ST. LOUIS, Missouri — Survivors of sexual abuse visited the downtown office of Missouri's Attorney General on Monday to hand deliver a letter urging him to investigate claims of rampant abuse inside private, unlicensed Christian boarding schools.
"We were denied entrance into the building and we were told by security that they won't even take a letter," David Clohessy said after attempting to drop the letter off at a state government building in St. Louis. He and other advocates delivered a similar letter to Attorney General Andrew Bailey's office in Jefferson City last month.
"Ample evidence already exists in the public record that these institutions lack oversight and sometimes attract predators who hurt kids and supervisors who ignore or hide suspicious or criminal acts," Clohessy wrote in the April 15 letter.
He and several other victims allege that a decentralized ring of fundamentalist church-based boarding homes often operate "under the radar" with little government oversight from Missouri state regulators.
Many of the adults who were sent to live in these facilities as "troubled teens" have described being shaken awake and abducted from their own bedrooms in the dead of night before being hauled halfway across the country with their parents consent. Then, once they arrived at the rigid reform camps, they say their communication with their parents was either cut off or tightly controlled.
"They monitor heavily the conversations between parents and children," Amanda Householder recounted. "So the children have no way of letting anyone know what is actually happening."
Householder, now a California native, revealed she recently won a settlement in a civil case against her own parents, Boyd and Stephanie Householder. The couple now faces more than 100 charges of abuse and neglect in a criminal trial set for this upcoming October.
Householder recalled instances where she and several other teenage girls tried to run away and escape from the Circle of Hope Ranch that her parents operated in Humansville, Missouri, before it was shuttered in 2020.
"We weren't being heard by the sheriffs in that town. They kept pushing us off," she said, describing one example where one of her friends "went to the police and the police officer just brought her right back" to her abusers.
Allegations of sex crimes against minors have also surfaced at Missouri facilities like the Agape Boarding School in Stockton, the Lighthouse Academy in Piedmont, and the Kanakuk Kamps in Branson. Three of the four facilities have since shut down. In several cases, victims allege the local prosecutors or law enforcement have apparent conflicts of interest or personal relationships with the owners of the facilities.
"Cedar County is conflicted every which way you can be conflicted," Householder's lawyer Rebecca Randles said in a Monday phone call.
She joined in the calls for state lawmakers to expand the attorney general's powers to investigate abuse.
"The legislature could do three things: make civil and criminal statutes the same; they could make sex trafficking and childhood sex abuse cases something the AG has statewide authority to prosecute so you don't fall into these traps where the local authorities are well-known to each other, friends or related; and then just change the law slightly to clarify what force means," Randles said.
She echoed Clohessy's criticism of the state's "archaic, arbitrary, predator-friendly statute of limitations." She said some county prosecutors may decline to press charges when old allegations crop up because they may not be able to prove whether or not the sexual assault against minors included physical force.
"People have been charged but nothing's being done," Householder said of the Agape Boarding School where her parents used to work before they launched their own facility. "No one's in jail. No one is being held accountable for this."
After complaints about conflicts of interest and inaction from local law enforcement surfaced years ago, former Attorney General Eric Schmitt stepped in and initially filed criminal charges against Boyd and Stephanie Householder.
At the time, Schmitt's office invited victims of sexual abuse to reach out to the attorney general's office.
"We want them to know, if anybody's in that situation, that they can call our office and we will work expeditiously to do everything that we can," he said at a 2021 press conference.
Three years later, as the couple prepares to face a criminal trial in October, abuse survivors are pleading with the state's current top legal officer to expand the probe to investigate other religious homes scattered across the state.
"We beg you as emphatically as possible to help expose, deter, and prevent potential crimes and criminal cover ups at dozens of similar, largely under-the-radar 'schools' in remote parts of Missouri," Clohessy wrote to Bailey.
Bailey's office confirmed three prosecutors in their office remain involved in the Householder case, but said it is limited in opening new investigations where there may not be conflicts of interest between the prosecutor and the defendant.
"We enforce the laws as written," Bailey's government spokeswoman Madeline Sieren wrote in an email. "The Attorney General’s Office does not have the legal authority to investigate or bring criminal charges, including those of sexual abuse and human trafficking, unless ordered to do so by the governor or a local judge."
Survivors are also urging the legislature to enact tougher laws to expand the window for victims to file civil suits against their abusers.