Original subtitles

To the outside world, the Amish seem like a kind, loving,

generous, hardworking community

who basically wouldn’t hurt a fly.

But that whole picture is pretty much a lie.

Woman: There’s no family within these communities

that’s not incurring some sort of abuse... physical abuse,

psychological abuse, emotional abuse, sexual.

There are more incidents of abuse like this

within the Plain community than the regular community.

The odds of an Amish woman getting raped by a guy on the street are almost zero,

but within their own communities?

It’s one out of every six on a good day.

It’s a predator’s paradise.

When I was six, I had an older sibling

start to molest me.

I remember not being safe in my room

from my own fucking brother.

Woman: Most Amish communities view going to the police

as a greater sin than the rape itself.

The unforgivable sin ironically is not raping children.

It’s talking about being raped.

It’s so risky reporting. It can be life-threatening.

It’s not that it’s awful that he’s a rapist.

It’s that it’s awful that I am unforgiving and reported it.

The part that I will never, ever, ever forget

was busloads of Greyhound of Amish coming, not just from our area,

but they were coming from Pennsylvania.

The district attorney said that the state of Wisconsin

is going to press charges on my behalf.

It’s completely out of my hands.

The support was solely for the brothers

that perpetrated these egregious sexual assaults.

We can’t just sit here and give them a free pass

just because they’re Amish.

Woman: Amish and Mennonites are what we consider Plain communities.

Not conforming to the world, being separate from the world,

and having a very plain lifestyle.

They purposely separate themselves

from the outside world through dress, through language.

They speak Pennsylvania Dutch.

They came to this country in general,

in the late 1600s and early 1700s

because they were facing religious persecution throughout Europe.

They have very strong religious beliefs.

They basically carved out a different way of existing

from the rest of us that has been maintained

for the hundreds of years that they’ve been here.

And they’ve been very rigid in maintaining those practices.

Woman: Plain living is intertwined with the sense of duty to work.

You’re not allowed to have free time.

Everything is really designed to keep you busy,

to keep you away from a wandering mind,

and to be in service of your church,

to be in service of the family, and to be in service of God.

Woman: I was born to Old Order Amish parents.

I grew up in different Amish and Mennonite communities.

We typically worked in the garden

and weeded the garden or hoed or something

before the sun got too hot.

Woman: We had our own garden and chickens, goats... all that kind of stuff.

We kind of lived on a farm, so in the mornings

we’d go out and work in the garden

for several hours before we did our homeschooling.

Woman: Who doesn’t want their child to grow up working on a farm

and around animals and having three meals a day that are homemade?

Woman: I learned how to cook, clean, sew, bake garden.

But here’s the thing.

I could have done all of those things

without going through the years of trauma.

I literally could have learned all of those things

without being put in that position as a child

to be sexually assaulted.

Jasper: It’s just this culture

that is so repressed and so secretive,

no matter how much pain that you’re in,

no matter how much abuse is happening,

you’re taught that the outside world is far worse.

Woman: The church wields a large amount of power and control.

Under the church, you would have the men,

and under that would be the women,

and under that would be the children.

And typically the wives only have as much voice

as their husbands allow them to have.

They have generally little to no voice in the church.

Jasper: You’re there to provide meals

and to keep your husband happy and to provide children.

It’s even ingrained into the theology that women are to be submissive

not only in the church, but also in the bed.

In Plain communities, we teach that men are almost animalistic

in the way that they view women and sex.

And it’s a need, right? It’s described as men need sex.

You hear how normalized that is

when children are raped by family members.

They’re told, "Well, he needed to have sex with somebody."

And it’s this objectification,

not only of women, but of children.

Man: It’s something that has been tolerated

within the Amish community for a long time,

not addressed as being inappropriate,

and that’s part of why it’s such a difficult part

of the fabric of their community to deal with

because they haven’t viewed it as the problem

that everyone else knows it to be.

So this is "The Girl..." "To a Girl of Eleven."

This is sex education for an 11 year old, I guess.

"This is a sex surge.

Once it is awakened and active in a young boy

at the age of puberty and beyond,

can become a powerful driving force within him.

