SPRINGFIELD (MO)
St. Louis Public Radio [St. Louis MO]
December 13, 2024
By Amanda Householder
[Includes a 35-minute audio interview with Amanda Householder and David Clohessy.]
The closure of three Christian boarding schools in Missouri since 2020 is only a start, says Amanda Householder, whose parents ran the now-closed Circle of Hope Girls Ranch. Householder reflects on her upbringing at her parents’ unregulated boarding school, what happened after she escaped, and her feelings as her mother, Stephanie Householder, faces numerous charges of child abuse. We also hear from David Clohessy, the former national director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. Clohessy shares insights from a career of advocating for abuse victims, and why he is calling on Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey to do more to expose other abuse situations in the state’s boarding schools.
Machine-generated transcript:
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support comes from St Louis Public Library Foundation helping the library serve children and their families with
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programs and services needed to become lifelong readers more information about the foundation is at slpl.org
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this is St Louis on the air from St Louis Public [Music]
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Radio I’m Danny wicentowski in for elain
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sha a note for that this next conversation involves a discussion of abuse at a school including sexual abuse
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and suicide as we look back on this year of news in Missouri there continues to be
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activity around Christian boarding schools which until 2021 operated completely without regulation or
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oversight three schools each facing abuse allegations have now closed in the last few years starting in 2020 with the
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circle of Hope Girls Ranch the closure of that School located in Southwest Missour
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followed dozens of abuse allegations and in 2021 criminal charges were filed
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against its married Founders Boyd and Stephany householder but the story of what’s
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happening in Missouri’s Christian boarding school industry and the closure of Circle of Hope didn’t start with that
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criminal investigation that story instead begins with Tik Tock where the former residents
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of those schools now adults began posting their accounts of beatings starvation and
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worse those stories also came from Amanda householder the daughter of the
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school’s Founders in one video uploaded before the ranch’s closure in 2020 she
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counted off examples on her fingers to describe the Terrible Things She had seen her parents do growing up you were
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not allowed to watch TV because it was considered evil and you burn in hell for eternity you were not allowed to listen
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to the radio because it was considered evil and you’d burn in hell for eternity if you were ever starved as a punishment
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if you ever watched your father pick up a disabled child by the neck and slam her to the ground to restrain her if you
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were ever told to restrain one of your peers if you didn’t you would be restrained
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instead if you ever watched your father force another child to eat their vomit
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if your father runs a cult in March of 2021 Amanda householder’s father Boyd householder
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was charged with 79 felony counts including for sexually abusing a child
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his wife Stephanie householder also faced charges for child abuse earlier this summer however Boyd
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householder died leaving only his wife to face trial next year Amanda
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householder told me that her father’s death isn’t the same as getting Justice and earlier this week I interviewed
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Amanda about her activism the rise of a Survivor community on places like Tik Tok and what it was like living and
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working at the Circle of Hope Ranch and what it was like watching it fall
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I began by asking Amanda to describe her upbringing and the beliefs that her parents used to justify their
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abuse the only way I can explain it is when you’re taught from a very young age
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that anything outside of this religion uh can make you go to hell you don’t
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want to see anyone you know uh go to hell and so um when you’re taught that
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you’re it’s better to have a black bottom than a black Soul you kind of
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just think okay well maybe I do deserve this because um if I if I’m bad I’m
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going to go to hell so they’re just teaching you how to get to heaven not to go to hell and so um it really wasn’t
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until I had my own kids that I realized that kids kids aren’t bad they aren’t
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going to go to hell for learning life um
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you’re supposed to learn you’re supposed to learn what’s right from wrong not not
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right from wrong being beaten out of you I want to understand a bit of what
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being at the Circle of Hope boarding school was like you actually worked there as as a teenager as a child this
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was not a job that you sought out or applied for if I’m understanding what what was it like to witness that what
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did the kids do there every day and and what did you have to do as a step staff
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member um what we did there every day is really hard to go through because um
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Boyd was very um unpredictable and so we rarely did
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school school was rarely a thing um cleaning taking care of the animals hard
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labor is the main thing that we did there or we sat down and read the Bible
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um I can tell you that even though was raised in a very abusive household it
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was really really really hard to see others get thrown to the ground and
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um it’s called restraint uh but they would get thrown to the ground and they would be
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screaming for hours and hours and hours and hours and um that that was hell I
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can’t explain it other than that I just remember if if Boyd said yelled
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restraint we all had to come like all of the higher up shirts um and I remember I
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can’t tell you exactly when but I I could uh not too long after they implemented that we were the ones having
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to do the restraints us teenagers um I would stay back in the kitchen and be like oh I have to get this done or oh I
