# Dirty Secrets: The Dark Side of the "Plain People" (with ex-Mennonite Jasper Hoffman)

An episode of [TheThinkingAtheist](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/412308695), 6 May 2025, 1 h 04 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/mgln.ai/e/711/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/65726906/podcast802_plainpeople.mp3

Amish and Mennonite communites often shield abuse and abusers from the public and the law. We speak to ex-Mennonite Jasper Hoffman and explore the dark underbelly of this culture of "plain people." Jasper Hoffman's podcast The Jasper Hoffman interview video The Type Investigations article Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/thethinkingatheist--3270347/support.

## Transcript

[0:01] Speaker 1: Understand the thinking atheist. It's not a person, it's a symbol,
[0:09] Speaker 1: an idea.
[0:10] Speaker 2: The population of atheists this country is going through the.
[0:13] Speaker 1: Rule, rejecting faith, pursuing knowledge, challenging the sacred. If I
[0:19] Speaker 1: tell the truth, it's because I tell the truth, not because.
[0:22] Speaker 3: I put my hand on a book and made a wish.
[0:25] Speaker 1: And working together for a more rational world.
[0:29] Speaker 3: Take the risk of thinking. Feel so much more happiness. Truth,
[0:32] Speaker 3: Fusian wisdom will come to you that way.
[0:35] Speaker 1: Assume nothing, question everything, and start thinking. This is the
[0:43] Speaker 1: Thinking Atheist podcast hosted by Seth Andrews.
[0:56] Speaker 3: Jasper Hoffmann is a former Mena and I'm going to
[1:01] Speaker 3: get into what the Mennonites are in just a few minutes.
[1:03] Speaker 3: But Jasper is fascinating. She started her life out in
[1:08] Speaker 3: a non religious family. Before that family connected with one
[1:12] Speaker 3: of the most conservative aka Puritan cultures in the country,
[1:19] Speaker 3: and today Jasper works to expose an abuse culture within
[1:24] Speaker 3: the Mennonites and the Amish communities. Now, I had the
[1:29] Speaker 3: chance to meet Jasper when I was down at the
[1:31] Speaker 3: Florida Free Thought Conference in Orlando. We sat down for
[1:35] Speaker 3: a conversation and I took the video of that conversation
[1:39] Speaker 3: and published a kind of video essay. I put all
[1:43] Speaker 3: of her answers into a more polished piece, But this
[1:46] Speaker 3: is the audio of my questions and her answers in
[1:50] Speaker 3: regard to those who are commonly referred to as a
[1:54] Speaker 3: plain people or a simple people, the Amish and the Mennonites,
[2:00] Speaker 3: And we started with a brief introduction.
[2:02] Speaker 2: I spent the majority of my formative years within the
[2:06] Speaker 2: Conservative Mennonite Church. The Mennonites actually came first before the Amish,
[2:11] Speaker 2: and they really nowadays would say that they split over shunning.
[2:18] Speaker 2: So Mennonites still have a very mission driven service into
[2:23] Speaker 2: the world. So they love to convert people, they say
[2:26] Speaker 2: they do. They do a lot of mission work. They
[2:28] Speaker 2: go out into the world much like you see in
[2:30] Speaker 2: the Protestant churches. The Amish don't. If you notice that
[2:33] Speaker 2: they keep to themselves. They really are not trying to
[2:36] Speaker 2: actively engage with people coming into their communities. So that
[2:40] Speaker 2: is like one of the fundamentals. The other is that
[2:43] Speaker 2: the Amish, the Conservative Amish, don't believe in assurance of salvation,
[2:48] Speaker 2: so they believe in a faith that works. The Mennonites do.
[2:54] Speaker 2: They do consider themselves for the most part Christians, so
[2:58] Speaker 2: they would believe that once you are baptize, as long
[3:01] Speaker 2: as you stay in good standing with the Church, that
[3:04] Speaker 2: you have eternal salvation.
[3:07] Speaker 3: Okay, before we continue with Jasper's answers, I want to
[3:11] Speaker 3: get a little bit deeper into definitions the origins of
[3:15] Speaker 3: the Amish and the Mennonites. We didn't have a chance
[3:18] Speaker 3: to flash all of this out on camera beyond her
[3:20] Speaker 3: basic descriptions, but here on the show, we've got extra
[3:24] Speaker 3: bandwidth so we can color inside those lines. And then
[3:27] Speaker 3: I'm going to get back to the discussion and Jasper's voice.
[3:31] Speaker 3: I'm throwing several groups out into this discussion. Stick with me, Okay,
[3:39] Speaker 3: Mennonites splintered off from the Ana Baptists, and Ana Baptists
[3:45] Speaker 3: can be considered the ancestor of today's Baptists, Mennonites, and Quakers.
[3:50] Speaker 3: Anna means again because the early converts believed in a
[3:56] Speaker 3: second baptism, so again baptized bis Anna Baptist. You make
[4:03] Speaker 3: that connection, right. These people were obsessed with baptism, but
[4:08] Speaker 3: they didn't believe you should ever baptize children, only adults.
[4:14] Speaker 3: And this was a break from society, from the church.
[4:17] Speaker 3: They were a part of They said, no, no, why
[4:20] Speaker 3: would you baptize somebody who hadn't yet reached the age
[4:23] Speaker 3: where they know what they're doing, where they know the
[4:27] Speaker 3: difference between good and evil? Why are you baptizing kids?
[4:32] Speaker 3: And so they sort of splintered off. They were separatists.
[4:36] Speaker 3: They separated themselves from the earlier church. They separated from
[4:41] Speaker 3: the state. They refused to swear an oath to the
[4:45] Speaker 3: state or a nation. They identified with the early martyrs,
[4:50] Speaker 3: those who suffered for their faith, and they thought Jesus
[4:53] Speaker 3: was going to return very very soon. These were the
[4:57] Speaker 3: Anna Baptists. This was like five one hundred years ago
[5:01] Speaker 3: when they started. In January of fifteen twenty five, there
[5:05] Speaker 3: was some blow up over legal doctrines of some kind
[5:09] Speaker 3: within the Ana Baptist in Switzerland, and then a Zurich
[5:13] Speaker 3: group splintered off to do its own thing. I love
[5:17] Speaker 3: how churches and their denominations, all having the truth, they
[5:21] Speaker 3: all like to argue, and then there are splits and
[5:24] Speaker 3: factions and they all go off and do denominations which
[5:27] Speaker 3: also split and faction. And we see this in churches
[5:31] Speaker 3: all around the world of every shape and stripe. And
[5:33] Speaker 3: this happened to the Anabaptist. It happened within the Mennonites
[5:36] Speaker 3: and the Amish as well. Okay, one of the early
[5:40] Speaker 3: leaders of the Mennonites was a guy named Meno Simons,
[5:46] Speaker 3: and he was consecrated as a priest. The group took
[5:50] Speaker 3: his name right, Meno Simons. They became the Menites. There's
[5:56] Speaker 3: a whole bunch of messy political stuff in the story,
[6:01] Speaker 3: and they sort of spread out through hundreds of years.
[6:04] Speaker 3: But suffice it to say, this extremely conservative and often
[6:08] Speaker 3: persecuted group became more and more and more groups, and
[6:12] Speaker 3: they spread outward all around the world, reaching North America
[6:17] Speaker 3: in sixteen sixty three. They established farming communities and they
[6:22] Speaker 3: largely retained their German language. They dress relatively modestly. I
[6:28] Speaker 3: guess it depends on the culture. But in the more
[6:30] Speaker 3: conservative communities you'll see what you expect. Plain colors, no jewelry,
[6:35] Speaker 3: no makeup on women, head coverings for women, the men
[6:40] Speaker 3: wear beards, and everybody wears these plain button up shirts, dresses,
[6:45] Speaker 3: et cetera. But more progressive factions have embraced more of
[6:50] Speaker 3: the modern world. Some even drive cars and used the Internet.
[6:56] Speaker 3: There are right now an estimated one point five million
[7:00] Speaker 3: Mennonites in eighty countries worldwide. Now the Amish, this is
[7:07] Speaker 3: essentially an old Order Mennonite group, So we're talking about
[7:11] Speaker 3: the Anabaptist and then the Mennonite split off and from
[7:16] Speaker 3: the Mennonites we get the Amish. They rose up in
[7:19] Speaker 3: the seventeenth century around a guy named Jacob Ahmen, and
[7:25] Speaker 3: there it is Ahmen the Amish. In the early years,
[7:31] Speaker 3: Amish was actually an insult. Other people sort of hurled
[7:35] Speaker 3: it at the group. All those are just the Amish,
[7:38] Speaker 3: But eventually the group claimed the term for itself. This
[7:42] Speaker 3: is a submission culture. They submit to God, subordinates, must
[7:47] Speaker 3: submit to authority figures, and go figure. It's always men.