Every decent girl will do her best

to help him and not make it harder for him.

Even in your own home, if you have brothers in their teens,

you should be mindful of this.

Do not appear in their presence

with nightclothes that are scanty.

Be modest about climbing up ladders.

Be sure you’re dress stays closed in front.

And when you sleep, either be sure your door is closed

or you are properly clothed and or covered.

Your brother, innocently coming upon you and seeing your partly uncovered body,

may suddenly have strong sexual desires aroused within him.

His intentions were not bad,

but he suddenly finds himself the victim of your carelessness

and the lust of his own body.

Cherish your purity,

pray fervently, and guard it well.

God will bless you and help you as you do so."

You are absolutely sexualized as an 11-year-old child.

Let me tell you about my community.

So they were really, really, really conservative.

They didn’t even use battery lights on the buggies.

They used oil lanterns on the buggies.

When you get to be a certain age,

your parents decide you were too old to play with toys.

From then on you’re expected to work,

make sure the horse gets fed,

or if you live on a dairy farm, you still have to milk the cows.

And if they catch you not working,

you’re considered lazy.

You might get spankings because you’re required

to be working unless it’s Sunday.

And even on Sundays,

women still have to cook the food

and do all that stuff.

In each community that I lived in there was child sexual assaults.

My first perpetrator was my biological father.

I was five.

I’ve been doing forensic interviews

for more than 21 years.

It’s not ever easy

for any child to talk about what they’ve experienced

in the realm of child abuse.

Someone you know, love, and trust your entire life

can harm you and hurt you in this way.

It affects every relationship in the future.

Being willing to trust another person,

to be in a relationship or friends with another person, right?

Because what they knew was sacred to them was violated.

Mary: I was five when he died.

I don’t remember him ever apologizing.

What I do remember is they had a huge, huge funeral.

You can’t begin to reconcile that

when your bad person is gone

and everybody around you is mourning that person

and talking about that person, what a good person they were.

But I had told my mom about it.

And that’s when she told me the first time what forgiveness is,

which means you don’t talk about it.

You don’t ever bring it up.

He’s sorry and you have to forgive him.

That burden of forgiving and turning a blind eye,

that falls on the shoulders of the victim.

And that’s what’s happening in the Plain communities,

they’re forcing their victims

to be the gatekeepers of all these secrets.

It’s about saying, "Hey, evil can live and breathe among us.

It can rape our children, and forgiveness will just wipe it all out."

Mary: In 1990, we had moved to another community.

This is where I learned about corn husking by hand.

I also learned that I wasn’t safe anywhere.

I started going to school.

I was afraid to go to the outhouse in school

because people would get raped in the outhouse at school.

And at that point in time, my cousin began sexually assaulting me.

And then his brother also began assaulting me,

and his sisters would lock me in a room

so that he could climb in the window and rape me.

And they would laugh when I screamed.

Nobody gave a fuck.

Part of me has to ask, like,

how many of those girls were victims too?

Misty: For me, I was not born into the Amish.

My mom and my stepdad, they ordered several books on the Amish.

You know, the Amish dress like this, they talk like this. They believe this and that.

All of a sudden, one day we just started dressing Amish,

and it was right after my 10th birthday.

I remember we went to the dumpster. We threw away the TV.

We threw away any modern appliances that we had.

We moved to Northern Washington

and we pretty much dropped off the map.

And that’s pretty much how I grew up from the age of 11 to almost 19,

when I went to live with the Amish.

Among the Amish, it’s very common

to have a teenage girl come in and help you

if you can’t manage your own household, if you’re sick,

or if you’ve just had a baby, or anything like that.

And I started living at the bishop’s house.

By at that time, they had seven children under the age of 12.

One day I was told by a friend, "Be careful of the bishop.

He’s not quite right."

It was like one in the morning,

and I felt him shaking me awake,

and he was standing there with the baby and he said,

you know, "Can you watch the baby?"

And he hands me the baby and he grabs my breast,

and I’m just, "What do I do?"

There’s nothing you can do about it.

