# 2 Amish brothers who raped 13 year old sister recieve suspended sentences "would be eaten alive in prison



## brg240 (Sep 24, 2020)

Two adult Missouri brothers of an Amish community who admitted to having sex with their 13-year-old sister have received suspended sentences because the prosecutor feared they would “be eaten alive” behind bars.

Earlier this month, 22-year-old Aaron Schwartz and his 18-year-old sibling Petie Schwartz of Seymour, Mo., pled guilty to two counts of third-degree child molestation with a child under the age of 14. They had originally faced rape charges.

Both they and two younger brothers had sex with their sister — whose name has not been revealed — who was between 12 and 13 years of age at the time of the acts, reported the Webster County Citizen.
*But the two oldest Schwartz siblings, who were hit with a 10-year prison sentence on one count and five years on a second count were spared jail time.*

Instead, they must write an apology letter to their community, perform 100 hours of community service and cough up a combined $500 to the Law Enforcement Restitution Fund, according to the Citizen.

Initially, the brothers had been been charged with six felony counts of statutory rape and one felony count of incest, but *Webster County Prosecuting Attorney Ben Berkstresser defended his decision to push for the lenient sentence.*


“I made the decision not to send them to the (Department of Corrections), to suspend the sentences,” explained Berkstresser. “*These two young men would have been eaten alive in the state prison system.”*

Two more Schwartz brothers, both allegedly minors, also engaged in sexual acts with the sister, who recently gave birth to a baby.

“One of the brothers is the father of this child,” said Berkstresser. “But *within the Amish community that primarily lives in the Seymour area, (the Amish) don’t see the authority we have to do anything to them*. This was a tough case to prosecute.”

Berkstresser added that the community has punished all four Schwartz siblings but did not explain how.

The alleged crimes were unearthed in June when the girl, then 13 and pregnant, confided to a doctor that she had been engaging in sexual intercourse with her four brothers.

Aaron and Petie Schwartz told a sheriff that they each had sex with the sister at least six times, noted the Citizen.


----------



## brg240 (Sep 24, 2020)

Related: 
The daily news really used sex when they should have been using rape/incest. 

There is no justice for this girl. On every level this girl was failed. An apology letter 

I didnt know that you could skip prison bc you would not do well there. Nor, that the criminal justice system cared if you didn't respect its authority

But, the prosecuted is a Brett kavenough supporter so i guess his actions make sense


----------



## Kalia1 (Sep 25, 2020)

Where were those who SHOULD have been protecting this girl? Her mother and father?!?
Who cares if they would be eaten alive in jail imagine the lifelong he’ll this young girl will be living knowing her four brothers raped her!


----------



## Black Ambrosia (Sep 25, 2020)

Disgusting. They're going to probably let them go back to the same house and continue molesting her. And I'm sure she's viewed negatively in that community.


----------



## CarefreeinChicago (Sep 25, 2020)

Disgusting on so many different levels


----------



## awhyley (Sep 25, 2020)

They just set terrible precedent with this.


----------



## lesedi (Sep 25, 2020)

Disgusting


----------



## Sosoothing (Sep 25, 2020)

This is infuriating to read.

Of course they would be eaten alive..as they should.

Raping your own sister and getting her pregnant is an abomination. There isn't enough that can be done for that poor child to make things right.


----------



## GGsKin (Sep 25, 2020)

Disgusting and outrageous. And I didn't realise prison sentences were only for those that could handle it.


----------



## CarefreeinChicago (Sep 25, 2020)

That judge/ prosecutor needs to be voted out


----------



## kimpaur (Sep 25, 2020)

Kalia1 said:


> Where were those who SHOULD have been protecting this girl? Her mother and father?!?
> Who cares if they would be eaten alive in jail imagine the lifelong he’ll this young girl will be living knowing her four brothers raped her!


I read an investigative piece months ago and in  these communities the fathers and brothers rape their daughters all the time .Its seriously disturbing.

 The daughters are usually “shunned” if they say something...and then the abuse continues.
I’m surprised this was even handled in real court. Usually they let them deal with the crime via their own justice system, which results in effectively nothing being done and the women continuing to be abused.


----------



## kimpaur (Sep 25, 2020)

Black Ambrosia said:


> Disgusting. They're going to probably let them go back to the same house and continue molesting her. And I'm sure she's viewed negatively in that community.