[7:54] Speaker 3: The Amish apparently didn't think the Mennonites were conservative and
[7:58] Speaker 3: isolationist enough, and they thought about all kinds of stuff,
[8:02] Speaker 3: including whether or not backsliding believers should be allowed to
[8:07] Speaker 3: take communion blah blah blah. Right. Like the Mennonites, the
[8:12] Speaker 3: Amish migrated well out of Switzerland. They arrived in North
[8:16] Speaker 3: America in the early eighteenth century, about five hundred of them,
[8:21] Speaker 3: starting a new life in Burke's County, Pennsylvania, and then
[8:25] Speaker 3: others would arrive. In the decades and centuries after, they
[8:29] Speaker 3: spread out to Ohio, Illinois, Iowa, into Canada elsewhere. As
[8:34] Speaker 3: more and more people arrived, these Amish people would argue
[8:39] Speaker 3: and splinter even more so. Then you've got progressive Amish
[8:44] Speaker 3: and really conservative Amish. By the nineteen twenties, progressive Amish
[8:49] Speaker 3: people wanted to do scandalous things like drive cars, go
[8:54] Speaker 3: to colleges, and even get jobs. Of course, the more
[8:59] Speaker 3: conservative ones retreated in the opposite direction. Now the Amish
[9:04] Speaker 3: these communities are like little mini nations. In nineteen seventy two,
[9:09] Speaker 3: the Supreme Court said that Amish communities are not required
[9:13] Speaker 3: to educate children past eighth grade. And of course, in
[9:19] Speaker 3: these cultures, we're talking about doctrine right in doctrination, much
[9:23] Speaker 3: more than education. The old order Amish do not use electricity,
[9:29] Speaker 3: They reject things like photographs and phones, cars and tractors.
[9:35] Speaker 3: They dress extremely plainly, and they are an incredibly isolated
[9:40] Speaker 3: and insulated culture. As a result, many people on the
[9:44] Speaker 3: inside have no idea what's happening on the outside, and
[9:48] Speaker 3: vice versa. Those of us peering in over the fence
[9:51] Speaker 3: have little clue what's going on in there. Right now,
[9:54] Speaker 3: there are approximately four hundred thousand Old Order Amish in
[10:00] Speaker 3: the United States, about six thousand in Canada. So now
[10:05] Speaker 3: back to Jasper Hoffman and our discussion. She spent her
[10:09] Speaker 3: youth in the conservative Mennonite Church, and that particular culture
[10:15] Speaker 3: was a whole lot like the Old Order Amish, very puritan,
[10:19] Speaker 3: very patriarchal, very problematic. But how did somebody raised in
[10:25] Speaker 3: an atheist family end up a Mennonite.
[10:29] Speaker 2: I actually grew up in northern California in a secular
[10:33] Speaker 2: slash atheist home. And yet in the early nineties there
[10:38] Speaker 2: was this really big movement which we see kind of
[10:40] Speaker 2: being mirror today with the tradwife movement, where people are
[10:45] Speaker 2: wanting to go back to more traditional values. And so
[10:49] Speaker 2: this showed up in a way in northern California where
[10:52] Speaker 2: people were pulling and extracting their children out of public
[10:55] Speaker 2: school and starting to homeschool them. Like I said, much
[10:59] Speaker 2: like we see what's happening today. The difference is that
[11:01] Speaker 2: social media didn't exist, so you were not able to
[11:06] Speaker 2: connect with people that were like minded unless you went
[11:08] Speaker 2: into more extreme cults. And so because of that, with
[11:13] Speaker 2: this homeschool movement, there were not a lot of publications
[11:17] Speaker 2: being produced for textbooks, so there were primarily three, one
[11:22] Speaker 2: which was a Becca, the other two were primarily produced
[11:28] Speaker 2: by Amish and Mennonites. So whenever they started sending out
[11:32] Speaker 2: these textbooks into our area, they noticed that there was
[11:35] Speaker 2: a large desire for people to entrench themselves in a
[11:40] Speaker 2: more fundamentalist Christian approach, not only with just schooling, but
[11:45] Speaker 2: also in a lifestyle. So my family is one of
[11:49] Speaker 2: the original families that brought Mennonites to California. I believe
[11:53] Speaker 2: now there's eight churches that are throughout northern and southern California.
[11:58] Speaker 2: But yeah, so at nine years old, it was really
[12:01] Speaker 2: this pivotal moment and shift where we went from just
[12:04] Speaker 2: kind of tiptoeing into more fundamentalist lifestyle into actual conservative Mennonitism.
[12:11] Speaker 2: It just really segued, much like you were going down
[12:14] Speaker 2: a slope, the slippery slope. So at that point I
[12:18] Speaker 2: was very excited because it felt fun. I was not
[12:21] Speaker 2: going to public school. We were having all of these
[12:24] Speaker 2: really cool homeschool movement meetups and different types of community efforts,
[12:29] Speaker 2: and it felt fun at nine. But by the time
[12:33] Speaker 2: I was fourteen and we moved to a more conservative
[12:35] Speaker 2: church in the Midwest, things became so much more complex,
[12:42] Speaker 2: and it became a lot more legalistic. What I found
[12:46] Speaker 2: is is that people that are joining into the Anabaptist
[12:49] Speaker 2: churches are oftentimes coming from a dysfunctional family unit themselves,
[12:53] Speaker 2: and so they are trying to model something for their children.
[12:57] Speaker 2: So I think that a lot of parents that are
[12:58] Speaker 2: moving in are actually genuinely wanting to have a better
[13:02] Speaker 2: life for their family. Nobody's really saying, yes, cults are us, like,
[13:06] Speaker 2: let's go right. The problem is is that as you
[13:11] Speaker 2: get thicker and thicker into it a you're losing your
[13:16] Speaker 2: reality of what you used to have, and it makes
[13:19] Speaker 2: it harder to pull out. And then there's this desire
[13:23] Speaker 2: to prove yourself that you are the most worthy to
[13:27] Speaker 2: be accepted into this community. So most of our families
[13:31] Speaker 2: that have joined in became ultra conservative as a way
[13:35] Speaker 2: of trying to prove that we were worthy of being
[13:38] Speaker 2: in good standing within the church. So my parents choosing
[13:42] Speaker 2: to go to a more conservative church absolutely makes sense
[13:46] Speaker 2: if you look at the just the wavelength of people
[13:50] Speaker 2: that will go into even more conservative churches. It was
[13:54] Speaker 2: fascinating at that point between fourteen and then when I
[13:58] Speaker 2: left at eighteen because my parents were trying. They all
[14:01] Speaker 2: of a sudden became super controlling over me, and the
[14:04] Speaker 2: church was becoming controlling. And because I was such a threat,
[14:07] Speaker 2: we were the first family to ever join our church
[14:11] Speaker 2: where we were at Coming from the outside, I was
[14:14] Speaker 2: this like shiny new object that was so threatening to
[14:18] Speaker 2: the ministry. And because all the girls they wanted, they
[14:21] Speaker 2: were fascinated with me, because I had outside information and
[14:24] Speaker 2: I had had this previous life and now here I
[14:26] Speaker 2: was in the community. While I was a threat to
[14:29] Speaker 2: the ministry and to the men in the church, it
[14:32] Speaker 2: was very much like I was this unique person to
[14:38] Speaker 2: my peers. We had a small group of girls, probably
[14:41] Speaker 2: around ten of us total, within a ninth and tenth grade.
[14:46] Speaker 2: And so how the church really splits girls up is
[14:50] Speaker 2: once you become a church member, then all of a sudden,
[14:52] Speaker 2: you're considered pretty much like you're from fifteen on in
[14:56] Speaker 2: a different category. And so there was a large amount
[14:59] Speaker 2: of that were around that age group. And whenever I moved,
[15:04] Speaker 2: I'll never forget Like before we even moved, I had
[15:06] Speaker 2: all these letters written to me by these girls, and
[15:08] Speaker 2: they were so excited that I was coming, and so
[15:11] Speaker 2: I was really initially accepted into the girls group there,
[15:16] Speaker 2: but that lasted probably three months before suddenly the parents
[15:21] Speaker 2: started forbidding the girls to associate with me outside of school.
[15:27] Speaker 2: I was not invited to any of the function the
[15:30] Speaker 2: family functions. There were only two primarily families in the
[15:33] Speaker 2: entire church, and so the girls ended up turning on me,
[15:40] Speaker 2: and so in my journal entries that I have, at
[15:43] Speaker 2: one point I was questioning that they were intentionally leaving
[15:47] Speaker 2: me out of things because it was so hurtful, which
[15:50] Speaker 2: they were right, whether or not it was their parents' influence.
[15:53] Speaker 2: It was like lord of the Flies in a sense.