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have to I would make excuses not to go um but that didn’t matter because you could still hear the screaming and the
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the crying and the pain that they were going through um the best way to explain
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what it was like being there is the moment you woke up you realized you were
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in the place that you wanted to escape so there comes a point though and
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I think this is again when you are a teenager and very young that you do recognize something is not right here
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and the way that you’re being treated and the way that the other kids are being treated is wrong
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what what was it that opened your eyes and what did you do after that
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so it really wasn’t until I had my own kids I was 21 that I really realized that no kid is
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an evil kid um but there was something inside of me growing up that didn’t want
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to be with my parents like it was hell living there I I um I would wake up I
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would be miserable um I first first attempted suicide when I was 10 um but I
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can’t say that I definitely knew something was wrong I just knew that I
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did not want to be with my parents um I do I did run away at Circle of Hope um
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not too long after they opened I want to say it was like August and they opened in like June um I ran away with two of
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the girls and the reason I ran away was because um one of the girls came
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came to me and uh she had told me that my dad was touching her inappropriately and she’s like my
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stepdad did this to me and I can’t go through this again and so we back we bagged up all my stuff and me and two
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girls left that un I did go out and I hugged my dad I said good night and I hugged my mom and then I hugged my
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little brother and then we went back to our rooms and then that night we we left we ran away um but there was still I got
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I got sent back to circle’s hope and it was beaten into me that what I did was wrong and so there was still something
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in me that felt like I was a bad person um but it wasn’t until I had my my kids
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that I was like I would never ever my parents beat me as a baby for crying
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babies cry when my son would cry and I couldn’t figure out why he would cry the only thing I wanted to do was hold
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him I didn’t look at him and think oh you’re evil you’re lying to me you’re you’re this you’re that but that’s what
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my parents would think and it was the weirdest thing to hold a baby and realize that my parents were messed up
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because I could never do that to my kid you were working at the Circle of Hope as a staff
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member how did you become you know one of the so-called trouble teens that it
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was helping well that’s the thing I never was necessarily considered a trouble
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teen like the school was helping um when I ran away I did get sent back and put
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into a orange shirt but one thing one thing that you learn when you
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are raised in this and you don’t want to be hurt you learn to lie and I lied and I
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said I got saved and so I was taken out of that orange shirt I don’t I wasn’t in circle of hopes program um I was just a
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child that was raised like that if that makes sense but
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I was never considered a troubled teen my parents did threaten to send me away but I never got sent away and that was
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because I learned how to manipulate and say no Jesus saved me
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Jesus this Jesus that um you mentioned an orange shirt uh what
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did that signify so the shirt it’s a shirt system and it changed a lot but from what I
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remember was orange was was when you were a new kid yellow was when you were there for a little bit longer and then
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it went like green purple and red red was the highest shirt which would be junior staff um my parents did not have
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when they first opened they did not have staff and so um myself and the older
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girls that were considered junior staff we were considered staff and that’s how I
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became a staff I wasn’t really staff I was like a junior staff um
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but uh the shirt system was another way of controlling they did add on to that like before I left they added a black
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shirt black was considered th if you weree black you were a centner um and so
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that is the color that they gave the worst in their opinion the worst students but you literally could be put
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in a black shirt for anything my my mom would would get it in her head that she
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didn’t like a girl and she would sit there and do everything in her power to make that girl have a mental breakdown
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to the point that my dad would put her in a black shirt and so
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um I was never yes I was staff but I was never technically an adult staff I was a
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junior staff one of the things that is is just really stunning about this entire story
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is that this was ostensibly a school you know to correct behavior and and
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spiritual problems but it was supposed to be a school it was totally unregulated by the state
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of Missouri had no rules did this feel like a school to you were you getting an
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education in some way or or was this all about the other things no it did not feel like a school
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um my main education was on how to be our I should say our not just mine it was the girls within the program as well
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our main education was how to be a housewife um very rarely did we sit down and do
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the curriculum that they chose which was called Ace accelerated Christian education but when I was in it and the
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girls were in it it was not it was not a good school uh a lot of it was Bible um
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history um math was was a joke a science was a joke um but the majority of our
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schooling was how to be a wife we’re talking about the state of
