child there knowing what happened. >> what was it like in there? >> it was hell. i was sexually abused. >> there? >> yes, sir. i felt like i was nothing. >> there were numerous concerns about abuse going on at this facility. my dad would pick a girl up by her neck, throw her to the ground. >> he would trip you and shove you. >> knock her out. >> yes, sir. >> i mean it. >> posted it to tiktok. >> knock her out. >> it just blew up. >> these allegations need to be looked into. >> how could i do this to my child. >> your parents deny everything. they say none of that stuff is true. >> what was going on was wrong. something needed to be done. hello and welcome to dateline. on the surface the circle of hope school appeared to be a refuge where so-called troubled girls could receive a christian education. but some students say behind closed doors they suffered abuse. their secret remained hidden in the shadows until an unlikely ally launched a courageous quest to bring it to light. here's keith morrison with broken circle. >> the sky is endless here at the edge of the california desert. it's her heaven. so far from the tree-tangled sky where she grew up. the woods of missouri and the yellow farmhouse where this story begins. her father's farmhouse. his school. do you love your dad? >> i do love my dad. >> are you afraid of him too? >> i'm scared of my dad. >> what a strange, strange thing to love the person you're afraid of. the father you're afraid of. >> it's because at one point in time i wasn't afraid of him. he wasn't what he is now. >> but she wasn't what she is now either. which is why she's come back all these years later to the woods and the old farmhouse at her dad's school. but we begin years ago and far away in a place called feris, texas where teresa tucker a single mom of three was no other word for it, desperate. it was about her middle daughter ashley. spiraling out of control. what were you worried about? >> drugs and just rebellion. very mouthy and so i didn't know where to turn. >> how old was she at the time? >> 16. >> on that december weekend in 2014, ashley was getting kicked out of yet another rehab. so teresa called her best friend, the pastor's wife for help. >> my pastor and his wife told us about circle of hope. >> circle of hope girls ranch and boarding school. it was in missouri on a farm. the students followed a strict regimen of chores and schoolwork and bible study. >> 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 it wilderness programs to therapeutic boarding schools to boot camps. and then there are those whose lessons derive from it 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. miss householder was a nurse and 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. she signed a contract committing ashley to an 18 month stay. and then she said good-bye. the pastor and his wife drove ashley to missouri. >> what was it like for you on the trip to that place. >> my pastor and his wife kept telling me everything's going to be okay. >> what were your first impressions? >> when we first got there it was at night. it was really dark. >> there they were waiting. boyd and stephanie householder. >> they were nice. they were sweet. they were laughing. joking. okay, this is a really good place. i'm going to get help here. >> but as soon as the pastor and his wife left the householders changed. >> they went from smiling and laughing to just straight face and that was it. i mean they didn't show any emotions or anything. >> ashley didn't know why. she suddenly felt very afraid. and she stepped deeper into the farmhouse. into a world of fear. >> what was it like? >> it was hell. it was scary. you were alone. it was basically while you're in there it's survival. >> what was really happening at that ranch? tales of terror from the girls on the inside. coming up. >> they had girls scrubbing the floor with toothbrushes. >> unless you were physically laying in it bed to sleep you were standing and you were facing a wall. >> all day every day? >> all day every day. >> when dateline continues. lin ♪ ♪ have you always had trouble losing weight and keeping it off? 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[coughing] copd isn't pretty. i'm out of breath, and often out of the picture. but this is my story. ( ♪♪ ) and with once-daily trelegy, it can still be beautiful. because with 3 medicines in 1 inhaler, trelegy keeps my airways open for a full 24 hours and prevents future flare-ups. trelegy also improves lung function, so i can breathe more freely all day and night. trelegy won't replace a rescue inhaler for sudden breathing problems. tell your doctor if you have a heart condition or high blood pressure before taking it. do not take trelegy more than prescribed. trelegy may increase your risk of thrush, pneumonia, and osteoporosis. call your doctor if worsened breathing, chest pain, mouth or tongue swelling, problems urinating, vision changes, or eye pain occur. ♪ what a wonderful world ♪ [laughing] ask your doctor about once-daily trelegy for copd because breathing should be beautiful, all day and night. because breathing keith morrison: teresa tucker had dispatched her daughter to a religious reform school in a tiny community called teresa tucker had dispatched her daughter to a