Three women abused as children at Christian reform schools in rural Southern Missouri publicly urged other victims and witnesses to come forward about their ordeals ahead of a major abuse trial scheduled for the fall.
“We just want anyone who has ever gone through this to know we are here to help them, and we are here to walk them through it to get justice,” survivor Amanda Householder said.
The survivors and their supporters hosted a news conference outside the federal courthouse in Springfield May 14 to press Missouri’s Republican attorney general for an investigation into other Christian children’s homes. They also want him to promote policies that could help prevent emotional, physical and sexual abuse at such facilities.
“I hope it puts the fire under Attorney General (Andrew) Bailey and, if not him, maybe under the opponent running against him,” Householder, 33, said of Republican Will Scharf. “We just need someone to do more to help us. He has a platform and he can make a big difference for us. Even a simple phone call to us survivors that he is working on these things would be helpful.”
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey
Householder has been at the center of a campaign to limit the wide-ranging freedoms Missouri grants to Christian reform schools. She is a survivor and whistleblower who sued her parents, Boyd and Stephanie Householder, for abuse that occurred at Circle of Hope Girls Ranch in rural Polk County. The home closed in 2020 soon after authorities removed 24 girls.
The couple is scheduled to go on trial in November on more than 100 felony counts of involving statutory rape, sodomy and physical abuse against numerous girls at the boarding school they operated from 2006 to 2020, the Kansas City Star reported. Boyd Householder, 74, faces 22 counts of having sexual contact with a girl under 17.
In a 2022 lawsuit, Householder accused her parents of subjecting her to beatings for sexual gratification, forced labor and for being forced to punish other girls at the home, the newspaper said. A settlement in that case was announced May 13.
Dozens of former residents of Circle of Hope Girls Ranch filed civil lawsuits saying they were raped, handcuffed, chained up, forced to stand by walls for long periods of time and often denied food and water, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, said in its announcement of the news conference.
Householder was joined by fellow Circle of Hope survivor Maggie Drew in the news conference. Aralysa Baker was abused as a youth at ABM Ministries’ Lighthouse Christian Academy in Piedmont.
Those cases and others at Agape Boarding School in Stockton have shined a bright light on the ease with which such facilities operate in Missouri. Agape shut down in 2023 amid abuse allegations, and ABM Ministries’ Lighthouse Christian Academy closed this year after kidnapping charges were filed against its owners, the Associated Press reported.
“For decades, Missouri had among the most lax boarding school regulations of any state in the nation.”
“For decades, Missouri had among the most lax boarding school regulations of any state in the nation,” AP found. “A 1982 state law gave religious boarding schools free rein and the state no way to monitor how kids were educated. Even the state Health Department had no oversight, including for schools that claimed to address mental health, behavioral and addiction issues.”
Former SNAP Director David Clohessy said more press events are scheduled across the state to turn up the heat on officials and to alert Missourians to how easy it is for abusers to set up shop in their state.
David Clohessy
“Thanks to remote counties, cheap land, deference to anything religious and almost non-existent government regulation, Missouri really is becoming the Mecca or the ground zero of these private, secretive and unaccountable so-called faith-based reform schools,” said Clohessy, who now leads Missouri SNAP.
“It does feel like our state tragically put out the welcome mat for those who want to claim religious authority to establish for-profit facilities where they can have access to the absolutely most vulnerable kids,” he added.
In addition to helping organize the Springfield press event, Clohessy took to social media to campaign for more transparency and oversight for faith-based children’s homes.
“Getting pretty tired of Missouri AG Andrew Bailey doing nothing & feigning powerlessness in the face of a growing scandal involving some of THE MOST vulnerable kids in our state,” he said via the social media platform X.
Householder acknowledged the uphill struggle ahead of her and abuse survivors — including convincing other victims to come forward.
“It took me years to even accept that I was abused to the extent I was abused. It takes a lot. But it does happen,” she said. “The news about Circle of Hope convinced Agape victims to come forward. But a lot them, to this day, cannot come forward because they don’t want to relive their trauma.”
By addressing the media, Householder and other abuse victims are signaling that change is possible, Clohessy said. “These three incredibly brave and strong and resilient women are already providing real hope to hundreds of people who suffered at these lawful unregulated facilities.”
For those reasons, the pressure must be kept up, he added. “We’ve seen prosecutions like this fail because wrongdoers often hire shrewd, expensive lawyers and exploit legal technicalities, while people with important information or suspicions don’t call police and prosecutors. We would hate to see that happen here. This is no time for victims, witnesses and whistleblowers to stay silent or be complacent.”