From the first week I moved in with a bishop,

he started molesting me.

One day I was going down to the basement.

I saw the bishop with his daughter in the basement.

The front of her dress was unpinned,

and he was frantically trying to pin her dress.

And her face was red. His face was red.

He got flustered and ran out of the basement.

There’s no reason for a dad to be pinning up

his Amish daughter’s dress.

She was 12 years old.

She knew how to pin her own dress.

I was in a state of shock.

It was a devastating to finally come in and realize,

yes, the bishop of my church is molesting the children.

Even if I went to the rest of the church

and I said, "I saw him with his daughter"...

what are they going to do?

They weren’t gonna do anything.

Going to the police? It wasn’t even an option.

The Amish view going to the police as a greater sin than rape itself,

because in doing so,

you are handing over an Amish brother or sister to the evil outside.

You are putting their soul at risk.

You are endangering them of going to hell.

But if I just ignored it, I was an accomplice.

Hinton: When there’s a problem, who do you go to?

As a woman, who do you go to? Well, you have to go to the men.

Well, when the men are the ones doing the abusing, who do you go to?

If women are told by male members of the community

not to have any interaction with law enforcement,

then generally they won’t.

It takes a very courageous person

to go against that community

because of what the potential ramifications are to someone.

There was this lady that lived on the property

and she had become my friend sort of.

She lived down the ways a little bit.

She wasn’t Amish.

And she was the only other person I knew

that I could possibly maybe trust.

You know, I just told her what happened because I was so scared,

And, you know, she’s like, "You gotta go to the police."

First they had me write out a report,

and then they told me that "We need evidence

and there’s not much we can do."

There’s no point in going to the police.

They’re not going to help

because they view the Amish as this religion

that can govern themselves, that punish people how they see fit.

I mean, there is no help for us.

I took my head covering off,

I threw it on the floor and I stomped on it,

and I said, "I’m leaving. I’m leaving the Amish."

Mary: We moved into a new house.

I would have been around eight or nine years old.

Even in this new house, I wasn’t safe.

I can still see the building.

This is where I remember

my own brother being in the outhouse

and assaulting me in the outhouse.

I finally had my own room.

This is where I remember not being safe in my room

from my own fucking brother.

If I made it to my room before he caught me

and got the door locked,

he would take the door off by the hinges.

I remember him grabbing me.

And then I remember being over here

and instantly splitting into two people,

like I wasn’t even there.

And when I came back,

the door was closing and he was gone.

I told my mother over and over and over

that these things were happening to me.

I begged her, I begged her.

"Don’t leave me home alone with my brothers."

I fucking begged her.

She did it anyways.

I don’t understand how you can be parent

and sit there and blame these children

for being sexually assaulted.

I knew before I left of at least three cases,

four sisters, two perpetrators, their brothers.

One girl impregnated by her rapist brother.

One girl I listened to confess in church

at the age of 17 that she committed a gross sin

because she "enticed," and I quote...

Hear that. Hear that.

She "enticed" her brother to rape her.

She was a minor. He was and adult.

He was in his mid-twenties.

And this is all when I was still Amish.

So do they know? Yes, they know.

Well, my childhood memories, a lot of them,

I have some happy ones.

I have some that aren’t so happy.

And at one time, I couldn’t even think

about my childhood without thinking

of those difficult memories.

Rebekah: My father moved us around all over the country.

So I lived in Michigan and North Carolina.

We had no indoor plumbing, or electric,

or anything like that.

Rebekah: You know, no electronics,

TV, that sort of thing.

My dad felt like we didn’t even really need

an eighth grade education.

Once we learned to read and write,

that was good enough.

So I thought it would be so cool to look at these pictures.

I remember being in the basement, I think,

in one of these shadowy rooms where it was all dark.

I was sexually abused.

It started when I was really, really young.

My earliest memory is when I was three years old,

but it’s very hazy.

I have memories of trying to run away from someone,

being grabbed, and I don’t even know who it is.

What I have better memories of is being sexually abused

when I was a little older several times

by older kids in the community that we lived in

and, um, you know, a family member.

I just thought I did the wrong thing.