[15:56] Speaker 2: And so I became I was wearing the scarlet a
[15:59] Speaker 2: and I hadn't really done anything except existed in how
[16:03] Speaker 2: I was, and so it was very confusing. I mean,
[16:06] Speaker 2: I feel like being a teenager is confusing in itself,
[16:09] Speaker 2: and then you add this component of trying to fit
[16:12] Speaker 2: into this world that you're never going to be accepted in.
[16:15] Speaker 2: But I didn't know that, so I tried so hard,
[16:19] Speaker 2: and then it made things worse because then the ministry
[16:22] Speaker 2: was saying that I was trying to one up the
[16:25] Speaker 2: girls by wearing thicker socks or a more conservative head
[16:29] Speaker 2: covering than the other girls, and I was trying to
[16:31] Speaker 2: make myself stand out. So it was really difficult. And
[16:36] Speaker 2: at that point you just start shutting down because if
[16:38] Speaker 2: you cannot succeed in this at all, I mean, what's
[16:41] Speaker 2: the point. Right, So that phase of like between sixteen
[16:46] Speaker 2: and eighteen was extremely lonely because I had been completely isolated.
[16:50] Speaker 2: I was not invited or allowed to any function and
[16:54] Speaker 2: I was under the microscope of the ministry the whole time.
[16:58] Speaker 2: Just and I just true. We wanted to fit in
[17:00] Speaker 2: and be accepted.
[17:03] Speaker 3: Okay, short break, I wanted to talk about our perceptions
[17:07] Speaker 3: of the Amish from the outside in. I'm going to
[17:10] Speaker 3: continue my conversation with Jasper Hoffman former Mennonites after this.
[17:23] Speaker 3: We continue the conversation today with Jasper Hoffman, former fundamentalist
[17:30] Speaker 3: old world old school Mennonite. She spent a great many
[17:35] Speaker 3: years behind the walls and the fences, and now she
[17:37] Speaker 3: is out here in the real world helping to expose
[17:40] Speaker 3: abuses inside the Mennonite and Amish culture. So, I mean,
[17:46] Speaker 3: in my mind, I'm picturing puberty meets Little House on
[17:50] Speaker 3: the Prairie, right, I mean, it's weird being a teenager anyway,
[17:54] Speaker 3: but now here you are in I don't know. It's
[17:57] Speaker 3: almost like being in a on a born planet. Tell
[18:01] Speaker 3: me more about your teen years as a Mennonite if
[18:05] Speaker 3: you would.
[18:06] Speaker 2: At fourteen, if you're joining into the church, you were
[18:10] Speaker 2: then considered an adult, so it takes away all of
[18:14] Speaker 2: your childhood. But so at that phase you go from
[18:17] Speaker 2: wearing braids into wearing your hair up and then wearing
[18:20] Speaker 2: a head covering. And so whenever I wanted to fit
[18:23] Speaker 2: in right, so I stood up during revival service and
[18:26] Speaker 2: I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. And
[18:30] Speaker 2: I then went through a period of instruction class. Much
[18:33] Speaker 2: like Catholicism, they put you through instruction class for a year,
[18:36] Speaker 2: but you put your hair up into a head covering.
[18:41] Speaker 2: So I had mousey brown hair. I had it slicked back.
[18:46] Speaker 2: I had a little bit of the fundamental I call
[18:48] Speaker 2: it the fundy sweep. You know, it's like you got
[18:51] Speaker 2: that perfect little poof problem is is that I have
[18:55] Speaker 2: a calik in the back of my head and so
[18:58] Speaker 2: my hair back here whoops as well. And the amount
[19:02] Speaker 2: of meetings that the ministry had with me because they
[19:05] Speaker 2: felt like I was intentionally leaving wisps of hair out.
[19:09] Speaker 2: Then led me to start shaving like any flyaways at
[19:14] Speaker 2: all because I was under an aquinet. Oh my god,
[19:17] Speaker 2: the way that we would use aquinet. It was like
[19:19] Speaker 2: we were armadillos. You could like you just like bounce
[19:23] Speaker 2: something off my hair. But I started really starting to
[19:25] Speaker 2: pull my hair out. This is the first sign of
[19:29] Speaker 2: really starting to lose some of my mental health, starting
[19:33] Speaker 2: to pull my hair out because it was causing so
[19:34] Speaker 2: many problems in ministry meetings. But yes, so i'd I
[19:37] Speaker 2: had the little fundy swoop, I had my head covering,
[19:39] Speaker 2: I wore my strings. For us, we could only have
[19:44] Speaker 2: material that was the print size on our dresses had
[19:48] Speaker 2: to be less than a quarter. So whenever we fabric shopped,
[19:51] Speaker 2: I had to take a quarter with me. The flowers
[19:53] Speaker 2: and the leaves had to fit within that circular twenty
[19:56] Speaker 2: five cent quarter piece. And so you could wear certain colors,
[20:02] Speaker 2: but I had to be careful because we have a
[20:06] Speaker 2: standard book that tells you what you can and cannot wear.
[20:09] Speaker 2: But there's a gray area, and if you're constantly being
[20:13] Speaker 2: looked at by the ministry, you have to really be careful.
[20:17] Speaker 2: And so pink was not allowed with some of the
[20:20] Speaker 2: family members because it was diluted red and red is
[20:25] Speaker 2: not allowed obviously, And so I had a few pink dresses,
[20:29] Speaker 2: but everything was just very floral. So I began to
[20:32] Speaker 2: start wearing solid colors and lengthening my hem almost to
[20:36] Speaker 2: my ankles, just to avoid any sort of ministry meetings.
[20:43] Speaker 2: You have to wear thirty to your socks and so
[20:47] Speaker 2: or opaque. But I tried to sway towards the opaque
[20:50] Speaker 2: side of things, just once again to avoid the ministry.
[20:53] Speaker 2: And then there were meetings because I was trying to
[20:57] Speaker 2: be too conservative. You have to wear a belt, you
[21:00] Speaker 2: cannot wear You have to have three quarterlink sleeves. Your
[21:03] Speaker 2: ruffles have to be less than a quarter of an inch.
[21:05] Speaker 2: You cannot show your elbows because elbows look like nipples.
[21:09] Speaker 2: You cannot drive a duly truck because that also looks
[21:13] Speaker 2: like women's hips. Black vehicle. We had to cut off
[21:16] Speaker 2: our antenna in case the world saw an intenta on
[21:19] Speaker 2: the car and thought that we would be listening to
[21:20] Speaker 2: the radio. You had no access to musical instruments. Nothing.
[21:25] Speaker 2: Keep in mind, my family, like the whole time we're
[21:28] Speaker 2: in the church, I didn't know the reference of this song,
[21:31] Speaker 2: but my dad would constantly sing paint it black, right,
[21:35] Speaker 2: I see a red door, and I want to paint
[21:36] Speaker 2: it black. Like that song was literally written about conservative
[21:40] Speaker 2: men and night women. I'm convinced because everything had to
[21:43] Speaker 2: be this color. So I had to wear a belt
[21:45] Speaker 2: at all times. The ministry and men would drive by
[21:49] Speaker 2: our house just to make sure if I was outside
[21:52] Speaker 2: wearing our hanging clothes on the line, that I was
[21:55] Speaker 2: wearing a belt and that I had stockings on. If
[21:57] Speaker 2: I didn't, I would be called into the into a meeting,
[22:01] Speaker 2: And so all these meetings were really linked into my membership.
[22:05] Speaker 2: So you're in a trial period right whenever you're in
[22:07] Speaker 2: instruction class, and then they have these council meetings and
[22:11] Speaker 2: the members of the church vote on you if they
[22:14] Speaker 2: feel like you are deemed worthy to be a member
[22:18] Speaker 2: of the church. Keep in mind, you can't be baptized
[22:21] Speaker 2: unless you are, so all of these legalistic standards and everything,
[22:25] Speaker 2: and you're trying to maintain this imagery is really so
[22:28] Speaker 2: that you can maintain your salvation, or that you can
[22:31] Speaker 2: be baptized and saved. So it's less about the clothes
[22:35] Speaker 2: and more about salvation. Right, So all of a sudden
[22:39] Speaker 2: salvation is tied to what kind of pins you have
[22:41] Speaker 2: in your belt and if you're wearing your belt, and
[22:43] Speaker 2: if you're you know, if your sleeves are the right
[22:46] Speaker 2: length and everything, and so it can really muddy the
[22:49] Speaker 2: water about salvation and compliance. You know.
[22:54] Speaker 3: I've often said that the cultures that are most obsessed
[22:59] Speaker 3: with set, like the pastors and the parents and you know,
[23:03] Speaker 3: the guardians, the elders, etc. Who are constantly bible banging
[23:07] Speaker 3: about sex. I think that they are I don't know,
[23:10] Speaker 3: they're exposing their own obsession, like it's all they think about.