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Christian boarding schools in Missouri and I’m talking today with Amanda household a survivor of the now closed
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Circle of Hope boarding school and the daughter of its Founders Boyd and Stephanie
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householder what was it that finally allowed you to break things off with your parents and and get
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away so the youngest child my parents ever took in was a
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5-year-old and uh she wasn’t put in the dorms at first
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she was put in my room and so it was me and this uh little 5-year-old and we bonded um but my mom could not stand her
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um one night I forget why uh but they moved her up into the dorms with the other girls and uh we had just gotten
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done with um uh Bible study or devotions is what
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they called it and I walked downstairs because she was we were all at the end
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doing our Bible reading again before we go to bed and she was crying and I asked her why she was crying and she said that
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she didn’t want her mom to go to hell because the devotions we just had my dad had said that if you are a female and
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you wear pants you’re going to hell and I looked at her and I said honey I was
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like if your mom is going to hell for wearing my for wearing pants my sister’s in hell and my dad’s mom is in hell and
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my aunt is in hell they all died in a car crash but they all wore pants and
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somehow that got back to my parents and that was a last draw and um they kicked
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me out so my my understanding you know this
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with this case there were many many complaints legal complaints complaints to the local sheriff’s department
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complaints to the various State departments um over the years in that
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Circle of Hope was open but things really don’t start happening until closer to 2020 and that’s when you were
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also getting on Tik Tok and sharing your story what were the elements that really
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came together to finally turn the attention of the authorities to your
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parents um in a way that it hadn’t before so in 2018 we
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had this Deputy that was not a highway patrol officer that had he was not
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connected to Cedar County which is the county Circle of Hope was in and he did
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a investigation and he took it to a prosecuting attorney outside of Cedar
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County and they declined Prosecuting because it wasn’t their jurisdiction and
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so the reason we went to this Sher this um highway patrol officer is because for
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years since the opening of Circle of Hope people would call Cedar County and
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Cedar County would be like oh that’s not our jurisdiction called poke P County which is humansville but which Circle of
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Hope is in humansville but it’s on the Ceder County side so for years we were getting nope not our not our problem not
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our problem not our problem to the point that a mother went through 11 different
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ways of filing charges she contacted the post office because Boyd would open up
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the girls presents and not give the student themselves the present but everyone else so she tried getting those
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charges put it put on Circle of Hope but that didn’t even happen so we knew
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something was up and it took until it took us going to Tik Tok finally to have
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one Deputy within that Cedar County Sheriff’s Department reach out and say
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hey we there’s a couple of people within this office that want to do something
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but we haven’t been able to and he confided in me basically saying uh when
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we started getting things going and that was only because of Tik Tok because we got hundreds of people calling that
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prosecuting attorney hundreds of people calling that Sheriff’s Department that they finally were like oh well we have to do something but it was because of
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corruption that nothing got done and it was because of corruption that it took us going to Tik Tock and reliving our
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trauma for anything to get done when you did go to Tik Tok and you
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you told your story um what was the reaction that you got was it what you were
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expecting no not at all what I was expecting thing I was expecting to be told like we had been told millions of
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times it was our fault um but no it it was a bunch of teenagers sitting there
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saying oh my God that could happen to me oh my God and so we got a lot of support and I I sat there and cried because we
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for so many years have been told we were Liars just to have thousands like almost
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300,000 people say no we believe you um it was amazing it really
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was the trial for your parents that was supposed to happen by now already it was
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supposed to happen twice already it was supposed to happen twice already but your father died um this summer the
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trial for your mother Stephanie householder is now scheduled I understand for September of next
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year what has it been like to to wait for these multiple trials but also to
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get a kind of of closure at least for someone who who committed so much harm
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as you’ve described it um I’m going to say this with I’m really sad that my dad died I really am
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but at the same time I’m really mad he died because we
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deserved um we deserved to see him in court we deserve to at least let
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him force him to see everything he’s done and that doesn’t mean he would actually repent or
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not even repent doesn’t mean he would be remorseful or anything like that but we deserved
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that I’m curious of your your thoughts on this upcoming trial and if this is if
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this is something that could potentially do do more to push the truth out to
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resolve things to give survivors like you closure or or is this just another
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reflection of far Missouri has kicked this down the line I have no faith in Missouri at this
