Horrific Amish and Mennonite Sexual Abuse Cases – Chapter 4

Chapter 4 of the book:

The Failure of the Great Amish and Conservative Mennonite Dress Experiment

Why Christian Conservatism Isn’t the Answer and What to Do

In this chapter we look at a number of Amish and Mennonite sexual abuse cases. Amish and conservative Mennonites have looked at modern Christianity and criticized them for how much like the world (non-Christians) they are. But within their own congregations there are men and women, boys and girls who are committing vile sins in secret that are as bad or worse than what is happening in the modern churches they are condemning. Over and over the church leaders have been turning a blind eye to what is happening when they find out. Sexual abuse in Amish and conservative Mennonite churches appears to be a much bigger problem than what most people ever imagined.

Are you looking for something more than just the same old concepts, interpretations, explanations, and perspectives you have heard regurgitated over and over again? This website will give you some new insights and things to think about. You may not agree with everything you read, but Biblical Research Reports will stimulate your thinking. Our goal is to help you to formulate in your own mind what is Jesus’ truth as you look at the research we share on the various subjects facing the Church.

Arthur J. Hershberger Case

In the early part of 2011, Art Hershberger, age 58, turned himself in for sexually molesting several young girls in a Beachy Amish Mennonite school where he was principal. The Arthur Hershberger case is an illustration that a sexual predator can be anyone of any social standing, and one whom you would least expect. They are probably not social misfits that give you the creeps to be around.

Art Hershberger’s information can be viewed at:

 www.homefacts.com/offender-detail/VA35454/Arthur-Jay-Hershberger.html

When I heard about Art Hershberger, God impressed upon me these words: “The Great Amish and Conservative Mennonite Dress Experiment is a failure”.

Art Hershberger was not just a Christian school principal. He was also the Administrative Secretary for the Biblical Mennonite Alliance conference and was one of the main leaders and founders of the conference. He was responsible for conference correspondence and was a main contact person. Hershberger was also a pastor and was overseer of five Mennonite churches in Virginia.

Biblical Mennonite Alliance (BMA) was the Mennonite conference that our family had been a part of before God told our family to leave the Mennonite church a number of years ago. BMA was started in 1998 because of the liberal drift of Conservative Mennonite Conference and other Mennonite groups. Their goal was to be the most Biblical Mennonite group, hence the name “Biblical Mennonite Alliance”. Their web address is Biblical Mennonite. BMA’s motto was “The Bible plus nothing, and the Bible minus nothing”.

The modest, conservative dress of these young girls did not protect them from the sexual advances of Mr. Hershberger. The conservative modest dress did not help this man to control himself as we were taught in the Mennonite church that it would. What is significant is that this man did not fall into adultery with an adult; instead it was sexual perversion with young girls. It is not normal for a man to be sexually interested in a young girl.

In Romans 1:28-32 God tells us: “And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient… without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.”

Young Amish and Mennonite children are very vulnerable to being sexually abused by someone within their family or church group. Their religious community’s focus on a specified modest dress style and piety in conduct is a cover for sexual molesters to operate. Sexual molesters can dress right and act right and no one suspects what they are doing to the children.

The Shocking Bolivian Mennonite Rape Case Involving 130 Girls and Women

This is a case so depraved that I have not heard of this type of thing among non-Christians, and yet this sexual abuse was committed by ultra-conservative Mennonite men in the Mennonite colony of Manitoba in Bolivia. It reminds me of what God said in 1 Corinthians 5: “It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles,…”

 “Peter Weiber, 48, a Mennonite veterinarian, is accused of transforming a chemical meant to anesthetize cows into a spray to be used on humans. For four years, Weiber and eight other Mennonite men allegedly sprayed the chemical through bedroom windows in Manitoba at night, sedating entire families and raping the females…The criminal charges detail depraved acts few would expect inside a supposedly upright sect like the Mennonites. ‘When there were no grown women’ in the houses that the men allegedly targeted, says Wilfredo Mariscal, an attorney for the victims, ‘they did what they wanted with the kids.’”