[23:14] Speaker 3: I don't know, every every accusation is a confession kind
[23:18] Speaker 3: of thing. I don't know. I'm guessing the Mennonites are
[23:21] Speaker 3: like that you.
[23:22] Speaker 2: Can sexualize anything. If one thing that I took away
[23:26] Speaker 2: from the church is that they sexualize absolutely everything. I mean,
[23:32] Speaker 2: have you ever looked at an elbow and been like, yeah,
[23:34] Speaker 2: that looks like a nipple. That checks, I'm going to
[23:37] Speaker 2: buy that galla drink? Absolutely not, Like who wants to
[23:40] Speaker 2: look at an elbow?
[23:41] Speaker 1: Right?
[23:41] Speaker 2: They can be ash e they're weird, they get in
[23:43] Speaker 2: the way and so growing up, my mom used to
[23:47] Speaker 2: use this analogy, and I think it still relates. When
[23:51] Speaker 2: you have a tube of toothpaste. Toothpaste is meant to
[23:54] Speaker 2: be used, and you're supposed to take the top off,
[23:57] Speaker 2: and when you squeeze, a little bit comes out and
[23:59] Speaker 2: you go along your merry way, right. That is pretty
[24:03] Speaker 2: much our sexuality how we look at things. The problem
[24:07] Speaker 2: is is in these insular communities like the Mennonites and Amish,
[24:10] Speaker 2: is that they're scared to take the top off because
[24:13] Speaker 2: they have never learned self control. And so you're taught that, oh,
[24:18] Speaker 2: if the top of that toothpaste comes off, it's going
[24:20] Speaker 2: to get everywhere, right, and so we can't do that.
[24:23] Speaker 2: But our natural urges are still there, our desires, our
[24:26] Speaker 2: desires to be loved, and our desires for sex, all
[24:29] Speaker 2: of these things. So that's going to be naturally squeezed.
[24:32] Speaker 2: But what happens is if you got the tube so
[24:36] Speaker 2: tightly wound at the top but it's still naturally being squeezed,
[24:39] Speaker 2: it explodes. And that is how I look at sexuality.
[24:45] Speaker 2: And I think that's why we have such an abuse
[24:47] Speaker 2: problem within the communities too, because they don't teach the children,
[24:51] Speaker 2: and they don't teach the men and they don't teach
[24:52] Speaker 2: the women anything about sex, and so they don't know
[24:57] Speaker 2: how their bodies work. They don't know what is consent
[25:01] Speaker 2: what isn't, and so it's exploding everywhere. I've asked my
[25:07] Speaker 2: Instagram audience a few times, like what age were you
[25:11] Speaker 2: first aware that you were being sexualized? And for me,
[25:14] Speaker 2: I think I was sexualized around the age of ten.
[25:17] Speaker 2: I mean, if you think about how they make you
[25:19] Speaker 2: cover up as a girl, and all of a sudden,
[25:21] Speaker 2: it's that security culture shame woven into it. And plus
[25:27] Speaker 2: then you're developing as a young woman so that you're
[25:29] Speaker 2: already kind of a little uncomfortable about it. But yeah,
[25:32] Speaker 2: they'll start sexualizing you at a very young age. Through
[25:36] Speaker 2: their propaganda, they have all of their reading materials meant
[25:40] Speaker 2: to the first one add that there's a series that
[25:43] Speaker 2: is very common to be distributed. They're called the Sacred Subjects,
[25:48] Speaker 2: and the first one is issued to girls. It's titled
[25:52] Speaker 2: A Girl of eleven, and in there it talks all
[25:57] Speaker 2: about your responsibility for maintaining your own purity and if
[26:01] Speaker 2: your brother rapes you, that it is your fault because
[26:03] Speaker 2: you were not wearing the appropriate clothing or that you
[26:06] Speaker 2: were laughing too loudly, or that you were walking to you.
[26:10] Speaker 2: You're supposed to walk in a certain way. Your body
[26:13] Speaker 2: language is supposed to be very shut down. And that's it.
[26:16] Speaker 2: That's a girl of eleven.
[26:19] Speaker 3: So I'm one of those people here on the outside.
[26:21] Speaker 3: I'm probably like everybody else. I went to go see
[26:25] Speaker 3: the movie Witness, you know, with Harrison Ford and Kelly
[26:28] Speaker 3: McGillis a great movie, and the Amish are just you know,
[26:34] Speaker 3: they're churning the butter and milking the cows, and they're
[26:37] Speaker 3: outworking the fields, and they wear the hooks and eyes
[26:41] Speaker 3: and the black and the white and their little high
[26:43] Speaker 3: water pants, et cetera. And you know, they just seem harmless.
[26:49] Speaker 3: And I've always had well, at least until I became
[26:52] Speaker 3: an activist and started to learn a little more. I
[26:55] Speaker 3: always had this idea that they were just like you say,
[26:58] Speaker 3: they're just the plain people, just simple folk living a
[27:02] Speaker 3: peaceful life. You want to talk about the outsider's perspective
[27:05] Speaker 3: of Amish and Mennonite people, if you would.
[27:09] Speaker 2: I think that there is this romanticism that we see
[27:13] Speaker 2: from people on the outside looking at the communities and
[27:18] Speaker 2: in general. And I'm always very intrigued. Why because I
[27:23] Speaker 2: think that if you look at how people perceive the
[27:25] Speaker 2: plane and simple and gentle people, it's almost like we
[27:28] Speaker 2: have such bias towards them, right, that surely they could
[27:33] Speaker 2: not hurt anybody. And yet also we look internally at
[27:38] Speaker 2: the brand, the Amish and Mennonite brand, which have done
[27:41] Speaker 2: such a good job of not only looking esthetically pleasing
[27:45] Speaker 2: but playing into that where we keep sweet right, the
[27:49] Speaker 2: women talk very softly and sweet and very sing songy,
[27:54] Speaker 2: and you don't you sing along whenever you're doing your
[27:56] Speaker 2: household chores. And it's all this, you know, allusion into
[28:01] Speaker 2: the fact that it's very simple and the women are
[28:03] Speaker 2: stupid in a way, and so we have to treat
[28:06] Speaker 2: them very tenderly. So there's no way that all of
[28:10] Speaker 2: this horrific amount of abuse is happening to these tender people,
[28:14] Speaker 2: when in fact that's all a ruse, but they're playing
[28:18] Speaker 2: into it. So when we look at the abuse within
[28:21] Speaker 2: Amish and Mennonite and Anabaptist churches, it's oftentimes compared to
[28:27] Speaker 2: the Catholic Church, but I will say it's far worse
[28:31] Speaker 2: because the Catholic Church is known for one thing, which
[28:34] Speaker 2: is sex abuse. But the amount of abuse that's happening
[28:39] Speaker 2: is not just limited to childhood sex abuse. Within these cultures.
[28:43] Speaker 2: We have trafficking, you have domestic violence, you have financial abuse,
[28:48] Speaker 2: religious abuse, you have kidnapping, you have drugging women. I mean,
[28:55] Speaker 2: it's just like this conglomerate. So instead looking at abuse
[28:59] Speaker 2: with in these communities, I often say you should look
[29:03] Speaker 2: at it as a wheel, right, So each of these
[29:06] Speaker 2: are components. There's spokes on the wheel, and it's moving
[29:09] Speaker 2: the systemic issues forward. So it's hard to dismantle that
[29:16] Speaker 2: belief system that abuse is. Maybe well, but my neighbors
[29:22] Speaker 2: are so nice they would never have that happen. But
[29:26] Speaker 2: the amount of people that I the amount of your
[29:29] Speaker 2: neighbors that I've actually heard horror stories from, would just
[29:34] Speaker 2: I think blow the regular person's mind. But I also
[29:39] Speaker 2: want to hone in on the fact that there's still
[29:43] Speaker 2: when we look at the abuse in the communities, maybe
[29:46] Speaker 2: we have an understanding. Maybe after hearing me speak, you'll
[29:51] Speaker 2: be like, next time you'll see an Amish person or
[29:53] Speaker 2: a men Nite person, you'll be like, there's abuse happening
[29:55] Speaker 2: in there, and it's high. There still is that separation
[30:00] Speaker 2: where there's not that component that will kick in that
[30:02] Speaker 2: says there's abuse happening in that community, and this is
[30:06] Speaker 2: a community member of mine, and they could actually come
[30:10] Speaker 2: for my children. But that happens, But we still want
[30:14] Speaker 2: to keep it isolated, right, We still want to think
[30:16] Speaker 2: that the abuse is only happening within the communities and
[30:18] Speaker 2: it's not what is keeping that from happening and penetrating
[30:23] Speaker 2: over into the other communities. So when I talk to
[30:27] Speaker 2: people and they at first are very challenged with dismantling
[30:31] Speaker 2: the belief in the narrative that their kind and gentle
[30:35] Speaker 2: neighbors would never do that, maybe I can get to
[30:37] Speaker 2: them to understand that, hey, yeah, it's happening, and it
[30:42] Speaker 2: could also happen to your children or your family members
[30:48] Speaker 2: if you don't hold them accountable as well. So it's
[30:53] Speaker 2: a bigger issue than just what's happening within the communities.