religious reform school in a tiny community called humansville, missouri. run by stephanie and boyd householder. teresa, did you have any idea what was happening in that place? >> no, i department. i didn't have no idea. >> amanda householder, however, did. knew that very well. boyd and stephanie are her parents. >> was your dad well suited to this kind of work? >> yes because he was a drill instructor. it was second nature to him to just put people in their place. >> before he'd started working in reform schools, boyd householder had been a marine. a trainer of marines. amanda had idolized her strong, commanding father. >> when i was like 2 or 3 i was a daddy's little girl. >> he'd take her for drives in his jeep, she said. listen to music together. but things began to change, said amanda when her mother persuaded the ex-drill sergeant to start going to church. there are many versions of christianity, of course. this one? >> do you remember what the sermons were like or what the preaching was like? >> a lot of the sermons were a lot based on fear and burning in hell for eternity. >> and some, she remembers, talked about how to discipline children. how to beat the sin out of them. >> it was to spare the rod spoil the child. >> it was through someone he met at church that amanda's dad got his first job at a christian reform school. boyd worked at agape. when amanda was 15 he decided to open his own school only this would be for girls. >> what was this place like? this physical house, the location? >> it was just a very run down homely place. >> she was sent there when she was in tenth grade. what had you been doing? committing crimes or something? >> i had never committed a crime. my mom found out that i had become sexually active and that i had tried marijuana for the first time. >> maggie drew arrived in 2007 when she was 15. >> nobody was smiling. i saw the girls and everybody was so quiet and i was like this is so dismal. what is this? >> maggie said the girls were afraid from the minute they woke up. >> it was immediately get up, hurry, hurry. get dressed. get downstairs. >> for bible study. and then chores. bizarre chores. >> they had girls scrubbing the floor with toothbrushes. they had the girls wiping walls down. they had us picking weeds in the middle of the heat all day. >> they would say, you know, the bible says this. the bible says that. no, that is your interpretation of the bible. that's not what the bible really says. >> but you'd talk back like that? >> no. no. no, no, no. it was yes, ma'am. >> why? >> because if we did we got punished. >> punishment. it's right here in the handbook. boyd householder promised to help reform especially difficult children by imposing biblical discipline. it didn't seem so biblical to her. >> he'd sit in his chair like this and be like pushups and they would start doing pushups and it would turn into him going up and kicking their hands out from underneath him. >> another punishment he called standing on the wall. >> unless you were physically laying in bed to sleep you were standing and you were facing a wall. >> all day every day? >> all day every day you'd have to eat like you'd be given one of those old school plastic 80s style lunch trays. i watched him walk past people on the wall and just hit their trays and their food would go everywhere. >> boyd householder denied that. said he didn't knock girls down while they did pushups either. but those weren't the only kind of stories we heard. we spoke to more than a dozen former students and three former staff members whose experiences at circle of hope span more than a decade and all of them told us that boyd householder didn't just subject his students to chores and pushups and other creative punishments. no, they said. he was physically abusive. >> he would go up behind a girl and grab them by the base of the neck behind their head like this like right up behind your ears almost and he would put a foot out and trip you and shove you, follow down and shove you with force face first. >> carpet, gravel, the floor of the chicken pen. didn't matter, said maggie. >> at that point he'd put his fist on the side of your head and one in the middle of your back so you couldn't get up. >> and there was more, said maggie. boyd ordered some of the girls to help. to put their weight on the students pressure points. and they did. >> it was like one of those things where it's like dog eat dog where if you don't fight your way to the top and do what you're told to do then it's going to come back at you. >> she found that out the hard way when she tried not to press too hard on the girl she was helping restrain. >> he dropped his knees on top of my elbows and once he did that and pushed his weight on top of me the girl then started screaming and he looked at me and told me that if she wasn't screaming like that once he let go of me holding her that i was going to be laying next to her until i [ bleep ] myself and said i needed to make decisions of whose side i was on. >> the householders told us they did restrain students when they were violent but never deliberately inflicted pain. and amanda? well, these girls were her age, some of them. could have been her friends. except amanda wasn't a student. and sometimes she was the one handing