The Missouri religious boarding school, Circle of Hope Girls Ranch, is finally being exposed by the founder’s daughter via TikTok following years of abuse allegations.
Back in March, Amanda Householder, daughter of Boyd and Stephanie Householder who runs Circle of Hope, received a Facebook message regarding her father’s treatment of the young girls who attended his school. The man who reached out was Joseph Askins, a friend and mentee of Boyd, who had recently visited the ranch and witnessed disturbing occurrences.
Askins later told NBC News that he witnessed Boyd smack a child in the mouth and force another young girl to chug water and then drink her own vomit. Askins revealed that he also heard Boyd order one teenage girl to assault another one, reportedly demanding that she “Knock her out, I mean it.” Askins was able to back up his claims with a video that he secretly captured while at the school.
Amanda was so disturbed by the footage taken at her parents’ school that she began to speak out publicly about her father and mother.
“I told everyone, ‘I can’t be silent anymore.’ No one can deny us, no one can tell us it wasn’t true anymore.”
Girls who were sent there were forced to spend most of their days tending to the ranches animal and cleaning the house. According to parents and former residents, they were only allowed to change their clothes twice a week. Boyd would punish girls who took more than five minutes to shower. The only offered education consisted of Christian homeschooling packets from Accelerated Christian Education that often did not count towards high school credits in public school districts.
Since years of abuse claims at the ranch have seemingly fallen on deaf ears, Amanda took to TikTok to help get the word out. Her bio on the app reads, “My parents own an abusive boarding school for girls. This is my page exposing it.” Videos by Amanda as well as former residents describing the shocking abuse, gained over 33 million views. The viral videos finally caught the eye of law enforcement.
In August, the state removed two dozen girls from the ranch, following an official investigation by the Cedar County Sheriff’s Department and the state Department of Social Services. The school has been closed ever since as the investigation continues.
Since opening in 2006, at least 15 people have reported abuse at Circle of Hope to at least six local, state, and federal agencies in Missouri, an NBC News investigation found.
Both parents and former residents reported Boyd for his use of physical restraints, including forcing girls to lay face down while he pressed a knee into their necks, and other residents were forced to squeeze the target’s pressure points. Children were forced to stand and stare at a wall for hours at a time. Boyd and Stephanie would also withhold food as a form of punishment or if they thought a girl was overweight.
Despite the mounting complaints, the boarding school continued to operate with little to no regulation since it operated as a private boarding school.
Cedar County Sheriff James McCrary confirmed that his office had received multiple calls about Circle of Hope throughout the years, but he would not detail the nature of the complaints. Another sheriff’s deputy reached out to Amanda directly in a Facebook message this year and said that the office didn’t have enough evidence. In 2019, a state highway patrol sergeant also told Amanda that a federal prosecutor turned down the case. Even the state’s education department could not help with the complaints, telling one parent in 2008 that it had no authority over the ranch because it was a private school.
The Missouri Department of Social Services determined in a preliminary finding two years ago that Boyd indeed physically abused a minor. However, that case is still pending.
One parent who reported the abuse, Teresa Tucker, says that the social services department claimed there was nothing that they could do since the ranch was considered a private religious school. Tucker claims that her daughter was restrained and fed nothing but soup while at the ranch in 2015.
“I don’t care what kind of laws they fall under,” Tucker said. “What they’re doing is wrong — it’s abuse.”
Stephanie denied the abuse allegations against her and her husband, claiming that they came from “a few girls [who] have no credibility.”
“It is a fact that the accusations will not withstand the scrutiny of examination and the testimony of others as to the truth.”
A lawyer for the Householder’s declined to comment.
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