If I was sexually abused, well, I wasn’t modest enough.

If I got beaten, well, I didn’t listen enough.

It was always my fault if something bad happened to me.

The Amish and Mennonites, their entire religion

is rooted in discipline and control,

and in order to gain that,

there needs to be corporal and physical punishment.

You are supposed to start physically disciplining your children

at the age of three months old.

It is so heavily promoted

to physically break the will of a child.

If you look at it that way, their entire religion is rooted in abuse.

Meg: You were really little.

Anna: Yeah, you were two and a half.

Meg: That was around the time that your will was broken.

Well, he would try to get them to say please or thank you.

Meg: I think for Becca, it was "please."

And she wasn’t talking very much,

so I thought that wasn’t fair

because I didn’t think she knew how to say "please."

And then I... I remember how bad I felt changing your diaper.

The marks just lasted forever.

Each time one of my siblings would turn two years old,

it would always start on a morning when Dad didn’t have to go to work.

One of my parents would tell the two year old,

like, "Clap your hands," or just give them a simple command.

They hadn’t even usually done anything wrong.

And then if the two year old just didn’t do it,

they would get a couple swats, and then it would escalate.

Then the two year old would be kind of in shock,

like, "What just happened?"

I remember one time looking at the time

and I had gone on for four hours.

I had a younger brother who would just always cry out,

and so that would lead to more beating

and more... more and more and more beating.

And on this one particular morning,

my dad started laughing and saying,

"I can do this all day long. I’ve got all day.

I’m going to tie you up, and I got all day."

And my brother was so little.

I think he was maybe four years old probably at that time. Maybe five.

We were expected to take a beating without crying,

being hit and usually on, you know, bare skin without clothes on.

I guess that inflicted more pain.

My dad would usually use a paddle that he had made

out of a really thick board.

In communities where abuse is rampant,

the norms start to shift.

Things become normalized that that shouldn’t be normalized.

Farrell: That culture of Amish, Mennonite, and Plain

have corporal punishment.

Children grow up learning that it’s okay.

And in my personal experience with the children

from the Amish community that I’ve interviewed,

there’s been a real lack

of awareness and understanding

that what they’re experiencing is wrong.

Mary: There’s a perceived image of the Amish.

They’re, non-violent, they’re forgiving, they’re all these other things.

And then you have these horror stories,

these tortures that people go through as children.

It doesn’t make sense.

We always knew that if we would look at our father the wrong way

or say the wrong thing, then we would get a beating.

Or if we even laughed too much.

He would always use Bible verses to justify that.

My dad always used scripture as a weapon,

and there’s scriptures in the Bible about how,

you know, you should discipline your children

and train them up to be, you know, men and women of God.

He would always just tell me,

"Well, see here what it says in Proverbs.

It says you’re not going to kill a child by spanking it.

It’s the law. The Lord commands it."

He would just tell me that over and over and over

to try to convince me that he wasn’t doing something wrong.

And it just... But it always felt wrong.

I think it really just makes me feel angry,

but I’m trying not to turn out like him, so...

As a girl and as a young adult, that was difficult

that my mom just let things happen to my siblings

and not be a strong person, I guess,

or be a protective mother.

I have a lot of memories of my mom beating me.

She would take my clothes off and beat me.

She was supposed to be there to protect me,

but I do feel like she never really tried.

Farrell: Children in the Amish community

don’t feel like they have a voice.

They’re fearful.

They fear for other siblings.

The bullying, the verbal abuse, the physical abuse,

and the lack of response silences children.

The moms see no way out either.

This is the only life they know.

I know of cases where wives have appealed to church leadership

about their abusive husbands

who were, you know, physically harming their children,

and were told by the church leadership,

"Well, nobody’s landed in the emergency room,

so you just need to be more submissive.

You need to be a better wife.

You need to make him happier, and everything will be fine."

And that shows a gross lack of understanding

about the nature and patterns of abuse

and how extremely harmful it is to children,

creating huge, massive harm

that can last for many, many years,

maybe their whole entire life.