Sadly, you’re spot on regarding what goes down in these Amish communities. She will be shamed instead of the men.


----------



## Chicoro (Sep 25, 2020)

What a crime and a shame. That poor little girl, child. May God protect her mind and her soul. Her body is not and will never be her own nor will it ever be safe or protected.

I thought it was two but the original post says,"The alleged crimes were unearthed in June when the girl, then 13 and pregnant, confided to a doctor that she had been engaging in sexual intercourse with her *four* brothers."


----------



## Chicoro (Sep 25, 2020)




----------



## Chicoro (Sep 25, 2020)

The brothers...


----------



## Chicoro (Sep 25, 2020)

Removed post.


----------



## Leeda.the.Paladin (Sep 25, 2020)

All 4 brothers! And she has a child by one them. This is too much this morning


----------



## CarefreeinChicago (Sep 25, 2020)

They have the prosecutors info on Twitter I been tweeting that trash since I read the story I bet if it was someone in his family they would be ok in jail


----------



## naturalgyrl5199 (Sep 25, 2020)

Leeda.the.Paladin said:


> All 4 brothers! And she has a child by one them. This is too much this morning


Right...the headline ignored this. The brothers must have some mental issues as well. All 4 of them raping this girl all at once.

Now...where are the parents? The Amish community might need to be investigated. I bet that prosecutor is Amish or related to/married to someone in that community.


----------



## blessedandfavoured (Sep 28, 2020)

naturalgyrl5199 said:


> Right...the headline ignored this. *The brothers must have some mental issues as well*. All 4 of them raping this girl all at once.
> 
> Now...where are the parents? The Amish community might need to be investigated. I bet that prosecutor is Amish or related to/married to someone in that community.



According to this Cosmopolitan article from January, the bolded isn't necessarily the case. 
Triggering read, FYI.


----------



## Charmingchick1 (Sep 28, 2020)

This story is so upsetting.  That poor child.


----------



## CurlyNiquee (Sep 28, 2020)

*The Amish Keep to Themselves. And They’re Hiding a Horrifying Secret*
A year of reporting by _Cosmo _and Type Investigations reveals a culture of incest, rape, and abuse.





by SARAH MCCLURE
 JAN 14, 2020

The memories come to her in fragments. The bed creaking late at night after one of her brothers snuck into her room and pulled her to the edge of her mattress. Her underwear shoved to the side as his body hovered over hers, one of his feet still on the floor.

Her ripped dresses, the clothespins that bent apart on her apron as another brother grabbed her at dusk by the hogpen after they finished feeding the pigs. Sometimes she’d pry herself free and sprint toward the house, but “they were bigger and stronger,” she says. They usually got what they wanted.
As a child, Sadie* was carefully shielded from outside influences, never allowed to watch TV or listen to pop music or get her learner’s permit. Instead, she attended a one-room Amish schoolhouse and rode a horse and buggy to church—a life designed to be humble and disciplined and godly.






By age 9, she says, she’d been raped by one of her older brothers. By 12, she’d been abused by her father, Abner*, a chiropractor who penetrated her with his fingers on the same table where he saw patients, telling her he was “flipping her uterus” to ensure her fertility. By 14, she says, three more brothers had raped her and she was being attacked in the hayloft or in her own bed multiple times a week. She would roll over afterward, ashamed and confused. The sisters who shared Sadie’s room (and even her bed) never woke up—or if they did, never said anything, although some later confided that they were being raped too.
Sadie’s small world was built around adherence to rules—and keeping quiet was one of them. “There was no love or support,” she says. “We didn’t feel that we had anywhere to go to say anything.”


So she didn’t.

Even on the day the police showed up on her doorstep to question then-12-year-old Sadie’s father about his alleged abuse of his daughters.

Even on the day when, almost two years later, Abner was sentenced by a circuit court judge to just five years’ probation.

And even on the day when, at 14, she says she was cornered in the pantry by one of her brothers and raped on the sink, and then felt a gush and saw blood running down her leg, and cleaned up alone while he walked away, and gingerly placed her underwear in a bucket of cold water before going back to her chores. A friend helped her realize years later: While being raped, she had probably suffered a miscarriage.






It wasn’t until now that Sadie decided to speak up, to reveal the darkness beneath the bucolic surface of her childhood. She’s tired of keeping quiet.

