A second lawsuit has been filed in federal court against the former owners of a defunct youth behavioral health facility called the Lord’s Ranch.
The suit alleges the serial sexual abuse of teenage boys at the hands of a senior staffer and counselor during the 1990s and 2000s.
The allegations contained in the federal suit are very similar to the first suit filed by 8 anonymous males, the new lawsuit is brought on behalf of eight additional John Does, bringing the total number of plaintiffs to 16.
The Lord’s Ranch closed in 2016 after its director, Ted Suhl, was convicted of bribing a state Medicaid official and sentenced to seven years in federal prison.
Ted Suhl was released early in 2019 after his sentence was commuted by then President Trump.
The new suit alleges sexual abuse similar to the suit filed by the first 8 victims, the new complaint is directed at Emmett Alden Presley, the former director of social services at the Lord’s Ranch when the adult plaintiffs were children and residents at the facility. Presley is in his 90s and lives in Jonesboro. Presley has not made any public comments on these allegations nor has any public comment been made regarding the allegations in the second suit.
The new lawsuit states “It should be noted, however, that Presley was not the only perpetrator of child sexual abuse at the Lord’s Ranch and that numerous other former residents allege sexual abuse by several other staff members”.
The lawsuit alleges that Presley coerced, threatened and bribed boys in his care to perform sex acts with him, often in his car.
The suit alleges that some victims were forced to have sex with other minors.
The federal complaint states victim after victim attempted to inform other adults at the Lord’s Ranch of Presley’s behavior.
The filing claims that “Attempts by children to seek help from outside the Lord’s Ranch always resulted in reprisals, often in the form of physical beatings and various forms of psychological and physical torture”.
The suit goes on to claim that Ted Suhl and his parents, Bud and Shirley Suhl, “possessed an overwhelming amount of actual knowledge concerning innumerable incidents of child rape continuously and routinely committed by [Presley] over a period of more than ten years.”
The complaint continues by stating “It can only fairly be said that the Suhl family condoned the enormous amount of child sexual abuse being committed by Emmett Presley. Otherwise, they would have reported it, terminated him, or, at the very least, prohibited Presley from continuing to rape and molest the children under their care”.
The federal lawsuit filed last week names Emmett Presley and Ted Suhl as defendants, along with Shirley Suhl and a former senior director at the facility, Alonza Jiles.
The suit also names a llist of corporate defendants associated with the Suhl family.
The Lord’s Ranch, which was opened by Bud and Shirley Suhl in 1976, was located on a remote, 1,100-acre plot of land in Randolph County near the Missouri state line north of Pocahontas.
Thousands of teens and children passed through the facility, sent from states including Illinois, Alaska, Indiana and Texas, as well as Arkansas. The facility was licensed and inspected by the Arkansas Department of Human Services and received hundreds of millions of dollars in Medicaid funding for the provided services. The Suhl family promoted the Lord’s Ranch as a therapeutic setting in which troubled children could grow “emotionally, spiritually and behaviorally”.