Free Republic

ST. LOUIS (AP) — Advocates for victims of abuse at Missouri boarding schools on Monday urged the state’s attorney general to launch an investigation, work with local prosecutors and take other steps aimed at stemming the tide of abuse. Three Christian boarding schools in southern Missouri have shut down since 2020 amid wide-ranging abuse allegations levied by current and former students. Several people affiliated with those schools are facing criminal charges. Advocates who worry that more abuse is going unpunished gathered Monday outside Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s St. Louis office to demand action. “This is a structural problem,” said...

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (KY3) - The case for a couple charged with ongoing abuse at the Circle of Hope Girls Ranch was back in front of a Cedar County judge Monday. Boyd and Stephanie Householder face 100 charges of abuse combined, including molestation and statutory rape related to their operation of the boarding school near Stockton. They have pleaded not guilty. Our cameras are not allowed inside the courtroom. The judge is trying to keep publicity involving this case to a minimum to ensure that the Householders get a fair trial. The Householders were not in court either. Defense attorneys told...

A whistleblower who got her own parents arrested and charged with more than 100 counts of abuse at a girls' school has now set out on a 'mission' to close down an associated facility. The Agapé Boarding School for Boys in Stockton, Missouri, has been hit with 14 lawsuits and Amanda Householder believes the time has come to shutter it for good. ‘The fact that the Agapé Boarding School is still open is beyond infuriating,’ Householder, 31, who was key to getting her parents' Circle of Hope school in nearby Humansville shut in 2020, told DailyMail.com. ‘When Circle of Hope...

When the owners of the Circle of Hope boarding school in Humansville, Missouri, were arrested last year on more than 100 combined charges of child abuse and neglect, authorities pointed to an unlikely whistleblower: their 31-year-old daughter, Amanda Householder. In a new lawsuit filed in Polk County Court, Householder alleges that her parents, Boyd and Stephanie Householder, routinely abused her and her younger brother, beating them with golf clubs and a leather whip and force-feeding them until they vomited. She also alleges the couple abused the teenage girls entrusted to their care at Circle of Hope and forced her to...

Maggie Drew’s dad sent her to Circle of Hope Girls’ Ranch in Missouri in 2007, hoping strict Christian teachings would stop his 14-year-old daughter’s teenage rebellion. Instead, Drew said, she found herself in a nightmare, sexually abused by one of the boarding school’s founders and left with permanent spinal injuries after a fall from a hay barn for which she received no medical attention. Just 25 miles away at another Christian boarding school, Brett Harper says he endured abuse that included staff members stomping on his back. He said his injuries required two spinal surgeries and left him disabled. They...

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (KY3) - The Missouri Attorney General’s Office filed numerous charges of abuse against the operators of the Circle of Hope Girls Ranch in Cedar County. Authorities arrested Boyd and Stephanie Householder. They remain jailed in the Vernon County Jail in Nevada, Mo. Attorney Eric Schmitt will detail the case against the Householders at noon news conference on Wednesday. You can watch that news conference LIVE here. State investigators removed about two dozen girls in mid-august from the facility outside Humansville. The state along with the Cedar County Prosecutor’s Office began outlining a case against the Householders. Four...