Over the past year, I’ve interviewed nearly three dozen Amish people, in addition to law enforcement, judges, attorneys, outreach workers, and scholars. I’ve learned that sexual abuse in their communities is an open secret spanning generations. Victims told me stories of inappropriate touching, groping, fondling, exposure to genitals, digital penetration, coerced oral sex, anal sex, and rape, all at the hands of their own family members, neighbors, and church leaders.


The Amish, who number roughly 342,000 in North America, are dispersed across rural areas of states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, New York, Michigan, and Wisconsin, according to the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College, a leading authority on Amish life. Because of their high birth rate—and because few members ever leave—they’re one of the fastest-growing religious groups in America. Lacking one centralized leader, they live in local congregations or “church districts,” each made up of 20 to 40 families. But the stories I heard were not confined to any one place.

In my reporting, I identified 52 official cases of Amish child sexual assault in seven states over the past two decades. Chillingly, this number doesn’t begin to capture the full picture. Virtually every Amish victim I spoke to—mostly women but also several men—told me they were dissuaded by their family or church leaders from reporting their abuse to police or had been conditioned not to seek outside help (as Sadie put it, she knew she’d just be “mocked or blamed”). Some victims said they were intimidated and threatened with excommunication. Their stories describe a widespread, decentralized cover-up of child sexual abuse by Amish clergy.

“We’re told that it’s not Christlike to report,” explains Esther*, an Amish woman who says she was abused by her brother and a neighbor boy at age 9. “It’s so ingrained. There are so many people who go to church and just endure.”


And yet, as #MeToo has rocked mainstream culture, Amish women have instigated their own female-driven movement. “It’s much slower and less highly visible,” says Linda Crockett, founder and director of Safe Communities, an organization that works to prevent child sexual abuse. “But I have seen a real uptick over the past 10 years in Amish women coming forward. They hear about each other—not on Twitter or Facebook, but there’s a strong communication system within these communities. They draw courage and strength from each other.”

“I get phone calls now....There’s a bunch of Amish who have my cell phone number, and they use it. The men call on behalf of the women,” says Judge Craig Stedman, former district attorney of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania—home to nearly 40,000 Amish—who has served on a task force that connects the Amish to law enforcement and social services. (Although most don’t have cell phones, the Amish might use pay phones or call from “English” neighbors’ homes.)
Some victims, like Sadie, have long since left the church and the Amish way of life, but others, including Esther, are still on the inside, sending out an alarm to the world they’ve been taught to reject. “They want to talk,” explains Crockett, “so they’re turning outside.”







There’s no one reason for the sexual abuse crisis in Amish Country. Instead, there’s a perfect storm of factors: a patriarchal and isolated lifestyle in which victims have little exposure to police, coaches, or anyone else who might help them; an education system that ends at eighth grade and fails to teach children about sex or their bodies; a culture of victim shaming and blaming; little access to the technology that enables communication or broader social awareness; and a religion that prioritizes repentance and forgiveness over actual punishment or rehabilitation. Amish leaders also tend to be wary of law enforcement, preferring to handle disputes on their own.

As a child, Sadie was up before dawn every morning to milk her family’s cows, wearing a pleated head covering and long dress, her shoes and socks a dull black, as her local church rules, or Ordnung, required. “If you didn’t work as hard as you possibly could, you were considered lazy,” she says. She never turned on a light switch or shopped for clothes in a store. She didn’t speak English at home—just Pennsylvania Dutch, the only language she knew until first grade. And she never revealed her abuse to anyone, except a cousin and her father himself, when he asked her, point blank, if her brothers were touching her. (The next time he asked, she lied, fearful he would beat the boys, as he often did.)




But what was happening in her house was a poorly kept secret, according to several of Sadie’s relatives. One of them reported Abner, who has since died, to local church leaders—Sadie remembers her father being “shunned” for six weeks, a common form of discipline in which the accused is socially ostracized and forbidden from eating at the same table as church members. After a shunning, the person confesses in church and the community is strongly compelled to forgive and forget that the “sin” ever happened. In Sadie’s house, she recalls, everything went back to normal—or at least, to how it had been before.
When the police and social workers later showed up on her doorstep, most likely after being tipped off by a local non-Amish person, Abner told authorities that “things which we were speaking about had been brought up and dealt with in the church,” according to a police detective’s notes. He also silenced his daughters. “You say nothing,” Sadie and another relative remember him demanding.