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time I want to keep hope and I want to say that this is going to be a way of
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closure but I have a feeling that Missouri is going to make it more trauma
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for us um because that’s what they have done to us these past since 2020 four
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years four years we’ve been out here screaming what has happened to us and that there’s other places like
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this and they don’t care how was Julio Sandoval able to go
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from working at Agape and being investigated his name is on one of the ones that was going to be charged a low
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misdemeanor how was he able to go from Agape to to Lighthouse Ministries after
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we put a law in place in 2020 one that was supposed to do background checks
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they’re not even enforcing the law that we work so hard to get so I don’t have any faith that Missouri is going to do
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the right thing I really feel they did this to make them look good and now are
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trying their hardest to make it go away um and a lot of us
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are are defeated a lot like like I said my my physical health has gone down this
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year so so much I can’t even get out of bed half the times because my stomach doesn’t work the way it should and
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that’s because of the trauma and not just the trauma I went through with circle of hope it’s the trauma that
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Missouri is re putting us through um the fact that I have to wake
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up and find out more students are running away from the abuse we went through that we were working so hard to
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end that it’s it’s sickening
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but where I’m at now is we may not have gotten the Justice we deserved but we
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have found family along the way and if it weren’t for my Survivor friends I think I would be doing a lot
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worse than I am right now as much as they tried and when I say
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they I mean agape and circle of hope they tried to keep us from Talking after the fact they didn’t want us to contact
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each other outside of this but Facebook happened they never expected Facebook to
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happen and we became like family if someone hits me up and they need help I will help them and the same with me
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and that is I think I need to focus more on that than the fact that we didn’t get
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Justice one thing I do want to say is they they offered Stephanie a plea deal
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and I am worried that they are going to try to give Stephanie a lighter sentence
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one thing I think people need to understand is Stephanie is just as bad as Boyd and does not deserve a lighter
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sentence she may not have physically abused the students to the extent Boyd
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did but she made it to where he did be abusing because like I said earlier she
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did not like a student she would do everything in her power to make them
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mess up for for Boyd to do something and I hope Missouri sees that yes vo is dead
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but the abuser we have another abuser still alive and we deserve justice that way as
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well that was Amanda householder she has spent the last several years talking about her experience at the Circle of
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Hope Girls Ranch a Christian boarding school founded by her parents Amanda’s mother Stephanie householder is expected
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to face trial on child abuse charges next year coming up we continue our look at
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the status of Christian boarding schools in Missouri and we’ll meet a longtime activist against abuse in the Catholic
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church and why he believes Missouri needs to do more to protect children this is St Louis on the air on St Louis
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Radio welcome back I’m Danny wowski we’re looking at the developments in Missouri’s troubled Christian boarding
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school industry alongside survivors like Amanda householder who we got to meet earlier in the show the cause has been
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joined by another notable activist David closy he is the former National director of snap the survivors network of those
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abused by priests this week I sat down with David colassi to talk about the work of
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survivors like Amanda householder and why he maintains that Missouri officials like Attorney General Andrew Bailey
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still aren’t doing enough to protect children so David your November 20th
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oped in the Missouri independent it’s titled it’s past time for Missouri’s attorney general to take action against
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abusive boarding schools you have been involved in advocating about abuse in
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churches in many different sectors for decades but boarding schools is
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something that I I think is kind of new how did you get involved in this issue
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to the point that it brought you to being part of these demonstrations this summer well it started um nearly a year
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ago uh I I’d heard and read you know some isolated stories here and there but
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um I saw a news news account of five boys down in pedmont Missouri uh out in
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the Boondocks who in the dead of winter ran away from uh one of these facilities
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and I grew up in Small Town Missouri um and I had a sense of just how remote
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this place was and I know that the overwhelming majority of kids who were sent to these Christian boarding schools
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come from out of state so these were kids 12 13 14 year olds who knew no one
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but who were being so severely mistreated that in the dead of night in the cold um they took off running um
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and uh and I realized that you know this is a problem that’s deeper than you know many of us myself included realized so
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uh went down there and simply handed out flyers for a couple of hours and uh you
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know sure enough I began hearing uh at first from Neighbors and others who saw or heard about what happened there and
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then eventually from victims um and it kind of has has spiraled uh since
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then one of the big developments that’s happened this year and in recent um history is those former students you