[30:56] Speaker 2: It's also a safety a safety can certain for community
[31:01] Speaker 2: members as well.
[31:03] Speaker 3: All right, wrapping up here, you are now on the
[31:06] Speaker 3: outside looking in, or you're kind of exposing what's going on.
[31:09] Speaker 3: You're a whistleblower, you've been part of research projects, you
[31:14] Speaker 3: host the Plain People's podcast. I'll throw that link in
[31:18] Speaker 3: the description box, But can you give me a little
[31:20] Speaker 3: more detail about kind of what it is that you
[31:23] Speaker 3: were doing out there on the front lines to talk
[31:25] Speaker 3: about or expose the abuses that are happening.
[31:30] Speaker 2: I truly am the only person that is doing what
[31:33] Speaker 2: I'm doing right now now. I have a few other
[31:36] Speaker 2: advocate friends that are working on other areas of fighting
[31:41] Speaker 2: this abuse, but as far as I know of, I'm the
[31:44] Speaker 2: only person that is not only putting out content which
[31:47] Speaker 2: I really have taken away from I have not had
[31:50] Speaker 2: the space to be able to put out free content
[31:52] Speaker 2: to educate because I've been so immersed within the communities.
[31:56] Speaker 2: So I'm back in the in the churches, back in
[31:59] Speaker 2: the communities, traveling literally all over the US, interviewing women,
[32:03] Speaker 2: taking down their stories, documenting what is happening, going through
[32:07] Speaker 2: all of these papers that are penetrating in through the
[32:11] Speaker 2: restoration teams, and through the communities. Primarily, I have women
[32:15] Speaker 2: that are reaching out that don't know what to do
[32:19] Speaker 2: with the levels of abuse that's happening, or maybe they
[32:21] Speaker 2: don't even know that there's abuse happening, but somebody within
[32:25] Speaker 2: the community told them about me. Why is it me?
[32:29] Speaker 2: Because I grew up in the church, and so whenever
[32:32] Speaker 2: I sit down with these current members within the community,
[32:37] Speaker 2: there is a sigh of relief literally whenever they realize
[32:41] Speaker 2: that I understand the dogma that they're being taught and
[32:48] Speaker 2: that they are living in, and they don't have to
[32:50] Speaker 2: explain any of the cultural nuance. They don't have to
[32:52] Speaker 2: explain what the ministry is saying or all of the
[32:55] Speaker 2: mechanisms that they use in order to control these women.
[32:59] Speaker 2: They literally say, oh, you get it, Yes, I get it.
[33:02] Speaker 2: I do get it, and I want you to get
[33:05] Speaker 2: that it is a crime because they don't know that.
[33:07] Speaker 2: So I'm in this really unique position to be able
[33:10] Speaker 2: to validate what is happening with them, and because of that,
[33:14] Speaker 2: trust is built. And once you're in, then you became
[33:19] Speaker 2: there's just a network of these women that then I'll
[33:22] Speaker 2: have somebody reach out to me because somebody met with
[33:24] Speaker 2: me and they felt like I was a safe person,
[33:27] Speaker 2: and so they'll reach out and share their story. So collectively,
[33:31] Speaker 2: what I started doing was trying to figure out what
[33:34] Speaker 2: the crimes were, what was happening, so that way I
[33:37] Speaker 2: could not only on the outside build out what support
[33:40] Speaker 2: system that they need, but also take it to a
[33:43] Speaker 2: federal level and have a federal investigation opened into these churches.
[33:49] Speaker 2: So I've met with judges, I've met with the prosecutors
[33:52] Speaker 2: in different counties. I've met with local law enforcement trying
[33:56] Speaker 2: to help them understand the cultural nuances and the case
[34:00] Speaker 2: is that are in their communities and not being reported,
[34:03] Speaker 2: and how they can assist them. I've met with the
[34:05] Speaker 2: Bureau of Criminal Investigations, Homeland Security, and so now I
[34:10] Speaker 2: have the support of federal agents that are trying to
[34:13] Speaker 2: help me as I move through the communities to get
[34:17] Speaker 2: women comfortable and educated enough to report what's happening.
[34:21] Speaker 3: And last thing for you, if there was someone in
[34:25] Speaker 3: a high control culture. We know the Amish aren't listening
[34:29] Speaker 3: to this interview, right, they don't have electricity, they don't
[34:32] Speaker 3: have podcasts, etc. But it's kind of a common scenario
[34:38] Speaker 3: shame culture, abuse culture, high control, paytriarchies, etc. So if
[34:43] Speaker 3: you were talking to somebody who was trapped in or
[34:46] Speaker 3: maybe a survivor of that kind of thing, what words
[34:49] Speaker 3: would you have for that person?
[34:52] Speaker 2: So if I had the chance to sit down with
[34:54] Speaker 2: somebody that is still in a high control, high demand religion,
[34:57] Speaker 2: which I do on a daily basis, what I want
[35:01] Speaker 2: them to understand is that their intuition is valid and
[35:06] Speaker 2: they're always right. I've yet to have somebody that comes
[35:10] Speaker 2: to me and says, I think something may be going
[35:15] Speaker 2: on in our community. There may be something, but then
[35:18] Speaker 2: they'll try to downplay it. They're always right, their instincts
[35:22] Speaker 2: are right, because we know that this is shit, that
[35:25] Speaker 2: we know that this is crime. And so I want
[35:28] Speaker 2: people that are still in these communities to understand that
[35:31] Speaker 2: they're not wrong, and that what is happening is happening
[35:36] Speaker 2: in a great capacity, and that it is challenging to
[35:43] Speaker 2: come forward and talk about it, but that there are
[35:46] Speaker 2: people on the outside that truly care and want to
[35:49] Speaker 2: support them as they move and navigate through what it
[35:52] Speaker 2: would look like to either leave the church or to
[35:56] Speaker 2: stay in regardless, they deserve safety.
[36:00] Speaker 3: Okay, And again, if you want to see the YouTube
[36:03] Speaker 3: version of Jasper Hoffman's interview, I kind of polished it
[36:07] Speaker 3: up for video. That link is in the description box.
[36:11] Speaker 3: Her work, her podcasts or activism have been featured on
[36:15] Speaker 3: the Peacock streaming network, on Apple TV, and also in
[36:21] Speaker 3: Cosmopolitan Now. Cosmo published an article a few years ago,
[36:26] Speaker 3: actually republished an article featuring Sarah McClure, and she teamed
[36:32] Speaker 3: up with Cosmo and Type Investigations to do one year
[36:36] Speaker 3: of reporting on Amish abuse. She's got an article. It's
[36:42] Speaker 3: kind of hardcore, but it's also compelling and I think necessary.
[36:47] Speaker 3: I'm going to read it for you next. You and
[36:55] Speaker 3: I think of the Amish very often. We think about
[36:59] Speaker 3: these happy little people walking a happy field, drinking unpasteurized milk,
[37:06] Speaker 3: praying ten times a day, and essentially doing their own
[37:10] Speaker 3: thing in peace. This is very often not the case,
[37:14] Speaker 3: as we have just heard. I'm going to read for
[37:17] Speaker 3: you here an article that published five years ago at
[37:20] Speaker 3: Type Investigations. Sarah McClure of Cosmopolitan magazine did an expose
[37:27] Speaker 3: of abuse in Amish communities. This is a pretty intense
[37:33] Speaker 3: and hardcore article, so just be advised going in. It
[37:37] Speaker 3: says this, The memories come to her in fragments, the
[37:43] Speaker 3: bed creaking late at night, after one of her brothers
[37:47] Speaker 3: snuck into her room and pulled her to the edge
[37:50] Speaker 3: of her mattress, her underwear shove to the side as
[37:54] Speaker 3: his body hovered over hers, one of his feet still
[37:57] Speaker 3: on the floor. Her ripped dresses, the clothes pins that
[38:02] Speaker 3: bent apart on her apron as. Another brother grabbed her
[38:06] Speaker 3: at dusk by the hogbin after they'd finished feeding the pigs.