Authorities returned a second time, asking him “specific questions about having sexual intercourse with his daughters,” according to the case file. Now Abner confessed to having “sex with two of them,” insisting “he made love to them at least three times each but didn’t hurt them.” Sadie, who had heard from a cousin that her dad was also abusing her sisters, didn’t dare breathe a word in their defense.
A relative recalls that Sadie’s mother told social workers “to do whatever they could to keep him from going to jail.”


It worked. A grainy VHS recording from 2001 shows a gray-bearded Abner standing with his hat hanging between his hands before a judge, as an attorney explains that he is pleading guilty to a reduced charge of sexual abuse in the first degree, and not incest, because “the family is not desiring that he be incarcerated.” Instead of serving a sentence that might have been five years or more, Abner got probation.

Sadie says her father abused her for five more years. When I reached out to her brothers, two confirmed that Abner had touched Sadie; one of them also said he himself “messed around” with her when they were young but that he did not rape her; the other denied raping her. A third brother did not respond to a request for comment.

Some victims aren’t just silenced—they suffer something worse. Lizzie Hershberger was 14 when she went to work as a “maude,” or hired girl, for a 27-year- old Amish man named Chriss Stutzman and his wife, taking care of their four children and helping Stutzman in the barn. One night after they had milked the cows, he pinned her against a wall and kissed her, then pushed her onto the feed bags. Because it was a frigid winter in Minnesota, Lizzie wore pants under her dress, which Stutzman removed while she tried in vain to fight him off. “Relax,” he whispered into her ear as he raped her. (To this day, that word remains a trigger for Lizzie.)

She didn’t know why she felt pain and blood between her legs. Her parents had never talked to her about sex or even her period. (When Sadie got her period at age 10, while playing outside, she remembers stuffing toilet paper in her underwear and pulling one of her sisters into the outhouse to ask what was going on.)



“Amish victims don’t even know the names of body parts,” confirms Stedman. “To describe a sexual assault without having any fundamental sex education, it presents even more challenges.”

When Lizzie’s abuser finally climbed off her, she was shaking. “I felt broken and used and dirty,” she says. “I was already blaming myself, thinking, _Why didn’t I leave the barn just, you know, a couple of minutes earlier?_” Stutzman would rape Lizzie 25 more times over roughly five months, according to court records and Lizzie’s diary. He raped her in the hayloft, in his house, and on the seat of his buggy. Once, on the way home from church, he pulled the buggy off the road and raped her in the woods. (Through his lawyer, Stutzman declined to comment.) Twice, male witnesses walked in on the abuse, but neither man came to Lizzie’s rescue.

Instead, Stutzman himself, perhaps sensing he’d been caught, confessed.


Like Abner, he was shunned for six weeks. And again, no one reported him to outside authorities, especially since the church had already disciplined and forgiven him. Instead, the community turned on Lizzie for what they saw as a consensual “affair.” She was bullied and mocked, spit on and called a “schlud” and “hoodah” (Pennsylvania Dutch for “slut” and “whore”). “They didn’t ask me how I felt or my side of the story,” she says. Instead, the community gossiped that she had “mental issues.”

It’s common for Amish victims to be viewed by the community as just as guilty as the abuser—as consenting partners committing adultery, even if they’re children. Victims are expected to share responsibility and, after the church has punished their abuser, to quickly forgive. If they fail to do so, they’re the problem.

When the rare case does end up in court, the Amish overwhelmingly support the abusers, who tend to appear with nearly their entire congregations behind them, survivors and law enforcement sources say. This can compound the trauma of speaking out. “We’ve had cases where there’ll be 50 Amish people standing up for the offender and no one speaks for the victim,” says Stedman.


In one 2010 case, young female victims were pressured to forgive their father and brother for abusing them, with one writing a pleading letter to the court (“Hello Sir, I’m Melvin’s sister. Please have mercy. Melvin has made a big change to let go of his committed crime in the last year. I’d like to have our family together.”), recalls former President Judge Dennis Reinaker, who has presided over 30-plus Amish sexual assault cases in Lancaster County. In this case, the victims agreed to cooperate only in exchange for their abusers receiving no jail time. The deal likely helped save the defendants from what could have been 25- to 30-year prison sentences, says Reinaker.