out the discipline. >> i know i had power trips. i know there were certain girls my dad favored over me and i didn't like them so i treated them poorly in the sense that i'd be like just push, give me 25. >> things she did she said things her father wanted her to do. whose side was amanda on? >> coming up. a stunning new allegation. >> i was sexually abused. >> there? >> yes, sir. >> when dateline continues. ne a slow network is no network for business. that's why more choose comcast business. and now, we're introducing ultimate speed for business —our fastest plans yet. we're up to 12 times faster than verizon, at&t, and t-mobile. and existing customers could even get up to triple the speeds... at no additional cost. it's ultimate speed for ultimate business. don't miss out on our fastest speed plans yet! switch to comcast business and get started for $49.99 a month. plus, ask how to get up to an $800 prepaid card. call today! keith morrison: on sundays, the students at circle of hope sometimes climbed into a bus on sundays the students at circle of hope sometimes climbed into a bus that drove them the 50 miles down highway 13 to a church with a towering white steeple. berean baptist church. the girls walked inside dressed in their sunday best and church smiles. the smiles were fake, said maggie. >> we did whatever we had to to make him happy. >> amanda watched it all. she knew, she said, what the students were hiding. how her dad treated them behind closed doors. what was it like to see your dad punishing other kids? >> i think that to me is the most traumatizing part, um, because to me it was just normal. >> amanda told us her dad had never spared her the rod, beating her regularly as a child. using his belt after church. but hearing the girls scream as they were being punished. >> when you think of souls burning in a lake of fire for eternity, that's what these girls sound like. >> and the screaming is especially hard to forget, she told us. because she helped her dad. >> as a 15-year-old i was forced to restrain the girls the same way my dad would. >> how'd that make you feel? >> i stopped. i refused to go when they yelled restrain. i would always say i have to make lunch or make dinner or i have dishes to do. >> did you ever tell your dad just go easy? >> i never had the guts. i never had the guts. >> when she was 15 she tried running away. failed. her father denied punishing her, but after that she said, things changed for her. >> i was put on the wall. every time my dad walked past me i was yelled at. couldn't use the bathroom without permission. i wasn't allowed to eat until my parents brought me food. i could not leave the wall outside my dad's office. >> just standing facing the wall. >> just standing facing the wall. >> how long? >> i think it was two months. >> amanda was not like the other girls. no one would pick her up and take her away. she counted the days until she was old enough to leave. and in 2009 when she was 17, she moved in with her grandma. then across the country to california. a new life. a fresh start. >> i had a really good job. i had my own apartment. i was doing everything a person does. >> even so, she wasn't quite ready to turn her back on her family. not yet anyway. in 2011 after a parent posted negative comments about the school online, it might surprise you who its loudest defender was. >> you were online defending your parents. >> i know. >> right? why were you doing that? >> i don't know other than i kind of felt guilty that it was my family and so any time that people would say something i just felt -- i didn't want my dad to go to jail. i don't know how to explain it. >> there were some stories she never heard back then. she never met ashley tucker. the teenager from feris, texas who arrived at the ranch in 2014. >> behind closed doors with just us kids, they were monsters. >> ashley said it was in that culture of fear that the worst thing happened to her. >> i was sexually abused. >> there? >> yes, sir. >> the boy was amanda's younger brother, she told us. he was 15 at the time. she said it happened while she was doing chores in one of the buildings on the farm. >> he walked over there, he grabbed me, he pushed me up against one of the walls and he actually ended up raping me right there. >> what happens to you when that's going on? >> i felt disgusting. i felt like i was nothing. i felt like i was never going to get out of that place. >> she told no one. copt tell her mom because she knew when she got calls from home someone was always listening. >> they would have their like their thumb over the little hang up button. >> but then a few months into her stay ashley took a chance. she told her mother that she was losing a lot of weight. >> when she told me that they hung up. so i call back, i'm like what's going on. oh, well she's being rebellious. put her back on the phone and that's when ashley said they're starving me. >> and the phone cut out again. teresa had heard enough. as soon as she could she got in her car and drove from texas to missouri to see for herself what was going on inside that yellow farmhouse. >> coming up. >> i'm not going to lie. i hated my mom. i hated her. i couldn't stand her. >> feel guilty? 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