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stood side by side with folks like Amanda householder who were sharing their
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stories who did things that were very similar to what you faced in the early
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2000s as you drew attention toward the Bishops and churches what was your impression of of this new generation you
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know again kids who had survived something incredibly terrible and we’re standing with you yeah um I was and I
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continue to be um just in awe of people like Amanda and these other uh Brave
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kids I technically they’re not kids now they’re mostly you know in their 20s or some in their 30s
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um but but they they are among some of the most
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um courageous I I shouldn’t rank survivors and how they cope with their pain and uh recover but these these kids
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are incredibly Brave and Incredibly resilient and it’s important to remember that they were already
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um they had already gotten the short end of the stick being sent to these homes in other words uh a fundamentalist mom
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or dad realized that that their 13-year-old daughter Sally was hanging around with a another kid who was known
27:20
to be gay or their 15-year-old son Billy uh was caught drinking beer at at a
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couple of parties and these parents of frankly in my view overreacted uh they thought oh my gosh the kids going off
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the rails I’ve got to do something dramatic so these kids already were were deeply damaged um when they went to
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these facilities I want to ask about kind of the level of activity around this issue
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in just the last few years there have been three of these boarding schools that have closed is it surprising how
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rapidly this these developments have occurred when you spent many many years watching you know the Catholic church or
27:56
others really buff and and move people around and find ways to keep these places open what what do you account for
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the quickness of of these closings well in many ways Danny it doesn’t feel quick
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um because I hear you know these horrific experiences that that often times do date back 10 or 15 or 20 years
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and I hear about uh not just kids but but parents and and some former staff
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who have knocked on the door of law enforcement for years without any real respons bonds um but any and all
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progress I think is really simply due to uh the tenacity um of these young people um
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because um you that’s the only way uh when when victims speak up uh sad to say
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that that really seems to be the only way in which um officials really take
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notice and and begin belatedly and grudgingly to to find they take
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action what do you make of the fact that Missouri has created some new laws I
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believe it was in 2021 this was after a lot of reporting from the Kansas City Star and of course a lot of what the
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survivors like Amanda household are you know making their voices heard these boarding schools were not regulated as
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schools or as as anything it seems uh the new law sets minimum health and safety standards it mandates and
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background checks requires adequate food and clothing and Medical Care again it’s it’s shocking that that wasn’t required
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it says parents must be allowed to access their children at any time given what you’ve said you know is
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is that progress is that a very small first step it it is progress um and it’s
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a it’s a small First Step only only if it’s
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enforced and and you have to remember these are relatively small facilities
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they’re way out in remote areas um um and uh and the state uh so far State
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officials have done an incredibly um minimal job when they do
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intervene um after getting reports of abuse and this is a horrific betrayal of
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of not just the students but their parents who were paying good money to send them here to hopefully you know get
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their lives back on track um so I think there’s been very little realaction by
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state officials and there’s been and only this one very recent laww um that
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that has set forward like you said the bare bare bare minimum standards like passing fire code right and making sure
30:38
that kids are given the prescription medicine that their doctors have ordered
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uh but there’s a long long way to go one of the other notable differences
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about the case of these boarding schools and what you experienced with priests in the Catholic church is the presence of
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social media and Tik Tok and Amanda householder when she was finally at a place to to tell her story she had
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hundreds of thousands of people who watched her videos and then as she told me hundreds of those people called the
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different sheriffs and police departments and created some of that pressure that really um seems to explain
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why things really have accelerated in the last couple years what does that look like to you to
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see that kind that new kind of public response that that you did not have um when you were talking about this in the
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early 2000s in the ’90s yeah oh it’s it’s very very encouraging um it was a
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real turning point for those of us abused in the Catholic Church um when the internet arrived and and we could
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lacking the ability to draw attention from the mainstream media um many of us turned to the internet uh and now fast
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forward a couple of decades and as you mentioned there’s Tik Tock and you know other forms of social media that were
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just simply not around um it’s uh it’s very encouraging
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it’s very validating it’s very um empowering um and again it takes um
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incredible courage for these kids to lay be their souls and their
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suffering just out there for for anybody and everybody to see uh but it can be a
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tool that enables them to organize collectively um and and finally bring
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about you know some degree of healing and if nothing else if nothing else what they’re doing is they’re doing what