Things got stranger for Lizzie. She remembers her mother telling her that she was being taken to a chiropractic clinic in neighboring South Dakota, and then boarding a bus full of Amish adults for the 300-mile drive to a facility where, for a week, “they watched me all the time,” she says. She received daily deep-tissue massages to “work through my emotional stuff,” she was told.

Lizzie’s is not the only account of an Amish victim being taken to an alleged “mental health” facility staffed by Amish or Mennonites (a similar, although typically less strict, group) that provides Bible-based counseling—and, in many cases, is not state licensed. Several years ago, Esther was sent to a facility for “counseling” after she tried to seek help for another Amish woman who was being sexually assaulted. When she protested, church leaders threatened to excommunicate her permanently.

No one would tell her why she was there. Instead, she was pressured to sign papers that would allow staff to communicate directly with her ministers, she says (she eventually gave in and signed). “From the first evening, they wanted to put me on medication,” she recalls. She said no, since “a lot of these people who get stuck in these facilities come home drugged and no longer have a life. They’re zombies.” (She’s aware of about 30 other Amish sexual assault victims, including two of her sisters, who have been sent away to such facilities.)


Eventually, Esther says she was told that refusing “sleep medication” would only prolong her stay. When she asked about side effects, a house parent told her, “It doesn’t matter— you have to take it.”

So she did. Except the drugs weren’t for sleep at all: According to her medical records, she was prescribed olanzapine, an antipsychotic medication that treats mental illnesses like schizophrenia. Every morning and night, she and other Amish patients lined up to receive their drugs. “We’d have to go and fill a small container with water and then go up to this pedestal; we’d all take turns,” she says. “It was gut-wrenching.”
Esther started having blurry vision and hallucinations. She wanted to escape—but she knew that defying her ministers would get her kicked out of the church. She was ultimately on the drug for two weeks of her five-week stay. Her discharge notes recommended she “be submissive” and that she “challenge unhealthy thoughts toward ministers and others using positive/good thought.”






Esther now says Amish leaders use lockup stays to silence women who are increasingly eager to go public with abuse allegations. “When a victim speaks out,” Esther explains, “they get sent to a facility and drugged so that they shut up.”
Still, as more and more women start to come forward, an ecosystem has also risen up to help them. Two years ago, Lizzie, who has long since left the Amish, and another former Amish woman named Dena Schrock launched Voices of Hope, a group for abused women. Lizzie met Sadie at one such gathering, and they’re now friends.

Others find solidarity in _The Plain People’s Podcast_, a show launched in 2018 that features stories of Amish and Mennonite sexual abuse. Jasper Hoffman, a former Mennonite and the podcast’s cohost, says she receives “hundreds of messages” from people wanting to share stories or get help reporting an abuser.


And especially in Pennsylvania, efforts are being made to reform Amish culture itself. In Lancaster County, the task force Stedman serves on, comprised of police, attorneys, and social service agencies, has been meeting with Amish leaders a few times a year, trying to build trust and communication. (It’s worth noting, however, that not a single woman has been included among the group’s Amish representatives.)

Some Amish have started their own initiatives too. In multiple states, their Conservative Crisis Intervention committees liaise with local authorities on reporting and prosecuting sexual assault cases. One Lancaster County member, Amos Stoltzfoos, told me that “a lot of things have changed and forced us to comply and not allow things to be swept under the rug, like they had at one point.” (Stricter mandatory reporting requirements were implemented in Pennsylvania in 2014 in the aftermath of the high-profile Jerry Sandusky child abuse case, for one.)

Now, Stoltzfoos says, the Lancaster County Amish, at least, “aren’t interested in hiding things” and have “adapted and recognized that we need to change with some of the education that we give to the parents and the children.” He says they’ve also tried to understand the lasting trauma that can make quick forgiveness difficult for victims: “Our community does really care....It just takes time.”






In the summer of 2018, Lizzie sought her own justice by reporting her rapes to police, something she never felt she could do before. To her surprise, charges were brought against Stutzman, who was by then a deacon in the church. He pleaded guilty to third degree criminal sexual conduct, and at his sentencing hearing, the room was filled with his Amish supporters. But Lizzie was also surrounded by supporters, including Sadie, who had driven two hours to be there. Stutzman was ultimately sentenced to 45 days in jail and 10 years’ probation, based on guidelines in place in 1988, the year before the assaults.
As for Sadie, she’s now a 32-year-old mother of five living in the Midwest. In 2013, she and her husband finally left the Amish church. For now, she’s focused on healing, not pressing charges. She still speaks with her brothers, one of whom has apologized “many times,” she says. She knows it sounds “weird,” but she even visits them occasionally.