[38:11] Speaker 3: Sometimes she'd cry herself free and sprint toward the house,
[38:15] Speaker 3: but they were bigger and stronger, she says, they usually
[38:20] Speaker 3: got what they wanted. As a child, Sadie not her
[38:25] Speaker 3: real name, was carefully shielded from outside influences, never allowed
[38:31] Speaker 3: to watch TV or listen to pop music or get
[38:34] Speaker 3: her learners permit. Instead, she attended a one room Amish
[38:39] Speaker 3: schoolhouse and rode a horse and buggy to church, a
[38:43] Speaker 3: life designed to be humble and disciplined and godly. By
[38:48] Speaker 3: age nine, she says she'd been raped by one of
[38:51] Speaker 3: her older brothers. By twelve, she'd been abused by her father,
[38:56] Speaker 3: Abner not his real name, a chiropractor, who penetrated her
[39:01] Speaker 3: with his fingers on the same table where he saw patients,
[39:05] Speaker 3: telling her he was quote flipping her uterus to ensure
[39:10] Speaker 3: her fertility. By fourteen, she said three more brothers had
[39:15] Speaker 3: raped her, and she was being attacked in the hayloft
[39:18] Speaker 3: or in her own bed multiple times a week. She
[39:22] Speaker 3: would roll over afterward, ashamed and confused. The sisters who
[39:27] Speaker 3: shared Sadie's room and even her bed never woke up,
[39:31] Speaker 3: or if they did, never said anything, although some later
[39:36] Speaker 3: confided that they were being raped two Sadie's small world
[39:41] Speaker 3: was built around adherence to rules, and keeping quiet was
[39:45] Speaker 3: one of them. There was no love or support, she says.
[39:50] Speaker 3: We didn't feel that we had anywhere to go to
[39:52] Speaker 3: say anything, so she didn't, even on the day the
[39:57] Speaker 3: police showed up on her doorstep to question then twelve
[40:01] Speaker 3: year old Sadie's father about his alleged abuse of his
[40:04] Speaker 3: daughter's even on the day when almost two years later,
[40:08] Speaker 3: Abner was sentenced by a circuit court judge to just
[40:12] Speaker 3: five years probation, And even on the day when, at fourteen,
[40:18] Speaker 3: she says she was cornered in the pantry by one
[40:20] Speaker 3: of her brothers and raped on the sink, and then
[40:24] Speaker 3: felt a gush and saw blood running down her leg
[40:28] Speaker 3: and cleaned up alone while he walked away and gingerly
[40:32] Speaker 3: placed her underwear in a bucket of cold water before
[40:36] Speaker 3: going back to her chores. A friend helped her realize
[40:40] Speaker 3: years later, while being raped she had probably suffered a miscarriage.
[40:47] Speaker 3: It wasn't until now that Sadie decided to speak up
[40:51] Speaker 3: to reveal the darkness beneath the bucolic surface of her childhood.
[40:56] Speaker 3: She's tired of keeping quiet. Over the past year, I've
[41:01] Speaker 3: interviewed nearly three dozen Amish people. In addition to law enforcement, judges, attorneys,
[41:08] Speaker 3: outreach workers, and scholars, I've learned that sexual abuse in
[41:13] Speaker 3: their communities is an open secret, spanning generations. Victims told
[41:19] Speaker 3: me stories of inappropriate touching, groping, fondling, exposure to genitals,
[41:25] Speaker 3: digital penetration, coerced oral sex, anal sex, and rape, all
[41:31] Speaker 3: at the hands of their own family members, neighbors, and
[41:34] Speaker 3: church leaders. The Amish, who number roughly three hundred forty
[41:39] Speaker 3: two thousand in North America, are dispersed across rural areas
[41:44] Speaker 3: of states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, New York, Michigan,
[41:49] Speaker 3: and Wisconsin. According to the Young Center for Anabaptist and
[41:54] Speaker 3: Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College, a leading authority on Amish life,
[42:00] Speaker 3: because of their high birth rate and because few members
[42:04] Speaker 3: ever leave, they are one of the fastest growing religious
[42:07] Speaker 3: groups in America. Lacking one centralized leader, they live in
[42:12] Speaker 3: local congregations or church districts, each made up of twenty
[42:17] Speaker 3: to forty families, but the stories I heard were not
[42:21] Speaker 3: confined to any one place. In my reporting, I identified
[42:26] Speaker 3: fifty two official cases of Amish child sexual assault in
[42:32] Speaker 3: seven states over the past two decades. Chillingly, this number
[42:37] Speaker 3: doesn't begin to capture the full picture. Virtually every Amish
[42:42] Speaker 3: victim I spoke to, mostly women, but also several men,
[42:46] Speaker 3: told me they were dissuaded by their family or church
[42:50] Speaker 3: leaders from reporting their abuse to police, or had been
[42:54] Speaker 3: conditioned not to seek outside help. As Sadie put it,
[42:58] Speaker 3: she knew she be mocked or blamed. Some victims said
[43:03] Speaker 3: they were intimidated and threatened with excommunication. Their stories describe
[43:09] Speaker 3: a widespread, decentralized cover up of child sexual abuse by
[43:15] Speaker 3: Amish clergy. We're told it's not christ like to report,
[43:21] Speaker 3: explains Esther not her real name, an Amish woman who
[43:26] Speaker 3: says she was abused by her brother and a neighbor
[43:29] Speaker 3: boy at age nine. It's so ingrained, she said. There's
[43:34] Speaker 3: so many people who go to church and just endure.
[43:39] Speaker 3: And yet as the hashtag me too movement has rocked
[43:43] Speaker 3: mainstream culture, Amish women have instigated their own female driven movement.
[43:50] Speaker 3: Linda Crockett, founder and director of Safe communities, an organization
[43:55] Speaker 3: that works to prevent child sexual abuse, says it's much
[43:59] Speaker 3: slower than less highly visible, but I have seen a
[44:03] Speaker 3: real uptick over the past ten years and Amish women
[44:06] Speaker 3: coming forward. They hear about each other, not on Twitter
[44:11] Speaker 3: or Facebook, but there's a strong communication system within these communities.
[44:17] Speaker 3: They draw courage and strength from each other. Judge Craigstedman,
[44:22] Speaker 3: former District Attorney of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, home to nearly
[44:27] Speaker 3: forty thousand Amish, has served on a task force that
[44:31] Speaker 3: connects the Amish to law enforcement and social services. He says,
[44:36] Speaker 3: I get phone calls. Now, there's a bunch of Amish
[44:39] Speaker 3: who have my cell phone number and they use it.
[44:43] Speaker 3: The men call on behalf of the women, although most
[44:47] Speaker 3: don't have cell phones. The Amish might use payphones or
[44:50] Speaker 3: call from English neighbors homes. Some victims, like Sadie, have
[44:56] Speaker 3: long since left the church and the Amish way of life,
[44:59] Speaker 3: but including Esther, are still on the inside, sending out
[45:04] Speaker 3: an alarm to the world that they've been taught to reject.
[45:08] Speaker 3: They want to talk, explains Crockett, So they're turning outside.
[45:14] Speaker 3: There's no one reason for the sexual abuse crisis in
[45:17] Speaker 3: Amish country. Instead, there's a perfect storm of factors. A
[45:22] Speaker 3: patriarchal and isolated lifestyle in which victims have little exposure
[45:27] Speaker 3: to police, coaches, or anyone else who might help them.
[45:31] Speaker 3: An education system that ends at eighth grade and fails
[45:36] Speaker 3: to teach children about sex or their bodies. A culture
[45:39] Speaker 3: of victim shaming and blaming, little access to the technology
[45:44] Speaker 3: that enables communication or broader social awareness, and a religion
[45:49] Speaker 3: that prioritizes repentance and forgiveness over actual punishments or rehabilitation.
[45:57] Speaker 3: Amish leaders also tend to be wary of law enforcement,
[46:01] Speaker 3: preferring to handle disputes on their own. As a child,
[46:06] Speaker 3: Sadie was up before dawn every morning to milk her
[46:09] Speaker 3: family's cows, wearing a pleated head covering and long dress,
[46:14] Speaker 3: her shoes and socks a dull black as her local
[46:18] Speaker 3: church rules required. If you didn't work as hard as
[46:22] Speaker 3: you possibly could, you were considered lazy. She says, she
[46:26] Speaker 3: never turned on a light switch or shopped for clothes
[46:29] Speaker 3: in a store. She didn't speak English at home, just
[46:33] Speaker 3: Pennsylvania Dutch, the only language she knew until first grade,
[46:38] Speaker 3: and she never revealed her abuse to any one except
[46:42] Speaker 3: a cousin and her father himself. When he asked her
[46:45] Speaker 3: point blank if her brothers were touching her. The next
[46:50] Speaker 3: time he asked, she lied, fearful he would beat the boys,
[46:54] Speaker 3: as he often did, But what was happening in her
[46:57] Speaker 3: house was a poorly kept secret, according to several of
[47:01] Speaker 3: Sadie's relatives, one of them reported Abner, who has since died,
[47:07] Speaker 3: to local church leaders. Sadie remembers her father being shunned
[47:11] Speaker 3: for six weeks, a common form of discipline in which
[47:15] Speaker 3: the accused is socially ostracized and forbidden from eating at
[47:20] Speaker 3: the same table as church members. After a shunning, the
[47:25] Speaker 3: person confesses in church, and the community is strongly compelled
[47:29] Speaker 3: to forgive and forget that the sin ever happened. In
[47:35] Speaker 3: Sadie's house, she recalls, everything went back to normal, or
[47:40] Speaker 3: at least how it had been before. When the police
[47:43] Speaker 3: and social workers later showed up on her doorstep, most
[47:47] Speaker 3: likely after being tipped off by a local non Amish person,
[47:52] Speaker 3: Abner told authorities that quote things which we were speaking
[47:56] Speaker 3: about had been brought up and dealt with in the church.
