The Amish community is a mysterious world within modern America, a place frozen in another time. The Amish live without automobiles or electricity. Education ends at the eighth grade and life largely centers on farming, family and faith.<\/p>\n
Some 90 percent of children raised Amish choose to stay in the community. But one who did not is 22-year-old Mary Byler.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would read books and I\u2019d imagine. I had a great imagination that would take me to faraway places, you know, places where I was afraid I would never be, but wanted to be,\u201d she told \u201c20\/20\u2019s\u201d Elizabeth Vargas.<\/p>\n
Mary says she\u2019d use those fantasies as an emotional escape from what she says was her horrible reality — a childhood and adolescence of sexual assault and rape.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf somebody was raping me, I\u2019d look up to the ceiling, count the blocks or count the cracks in the wall, or just I was completely not there emotionally. I would have committed suicide many times over if I wouldn\u2019t be strong,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Through the years, by Mary\u2019s account, she was raped by several different attackers. But one abused her more often than the others — her brother Johnny. Johnny, one of Mary\u2019s eight brothers, began assaulting her when he was 12 and she was 6. The assaults continued into her teen years, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI couldn\u2019t go to the outhouse because there was always somebody waiting there. I couldn\u2019t go anywhere alone. There was just no place I could be alone,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
As time passed, another brother, Eli, followed suit.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019d rape me down in the milk house when I was cleaning up the milk house. He\u2019d rape me down in the barn,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The violence in Mary\u2019s family began with the head of it — a stepfather who, she says, continually beat both Mary and her brothers.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe hit them with shovels and hacksaws, fists, halters, anything and everything he could get his hands on,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
A Community of Submission<\/p>\n
Irene Garrett left the Amish community to marry an outsider and has written several books on Amish life. Sadly, Garrett says, Mary\u2019s plight is not an isolated case.<\/p>\n
\u201cOverall in an Amish community, women are very quiet, they\u2019re very submissive,\u201d Garrett said.<\/p>\n
Amish women are not taught anything about sex, according to Garrett, which makes it even harder for a girl who\u2019s being abused to describe what\u2019s happening to her.<\/p>\n
Mary said she didn\u2019t know how to describe what was happening. \u201cI thought they were being bad to me. That was the only word I had to express it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
In an Amish culture unaccustomed to women speaking up, Mary felt she got more scolding than sympathy when she told her mother what was going on.<\/p>\n
She said her mother told her, \u201cYou don\u2019t fight hard enough and you don\u2019t pray hard enough.\u201d Mary said her mother made her feel as if the assaults were her fault. \u201cEvery time I would talk about this she would say that they have already confessed in church and you\u2019re just being unforgiving,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Indeed, Mary\u2019s brothers had confessed in church. In this closed society problems are handled internally, the church elders are both judge and jury.<\/p>\n
And the punishment might be surprising to outsiders.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Amish emphasize the simplicity of life, plainness of life. They accentuate several themes, such as pacifism, the importance of community,\u201d said Donald Kraybill, professor of sociology at Elizabethtown college and author of \u201cThe Riddle of Amish Culture.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey feel that the use of force, even legal force, even filing a lawsuit is outside the spirit of Christ, and outside the spirit of Christian faith,\u201d according to Kraybill.<\/p>\n
Kraybill said individuals who confess to offenses — regardless of the seriousness — are banned from church activities for six weeks and only restored to full membership in their community if they are truly penitent.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Amish church has a very strong emphasis on first of all, the importance of confession, public confession, if you transgress the teaching, but secondly forgiveness for that and then forgetting it, and letting it go,\u201d Kraybill said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe funny thing is that they view drinking alcohol until you puke as bad a sin as raping somebody. They get the same punishment for either one,\u201d Mary said.<\/p>\n
But Amish-style punishment was not going to bring Mary the justice she wanted. And for her, the final straw came when she suspected a younger brother, David, was molesting their then 4-year-old sister.<\/p>\n
Breaking Community Ties<\/p>\n
Mary recalled, \u201cShe said to me, \u2018You know, Mary, David is bad to me.\u2019\u201d Mary said her sister told her their mom, Sally Kempf, said she shouldn\u2019t talk about it and that she should forgive her brother.<\/p>\n