Sadie has tried to work through her trauma in couples therapy with her husband. And she’d still like to get her own Christian therapist. She’s pretty sure she’ll never completely trust any man around her kids.

There’s been plenty of anger to deal with. She used to “fly off the handle,” she says. But now, it feels good to finally be letting it all out.


_*Name has been changed.
These photos are used for illustrative purposes only.
Additional research by Darya Marchenkova and Hannah Beckler. Additional support provided by Investigative Reporters and Editors.

Type Investigations is an award-winning nonprofit newsroom that works with independent reporters to investigate topics ranging from gender issues to criminal justice to human rights._
SARAH MCCLURESarah McClure is an investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker in Los Angeles.


----------



## CurlyNiquee (Sep 28, 2020)

After reading the above article, I am absolutely horrified. I often shop at an Amish store/Bake Shoppee in town ...I will never be able to look at them the same again.


----------



## blessedandfavoured (Sep 28, 2020)

Thanks for pasting the article @CurlyNiquee.  I didn't think to do that - sorry for any inconvenience.


----------



## naturalgyrl5199 (Sep 28, 2020)

We have an Amish bakery near here. I'd been wanting to go because I got a sample from the bakery that knocked my socks off. I won't go.


----------



## Keen (Sep 28, 2020)

naturalgyrl5199 said:


> Right...the headline ignored this. The brothers must have some mental issues as well. All 4 of them raping this girl all at once.
> 
> Now...where are the parents? The Amish community might need to be investigated. I bet that prosecutor is Amish or related to/married to someone in that community.


Either mental illness or it’s common in the community.


----------



## naturalgyrl5199 (Sep 28, 2020)

Keen said:


> Either mental illness or it’s common in the community.


Yeah I read the article above. Seems it IS the norm...I'm shook.


----------



## Ganjababy (Sep 29, 2020)

they probably learned it from their father. We are not getting the full story. Dysfunction does not start with the children. It continues with them. 





naturalgyrl5199 said:


> Right...the headline ignored this. The brothers must have some mental issues as well. All 4 of them raping this girl all at once.
> 
> Now...where are the parents? The Amish community might need to be investigated. I bet that prosecutor is Amish or related to/married to someone in that community.


----------



## Ganjababy (Sep 29, 2020)

This sentencing is white privilege...


----------



## kimpaur (Sep 29, 2020)

CurlyNiquee said:


> After reading the above article, I am absolutely horrified. I often shop at an Amish store/Bake Shoppee in town ...I will never be able to look at them the same again.


That’s the article I was referencing in my posts

Seems like anytime there are unconventional/extreme ways of life(be it religion or anything else), you can guarantee women are getting the short end of the stick.


----------



## Newhottie (Nov 11, 2020)

Don’t know why I read this. Absolutely disgusting and I hope they all burn


----------



## Maracujá (Nov 13, 2020)

Have any of you ladies ever heard of any society in the world, where incest/rape doesn't occur?


----------



## Kookookiwi (Nov 17, 2020)

Chicoro said:


> The brothers...
> 
> View attachment 463569


Oh my goodness you can feel the evil through the screen!!!! These two are vile, vile, VILE.

I cannot imagine what else that poor girl had and will go through.


----------



## Lita (Nov 22, 2020)

That poor child & her baby..I wonder if the baby have any deformities..This is disgraceful..The judge should have sent them to jail & it would send a message to the rest of them..Did they give her mental/emotional help? So many questions


----------



## RUBY (Dec 9, 2020)

Thinking of how insular that community it, I'm not surprised. They have to be inbred in some level as it is. There is no genetic diversity and I wouldn't be surprised if this abuse and incest wasn't in fact encouraged early on in some way to keep their numbers up. How in the hell are not more of them dying from genetic diseases alone? 

The Amish are the typical poster children for white christian privilege. 

If black people tried to pull the same stunt by having some reclusive religious community  watch it get broken up in 3.2.1 periodt. They would storm the compound and break it up FAST.


