my child, thinking i was helping her? teresa did not want it happening to anyone else. ashley begged her, don t report the alleged rape. and so she didn t. but teresa did call child protective services, cps, and she told them about ashley s other allegations of physical abuse. they stated that they were going to go out and check the facility and all that. once they got back with me, they stated that they didn t see anything. there was nothing they could do. teresa contacted the sheriff s office, too. same story. nothing happened. what teresa didn t know was that she was far from the first or only person to make a complaint to authorities about the circle of hope. a mother told us she reported the school the year after it opened. and as time went on, police records show, more relatives and students told stories of abuse. about a girl covered in bruises.
letter is how i is how i started just thinking. amanda started thinking about all of it. how her parents had raised her. what she said she saw them do to the children at circle of hope. it wasn t until i had my own kids that i realized what was going on was happening to other people s kids. and she wanted to make things right. she and maggie decided to track down the girls of circle of hope, as many as they could, listen to their stories, ask if they were okay. it was a big thing for a lot of them to be able to honestly, in a safe space, speak their truth. but it wasn t just kids at circle of hope who had stories about her father. amanda began hearing from former students of agape, the boys religious reform school where her dad used to work.
was it important to you that she go to a place where there was going to be some spiritual help? at this point, i didn t really care. i just needed her to have help. there are hundreds of private residential facilities across the country promising to reform troubled teens. they range from wilderness programs to therapeutic boarding schools to boot camps. and then there are those whose lessons derive from a very particular religious point of view. circle of hope was run by a married couple, boyd and stephanie householder. at the heart of their program, they said, was a strict interpretation of the king james bible. she was going to get schooling. and she was going to get counseling. ms. householder was a nurse, and that she was going to facilitate her medications and things like that. most important of all, perhaps, they had a free bed and could take ashley right away for just $100 a month. to teresa, it felt like a miracle of sorts.
in proper restraining techniques. colton insisted he was beaten there years ago and tried to report it to a sheriff s deputy who picked him after he ran away from the school. i tried to tell him. like, man, they re beating us. and he didn t listen. cuffed me up, put me in the back of the car and dropped me off back at agape. and that s the last i ever heard of it. never saw cps, nothing. the cop didn t believe you? no. agape, like circle of hope, was seen in the community as doing good work. helping troubled kids. amanda said it wasn t unusual to see deputies hanging out at circle of hope, sometimes doing target practice with her dad. maggie said boyd boasted about it. they had ties with all the cops in the area. if we ran away or said anything, we d be immediately brought back, and nobody would believe us.