“…closure will be difficult for the victims, especially since many feel they can no longer trust their insular community to help them deal with the trauma. It’s hard to blame them: shockingly, some of Manitoba Colony’s male leaders have suggested that because the women were usually sedated during the rapes, they have no psychological wounds. None have yet received counseling. ‘I’d like to be able to talk to someone, but it will have to be when I learn Spanish,’ says Banman (one of the victims). ‘I rarely sleep through the night anymore.’

“Then there’s the stigma. Out of shame, many of the women no longer attend church, the colony’s only real social space; the younger among them say they fear they are “stained” and will never be able to marry.” Time Magazine Aug. 17, 2011

www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2087711,00.html

In a February 2008 article in the Mennonite Brethren Herald, it was reported that TransWorld Radio was broadcasting Mennonite Brethren programs into the Mennonite colonies in Bolivia. “’We began receiving letters from kids and teens who listened to these programs where radios are prohibited by colony elders,’ said Klaue. ‘Through them we learned of addictions, depression, and sexual abuse common in the colonies. I was convinced that more needed to be done for these kids,’”…      www.mbherald.com/47/02/news-1.en.html

A Mennonite Report on the Bolivian Rapes

Jack Heppner, a Mennonite pastor from Canada, visited Bolivia and investigated the rape allegations and what could be done to help the Colony Mennonites. He wrote an extensive report. What Heppner says about the motivation for church regulations among the colony Mennonites in many ways applies to the motivation behind why the Amish and Conservative Mennonite Dress Experiment is being continued today. The following are several excerpts from it (the term “Colonists” refers to the Colony Mennonites):

 “Gradually I began to understand that the bottom line on any issue in colony life was that nothing was allowed to change. Colonists had moved away from “the world” in order to keep things the way their parents and grandparents had had it. From one perspective we would say they were anti-modern, but to me their anti-modernity seemed to be motivated less by the desire to remain a biblical people than by a stubborn notion that nothing should change from the way their forefathers had had it. Didn’t the Bible say, “Bleibe bei was du gelernt hast!” (Stay with what you have learned.) And this idea was clearly tied to the notion that to introduce changes that their forefathers had not thought of was to dishonor them. Stuck in this mode, colony leaders were in a difficult position to deal with emerging problems and issues with any degree of elasticity or freedom. There was little discernment or logic available. The only thing they could fall back on was the promise people had made at baptism to remain true to the church – the way they had received it from their forefathers…

“Isolation as a social grouping can do unexpected things to its people. For one, a sense of superiority develops with respect to the people living around them… So in the context of this “superior” colony life, it gradually became evident that social, religious and moral life began spiraling downward … So many young people really only had a very sketchy understanding of the biblical narrative and gospel imperatives. Severe tensions frequently erupted within the colonies over the smallest of deviations from dress and behavior codes. And sexual deviance, including rampant sex among young people and with neighboring Bolivian girls, men using prostitutes in town, brothers using sisters and fathers using daughters began to emerge…”

Jack Heppner met with Bishop Neudorf, the Bishop in the colony where the rapes occurred. The following is some of what he reported:

“Hans and I pressed Bishop Neudorf a number of times during our conversation about our perceived need to get some counseling help for the women who had been raped. We suggested to him that if women who are sexually abused do not get help, they frequently experience various forms of dysfunction later in life. His response was to say that if these women had been violated sexually while drugged, they would have no recollection of the experience and therefore would not need any help either…

“I had heard of rampant sexual misconduct among Mennonites. I asked him to tell me if what I had heard was not true. I then told him what one man in prison had related to me. How that the standard practice for colony youth was to begin drinking on Sunday afternoon, then when they were quite drunk by evening they would go to the end of the village to participate in sex with one another. The bishop did not deny any of this but did lament how the drinking of alcohol had brought a lot of trouble into the colony.” 

http://doradueck.wordpress.com/2010/03/27/bolivian-mennonite-rape-victims-update/

The Ghost Rapes of Bolivia – The Perpetrators Were Caught, but the Crimes Continue

Almost two years after Jean Friedman-Rudovsky wrote the article in Time Magazine about the Bolivian Mennonite rapes, she went back to the Mennonite colony in Bolivia to see what had taken place since then.