So, Mary did something that drew more shock from her community than the sins of her brothers. She called authorities outside the Amish community, and she let them use her to gather evidence against her own brothers. She visited her brother Johnny wearing a wire and he admitted freely that he had sexually abused her.<\/p>\n
Don Henry from the Vernon County, Wis., Sheriff\u2019s Department said he had enough evidence to make an arrest in the case. When he spoke with Johnny, he freely admitted to raping her. The only question was how many times, according to Henry.<\/p>\n
Henry said, \u201cHe wanted to know how many times she had said, and with him alone she said it happened between 100 and 150 times. He thought it was too many and that he thought it was between 50 and 75 times.\u201d<\/p>\n
Greg Lunde, Eli\u2019s lawyer, said Eli admitted to more assaults than Mary had alleged. \u201c I think Mary\u2019s allegations against Eli were 12 or 13 times. By Eli\u2019s own admission, it was 15 or 16.\u201d David also confessed to authorities.<\/p>\n
All three brothers pleaded guilty.<\/p>\n
David, charged with second-degree sexual assault of a child, was sentenced to four years in prison. Eli, charged with second-degree sexual assault of a child, and with a prior misdemeanor conviction on his record, was given eight years in prison. Johnny Byler\u2019s sentencing brought out the largest crowd — and the most tears — not in support of Mary, but in support of the confessed rapist.<\/p>\n
The community\u2019s reaction did not go unnoticed by the judge in the case, Michael Rosbrough. \u201cThe thought occurred to me,\u201d he said, \u201cHow many of you have ever cried for Mary Byler? … You may have prayed for her, I don\u2019t doubt you have, but how many of you cried for her? For the loss of her childhood.\u201d<\/p>\n
Viewing Victim as Villain<\/p>\n
The community viewed Mary, not Johnny, as the villain, because they had already punished Johnny within the church, according to Garrett. \u201cHe went through that process. He was sorry for what he had done, so to the Amish he was forgiven and it should be forgotten,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Ironically, Johnny, who raped Mary first and most often, got the lightest sentence. Now married and with children of his own, he was given 10 years\u2019 probation. For the first year he can work in the Amish community during the day but must spend every night in the county jail.<\/p>\n
The Vernon County court also sentenced Mary\u2019s mother to two years probation for failure to protect her daughter. Her stepfather was sentenced to 18 months probation for battery and disorderly conduct.<\/p>\n
Garrett says Mary\u2019s case may strike people as particularly startling because the public has an idealized perception of Amish life. \u201cIt\u2019s like any other society. You have great families, very well-balanced, but you also have dysfunctional ones. Take the Amish off the pedestal. They\u2019re just like everybody else,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
For some time now, Mary Byler has been living in a radically different world. Her new life has some distinctly not-Amish trappings: a driver\u2019s license, a smoking habit and a GED. Just last March, she joined the Army — hoping to pursue a career in nursing. And she\u2019s on a mission of her own, to help other abuse victims in and out of the Amish community.<\/p>\n
She says her life now has not only new pleasures but new responsibilities.<\/p>\n
And she\u2019s on a mission to help other abuse victims, in and out of the Amish community.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf somebody, some girl or some boy or some child who\u2019s being hurt by somebody, would get some good out of this story. That would make me feel really good,\u201d Mary said.<\/p>\n
Also, for Mary, there\u2019s an ironic carryover from her former life an abiding faith. She said, \u201cI feel like God helps those who help themselves. You know, there\u2019s a verse in the Bible to that effect, and I really believe it\u2019s true, because, you know what, if you don\u2019t have the strength to stand up for yourself, there\u2019s really not much he can do for you.\u201d<\/p>\n
________<\/p>\n
\u201c20\/20\u201d first aired this story on December 10, 2004<\/p>\n
=================
\nSermon version:<\/p>\n
Back in 2004, 20-year-old Mary Byler did something unthinkable – she brought charges against her three brothers in the local courthouse. They had abused her repeatedly for years.<\/p>\n
Mary had told the Amish leaders, and they had punished the brothers with six weeks of \u201cshunning.\u201d The brothers said they had repented — but the abuse continued.<\/p>\n
In court, the brothers each confessed to the charges. They were given several years in prison. But the judge was amazed at the size of the crowd who came to support, and cry for, the oldest offender.<\/p>\n
The judge told the courtroom, \u201cHow many of you have ever cried for Mary Byler? … You may have prayed for her, I don\u2019t doubt you have, but how many of you cried for her? For the loss of her childhood.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mary had to leave the Amish community because many blamed her for being unforgiving to her brothers. This is a common experience of abuse victims.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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