[48:00] Speaker 3: According to a police detective's notes, he also silenced his daughters,
[48:05] Speaker 3: you say nothing. Sadie and another relative remember him demanding
[48:12] Speaker 3: authorities returned the second time, asking him specific questions about
[48:16] Speaker 3: having sexual intercourse with his daughters. According to the case file, now,
[48:22] Speaker 3: Abner confessed to having sex with two of them, insisting quote,
[48:27] Speaker 3: he made love to them at least three times each,
[48:30] Speaker 3: but didn't hurt them. Sadie, who had heard from a
[48:35] Speaker 3: cousin that her dad was also abusing her sisters, didn't
[48:39] Speaker 3: dare breathe a word in their defense. A relative recalls
[48:44] Speaker 3: that Sadie's mother told social workers to do whatever they
[48:48] Speaker 3: could to keep him from going to jail. It worked.
[48:53] Speaker 3: A grainy VHS recording from two thousand and one shows
[48:57] Speaker 3: a gray bearded Abner standing with his hand hanging between
[49:01] Speaker 3: his hands before a judge as an attorney explains that
[49:04] Speaker 3: he is pleading guilty to a reduced charge of sexual
[49:09] Speaker 3: abuse in the first degree and not incest because quote,
[49:15] Speaker 3: the family is not desiring that he be incarcerated. Instead
[49:20] Speaker 3: of serving a sentence that might have been five years
[49:23] Speaker 3: or more, Abner got probation. Sadie says her father abused
[49:28] Speaker 3: her for five more years. When I reached out to
[49:32] Speaker 3: her brothers to confirm that Abner had touched Sadie. One
[49:36] Speaker 3: of them also said he himself quote messed around with
[49:40] Speaker 3: her when they were young, but he did not rape her.
[49:43] Speaker 3: The other denied raping her. A third brother did not
[49:47] Speaker 3: respond to her request for comment. Some victims aren't just silenced,
[49:54] Speaker 3: they suffer something worse. Lizzie Hirschberger was fourteen when she
[49:59] Speaker 3: went to work at as a maud Or hired girl
[50:03] Speaker 3: for a twenty seven year old Amish man named Chris
[50:06] Speaker 3: Stutsman and his wife, taking care of their four children
[50:10] Speaker 3: and helping Stutsman in the barn. One night, after they
[50:15] Speaker 3: had milked the cows, he pinned her against a wall
[50:17] Speaker 3: and kissed her, then pushed her onto the feedbags. Because
[50:22] Speaker 3: it was a frigid winter in Minnesota, Lizzie wore pants
[50:25] Speaker 3: under her dress, which Stutsman removed while she tried in
[50:29] Speaker 3: vain to fight him off relax. He whispered into her
[50:33] Speaker 3: ear as he raped her. To this day, that word
[50:37] Speaker 3: remains a trigger for Lizzie. She didn't know why she
[50:42] Speaker 3: felt pain and blood between her legs. Her parents had
[50:45] Speaker 3: never talked to her about sex or even her period.
[50:49] Speaker 3: When Sadie got her period at age ten, while playing outside,
[50:53] Speaker 3: She remembers stuffing toilet paper in her underwear and pulling
[50:57] Speaker 3: one of her sisters into the outhouse to ask what
[51:00] Speaker 3: was going on. Amish victims don't even know the names
[51:04] Speaker 3: of body parts, confirmed Steedman to describe a sexual assault
[51:09] Speaker 3: without having any fundamental sex education. It prevents even more challenges.
[51:15] Speaker 3: When Lizzie's abuser finally climbed off her, she was shaking.
[51:20] Speaker 3: I felt broken and used and dirty, she says. I
[51:23] Speaker 3: was already blaming myself, thinking why didn't I leave the
[51:26] Speaker 3: barn just you know, a couple of minutes earlier. Stutsman
[51:31] Speaker 3: would rape Lizzie twenty five more times over roughly five months.
[51:36] Speaker 3: According to court records and Lizzie's diary. He raped her
[51:41] Speaker 3: in the hayloft, in his house, and on the seat
[51:44] Speaker 3: of his buggy. Once, on the way home from church,
[51:47] Speaker 3: he pulled the buggy off the road and raped her
[51:50] Speaker 3: in the woods. Through his lawyer, Stutsman declined to comment.
[51:55] Speaker 3: Twice male witnesses walked in on the abuse, but neither
[51:59] Speaker 3: man aim to Lizzie's rescue. Instead, Stutsman himself, perhaps sensing
[52:05] Speaker 3: he'd been caught, confessed like Abner he was shunned for
[52:10] Speaker 3: six weeks, and again no one reported him to outside authorities,
[52:15] Speaker 3: especially since the church had already disciplined and forgiven him. Instead,
[52:20] Speaker 3: the community turned on Lizzie for what they saw as
[52:24] Speaker 3: a consensual affair. She was bullied and mocked, spit on,
[52:30] Speaker 3: and called a schlood or hoodlah, which is Pennsylvania Dutch
[52:34] Speaker 3: for slut and whore. They didn't ask me how I
[52:38] Speaker 3: felt or my side of the story, she says. Instead,
[52:42] Speaker 3: the community gossiped that she had mental issues. It's common
[52:47] Speaker 3: for Amish victims to be viewed by the community as
[52:51] Speaker 3: just as guilty as the abuser, as consenting partners committing adultery,
[52:57] Speaker 3: even if their children are expected to share responsibility and
[53:03] Speaker 3: after the church has punished their abuser, to quickly forgive.
[53:08] Speaker 3: If they fail to do so, they're the problem. When
[53:13] Speaker 3: the rare case does end up in court, the Amish
[53:16] Speaker 3: overwhelmingly support the abusers, who tend to appear with nearly
[53:20] Speaker 3: their entire congregations behind them. Survivors and law enforcements say
[53:26] Speaker 3: this can compound the trauma of speaking out. Steadman says,
[53:32] Speaker 3: we've had cases where there'll be fifty Amish people standing
[53:36] Speaker 3: up for the offender and no one speaks for the victim.
[53:41] Speaker 3: In one twenty ten case, young female victims were pressured
[53:45] Speaker 3: to forgive their father and brother for abusing them, with
[53:48] Speaker 3: one writing a pleading letter to the court. Hello, Sir,
[53:53] Speaker 3: I'm Melvin's sister. Please have mercy. Melvin has made a
[53:57] Speaker 3: big change to let go of his committee crime in
[54:00] Speaker 3: the last year. I'd like to have our family together,
[54:05] Speaker 3: recalls former President Judge Dennis Rennecker, who was presided over
[54:09] Speaker 3: thirty plus Amish sexual assault cases in Lancaster County. In
[54:15] Speaker 3: this case, the victims agreed to cooperate only in exchange
[54:18] Speaker 3: for their abusers receiving no jail time. The deal likely
[54:24] Speaker 3: helped save the defendants from what could have been twenty
[54:28] Speaker 3: five to thirty year prison sentences. Things got stranger for Lizzie.
[54:34] Speaker 3: She remembers her mother telling her that she was being
[54:36] Speaker 3: taken to a chiropractic clinic in neighboring South Dakota, and
[54:41] Speaker 3: then boarding a bus full of Amish adults for the
[54:44] Speaker 3: three hundred mile drive to a facility where for a
[54:48] Speaker 3: week quote they watched me all the time. She says
[54:52] Speaker 3: she received daily deep tissue massages to quote work through
[54:58] Speaker 3: my emotional stuff. She was told Lizzie's is not the
[55:02] Speaker 3: only account of an Amish victim being taken to an
[55:05] Speaker 3: alleged mental health facility staffed by Amish or Mennonites, a similar,
[55:11] Speaker 3: although typically less strict group that provides Bible based counseling
[55:17] Speaker 3: and in many cases is not state licensed. Several years ago,
[55:22] Speaker 3: Esther was sent to a facility for counseling after she
[55:26] Speaker 3: tried to seek help for another Amish woman who was
[55:29] Speaker 3: being sexually assaulted. When she protested, church leaders threatened to
[55:34] Speaker 3: excommunicate her permanently. No one would tell her why she
[55:39] Speaker 3: was there. Instead, she was pressured to sign papers that
[55:43] Speaker 3: would allow staff to communicate directly with her ministers. She
[55:48] Speaker 3: says she eventually gave in and signed. She said, from
[55:53] Speaker 3: the first evening they wanted to put me on medication.