She said that officially there were 130 victims, but not everyone that was raped was included in the legal case. It is believed that the true number of victims is much, much higher. The girls and women were married, single, residents, visitors, and the mentally handicapped. Residents privately told her that men and boys were raped too.

Jean states: “Over the course of a nine-month investigation, including an 11-day stay in Manitoba, I discovered that the crimes are far from over. In addition to lingering psychological trauma, there’s evidence of widespread and ongoing sexual abuse, including rampant molestation and incest. There’s also evidence that—despite the fact that the initial perpetrators are in jail—the rapes by drugging continue tohappen…

“On my last day in Manitoba, I got a shock. “You know that it’s still happening, right?” a woman said to me, as we drank ice water alongside her home. There were no men around. I hoped something was lost in translation, but my Low German translator assured me it wasn’t. “The rapes with the spray—they are still going on,” she said. I peppered her with questions: Had it happened to her? Did she know who was doing it? Did everyone know it was going on? 

“No, she said, they hadn’t returned to her house, but to a cousin’s—recently. She said she had a good guess about who was doing it but wouldn’t give me any names. And she believed that, yes, most people in Manitoba Colony knew that the imprisonment of the original rapists hadn’t put an end to the serial crimes.

“As if in a strange time warp, after dozens of interviews with people telling me everything was fine now, I didn’t know if this was gossip, rumor, lies, or—worse—the truth. I spent the rest of the day frantically trying to get confirmation. I revisited many families who I had previously interviewed, and the majority admitted, a bit sheepishly, that yes, they had heard the rumors and that, yes, they assumed they were probably true…”

On a following trip by Noah Friedman-Rudovsky, the photographer for the article, five people went on record and confirmed that they had heard the rapes were continuing.

Sexual abuse is rampant in the Bolivian colony. Jean visited Agnes Klassen, who had left the colony, and talked to her about incest in her past. The sexual abuse began in her early childhood which included being fondled by several of her eight older brothers.

Jean reports: “Agnes said the abuse would happen in the barn, in the fields, or in the siblings’ shared bedroom. She didn’t realize it was inappropriate behavior until the age of ten, when she was given a stern beating after her father found her brother fondling her. ‘My mother could never find the words to tell me that I was being wronged or that it was not my fault,’ she recalled. 

“After that, the molestation continued but Agnes was too scared to go to anyone for help. When she was 13 and one of her brothers tried to rape her, Agnes warily notified her mom. She wasn’t beaten this time, and for a while her mom did her best to keep the two apart. But the brother eventually found her alone and raped her. 

“The sibling assaults became increasingly commonplace, but there was nowhere for Agnes to turn… ‘I just learned to live with it,’ Agnes said haltingly. She apologized for her stops and starts, for her tears. It was the first time she had ever fully told her story. She said the incest stopped when boys began courting Agnes, and she filed it away in her mind as a thing of the past. 

“But when she got married, moved into her own house in Manitoba, and gave birth to two daughters, family members began molesting her children during visits. ‘It was starting to happen to them, too,’ she told me, her eyes following the movements of her two young platinum-blond girls darting past the windows as they played outside. One day, her eldest daughter, not yet four at the time, told Agnes that the girls’ grandpa had asked her to put her hands down his pants. Agnes said that her father never molested her or her sisters, but that he allegedly routinely abused his grandchildren until Agnes fled Manitoba with her daughters (and still allegedly abuses her nieces, who remain in the Colony). Another day, she caught her nephew fondling her youngest daughter. ‘It happens all the time,’ she said. ‘It’s not just my family…’

“The Old Colony leaders I spoke with denied that their communities have an ongoing sexual abuse problem and insisted that incidents are dealt with internally when they arise. ‘[Incest] almost never happens here,’ Minister Jacob Fehr told me one evening as we chatted on his porch at dusk. He said that in his 19 years as a minister, Manitoba had only one case of incestuous rape (father to daughter). Another minister denied that even this episode had happened.”

www.vice.com/read/the-ghost-rapes-of-bolivia-000300-v20n8?Contentpage=-1

This sad situation in the Bolivian Mennonite colonies highlights the failure of conservative dress in preventing sexual abuse. The Colony Mennonites made settlements in Mexico, Belize, Bolivia, Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay. They withdrew from society and made settlements in these countries so that they could raise their families in an environment that would be sheltered from the influences of the ungodly world. Manmade rules and isolation do not prevent sin from occurring in the home and church. In this case, and in many Amish and conservative Mennonite churches, and in the case of a significant number of conservative homeschool families in America today, manmade rules and dress regulations only make the end results worse. This will become clearer as we look at the rest of the evidence.