Mary: Young Amish women and girls,

it’s very common for them to be married at 19, 20, 21.

If you get to be a woman and you’re 21 years old and you’re not married,

in most communities, you’re considered to be an old maid.

We were supposed to be good,

subservient, submissive Amish women.

Our whole purpose in life is to keep a good house,

work hard, you know, and work harder,

and bear children.

There’s always the teaching that you grow up to marry some guy,

you have babies, and you care for the home.

I remember seeing Eli, and he asked me on a date.

And I was sort of scared because, I mean,

I was 16 and he was turning 26.

But I felt sort of flattered, you know, that he would want to date a 16-year-old.

And at 26, he would normally have been married

and have several children already, you know?

So it was a little unusual.

The week I turned 18 is when we got married.

Yeah, I’m young, but that’s how I was raised.

There’s really no other option for a woman.

Eli, my husband, was sort of troubled

because his dad wasn’t nice to him.

His parents were very violent toward each other.

He grew up seeing his mom grab the kitchen knife

and run after her husband,

and just things like that and yelling and screaming.

I felt sad for him, and I wanted to let him know

that I would be his friend.

And he would say, "I’m never going to mistreat my wife."

You know, and I believed him, which was a mistake.

Um, it was really hard because I had no, um,

no one told me.

I didn’t know anything about sex.

He just grabbed me,

and I was like, "What are you doing?"

He’s like, "I own you,

and I want to have sex now," you know?

It was just that... it was just...

He had no patience with trying to help me understand or...

I got pregnant immediately.

It was like nine months to the day.

I wanted to have my baby in the hospital.

It just seemed a safer place to be,

and he had agreed to do that.

And then at the last minute he said,

"You’re gonna have the baby at home.

I found a midwife."

When Meg was born,

I really started bleeding,

and finally it all calmed down.

And they waited a couple hours,

and it seemed like I was okay, so they went home.

And as soon as they left, he just...

He just came in and just... he just ripped away the bloody bands...

I tried to beg, but I was so exhausted, I couldn’t even move.

I was so scared, but I never told anybody how scared it was.

Hinton: Fear dominates us.

When we’re afraid, everything in our world changes.

People who aren’t inside of that home,

people who don’t understand the mind of an abuser,

people who don’t understand violence

and perversion and those sorts of things,

they look at the woman and say,

"If you’re so scared,

why do you keep going back to this man?"

There is no divorces or leaving an Amish or Mennonite.

It was just never done,

especially as we had children.

This is when Becca was born.

You know, she was 12 years younger than me,

and I just thought she was a sickly little girl

because she would just vomit so easily.

She shared a room with me,

and I didn’t know why my sister was vomiting every night.

I remember when we used to share a room in North Carolina, and I would wet the bed.

Meg: Yeah.

And I just didn’t know why you would wake up screaming,

and you would throw up sometimes too.

Anna: You would tell me, right, the next day, and then...

Meg: Yeah, I would always told you when she threw up and when she wet the bed.

Rebekah: I don’t know if you know about this, but I have...

Ever since I was six, I’ve had this dream

where rats are crawling all over me.

I started having these dreams

right after a family member molested me.

When I was six, my older brother started to molest me.

He would touch me here and there without anyone noticing

and eventually start asking me to come to his bedroom.

I remember the very first time.

He just sat me on the bed and then he started touching me.

He came in and put his hand under my shirt

and just started to grope my breasts and stuff.

And then he would just be like,

"You’re going to get in trouble if you tell anybody."

I felt a lot of shame around it.

And when he would tell me to come and meet him in his room,

I felt like I had to, but I felt like it wasn’t okay.

And I was ashamed of it because I thought

it was somehow my fault at the time.

I would try to stay away from him,

but even when we were around family gatherings and he’d be sitting by me,

he would reach over and touch me over my clothes.

But I guess no one ever noticed.

In Plain churches, historically that has always

been a male-run church.

The men are the pastors, the men are the leaders,

the men are the Sunday school teachers.

The men who are on the church-run school board for the church school.

It’s very definitely the men running it.

The church is in charge of everything and you have to obey the church.