----------



## naturalgyrl5199 (Dec 14, 2020)

RUBY said:


> Thinking of how insular that community it, I'm not surprised. They have to be inbred in some level as it is. There is no genetic diversity and I wouldn't be surprised if this abuse and incest wasn't in fact encouraged early on in some way to keep their numbers up. How in the hell are not more of them dying from genetic diseases alone?
> 
> The Amish are the typical poster children for white christian privilege.
> 
> If black people tried to pull the same stunt by having some reclusive religious community  watch it get broken up in 3.2.1 periodt. They would storm the compound and break it up FAST.


Yep---Black people HAVE had these communities and unfortunately they have had problems. There was one Egypt-centered religious one in Georgia at one point. However, these mimic your classic cults and all their problems including the leader(s) raping and molesting minors. Of course, when the FBI gets involved, they break it up.

They don't have religious protections/freedoms because they are novel/new and often don't claim more well-known religious sects or doctrine.

I don't think the Amish community sanctions this in the level that mormon offshoot did---but I think it happens a lot in secret due to them being insular, and its simply hidden because they prefer to be self-governing. They don't see levels to sin. I know they may report a murderer but this kind of stuff isn't accepted as "being okay" but they just punish, shun, ex-communicate...even these acts which outside their community are punishable  by law. As far as white privilege they don't even see themselves as "white Americans"....They actually have an intact distinguishable language and refer to white Americans as "The English" as their language has German/Deutsch roots....


----------



## bzb1990 (Dec 14, 2020)

naturalgyrl5199 said:


> Right...the headline ignored this. The brothers must have some mental issues as well. All 4 of them raping this girl all at once.
> 
> Now...where are the parents? The Amish community might need to be investigated. I bet that prosecutor is Amish or related to/married to someone in that community.


Not necessarily,  criminal attorneys often have to defend the indefensible, 
it's just the way the system has to be.

I'm sure a lot of them have no conscience/second thoughts relating to the job, from necessity over time.
Or maybe neurologically many are psychopaths (not in an evil or criminal way like Hollywood says, I mean the neurology itself 
is naturally that way, like how my neurology is by definition
autistic) and succeed more easily in these fields.


----------



## naturalgyrl5199 (Dec 14, 2020)

After my last comment I had to check some things because that post/comment was based on what little I already knew of the Amish.

Interestingly, they DO only marry within their community so defects are common. They have also higher risks of genetic conditions that tend to affect German/White people (Maple Syrup urine disease for example) and have Amish-centered research and treatment available. There is a clinic for kids with special needs. They have longer lifespans overall due to their diet, regular exercise, active lifestyle. They don't do genetic testing and are big proponents for participating in large scale research at major universities (I can verify this as I've seen the studies) to contribute something meaningful to science--Alzheimer's and Parkinson's research for example.
I thought it was interesting.


----------



## bzb1990 (Dec 14, 2020)

naturalgyrl5199 said:


> After my last comment I had to check some things because that post/comment was based on what little I already knew of the Amish.
> 
> Interestingly, they DO only marry within their community so defects are common. They have also higher risks of genetic conditions that tend to affect German/White people (Maple Syrup urine disease for example) and have Amish-centered research and treatment available. There is a clinic for kids with special needs. They have longer lifespans overall due to their diet, regular exercise, active lifestyle. They don't do genetic testing and are big proponents for participating in large scale research at major universities (I can verify this as I've seen the studies) to contribute something meaningful to science--Alzheimer's and Parkinson's research for example.
> I thought it was interesting.


That IS interesting. Genetic testing is free in America, I'm assuming?

If not, that might be why too.



Spoiler



I know from experience that genetic 'defects' (cruel way of putting it imo) aren't necessarily from 'in-breeding' or only marrying within the community. As my kids both have genetic conditions, one of them also severely disabled from an unresearched chromosomal abnormality (they said they have no record of this at all so far, apart from only us 2, me and him, in the world), passed on from me, and we have no limits in our family and ancestry, on marriage.

We have recent ancestry from Arab tribes (currently called 'Saudi Arabia' after the british balfour declaration imposed against the actual Arab wishes- of course-- beginning of the end), Indians,
Sudani. There's no limit there. XH from another Arab tribe (although also from what is currently called Saudi Arabia), India,
Iran. We both have extensive family trees recorded and researched over the generations.
I just wanted to say that because I don't want special needs and genetic diseases to be linked to such abhorrent type of people like these brothers, and given an implication like that.