[55:56] Speaker 3: She said no, since a lot of these people who
[55:59] Speaker 3: get get stuck in these facilities come home drugged and
[56:03] Speaker 3: no longer have a life. Their zombies. She's aware of
[56:07] Speaker 3: about thirty other Amish sexual assault victims, including two of
[56:11] Speaker 3: her sisters, who've been sent away to such facilities. Eventually,
[56:16] Speaker 3: Esther says she was told that refusing sleep medication would
[56:21] Speaker 3: only prolong her stay. When she asked about side effects,
[56:25] Speaker 3: a house parent told her, it doesn't matter, you have
[56:28] Speaker 3: to take it, so she did except the drugs, wearing
[56:33] Speaker 3: for sleep at all. According to her medical record, she
[56:37] Speaker 3: was prescribed a lenzapine, an antipsychotic medication that treats mental
[56:43] Speaker 3: illnesses like schizophrenia. Every morning and night, she and other
[56:48] Speaker 3: Amish patients lined up to receive their drugs. She said,
[56:53] Speaker 3: we'd have to go and fill a small container with
[56:55] Speaker 3: water and then go up to this pedestal. We'd all
[56:59] Speaker 3: take turns. It was gut wrenching. Esther started having blurry
[57:05] Speaker 3: vision and hallucinations. She wanted to escape, but she knew
[57:09] Speaker 3: that defying her ministers would get her kicked out of
[57:12] Speaker 3: the church. She was ultimately on the drug for two
[57:16] Speaker 3: weeks of her five week stay. Her discharge notes recommended
[57:21] Speaker 3: that she be submissive and that she quote challenge unhealthy
[57:27] Speaker 3: thoughts toward ministers and others using positive good thought. Esther
[57:33] Speaker 3: now says Amish leaders use lock up stays to silence
[57:37] Speaker 3: women who are increasingly eager to go public with abused allegations.
[57:42] Speaker 3: She says when a victim speaks out, they get sent
[57:46] Speaker 3: to a facility and drugged, so they shut up. Still,
[57:51] Speaker 3: as more and more women start to come forward, an
[57:54] Speaker 3: ecosystem has also risen up to help them. Two years ago, Lizzie,
[58:00] Speaker 3: who has long since left the Amish, and another former
[58:02] Speaker 3: Amish woman named Dina Schrock launched Voices of Hope, a
[58:08] Speaker 3: group for abused women. Lizzie met Sadie at one such gathering,
[58:14] Speaker 3: and they're now friends. Others find solidarity in The Plain
[58:19] Speaker 3: People's Podcast, a show launched in twenty eighteen that features
[58:24] Speaker 3: stories of Amish and Mennonite sexual abuse. Jasper Hoffman, a
[58:29] Speaker 3: former Mennonite and the podcast's co host, says she receives
[58:34] Speaker 3: hundreds of messages from people wanting to share stories or
[58:38] Speaker 3: get help reporting an abuser, and especially in Pennsylvania, efforts
[58:44] Speaker 3: are being made to reform Amish culture itself. In Lancaster County.
[58:49] Speaker 3: The Task Force Steadman serves on, comprised of police, attorneys,
[58:54] Speaker 3: and social service agencies, has been meeting with Amish leaders
[58:58] Speaker 3: a few times a year, trying to build trust and communication.
[59:03] Speaker 3: It's worth noting, however, that not a single woman has
[59:06] Speaker 3: been included among the group's Amish representatives. Some Amish have
[59:12] Speaker 3: started their own initiatives too. In multiple states, their Conservative
[59:17] Speaker 3: Crisis Intervention Committees liais with local authorities on reporting and
[59:22] Speaker 3: prosecuting sexual assault cases. One Lancaster County member, Amos Stallsfous,
[59:29] Speaker 3: told me that, quote a lot of things have changed
[59:32] Speaker 3: and forced us to comply and not allow things to
[59:35] Speaker 3: be swept under the rug like they had at one point.
[59:39] Speaker 3: Stricter mandatory reporting requirements were implemented in Pennsylvania in twenty
[59:44] Speaker 3: fourteen in the aftermath of the high profile Jerry Sandusky
[59:49] Speaker 3: child abuse case. For one Now, Stoltzfus says the Lancaster
[59:55] Speaker 3: County Amish at least quote aren't interested in hiding things
[1:00:00] Speaker 3: and have adapted and recognized that we need to change
[1:00:05] Speaker 3: with some of the education that we give to the
[1:00:08] Speaker 3: parents and the children. He says, they've also tried to
[1:00:11] Speaker 3: understand the lasting trauma that can make quick forgiveness difficult
[1:00:16] Speaker 3: for victims. Quote. Our community does really care, it just
[1:00:21] Speaker 3: takes time. In the summer of twenty eighteen, Lizzie sought
[1:00:25] Speaker 3: her own justice by reporting her rapes to police, something
[1:00:30] Speaker 3: she never felt she could do before. To her surprise,
[1:00:34] Speaker 3: charges were brought against Stutsman, who was by then a
[1:00:37] Speaker 3: deacon in the church. He pleaded guilty to third degree
[1:00:42] Speaker 3: criminal sexual conduct, and at his sentencing hearing, the room
[1:00:47] Speaker 3: was filled with his Amish supporters, but Lizzie was also
[1:00:52] Speaker 3: surrounded by supporters, including Sadie, who had driven two hours
[1:00:57] Speaker 3: to be there. Stutsman was ultimately sent to forty five
[1:01:01] Speaker 3: days in jail and ten years probation based on guidelines
[1:01:06] Speaker 3: in place in nineteen eighty eight, the year before the assaults.
[1:01:11] Speaker 3: As for Sadie, she's now a thirty two year old
[1:01:15] Speaker 3: mother of five living in the Midwest. In twenty thirteen,
[1:01:19] Speaker 3: she and her husband finally left the Amish church. For now,
[1:01:23] Speaker 3: she's focused on healing, not pressing charges. She still speaks
[1:01:29] Speaker 3: with her brothers, one of whom has apologized many times.
[1:01:33] Speaker 3: She says she knows it sounds weird, but she even
[1:01:37] Speaker 3: visits them occasionally. Sadie is trying to work through her
[1:01:41] Speaker 3: trauma in couples therapy with her husband, and she'd still
[1:01:46] Speaker 3: like to get her own Christian therapist. She's pretty sure
[1:01:50] Speaker 3: she'll never completely trust any man around her kids. There's
[1:01:55] Speaker 3: been plenty of anger to deal with. She used to
[1:01:58] Speaker 3: fly off the hen, she says, but now it feels
[1:02:03] Speaker 3: good to finally be letting it all outs. And that's
[1:02:08] Speaker 3: the article from Type Investigations. I will link it in
[1:02:12] Speaker 3: the description box. I myself cringed a little bit at
[1:02:15] Speaker 3: the idea of a Christian counselor. And you know the
[1:02:19] Speaker 3: reasons why, right, because they tend to frame this as
[1:02:23] Speaker 3: a spiritual issue. In many cases, they talk in terms
[1:02:27] Speaker 3: of sin, even the sin of the abuser, and I
[1:02:31] Speaker 3: think a lot of that is a distraction from real
[1:02:33] Speaker 3: world problems. But it's a fascinating story of in many
[1:02:37] Speaker 3: cases liberation and whistleblowing about this culture. I thought it
[1:02:41] Speaker 3: was a topic that you would be interested in today,
[1:02:44] Speaker 3: and again I would encourage you to check out The
[1:02:46] Speaker 3: Plain People's podcast, which is also linked in the show notes.
[1:02:50] Speaker 3: And thanks again to Jasper Hoffman for speaking with me
[1:02:54] Speaker 3: and for her work, and thanks to you for listening.
[1:02:59] Speaker 3: This was kind of a heavy one, but a necessary one.
[1:03:02] Speaker 3: I'm so glad you were taking the journey with me.
[1:03:04] Speaker 3: I will see you back here next time. Take care.
[1:03:07] Speaker 1: Follow The Thinking Atheist on Facebook and Twitter for a
[1:03:10] Speaker 1: complete archive of podcasts and videos. Products like mugs and
[1:03:14] Speaker 1: t shirts featuring The Thinking Atheist logo, links to atheist
[1:03:18] Speaker 1: pages and resources, and details on upcoming free thought events
[1:03:21] Speaker 1: and conventions. Log onto our website, The Thinkingatheist dot com.

Shows are listed from Apple Podcasts' charts and directory, and Podcast Index where it is used. Every show and episode belongs to its publisher and plays from the publisher's own feed; this site hosts none of them.