Each Amish church has its own list of rules.

It’s called the Ordnung, and it’s a list of everything in your Amish life,

all the way down to your underwear.

In the Amish community, there are different classes.

The highest class is the bishop.

And then you will have the other church leadership,

other prominent families within the church.

The more children you have, the more status you have.

If you could marry into the bishop’s family,

it gives you a higher status.

Each church has its own individual bishop,

and a church usually consists of maybe 15 to 20 families

depending on how many children are in the church.

So they’re male-centered communities.

They hold a strong view

that women should never have authority over a male.

The theology says the woman’s place is in the home.

If you’re an Amish woman

and you have any kind of voice, that’s bad.

Like, if you want something to be said,

you would go ask your husband or your father,

and then they would probably speak for you

or tell you exactly how you’re allowed to say that.

It’s fucked up brain-washing mind control bullshit.

That’s what it really is.

If you try and speak out against these things

happening in Amish communities, you will be silenced.

The repercussions oftentimes include physical abuse,

shaming, separation, or being sent away.

They can be sent to these Amish

and Mennonite psych facilities

in order to silence them.

Reinaker: There are some horrific examples

of where the female victim against her will

was removed from her home and placed in facility.

She was administered drugs as part of the process.

I mean, just things that are unimaginable,

and the Amish community has been sending people to them.

They just sort of operate within their own realm

and do whatever they deem is appropriate.

And what they’re passing off as treatment

for these individuals does not at all comply

with what any true professional in that environment

would say is necessary.

Because these facilities are unlicensed and unregulated,

many times children and the vulnerable

are being extremely harmed in these facilities

and it doesn’t get found out.

Woman: I was raised horse-and-buggy Mennonite.

As a very, very conservative Mennonite.

Four years ago, at the age of 21, I left,

and it was the best decision I ever made.

The sexual abuse, I remember some of it.

I don’t remember a whole lot.

I just remember certain ages when it started,

like, three, and then age six.

When I came out with the abuse,

my family told other people that I’m schizophrenic

so no one would believe me.

They would call me crazy,

mentally damaged, psycho,

and those are the words they use to describe anyone

that’s abused sexually in those communities.

They just looked at me and saw a problem.

Like, I was acting out.

I wasn’t dealing with my emotions

because I couldn’t deal with them.

I didn’t know how to deal with them.

How do you deal with something like that?

And that’s when I started landing in mental hospitals.

Most of my young adult life

I was in and out of mental hospitals.

And that was probably the most traumatic part

of any of this trauma.

If somebody is viewed as a problem

or causing trouble in the community or the church,

the solution is to pack them up, ship them out.

Often it’s out of state.

Even children are being sent across state lines

to these facilities without the proper paperwork

and the proper supervision.

Jasper: They’ll oftentimes take you in the middle of the night.

No warning, nothing.

And they will admit you and you can’t leave.

Misty: We were usually locked inside, medicated.

A lot of times you won’t be let out until you seem compliant,

until you seem like you’ve come to your senses.

Coming to your senses is agreeing to forgive

and be quiet about whatever happened to you.

I’ve heard firsthand accounts from survivors

who were sent to some of these facilities

who were horrifically abused.

Some were sexually assaulted by the so-called counselor.

Some were threatened with the removal of food

if they didn’t cooperate.

Others were denied appropriate medical care.

Annie: I was 18 years old,

and by that time I was extremely depressed.

I felt no hope or joy.

Jasper: When you think about women being locked away

and being told that it’s because they’re hysterical,

you think of the 1950s.

You don’t think that this is happening

in the state of Pennsylvania

at the nice beautiful white house on the hill.

But it is.

Rebekah: He was my older brother.

I wanted so badly to have that love and protection

that an older brother is supposed to give,

but he was just... He was this monster.

When I was 18, my brother actually confessed to me

that he was sexually abusing her.

And he told me that he raped her,

and he was crying, and he seemed to feel really bad about it.

I went to my parents, told them.

My older sister came and got me and woke me up and took me into the living room.

And my mom and dad were sitting on the couch, and they looked so angry.