One of many beautiful Amish farms in Lancaster County Pennsylvania. Most people have no idea of the amount of sexual abuse of boys and girls that goes on in secret on some these beautiful Amish or conservative Mennonite farms that look so idealistic and peaceful.

Melvin Glick, an Amish Sexual Abuse Case Lancaster County, Pennsylvania

This is a pathetic case in which the Lancaster Amish community supported the pedophile, a 32 year old Amish man who had repeatedly committed his acts of sexual abuse over a three year period with a neighbor girl, while ignoring the trauma that had been caused to the victim that she would live with the rest of her life. By supporting Melvin Glick, the Amish community gave indirect support to others to commit sexual abuse. They minimized the sin and crime of sexual abuse and accountability to the law.

“Despite urgings from leaders of a local Amish community, Melvin Glick was jailed on Wednesday for having a three-year sexual relationship with a young girl. Glick, 32, received a large show of support from his community after he was charged last year with sexually assaulting the girl about 100 times.

“However, a local judge said, that support doesn’t excuse the criminal acts. ‘To treat you differently just because you are a member of the Amish community would disrespect that honorable community,’ County Judge David Ashworth told Glick.

“…The trooper said that months later about 25 people showed up at a preliminary hearing in support of Glick. ‘Nobody was there from the community to support the victim or her family,’ Gerow said.

Ashworth agreed with prosecutors that the girl was traumatized by the inappropriate relationship. ‘You can’t take back what you have done,’ he told Glick. ‘That is something that little girl is going to have to live with.’

“Ashworth said he sentenced Glick on the low end of state guidelines, but told him his rehabilitative efforts should have come years ago. ‘All these things you are doing now, you should have done them before you victimized this young lady,’ the judge said.

“Ashworth received numerous letters on Glick’s behalf, many including references to Scripture. The judge, while handing down sentence, quoted a verse from the Book of Galatians. ‘For what a man may sow — that also he shall reap,’ Glick was told.”

http://lancasteronline.com/article/local/449336_Amish-man-goes-to-jail-for-sex-crimes.html

Amish buggy in Lancaster County, PA. When cars were invented, the Amish decided to prohibit their members from owning cars and they required their members to use a horse and buggy. Photo credit

www.flickr.com/photos/livenature/176283898/

The Gentle People – Sexual abuse in Amish Communities

Nadya Labi, a senior editor at “Legal Affairs Magazine”, wrote an extensive article about sexual abuse in Amish communities called The Gentle People. She states that although the Amish appear to be a “gentle people,” there’s another world, namely one marked by a virtual plague of incest which has gone largely untouched and unpunished by social service agencies and law enforcement. She personally interviewed a number of people for the article and gives the stories of a number of unrelated sexual abuse cases among the Amish. The following are some excerpts from the article (emphasis is mine):

“Impressed by their piety, courts have permitted the Amish to live outside the law. But in some places, the group’s ethic of forgive and forget has produced a plague of incest—and let many perpetrators go unpunished.”

The first case is about Mary Byler, who was sexually abused and/or raped by her dad, brothers, and cousins on repeated occasions.

Labi makes this statement: “No statistics are available, but according to one Amish counselor who works with troubled church members across the Midwest, sexual abuse of children is ‘almost a plague in some communities.’ Some police forces and district attorneys do their best to step in, though they are rarely welcomed. Others are slow to investigate or quick to let off Amish offenders with light punishments. When that happens, girls like Mary are failed three times: by their families, their church, and their state.”

