine if the claims are credible or non-credible, and it is their responsibility to determine guilt or innocence.�

In a Feb. 14, 2023, email to someone seeking clarification about the 2016 case of the auxiliary house parent who allegedly raped a boy in Hope House, Ross wrote: “I asked our team to look at the timing of the accusation. [He] was already gone from the home for quite some time when we received the accusation. He had left the organization approximately 3 months before we knew of anything against him. May God continue to help us to protect each and every child!!�

Heifner was aghast at the comment. She said children registered complaints to leadership in 2016 that the same auxiliary house parent stood a line of boys up naked and examined their genitalia to teach personal hygiene. Heifner said she registered additional concerns in 2017.

“I can’t forget these accusations that the children made or that I made, but he can so easily forget?� Heifner said. “Then God have mercy on his soul.�

Ross has been in the mission field a long time. He and his wife, Janet, and their three daughters first moved to Mexico in 1990 so he could be administrative director. Later that decade, they served as house parents at Hope House before returning to Missouri. For a spell, Ross was a trustee at now-closed ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Christian College (his alma mater) and an administrative pastor at First Christian Church of Florissant. He returned to Niños in 2012 to be executive director.Ìý

During his time at the helm, he doubled the number of residents served to about 100 a year. Today, there are eight group homes and two dormitories for young adults. Annual revenue rose from $1.1 million in 2012 to $1.8 million in 2021, according to the latest available tax filings.

His tenure also came with challenges that he didn’t want to talk about in a lengthy interview with the Post-Dispatch. When pressed, he confirmed that he’s fired two of the three administrative directors who have worked for him in the past decade. The first firing, which happened shortly after Ross took over, involved a man who had been accused of having sex with a young adult living at Niños; the secondÌýman was in charge when the Colosia case came to light. Ross acknowledged there’s been a complaint to Niños leadership about the current administrative director being inappropriately flirtatious.Ìý

“There may have been some comment way back when, but nothing that I could see as really a problem,� Ross said. “Mexicans are just very affectionate just in general. Sometimes people don’t respond well to that.�

He confirmed that he fired the female house parent accused of having a sexual relationship with a resident, but that the “young man� had turned 18 and didn’t want to report it to authorities. Ross said he didn’t recall telling Miller that he was concerned that doing so risked closing the mission down.

He said allegations came to light “way after� a house dad was moved from Agape House to Hope House, not before. He said the man was moved away from the girls because he was “just more at ease with the boys.� He said that case was turned over to prosecutors in 2017 but they didn’t find anything to pursue. Still, Ross said he fired him.

Ross said the Cervantes complaint about the long-time medical director was the first he’d heard.

“Seeing his compassion with the kids, seeing his compassion for other things we had done in rural communities, no, I didn’t see the red flags,� Ross said.

Asked what motivated the policy change that requires a house parent be present at medical checkups, he said: “It seemed like the right thing to do to protect everybodyÌý— the doctor, the house parents, the child themselves, as well.â€�Ìý

Ross said the former medical director, who was raised by Niños, has moved to southern Mexico and no longer in touch with him. Ross said he hasn’t done his own investigation to see if the doctor may have abused other residents, employees or volunteers. He said he’s waiting to see what comes of the Cervantes complaint to prosecutors “to determine if we had to go deeper from there.�

Why wait?

“I don’t know,� he said.

On board

But Ross, as well as the Niños board of directors, said they know the kind of independent review that Miller wants isn’t needed right now.

“We are trying to let the investigations that the government organizations are doing play out,â€� Ross said.Ìý

Smith, who wrote the joint letter with Ross to supporters in January, isn’t on the board anymore. Reached Tuesday outside First Christian Church of Washington, where he’s executive minister, Smith said he wasn’t involved with Niños and refused to explain. “I am not interested,� he told the Post-Dispatch. “Have a good day.�

Robert L. Wideman succeeded Smith as board president.

In a June 12, 2023, email to Miller, Wideman thanked the former Bible Bowl competitor for his advocacy.

“We know you have concerns about the leadership and direction of Niños, and I have no doubt that you believe you are doing what is best for the children,� Wideman wrote. “You must understand that the same passion for doing what is right is in the heart of each one of the staff and board members of Niños.�

“To that end, while being laser focused on the children currently in our care, we are acutely aware of the accusations of the peer on peer, and other abuse in the past that you have brought to our attention. We are exploring programs to give an opportunity for closure and a way forward for the young men and women no longer in our care.�

Wideman didn’t tell Miller what he needed to back off.

“At this time an independent investigation will not be part of that process,� Wideman wrote. “Thank you for your time.�

This story, first published online on Thursday, Nov. 2, appears in the Nov. 5 print edition.

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