And the first words out of my mom’s mouth were,

"Well, why did you do that?"

And so she blamed me for my older sibling molesting me.

She was just so angry, and she just kept asking me,

"Why did you let that happen?"

And it hurt, because I was like, "What do you mean?"

Because I didn’t even understand at the time what was happening to me.

And I didn’t process that until I was a teenager.

I was just so scared that they were going to beat me when they talked to me.

But my mom just told me, like, "That’s never okay.

You shouldn’t have let that happen," and then sent me back to bed.

That was it.

Even after my older sibling confessed to my parents about it,

it wasn’t long again before the abuse started again.

He moved out, but he would still come home to visit throughout.

And that’s why I still hold a lot of anger towards my mom

because she would still allow my older brother to come back and visit.

Even when she eventually had the chance to stop it, she chose not to.

And so then the abuse would keep happening.

But because of the conversation we had when I was a child,

I was so scared that she’d be angry.

So, of course, I never said anything.

Rebekah: Because of the conversation we had when I was a child,

I’ve never really confronted my mom about it

because I don’t know really how to.

I feel like I hold a lot of anger and resentment towards you

because the night that you pulled me out of my room

and confronted the whole situation,

the only thing I really remember about that besides being scared

was you being angry at me and asking me, "Why did you do this?"

Because you said that to me.

And as I got older and it kept happening

and other family members abused me,

I didn’t say anything to you.

And even after he left home,

you still would allow him to come back and visit.

And it was like you choosing him again and again,

and you just ignored me.

- You had... ( crying ) - I’m sorry.

I’m gonna go check her.

Can I come to, too, and tell her that...

Maybe not right now. Maybe just wait a second.

I... there’s no excuse for me to give.

I’m so sorry.

It’s so complicated with all the abuse

and that I was abusive too.

I think I’m trying to understand,

and I want to move on and forgive,

but it’s just really hard.

Anna: I understand.

And I’m trying to figure out how to do that,

but I don’t think I’m there yet.

One of the things I’ve learned as an advocate and an educator

is that sometimes mothers who do not protect children

are actually victims of abuse themselves,

and they’ve never gotten help.

So they just kind of shut down and look the other way.

Sometimes you have women who are just not even willing

to be honest about their husbands

because they’re afraid.

Mary: I remember hearing my sister say that she was being abused.

I remember exactly where I was,

how terrified she was to tell me.

It literally fucking killed me.

She told me what my mom said to her,

and it was the exact same word she had said to me

13 and a half years before that.

She told her, "You have to forgive."

And that means you don’t talk about it

and you can’t tell anybody about it.

And it clicked.

Like, if I don’t do anything,

my sister’s going to grow up

and have the exact same hell

as her childhood as I did.

No child deserves that.

It wasn’t enough that I was a victim?

Now you’re going to do this to my sister?

My sister who never did anything to anybody?

I called the sheriff’s department and reported it.

I don’t know where the courage came from. I felt like I had to.

I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t.

Henry: My position with the sheriff’s department was the chief investigator.

I took care usually of most of the sexual assault cases

that came into our department.

She just came in to our department.

We sat down in an interview room

and I interviewed her.

She went through and told me

what Johnny had done to her, what Eli had done to her.

She identified her brothers as the perpetrators.

I don’t understand what they were thinking.

I mean, they treated her like an animal.

Whenever you are investigating a historical sexual assault,

something that isn’t, like, just recently happened,

where we don’t have the physical evidence of seminal fluid,

any injuries, things like that,

we want to make sure that we can build

and gather as much evidence as all possible.

We decided to place a body wire on the victim.

They had a whole group of investigators who put a wire on me.

And then we had a female deputy drive her to Johnny’s place.

So this road right here is where Scott and I set up when Mary had the wire on.

And we had to move a couple times because she went into the barn

and that kind of messed up our signal.

What I was worried about was if they caught on to it

and they decided to beat the hell out of her.

That’s why we had to stay not only within distance

of getting there to be able to help her if something went wrong,

but also we needed to be within a certain distance

so we could pick up the sound.

All right. Here’s the Byler place.