I love your profile picture btw


----------



## naturalgyrl5199 (Dec 14, 2020)

bzb1990 said:


> That IS interesting. Genetic testing is free in America, I'm assuming?
> 
> If not, that might be why too.
> 
> ...


Not really free or even readily available. Insurance only wants to pay for it if it will reduce the health risk of an adverse outcome later on, or there is some medical reason and its requested by a doctor. For example, I had my youngest child when I was 37, so by default, being over 35 automatically qualifies me for genetic testing if I choose to opt in. I did, and with that, I knew I was carrying a girl when I was only 11 weeks pregnant. With my first I was 33 and it was not offered....had she had some medical issue caught later during a routine scan of my pregnancy, we would have been offered a test. When my oldest was born at 23 weeks, genetic testing was done as this is routine for micropreemies to see if there are any other possible medical issues to treat. Then some minor routine genetic tests (like sickle cell, legislated by FL law) are done. We learned in the regular scan she had sickle cell trait....but when she got genetic tests a little later, she was negative for anything else. She had some eye abnormalities later on which triggered a genetic test, and she has a gene for an eye abnormality on her dad's side. I suspect its legit bc several on that side have had corneal replacement and her dad has to get one eventually we learned. Right now her eyes are fine. The youngest got a routine genetic test for sickle cell and she has the trait as well. That's a long answer but they aren't routinely given.

Thats likely to prevent abortion requests....if I am to believe the high risk doctor I saw when I was carrying my oldest and I opted out of the genetic test for Downs Syndrome...I was offered a test for both because I was seeing a high risk doctor anyway.

This amish population would be offered it routinely because of known genetic issues in that group. But they don't believe in insurance either.


----------



## bzb1990 (Dec 14, 2020)

naturalgyrl5199 said:


> Not really free or even readily available. Insurance only wants to pay for it if it will reduce the health risk of an adverse outcome later on, or there is some medical reason and its requested by a doctor. For example, I had my youngest child when I was 37, so by default, being over 35 automatically qualifies me for genetic testing if I choose to opt in. I did, and with that, I knew I was carrying a girl when I was only 11 weeks pregnant. With my first I was 33 and it was not offered....had she had some medical issue caught later during a routine scan of my pregnancy, we would have been offered a test. When my oldest was born at 23 weeks, genetic testing was done as this is routine for micropreemies to see if there are any other possible medical issues to treat. Then some minor routine genetic tests (like sickle cell, legislated by FL law) are done. We learned in the regular scan she had sickle cell trait....but when she got genetic tests a little later, she was negative for anything else. She had some eye abnormalities later on which triggered a genetic test, and she has a gene for an eye abnormality on her dad's side. I suspect its legit bc several on that side have had corneal replacement and her dad has to get one eventually we learned. Right now her eyes are fine. The youngest got a routine genetic test for sickle cell and she has the trait as well. That's a long answer but they aren't routinely given.
> 
> Thats likely to prevent abortion requests....if I am to believe the high risk doctor I saw when I was carrying my oldest and I opted out of the genetic test for Downs Syndrome...I was offered a test for both because I was seeing a high risk doctor anyway.
> 
> This amish population would be offered it routinely because of known genetic issues in that group. But they don't believe in insurance either.


Would they be able to afford insurance? I'm ignorant on the topic but I presume it is cost-prohibitive for them?


----------



## naturalgyrl5199 (Dec 15, 2020)

bzb1990 said:


> Would they be able to afford insurance? I'm ignorant on the topic but I presume it is cost-prohibitive for them?


Maybe not. But they cite "religious reasons" for their opposition to it either way. I think the Amish can raise any resources and funds they want if compelled to and the need arose.


----------



## snoop (Dec 24, 2020)

bzb1990 said:


> Would they be able to afford insurance? I'm ignorant on the topic but I presume it is cost-prohibitive for them?



I watched a documentary on them a while back and it said that they are one of the wealthiest groups in America.  I was shocked.  I am not sure if this includes all orders or just the Old Order Amish.

I was trying to find something a bit more substantial because I don't remember the name of the documentary, but I did come across this article.


----------



## bzb1990 (Dec 24, 2020)

snoop said:


> I watched a documentary on them a while back and it said that they are one of the wealthiest groups in America.  I was shocked.  I am not sure if this includes all orders or just the Old Order Amish.
> 
> I was trying to find something a bit more substantial because I don't remember the name of the documentary, but I did come across this article.



I see!


----------