“Last March, a detective in Wisconsin phoned trooper Janice Wilson to tell her about statements that Mary and her family had made about rampant incest in the Amish community in which they grew up. That community is in New Wilmington, Pa., near where Wilson works. When she started investigating, she was stunned to hear reports of extensive sexual abuse, and of births resulting from incest. 

“Amish insiders say the problem is so common that a bishop in the area has preached against it. Johnny Byler [Mary’s brother] said that, growing up in Lawrence County, he thought it was normal to have sex with his sister. ‘Other kids would talk about it,’ Johnny said.” 

The second interview was with Kathryn Byler in Morrow County, Ohio. “This was the mother who had tried to shield her husband from prosecution, after the boyfriend of one of her three daughters reported to the Ohio police that Raymond was molesting two of the girls. The abuse began when the older girl was 5 or 6; it lasted more than a decade, and included repeated rapes. “

The third case is about Norman Byler from Guernsey County, Ohio.

“Norman has a history of pedophilia that dates to the 1970s, when he allegedly molested several of his eight daughters and at least one young woman outside his family. During that period, he confessed in church, repented, and was banished for four weeks. 

“Aware of her father’s problem, Norman’s youngest daughter ‘went to great lengths to make sure he wasn’t alone’ with kids, said his public defender, Diane Menashe. In 1995, the daughter and her husband, Tobie Yoder, let Norman move onto their property. Four years later, the Yoders discovered that Norman was molesting three of his granddaughters, ages 3, 5, and 8. 

“Tobie went to Bishop Moses Miller and the elders in his Swartzentruber district. That denomination falls on the most restrictive end of the spectrum from Old Order to New Order Amish…(some Swartzentrubers make allowances, like permitting tobacco and ‘bed courtship’: On Saturday nights in Moses Miller’s district, teenage boys are allowed to steal into the rooms of girls their age. The teens are supposed to keep their clothes on, but the boy isn’t expected to leave until milking time the next morning. Many parents encourage bed courtship because it often leads to early marriages, which make young people less likely to leave the church.”

Another interview was with Levi Schwartz,

He “said the church’s reliance on repentance failed him. ‘Sometimes I went into the bedroom and cried because of my sin,’ he recalled. In 1989 Schwartz started molesting one of his daughters… until she grew old enough to date, and then he moved on to her younger sister. On a late fall night in his cavernous living room, the 52-year-old, who has since left the Amish, talked about his past with unnerving ease while one of the daughters he molested sat on a nearby couch. ‘I confessed in church a number of times,’ Schwartz said. ‘I wanted to be clean, so I took it to the ministers. I thought that would give me grace, and the power to overcome it.’

Schwartz said his bishop, Eli Raber, discouraged Schwartz’s sporadic attempts to get counseling. (Raber declined to comment.) In 1994, Schwartz’s son Benjamin began touching his sisters; he confessed in church and was shunned for two weeks. Levi Schwartz, however, was losing faith in the church’s method of punishment. After one of his daughters started crying while he was molesting her, Schwartz checked himself into Oaklawn Psychiatric Hospital in Indiana. He asked the girl to pray for him, and she did.” 

The last and saddest interview was with Anna Slabaugh.

“When Anna turned 11, she told me, her 19-year-old brother began molesting her, stopping just short of intercourse. When he moved away, another 17-year-old brother started raping her. (The court documents involving Anna’s family are sealed.) Anna didn’t try to stop her brothers at first. ‘You don’t tell your brothers, who are so much older than you, No,’ she said.”

“…When a social worker visited Anna’s home, Anna told her about the sexual abuse. She also reported that her parents were moving the family to Pennsylvania. Laurie Roberts, one of the social workers on Anna’s case in Ohio, said she was taught in training that sexual abuse among the Amish is pervasive, and seldom reported.”

