The estranged daughter of the former Circle of Hope Girls Ranch owners is suing her parents for forced labor, beating her for their own sexual gratification and making her punish other students at their southwest Missouri boarding school.
Amanda Householder alleges that her parents — Boyd and Stephanie Householder — made her work at Circle of Hope in Cedar County as a teenager and help discipline students, including the use of painful physical restraints that sometimes lasted for hours. She also accuses her parents of beating her while she was naked, making her do repeated exercises for hours on end and force-feeding her until she'd vomit, then making her eat that.
Some of the childhood abuse, she said, also occurred at Agape Boarding School, where Boyd Householder worked before opening Circle of Hope. She alleges that Agape's founder, who died in October, was aware of the abuse for years but did nothing to stop it and failed to report the allegations to authorities.
"I was born into this. I didn't have a choice," Amanda Householder, 31, told The Star. "So, I am becoming the person who did not rescue me as a child, by holding those who abused my peers and myself accountable.
"I hope survivors know that I see them, and I will do whatever I can to make sure that the rest of the world sees us, too."
Amanda Householder is requesting a jury trial and seeking an unspecified amount of damages.
The 24-page lawsuit, filed late Monday in Polk County Circuit Court, names as defendants Boyd and Stephanie Householder; Circle of Hope Girls Ranch (which is now closed); Agape Boarding School and its owner, the late James Clemensen; Agape Baptist Church; and Jeffrey Ables, a former Circle of Hope board member and current pastor of Berean Baptist Church in Springfield.
The suit says that all of the defendants "have acted together and separately to abuse children at their unlicensed 'schools' and 'ranches,' supporting one another and failing to report the known abuses and/or covering up these abuses."
Ables and Agape officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The Star spoke to Boyd and Stephanie Householder in September 2020. They denied ever abusing students and accused their estranged daughter of wanting to do anything to shut them down.
"She's a satan worshiper," Stephanie Householder said then. "She's addicted to drugs."
Amanda Householder has vehemently denied her parents' claims and said all she has ever wanted to do was stop the abuse.
The Householders ran Circle of Hope Girls Ranch in Cedar County from 2006 until closing it in September 2020 amid allegations of abuse and an ongoing investigation by local and state officials. The couple was charged last year with 100 criminal counts including statutory rape, sodomy, physical abuse and neglect. All but one are felonies. They pleaded not guilty and the case is ongoing.
Among the allegations outlined in the lawsuit:
— During her childhood, Amanda Householder said she was subjected to severe physical and mental abuse and torture. If she didn't carry out punishments on boarding school students, she said her parents threatened her with "serious bodily injury."
— She was brutally beaten with a leather belt, a horse whip and a golf stick, the suit alleges. Some of those beatings lasted for "long periods of time" with her sometimes receiving a hundred lashes or more.
— On one occasion, Amanda Householder's parents caught her and her brother fighting and the two were beaten, the suit says. Afterward, "they were required to do 'Bunny Foo Foos' — jumping jack(s) then reaching down as if picking up a metaphorical rock — for three consecutive hours. Each time they paused, they would be given more workouts."
— Stephanie Householder often restrained Amanda Householder and her brother by sitting on them while "their father beat them with a whip or golf stick," according to the suit. They would pull the children's pants down and beat them on their bare bottoms, it says.
— During the beatings, the lawsuit alleges, Boyd Householder "began using a cattle prod on Plaintiff's younger brother." Amanda Householder says she was required to watch.
"Plaintiff's memories of her childhood are a nightmare," the suit says. " ... Defendants used beatings on Plaintiff's naked body for the purpose of arousing or gratifying their sexual desire and for the purpose of terrorizing Plaintiff."
The Householders "appeared to get joy from the beatings," according to the suit.
"At times, the parents would kiss as they switched positions to continue beating the children," the suit alleges. "If the parents had been arguing, the beatings would calm them down and they would become loving toward each other."
The suit is one of six filed against the Householders and Circle of Hope since 2020 and one of six filed against Agape since last year. The other Circle of Hope cases were settled in July for an undisclosed amount, and the Agape lawsuits are pending.
Amanda Householder's allegations are similar to the accounts of abuse that dozens of students told The Star they experienced at both boarding schools in southwest Missouri.
In the previous Circle of Hope lawsuits, the former students alleged they were subjected to extreme physical and psychological abuse. They said they were routinely assaulted, manhandled by being thrown against walls and to the ground and hit and slapped. Others were restrained, the lawsuits alleged, while some said if they didn't finish their meals they were forced to eat until they vomited.
Many of those examples were detailed in a 2018 Highway Patrol investigation and in the criminal charges the Missouri Attorney General's Office filed against the Householders.
Kansas City attorney Rebecca Randles, who filed the new lawsuit, said Amanda Householder is as much a victim as the Circle of Hope students were.
"This is the stuff of nightmares," Randles said. "Amanda Householder's childhood was so gruesome that some scenes could not be shown in a slasher movie. The horrors she experienced, observed and forced to participate in as a child leave you wondering how any person, let alone ones calling themselves 'Christian' could be so cruel. Most abhorrent — these children believed this barbaric behavior to be normal because that's all they knew.
"If you know anyone suffering abuse, please step in, reach out and call someone."
Amanda Householder eventually moved to California, where she now lives with her two young sons. She has become a vocal critic of unlicensed boarding schools and the so-called troubled teen industry in recent years.
After authorities removed the students from Circle of Hope in August 2020, she and former boarding school students from Missouri and other states lobbied hard for a bill proposed by two state lawmakers to give the state oversight over such facilities. The bill passed with little opposition, and Gov. Mike Parson signed it into law last July.
At a rally for former boarding school students in November 2020, Amanda Householder's voice broke as she described what she said went on at Circle of Hope.
"I witnessed a lot in my family because my parents were extremely abusive," she said. "But let me tell you — being forced to restrain someone is probably the worst thing that I ever had to go through. Because you were being forced to inflict pain on your friends and you were being told that you would be tortured after if you don't."
When her parents were charged four months later, she told The Star the news was bittersweet.
"I don't want my parents to go to jail," she said. "That's something that I never wanted. But I'm happy they're being held accountable."
