Prosecutor: Parson directs AG to help investigate MO reform school, ‘possible charges’
Missouri Gov. Mike Parson has directed the state’s attorney general to assist Cedar County authorities in the investigation and “prosecution of possible charges” in the case of Circle of Hope Girls’ Ranch.
In a news release Tuesday morning, Cedar County Prosecuting Attorney Ty Gaither said he requested that Parson involve Attorney General Eric Schmitt. The governor then directed the AG to assist, Gaither said in his release.
“In my opinion, my county does not have the resources that I believe are going to be necessary to fully handle this case,” Gaither told The Star on Tuesday. “I anticipate the possibility of charges.”
Gaither received the Circle of Hope investigation from the Cedar County Sheriff’s office early last week. He said he spent days reviewing it and then late in the week contacted the governor’s office.
On Monday, he heard from Parson’s office that staff from the attorney general’s office would be assisting him.
“It’s not something our office can handle alone,” said Gaither, who also has three ongoing, unrelated murder cases. “This is too complicated. I believe this case will be way too complicated for a one-man office to have.”
The boarding school, run by Boyd and Stephanie Householder, is now closed. The Circle of Hope property sits on 35 acres along Highway N about seven miles from Humansville in Cedar County.
The Householders did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
The Star began looking into Circle of Hope this past summer after authorities removed 25 girls from the ranch in mid-August. The investigation found that the faith-based boarding school has had four substantiated reports of abuse since it opened in 2006, according to the Missouri Department of Social Services.
One report was for neglect, another for physical abuse and neglect, and two were sexual abuse allegations. The Householders have denied that those incidents occurred and are fighting the allegations in court.
In late July, a Washington couple drove 32 hours from the Seattle area to pick up their daughter who had gone to the school for two years. The family told The Star they went directly to the Sheriff’s Office and the 17-year-old told a deputy what went on inside Circle of Hope.
After the girls were removed from the ranch, they were taken to a facility in Joplin and workers with DSS called parents to pick up their daughters. Local and state law enforcement served a search warrant at the school in early September. The school hasn’t been open since, and the Householders have put the property up for sale.
Gaither said Tuesday that the state is still going over items seized in the search.
In 2018, a Missouri Highway Patrol sergeant spent months investigating abuse allegations against the Householders before presenting his case to federal prosecutors.
But according to Sgt. Travis Hitchcock’s 44-page report, obtained by The Star, his investigation didn’t go any further than the U.S. attorney’s office in Springfield. A federal prosecutor there declined to file charges against Boyd and Stephanie Householder.
Hitchcock opened that investigation on May 30, 2018. His report is filled with allegations of physical abuse, sexual misconduct and possible human trafficking. Several former students and two former staff members told the sergeant that girls ages 17 and 18 weren’t allowed to leave the ranch.
In a Sept. 6 Star report, several young women who have lived at the facility described in vivid detail a place that sounded more like a maximum-security prison than a Christian school for troubled girls.
They told of punishment that included withholding food and water and being forced to stand against a wall for hours on end for even the most minor infraction. And they explained how they were restrained — pinned on the floor with Boyd Householder’s knee pressed on the back of their necks while other girls or staff members pushed as hard as they could on pressure points on girls’ arms and legs.
In a lengthy Sept. 12 interview with The Star, Boyd and Stephanie Householder denied all allegations. They said it was all revenge from a group of girls whose lives didn’t turn out well after they left the ranch.
The Householders said they were closing their reform school for good. Boyd Householder, 71, said that he “will not put up with a corrupt sheriff’s department and a corrupt social services department.”
A decades-old Missouri statute allows boarding schools like Circle of Hope to claim a religious exemption, which means they are not required to be licensed and the state has no authority over their operations.
After The Star’s first Circle of Hope story was published, Rep. Keri Ingle, D-Lee’s Summit, requested a legislative hearing in Jefferson City. On Nov. 9, lawmakers on the House Children and Families Committee met and heard testimony about how the state has no oversight over these schools.
Lawmakers said after the hearing that something must be done about boarding schools that lack state oversight. After four hours of testimony, the committee chairwoman said a report would be submitted in two weeks that will include recommendations on how to better protect children in unlicensed youth facilities across Missouri.
Ideas discussed by lawmakers included requiring background checks for employees of unlicensed youth facilities, requiring those schools to register with the state in some way and adopting legislation that would require parents to be notified if there’s a substantiated report of abuse or neglect at their children’s boarding school.
On Nov. 8, The Star published a report on Agape Boarding School, another Christian reform school in Cedar County. Sixteen former students told similar stories of physical and mental abuse at the boys’ facility. Some said they had reported the abuse to local law enforcement but nothing ever came of it.
The Star’s investigation found that the Cedar County sheriff’s department has ties to Agape, employing in some capacity at least three people who have worked at the school — or still do. That includes two full-time deputies.
This story was originally published November 17, 2020 at 12:35 PM.
