In the summer of 2020, about four years after cutting ties with her parents, Amanda Householder began telling her story of survival to a new audience. In videos uploaded to TikTok, she described patterns of starvation, humiliation, and physical and sexual abuse at the Circle of Hope Girls Ranch in Humansville, Missouri. The Christian reform school was operated by her parents, Boyd and Stephanie Householder.
“You were starved as a punishment,” she said in one video. Householder went on to describe how her father picked up “a disabled child by the neck and [slammed] her to the ground to restrain her” and how other teens were often ordered to help restrain their peers.
Complaints of abuse had followed the ranch since its opening in 2006. But it wasn’t until former residents of the ranch began speaking out that authorities took action, removing more than 20 girls from the property and closing it in August 2020.
Amanda Householder told St. Louis on the Air, “For years, we were getting ‘Nope, not our problem, not our problem, not our problem.’”
“It was only because of TikTok — because we got hundreds of people calling the prosecuting attorney, hundreds of people calling the sheriff's department — that they finally were like, ‘Oh well, we have to do something,’” she added. “It was because of corruption that nothing got done, and it was because of corruption that it took us going to TikTok, and reliving our trauma, for anything to get done.”
In March 2021, Boyd Householder was arrested and charged by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt with dozens of felony counts, including sexual abuse. Stephanie Householder was also arrested and charged with child abuse and neglect.
But Boyd Householder will not face trial. In June 2024, four months before the legal case was set to proceed, he died in custody.
For Amanda Householder, her father’s death ends only part of the story. Stephanie Householder still faces trial in 2025.
“I'm really sad that my dad died. I really am,” she said. “But at the same time, I'm really mad he died because we deserved to see him in court. We deserved to at least force him to see everything he's done.”
To hear more from Amanda Householder, including her attempts to run away from her parents’ boarding school and what she experienced there, as well as a discussion with former SNAP national director David Clohessy about Missouri’s failure to take action on abuse cases in Christian boarding schools, listen to St. Louis on the Air on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube, or click the play button below.
“St. Louis on the Air” brings you the stories of St. Louis and the people who live, work and create in our region. The show is produced by Miya Norfleet, Emily Woodbury, Danny Wicentowski, Elaine Cha and Alex Heuer. Jada Jones is our production assistant. The audio engineer is Aaron Doerr. Send questions and comments about this story to talk@stlpr.org.