“…When Fannie (her mother) found out about the CYS visit, she and Anna went with 13 other kids to the home of John Yoder, an Amish dentist who lived an hour and a half away in the town of Punxsutawney. Yoder’s living room had a recliner with a tin pan and some needles next to it. Anna watched as the other kids each had one or two bad teeth pulled. When it was her turn, Yoder shot some Novocain into her upper gum. She shook her head and told him that two of her lower teeth had cavities. He shot the lower gum, and asked Fannie which teeth should go. Anna’s mother answered, ‘Take them all,’ and Yoder pulled—along the upper gum, along the lower gum, until every tooth was gone. ‘After he had pulled the last tooth,’ Anna remembered, ‘my mom looked at me and said, ‘I guess you won’t be talking anymore.’ ” 

“…Anna bled for three days. Her family ignored her, except to periodically hand her a drink. She couldn’t talk, but that didn’t matter, because Anna had nothing left to say. At church, she looked away when other kids pointed at her mouth. Fannie Slabaugh told me that Anna had asked for her teeth to be pulled. But the detective who investigated the case, Trooper Michael Pisarchic, said that the other kids who went with Anna to see Yoder said that Anna was being punished. Meanwhile, CYS was continuing to investigate. A court date was set for the spring of 2002. The bishop in Anna’s district, Moses Shettler, called Barbara Burke and asked her to testify that Anna had mental problems. Burke refused. On the Friday before Anna was scheduled to appear in court, soon after her teeth had been pulled, Shettler and a group of elders visited Anna’s parents. Anna said her parents threatened two days later to take her out to the woodpile, or worse, unless she told her lawyer that she took back her accusations against her brothers. Stripped of faith in the state to protect her, Anna did as she was told.”

http://legalaffairs.org/issues/January-February-2005/feature_labi_janfeb05.msp

Amish children on the way to school. It is sad to realize that requiring people to dress in a conservative, modest way as these children are, can actually increase the possibility that they will be sexually abused. It is even worse, for the victim to then be blamed by the church for causing the sexual abuse to happen with no protection from more abuse occurring.  http://www.flickr.com/photos/gadjoboy/

Torah Bontrager

In the article Escaping the Amish, Torah said that one of the biggest negatives of the Amish is “The rape, incest and other sexual abuse that run rampant in the community”

 http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2008/07/15/escaping-the-amish-part-1/

Ex-Mennonite

One man that grew up in Pennsylvania said this about sexual abuse in his Mennonite community:

“In the Mennonite Community that I grew up in incest was rampant… Some of the incest I know of first hand (although it didn’t involve me or my family directly.) Nor am I talking about cousin/cousin marriages which are common and accepted in Menno/Amish communities. There are some seriously screwed up teenagers (and adults) in the Mennonite/Amish communities.”

www.ex-christian.net/topic/37841-ex-mennonite/

Saloma Furlong – Sexual Abuse Among the Amish

“Even though I was born and raised in an Amish community and endured sexual abuse myself, it is hard for me to say just how prevalent sexual abuse is among the Amish in general. But what I do know is that Amish men are dominate in the culture and that girls are taught they should be submissive to the men (and boys) from the time they can understand the concept. Most Amish do not educate their children about sex, so girls can easily fall prey to sexual abuse.”

“…When sexual abuse is uncovered among the Amish, they focus mainly on the perpetrator’s repentance, rather than on the welfare of the children, which allows pedophiles to walk freely among innocents.”  http://aboutamish.blogspot.com/2010/09/sexual-abuse-among-amish_08.html

She also writes: “Oftentimes, when law enforcement or social workers become aware of abuse among the Amish, there is an unwillingness to intervene because the perception is that the Amish have a way to deal with these problems within their communities.

“The truth is that they don’t. They certainly try. They use the only method they know: disciplining the perpetrator. If he is exposed, then he is expected to go to the bishop and ask to make a public confession. If he doesn’t, he will be visited by the elders of the church, who ask him to make the confession. If they deem the person to show proper remorse, they plan to “accept” the confession in the next church service. At the end of the service, the children and young people who are not yet members are dismissed and the confessor leaves with them. Then the members’ meeting begins. The bishop lays out what the “charges” are, and he suggests he will accept the confession with the person sitting or kneeling (kneeling is for the transgressions the bishop deems more serious). Then he sends the deacon through the members’ meeting, asking for people’s vote on whether they agree with the method the bishop suggested. The vote has to be unanimous. which it usually is (to disagree with the bishop is considered a transgression in itself, especially for women). Then the confessor is brought in, and he repeats the words of contrition after the bishop in high German. (He doesn’t have to say what he is sorry for, however, because the bishop has already done that.) The holy kiss and handshake are exchanged between the bishop and the confessor, and then all is forgiven and forgotten. Should anyone bring up the wrongdoing again, he or she can be subjected to the same discipline as the person who made the confession in the first place.”

