Will the wife of the deceased owner of the MO boarding house still stand trial?

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In the hours after Boyd Householder’s death Tuesday, former students at his Circle of Hope boarding school in southwest Missouri had one question.

Will the judge and jury ever hear what they believe is going on at the unlicensed school he and his wife, Stephanie, have run for 14 years in rural Cedar County? Brutal restrictions, excessive training in extreme temperatures, psychological and sexual violence, and food and water used as punishment.

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His death at age 75 came four months before the Householders were scheduled to go on trial on 99 felony counts of child abuse and neglect, including statutory rape, sodomy and physical abuse. The Missouri Attorney General’s Office charged the pair in March 2021, and then-Attorney General Eric Schmitt described the abuse the students experienced as “extensive and horrific.”

Charges against Boyd Householder include that he slammed the girls’ heads or bodies against walls, hit them with his hands, a belt or other objects, stuffed one of the girls’ faces in horse manure and poured hot sauce down the girl’s throat. Former students said Stephanie allowed the violence to occur and at times even participated in it.

“Stephanie’s case needs to be urgent,” said Sophia Ellis, a former Circle of Hope student who attended a news conference in downtown Kansas City on Wednesday. “There is no reason for this issue to be postponed so many times. Justice must be brought to her and what she has done.”

It was unclear Wednesday whether Stephanie Householder, 59, will still face trial in late October. The Star sent several questions to the AG’s office, asking how Boyd Householder’s death would affect the criminal case against the couple and whether the victims had been contacted.

“This is an ongoing criminal case, so I decline to comment at this time,” Madeline Sieren, a spokeswoman for the Attorney General’s Office, said in an email Wednesday.

Adam Woody, the attorney for the House, did not respond when asked what would happen to the case against Stephanie. He said Boyd Householder died of “cardiac arrest.”

“He has passed away maintaining his innocence of all crimes,” Woody wrote in a text message to The Star on Tuesday night, “and is in a better place.”

“There was no justice for him in our world.”

The former students said they wanted the Master of the house, a former Marine who was called “Brother House,” to face a jury and be held accountable. They said they missed this opportunity.

“I guess the only thing I can say is that even though he didn’t get justice in our world, I feel like he will get it in the next one,” said Ellis, 21, who worked at Circle of Hope for 3 1/2 years . “I believe in life after death, so it was definitely a mix of emotions for me, just because I spent so much time there.”

Stephanie Householder faces 21 charges, including 11 counts of child abuse or neglect and 10 counts of child endangerment.

Ashlyn Dixon, 18, attended the Cedar County school from 2019 until it closed in August 2020 and said she believes Stephanie Householder should be held accountable for the abuse she and others say people took place there.

“They were really in this together,” Dixon said.

Authorities began investigating Circle of Hope in early 2020 after a short video surfaced on social media showing Boyd Householder ordering students to chase Dixon if they felt he was threatening them. The video went viral on TikTok, garnering millions of views.

The Householders’ daughter, Amanda, posted the video sent to her by a family friend who secretly recorded it during a visit to Cedar County.

Several former students said they believed family members should be kept in jail pending trial and banned from home. They both used monitoring devices for some time, but later asked the court to remove them.

The homeowners said they have had no violations since being released from jail on July 23, 2021, and that the GPS monitors “do not serve the safety of the community or alleged crime victims” and are too expensive.

“They pay nearly $700 per month for monitors, an unnecessary expense that has now exceeded necessity,” their motions said. Boyd Householder went on to say that his health is “slowly deteriorating” and that he is “currently on two oxygen tanks per day.” The judge granted Boyd Householder’s request to remove the monitor, but not his wife’s.

“They literally attacked so many young girls every day in so many horrific ways that you can’t even imagine, and they just gained their freedom,” Dixon said. “This shouldn’t be allowed.”

After the press conference, organizers planned to deliver a letter to Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s office in Kansas City demanding that he take a stand against abuses at the state’s unlicensed boarding schools. They called on Bailey to ask prosecutors in counties where such boarding schools operate to investigate and determine whether any abuses occurred.

“He can, should and must take the lead on this because otherwise it will just be a drip, drip, drip of allegations, reports, prosecutions and lawsuits,” said David Clohessy, former national director of the Priest Victims Network. “And meanwhile the attorney general is basically sacrificing countless children in order to destroy their lives. It’s just completely irresponsible and inexcusable.”

A new Agape lawsuit has been filed

Rebecca Randles, a Kansas City attorney who has filed more than 15 lawsuits for Circle of Hope, was present at Wednesday’s press conference where Dixon, Ellis and others wrote the names of alleged abusers at the residential school on the sidewalk.

The attorney also announced a new lawsuit filed Wednesday against Agape Boarding School, another unlicensed facility in Cedar County where dozens of molestation lawsuits are pending and where Boyd Householder first worked after arriving in Missouri. A new lawsuit alleges that the Arizona boy – who goes by the name MB2 – was abused and/or neglected by five former school staff leaders.

“The latest case is unfortunately like all the others in the sense that this is a child who is still very young,” Randles said, “who was attacked, abandoned, beaten, denied water, food, forced to exercise in the heat, without access to water and without food when he was hungry.”

One of the alleged victims Randles represented with Circle of Hope is the Householders’ daughter, Amanda. She was instrumental in pushing for an investigation into alleged abuse at Circle of Hope and sued her parents for forced labor, beating her for their own sexual gratification, and forcing her to punish other students at the unlicensed boarding school near Humansville.

She said she had many emotions surrounding her father’s death, including frustration that there had been so many delays in the trial.

“The little girl in me hurts that I didn’t get to say goodbye to the version of my dad she missed so much,” Amanda Householder told The Star on Wednesday. She added that she was even more devastated “for those of us who were sexually, emotionally and physically abused by him for many years.”

“I hope his passing will bring comfort to the hundreds of defenseless children who suffered even more at his hands. But I am also angry because I feel that the state of Missouri is delaying in allowing us, the survivors, to see the face of our abuser while they themselves are held accountable.”

Now, she said, “Victims of abuse are being denied justice and their day in court. It is tragic that none of us who have been so seriously wounded by his crimes will be able to reveal in court the full extent of his crimes.”