That’s the big house right there.

Eli would rape her there.

I went back. I confronted my abusers.

Sometimes we have to face our biggest fear in order to grow.

What I remember most distinctly

is just sitting there inside the barn,

and I had my arms wrapped around the knees.

And it’s just like, if he kills me right now

or if I die right now, they’re going to get him,

because there’s people that came with me

that had the ability to make sure that they get him.

Now that’s Johnny’s place there.

And about right where that wagon sits

is where Johnny and I sat in my squad car

while I talked to him.

And down here is where Mary came and went into his barn

when she wore the wire and talked to Johnny.

Johnny specifically said he had probably

sexually assaulted his sister upwards of 200 times.

If somebody says 200, that probably...

In my opinion anyways, probably means significantly more than that.

Bjerkos: We were successful with getting a number of the individuals

making admissions to having forced intercourse with her,

and were able to bring a good case

to the district attorney’s office.

Gaskell: As the district attorney, we make the charging wishes.

How I perceived the Byler case

is that these were certainly all prison cases.

Mary: When I met with Tim Gaskell,

that was a really intense and also terrifying thing.

The district attorney said that the state of Wisconsin

is going to press charges on my behalf.

It’s completely out of my hands.

"You’ve done your part.

This is what the state of Wisconsin is going to do."

Henry: Johnny, Eli, and David were properly charged with sexual abuse.

The mother Sally was charged with failure to protect her child.

William, the stepfather, he was taken to jail too.

There was no trials. I mean, it was all, they pled guilty.

All of them did all, all five of them.

Eli and Johnny were sexually abusing Mary

from age six until 17.

That’s 11 years of hell.

Gaskell: We certainly had discussions to Mary about the expectation,

an expectation that Johnny would go to prison.

I don’t remember Amish being in the courtroom

when Eli was sentenced or when David was sentenced.

But I certainly do remember when Johnny got sentenced,

because the courthouse was packed.

Gaskell: The lack of support from the Amish community

toward Mary was eye-opening.

The Amish will come in droves to the courtroom

when they have somebody involved in a court proceeding or a court hearing.

The support was solely for the brothers

that perpetrated these egregious sexual assaults.

No Amish came to support Mary, not one.

Her support was our victim witness coordinator

with the district attorney’s office,

and my wife Mary was there also.

The part that I will never, ever, ever forget

was busloads a Greyhounds of Amish coming,

not just from our area,

but they were coming from Pennsylvania.

I was having a hard time wrapping my head around

that all these people were here for those men

that hurt her so badly and abused her.

Gaskell: These are numerous letters

that were written really on behalf of Johnny Byler.

This letter says "He has been," meaning Johnny...

"has been through all our punishments,

a ban, no communication with other church members,

grounded, that included his wife.

These are very severe punishments

and with what all Mary is doing

to harass us and Johnny,

God sees her then."

It says, "I have a feeling she is doing this

out of spite more than anything.

Ever since I learned to know Mary personally,

she had a habit of making things sound worse than they really are."

And that’s her mother.

That’s a letter from her mother.

Mary: They literally paraded them up on the witness stand

to testify as to what a good Amish man he is,

and people practically cried on demand.

I have pointed a real bad finger at the Amish.

It’s not that it’s awful that he’s a rapist.

It’s that it’s awful that I am unforgiving and reported it.

I had the victim advocate with me,

and I knew that if I could just make it to the other side of this,

I’m going to be okay.

I got up in front of them and read the victim impact statement.

Mary Henry: And I can remember just hugging her and holding her,

imagining a child being abused to the extent that she was.

That’s... I can’t block it off,

but just to think about what that little girl endured

and to be hunted down like an animal

and treated like an animal.

The judge, as he was sentencing,

I can remember him saying, "I see all you people here

in support of the defendant,

but where’s the support for Mary?

How many of you have ever cried for Mary Byler?

How many of you cried for her

or the loss of her childhood?

That was a very small triumph. It was like, "Oh, my God, this is unheard of.

He’s going to actually do the right thing."

And I thought, you know what? He’s going to hammer Johnny.

I hoped.