TROUBLED YOUTH FACILITY FACES ABUSE ALLEGATIONS

Heartland's Operators Sue, Citing Harassment.

ST. LOUIS (AP) - Before his parents shipped him off to the Heartland
Christian Academy, 16-year-old Tim Hans was struggling in school and
messing with drugs and the occult.

After nearly a year at the academy, considered a last resort for difficult
youngsters, Tim has righted his course. No more rebellion or fits of rage.
The straight-A student, now respectful and polite, has found God.

"It's kind of a total overhaul of the mind," he says.

Now the academy that markets its tough love faces troubled times itself.
Prosecutors are calling its form of discipline abuse.

In June, five Heartland workers were accused of sending 11 misbehaving
teenagers to shovel manure, at times in a pit filled with animal waste and
afterbirth. Two months later, four Heartland workers - two already charged
in the manure incident - were accused of spanking a teen 30 times with a board.

Authorities removed 115 Heartland students last month after a 13-year- old
boy reported another Heartland worker burst his eardrum. Parents, some from
as far as Texas and California, were called to retrieve the children.

About 80 have since returned to the school after a judge intervened,
according to Charles Sharpe, Heartland's founder and senior pastor.

"It's an evil attack," Sharpe fumes. The former Kansas City insurance
executive pledges to spend his fortune - estimated in the tens of millions
- - "and every drop of blood in my body" to defend the 200-acre religious
community 150 miles north of St. Louis where work therapy is combined with
Christian teachings.

The 74-year-old Sharpe, known at Heartland as Pastor Charlie, maintains no
child gets more than five "swats" and says the 13-year- old was struck
accidentally by a worker trying to free his arm from the boy's jaws.

For now, a federal judge is allowing juvenile authorities to seek removal
of any Heartland child considered at risk, but he has barred any mass
removals pending a final ruling.

Heartland's operators are suing authorities in federal court, complaining
of a "systematic, persistent and continuous campaign of harassment." Joshua
Eads, a 17-year-old Heartland student, also is suing local investigators,
alleging he was unjustly held for 12 days on suspicion he was involved in
the manure-pit incident.

"We don't believe in abusing kids," Sharpe says. "In society today, any
time you correct or discipline a child, in the eyes of many it's abuse."

Sheriff David Parrish, a father of two who says he shoveled pig manure as
part of a boyhood summer job, counters: "We believe it was abuse, and I'm
comfortable with what a jury will say."

Parrish says the youngsters were forced to stand for up to two hours in
manure piles brimming with bacteria. Parrish says some witnesses told him
children were forced to stand in manure up to their chests, though others
dispute that.

Sharpe said using youths in the manure pits has been discontinued - though
not because of abuse allegations. Only adults now shovel manure on the
dairy farm.

Sharpe has friends in high places. Attorney General John Ashcroft, to whom
Sharpe donated at least $10,000 for a 2000 presidential exploratory
committee, wrote the introduction to Sharpe's 1999 autobiography. "Charlie
Sharpe doesn't need a public opinion poll to know right from wrong. His
faith in God and his conscience determine that for him," Ashcroft wrote.