Deputies raided Pastor Gary Wiggins' religious boarding school in rural Alabama after two boys escaped to a neighbor's house and said they were victims of abuse.

Wiggins - known as Bro. Gary to those at the school - ran the Blessed Hope Boys Academy in Seminole, Ala. The private school was billed as a place where parents could send troubled teens for hard work and a Christian education.

It operated without government regulation or inspection, thanks to an exemption in state law for schools that consider themselves part of a church ministry.

Five months after the police raid, Alabama passed a law that would allow the state to inspect schools like his. Wiggins shuttered the Blessed Hope Boys Academy.

But he soon reopened in a remote area of Missouri where there are no such regulations, no prying eyes from the state.

Red flags

Last week, the McDonald County Sheriff's Department in southwest Missouri began getting calls.

One of those calls came from Carol Greer of Georgia. She told them she was concerned about the welfare of her 14-year-old great nephew, who she said is a student at Wiggins' school, now called the Joshua Home.

On its website, the Joshua Home bills itself as "a home for young men that are struggling in life, whether it be with drugs, alcohol, a rebellious spirit, school, etc."

Greer said she began researching Wiggins soon after the boy's mother sent him to the camp and she was not able to get in touch with him. She didn't like what she found.

"(Wiggins) has a pattern where he establishes these schools in remote areas, and is hiding under the cloak of the First Amendment for religious activities," she said. "There are no checks and balances."

Missouri law is much like Alabama's was before it changed last year. Missouri state law exempts faith-based schools from regulation or inspection by the state department of education. The Department of Social Services and law enforcement can only step in when there are credible allegations of abuse or neglect.

When Wiggins operated Blessed Hope, he filed for nonprofit status. Records show the school's revenue grew from $232,524 in 2013 to $289,655 in 2014. The National Center for Charitable Statistics listed the school's 2015 total revenue at $430,159.

In December 2016, after the two boys escaped, Baldwin County Sheriff's Department and the Alabama Department of Human Resources removed all 22 boys from the school. They ranged in age from 8 to 17 and all of them were from out of state.

Wiggins vehemently denied any abuse had occurred. Charges were never filed.

Checking in

Deputy Becky Ernest of the McDonald County Sheriff's Department said she was not aware the Joshua Home was operating in the county until Greer called, asking for a wellbeing check on her nephew.

Ernest said the department's juvenile office and the local Department of Family Services office had never heard of the school when she called them to ask about it.

Ernest went out to the Joshua Home, located in a rural area outside of Pineville, Mo. She eventually located Greer's nephew at the school building, a single-wide trailer down the highway from the student housing building.

"Typically, if I go up and knock on somebody's door, if they're an adult they don't have to talk to me," said Ernest. "But a child - they have to produce that child and let me talk to them."

She said Wiggins let her talk to the boy alone, and the boy seemed fine. He told her he felt safe.

Kicked out of Alabama

A month after law enforcement descended on Blessed Hope Boys Academy in Alabama in December 2016, three leaders of another unrelated religious boot camp in nearby Mobile were convicted on multiple counts of aggravated child abuse.

Their school had been raided in 2015, when 36 children and teens were removed after officials learned students had been handcuffed to beds, locked in solitary confinement for weeks at a time, and forced to fight each other.

In May 2016, the Alabama legislature passed a law that regulates these kinds of private youth facilities, requiring them to perform background checks on staff and banning the use of certain punishments.

The law further says schools have to register with the Alabama Department of Human Resources, which must inspect the schools at least four times a year to make sure they're following regulations.

A spokesperson for Alabama DHR confirmed that no religious residential schools have been licensed since the law went into effect. If any are still operating in Alabama, they're doing so illegally, said Barry Spear, public information manager for DHR.

Religious freedom groups protested language in the bill that banned discrimination based on sexual orientation or using sexual orientation change efforts on students. Lawmakers took out those parts of the bill before it passed.

In 2017, ABC News' 20/20 program profiled Lucas Greenfield, a former Blessed Hope student who said Wiggins had mistreated him and attempted some forms of conversion therapy on gay students.

(Further reading: Former students share harrowing stories of life inside Alabama's worst private school)

Wiggins calls himself a born-again Christian, according to the Blessed Hope Boys Academy website in 2017. He said he is a recovering alcoholic and drug addict who felt called to open a Christian boarding school for troubled teens.

He and his wife, Meghann, ran a boys' school in Missouri before moving to Alabama to open Blessed Hope.

On the wall

Thomas Cox, a Pennsylvania teenager, said he was one of the two boys who escaped from Blessed Hope in 2016 and led to the school's temporary shutdown.

"Being there for two years, your anger kind of builds up," said Cox, who said he was sent to Blessed Hope when he was 15 years old.

"It was very cultish. They try to force religious stuff down your throat. If you didn't submit to what they wanted, it was automatic restraint and on the wall."

Restraint, he said, was a disciplinary measure involving five people pinning down the student at pressure points, for about 15 minutes at a time. "On the wall" meant standing facing a wall, without talking or moving, for several hours a day with minimal food.

"You get 10 demerits and you're on the wall," he said. "I'd end up with 100 demerits for talking, not memorizing Bible verses. That's usually what people were on the wall for."

Cox said the students' phone calls were monitored by staff and they were not allowed to take prescribed medication for mental or emotional disorders. He said one of Wiggins' favorite phrases was "You're wicked."

The school, according to its website, used the ACE (Accelerated Christian Education) Curriculum, a self-instructional, Bible-based program that does not lead to a diploma that is recognized by most colleges and universities.

Home in Missouri

It's hard to know how many religious camps or schools for troubled teens still operate in Alabama because they were never originally required to report to the state.

The same is true in Missouri. But a few of the camps that have been in the news in recent years are located in the same rural, sparsely-populated southwestern corner of Missouri where Wiggins set up the Joshua Home.

A lawsuit filed last year alleges that boys at the Lives Under Construction Camp in the southwest Missouri town of Lampe were sexually assaulted in 2009 and 2010.

Two teens who ran away from that same camp in 2013 pled guilty to killing an elderly couple.

In 2011, a former student at the New Beginnings Girls Academy in La Russell, also in the southwest part of the state, told ABC News she was ridiculed, deprived of adequate food, and subjected to harsh physical punishment.

Wiggins did not respond to email requests for comment on his school.

Cox said most days he tries not to think about the years he spent at Blessed Hope. He recently got his diploma and has joined the military. He is trying to move on.

"There should be laws to protect kids (in places) like that," he said. His advice for students at the new camp was to "Shut up and don't say anything."

"If you never, ever say anything except your Bible verses, mind your business, play the game, then you can be all right," he said. "But that's no way to live."