http://salomafurlong.com/aboutamish/2017/05/abuse-among-the-amish-and-what-about-the-innocent-victims/

Chester Mast – an Amish sexual abuse case

The New York Times reported in an article “A Crisis in Amish Country”: “Mr. Mast, who is married with two children and another on the way, stands accused in Wisconsin of incest and the repeated sexual assault of a minor. Meanwhile, officials here have charged him with two counts each of statutory rape and sodomy and one count of sexual misconduct involving a child. Investigators claim that Mr. Mast has victimized at least six girls, ages 5 to 15 — including some outside the Amish community — over the last 10 years.”

www.nytimes.com/2010/09/03/us/03amish.html?pagewanted=all

Amish buggy in Wisconsin. Their church does not permit them to drive cars, although they are allowed to hire someone to drive them in an automobile. Amish rules requiring non-conformity to the world does not help keep people from committing horrible sins such as sexual abuse of boys and girls. Photo credit Fairchildgiftcompany.com

Anna Olson

“Sexual abuse is about as scary as it can get for a child,” she writes. “Growing up Amish did nothing to prepare me for the trauma end of this. Why would God let this happen to me? What on Earth did I do to deserve this? Anger, ashamed, dirty, and humiliation were just a few of my feelings while this was happening.”

http://www.growingupamish.com/media5.htm

Trudy Metzger

Trudy Metzger was born in an Old Colony Mennonite home in Mexico. Her family then moved to Canada. She had 15 brothers and sisters.

“While my memories of sexual abuse are few and far between, memories of what I observed are much more graphic. Most of our family had been sexually abused by someone, whether uncles and aunts, a parent, or neighbors, and that resulted in serious sexual dysfunction between siblings in various degrees of incest and inappropriate behaviors. Where this impacted my life, I have freely forgiven and released siblings. We were children with a frame of reference so vile, so harsh, that this was all ‘normal’.

“One of the most painful realities of sexual abuse is that children learn destructive behaviors and perceive them to be ‘normal’. But, because the topic is often not spoken of, other than a scolding or beating if caught, there is a sense of secrecy that leads children to believe that it is normal private behavior; it is getting caught that is the problem. Especially since the adults who punish children, beating them to within an inch of their life, are often the perpetrators in the lives of those very children. And, when caught in the act, it didn’t matter if the child was the instigator or the victim. The punishment was severe either way.

“That was the case in our home, and in many homes within the Old Colony culture and those who had broken away from that culture. How the sexual abuse and perversion took such deep root, I do not know, but it was rampant then, and in many communities it has not improved.

“The hardest part in healing has been remembering, usually against my will, the horrific sexual abuse I witnessed as I saw groups of older teens use and abuse little children. On at least one occasion I followed a group of teens as they led some of my older siblings to a ‘secret place’ where I witnessed horrible things. For many years I questioned whether I had imagined it, dreamed it out of thin air, but this year I had the courage to ask several siblings.

“Instantly, when I mentioned the ‘secret location’, the one sibling gasped, and before I could even describe what I thought I remembered, he repeated in graphic detail a vision that had haunted me for almost forty years. He had completely blocked it until I mentioned the place.”

http://trudymetzger.com/2012/07/20/sexual-abuse-violence-this-is-my-story/

The Little Girl

Ann Peachy Detweiler shared on her blog about her sexual abuse: “A few years ago, as I was sitting in a counselor’s office with my husband-to-be, the counselor looked up from across his desk after hearing only a fraction of my story, and asked, ‘Why aren’t you a prostitute?’

“I should be exactly opposite of who I am today. Statistically, with a history of abuse and self-destructive habits as I have, I should be a prostitute or a single mom with four kids to four different men.

“If it wasn’t for the grace and mercy of God Almighty, that is who I would be today.”

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The Next Chapter: The MennoPORNite Syndrome