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we’ve asked the Attorney General to do which is they’re warning parents who are thinking about sending kids to these
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facilities to you know think twice and investigate thoroughly um because
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lacking any state oversight or uh license any real licensing requirements
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um these parents are they’re Flying
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Blind we started this conversation talking about your oped for the Missouri independent last month and you were
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calling on the the Missouri attorney general Andrew Bailey to to do more um
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the Associated Press wrote about this Andrew Bailey gave a response basically you know I think to what you and the
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other survivors have been talking about saying that the Missouri attorney general’s office does not have original
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jurisdiction to prosecute criminal cases including those of sexual abuse and trafficking what do you make of of that
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response that this isn’t the Attorney General’s jurisdiction that this has to be I guess starting at the local prosecutor level um what do you make of
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that you know um that’s incredibly depressing um hair
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splitting um we’ve asked the the Attorney General to do half a dozen things
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um almost all of which uh he clearly has
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the authority to do for example we’ve said okay let’s give you the benefit of the doubt and claim that you can’t act
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without County Prosecutors acting first well use your bully pulpit right to
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those County Prosecutors and tell them look here’s here’s what we’ve seen just in the
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mainstream media just in the Civil courts just in the criminal courts here’s what we’ve seen some of this may
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be happening in your your jurisdiction get busy start investigating and the AG’s office will help just simply a
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letter we’ve asked the the Attorney General to Simply hold a a zoom phone
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call with some of these victims uh so that they can feel like the state of Missouri is uh attuned to you know their
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they’re suffering we’ve asked him to um uh try to broker a deal with these uh
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facilities owners to let some independent nonprofit that focuses on
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children’s well-being to go in and investigate or inspect these schools you on a regular basis we’ve asked him to do
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all of these things that he does not need any additional statutory power to
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do uh and I guess I would turn it around and say um you know if a public servant really
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wants to address a serious problem and believes he or she doesn’t have the
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legal authority to do it well they do one of two things they either Lobby
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another public official in this case it would be a governor to who does have the power to
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start acting or would go to the state legislature and say I’m in charge of this Arena we’ve got this serious
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problem I don’t have the legal tools to deal with it give me more power and Bailey’s done neither of those things so
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uh oh and finally you know we we’ve also asked him to Simply do what we’re trying to do which is Ring the Alarm Bell and
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say to parents we got dozens of these schools we don’t know enough about them
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some are legit some are not so please please please if you’re thinking about sending your kid to a private
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fundamentalist you know boarding school Christian boarding school um work work
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hard and do your due diligence because not all of these places are what they claim to
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be one of the variables here is time
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that is happening in this case Boyd householder the father of Amanda householder who we heard from before he
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was facing he was supposed to go to trial I think this you know just this year he was facing 22 counts of very
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very serious crimes against children um he died in June he will never face those
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charges is that part of the danger here of allowing this time to
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unfold it is um but but I would argue that
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um Yes W with the passage of time and in action by law enforcement and state
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officials yes more uh predators and sadists who hurt kids at these
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facilities will escape any accountability but there’s an even greater problem and that is that without
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uh pursuing these wrongdoers U kids
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today are being abused or at risk of horrific abuse in these schools um right
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now so it’s not just a case um where we’ve got to uh take you know in some
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way remedy past harm we got to stop harm right now I mean you cannot tell me that
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uh well no I shouldn’t say let me um it it’s possible in fact it’s likely that
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some of these boarding schools are now being a little bit more careful about
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what who they hire and a little bit more prompt about acting on abuse
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reports um but we all know that you know the way
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you prevent crimes is by pursuing the criminals um and uh these places are
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under the radar uh they’re accountable to virt no one they’re inspected by
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almost no one um and unless and until some of these owners and operators who
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either abuse or let abuse happen uh until some of those people are behind
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bars there’s not going to be any real incentive for the other school staff to
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you know shape up and and fly fly right there’s just not that was David coli the former
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National director of the survivors network of those abused by priests he spoke with me earlier this week about
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abuse in Missouri’s Christian boarding
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[Music]
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schools this episode was produced by Danny wowski audio engineering and podcast design by Aaron door our
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executive producer is Alex Hoyer St Louis on the Ariz is a production of St Louis Public