Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Norman.
Speaker 3: They call me Ben. We are joined as always with
Speaker 3: our super producer Andrew trefors Howard. Most importantly, you are you.
Speaker 3: You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't
Speaker 3: want you to know. My fellow Americans, what do you
Speaker 3: think of when you hear the word abbish?
Speaker 4: Barack Obama, Barack Hussein Obama.
Speaker 3: That was like maybe a third Barack at the beginning,
Speaker 3: And then I just started, who.
Speaker 4: Is cartoon Barack? And I'm here for it.
Speaker 2: Wait somebody, it's somebody explain this. What does amish have
Speaker 2: to do with Barack Obama?
Speaker 3: Oh, it's just my fellow Americans, is a thing President say?
Speaker 5: Oh, he's just opening the floor for questions in common?
Speaker 5: You know, I'll tell you. There is this great documentary
Speaker 5: called The Devil's Backbone that I remember from many years ago,
Speaker 5: with an exclusively Aphex Twins soundtrack. It's got all this
Speaker 5: stuff from like selected ambient Works Volume two.
Speaker 4: It's very beautifully used. He's not a guy that licenses
Speaker 4: at his music for stuff, and it's very well used.
Speaker 5: It obviously describes the Amish practice of sort of allowing
Speaker 5: young people to go out into the world and live
Speaker 5: for I believe a year. Some of them come running back,
Speaker 5: and some of them, you know, stay and become kind
Speaker 5: of yeah, de amished.
Speaker 3: I guess wait, wait, wait, Aphex Twin is one guy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so's Tame and Paula bro It's crazy. Yeah, Richard D.
Speaker 4: James is a fixed twin.
Speaker 3: But wait, how many pilots are in twenty one pilots?
Speaker 4: Only two? There's only two pilots, but really quickly.
Speaker 5: This film is fascinating because a big thing that happens
Speaker 5: with a lot of these kids who will go out
Speaker 5: on this kind of like journey of self discovery is
Speaker 5: some of them become they get absolutely taken in by
Speaker 5: the corrupt the corruption of the world and become like
Speaker 5: drug addicts, and there's all kinds of horrible things that happen,
Speaker 5: and then some of them come back and live a pure,
Speaker 5: you know, fully Amish life. It's very interesting phenomenon of
Speaker 5: the Amish culture that they have this whole kind of
Speaker 5: trial period called rum Springer.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: I was gonna say, guys, I have a very clear
Speaker 2: picture of a film, also not a documentary, a movie
Speaker 2: called Kingpin that came out in ninety six, all about
Speaker 2: kind of that like being corrupted by the world. I
Speaker 2: think it's Dennis No, Randy Quaid, Randy Quaid, I think
Speaker 2: that's right. I think is Randy Amish, Yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 2: amish like guy who doesn't know much about the world,
Speaker 2: but he happens to be excellent in bowling and then
Speaker 2: he gets taken in and he goes yeah, gets taken over.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's a country mouse, meat city mouse kind
Speaker 3: of true.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly exactly, but with bowling at the heart of it.
Speaker 3: Jeez.
Speaker 2: I remember really liking that movie and thinking like quoting
Speaker 2: it a lot, but I don't know how well it
Speaker 2: holds up. So sorry if you go back and watch
Speaker 2: it now and there's problems, but I really liked it.
Speaker 3: Well. You can hang out with us, folks. If ever
Speaker 3: you find yourself in our grand city of Atlanta, be
Speaker 3: you Amish or other, which will play into tonight's episode,
Speaker 3: you can always hang out with your fellow conspiracy realist.
Speaker 3: We will take you bowling. You will probably win because
Speaker 3: I don't know about you, guys, but I am terrible
Speaker 3: at that sport.
Speaker 5: It's very difficult sport. I don't have the chops, I
Speaker 5: don't have the form. If I ever am good at bullying,
Speaker 5: it's the same way I'm good at darts, which is
Speaker 5: accidentally good.
Speaker 2: Guys, I spent a lot of time in Ohio.
Speaker 4: I won't you know.
Speaker 2: I won't like take your money on purpose, but I'm sorry.
Speaker 4: Ohio huge.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, bully is huge. Matt's got that shark elbow.
Speaker 4: I love it.
Speaker 3: Welcome back, fellow conspiracy realist. As you may or may
Speaker 3: not know, we have been on and off the road.
Speaker 3: As a result, we had some microphone shenanigans. We wanted
Speaker 3: to let you know you are not crazy. Uh, the
Speaker 3: audio is a little different at the beginning. However, we
Speaker 3: got everything in line with all prise due to our
Speaker 3: super producer Andrew rifles Howard. And now on with the show. Now,
Speaker 3: I'm not gonna get you into the personal bowling curse,
Speaker 3: which is a story for another day. But we're we're
Speaker 3: talking about what we hear, what the word amish conjures
Speaker 3: in our minds. America as a continent or a series
Speaker 3: of continents and a country is, as we all know,
Speaker 3: far from perfect, but the idea is pretty fantastic. One
Speaker 3: of the biggest wins that ever happened in the history
Speaker 3: of the world was the United States idea of religious tolerance.
Speaker 3: The US has always, in theory, guaranteed residents the right
Speaker 3: to worship as they choose, so long as they don't
Speaker 3: mess with other people. And Christianity Islam, Judaism, they're all
Speaker 3: these people book right, abramac panopolies of interpretation, doctrinal difference.
Speaker 3: I would argue Christianity is probably the most diverse umbrella
Speaker 3: group of those three big concepts, and for the past
Speaker 3: few millennia, since the time of Jesus Christ, guy who
Speaker 3: is famously known for, you know, bread and fish and
Speaker 3: being cool.
Speaker 4: You know what, It's true.
Speaker 5: There's a really great song with it's been called King
Speaker 5: Missile called Jesus is way cool, and it's true.
Speaker 4: And I don't enough people give him credit for that.
Speaker 4: And I appreciate that.
Speaker 3: Ben.
Speaker 4: You always wanted to give credit where credit is due.
Speaker 4: And Jesus was way cool.
Speaker 3: Jesus was our big lebowski. I don't know why kingpen
Speaker 3: is making me thinking of ye, that's for sure, he did.
Speaker 3: The dude abides so like. For thousands of years, people
Speaker 3: have been fighting about which interpretation of Christianity is woosh
Speaker 3: woosh correct. In tonight's episode, we are examining a particular
Speaker 3: group of Christian communities, largely in the United States. They're
Speaker 3: known for their separation from the larger secular world and
Speaker 3: surrounding neighborhoods. In the US, we usually call these communities
Speaker 3: just the Amish, but as we'll discover, they are not
Speaker 3: a monolith, and there is unfortunately a positively unholy intergenerational
Speaker 3: conspiracy afoot in some of these places that don't really
Speaker 3: meet with the modern world. I guess before we close
Speaker 3: our cold open, we do have to give you a disclaimer.
Speaker 3: Tonight's episode contains at times graphic descriptions of assault, incest,
Speaker 3: and violence. As such, it may not be appropriate for
Speaker 3: all listeners. Here are the facts, all right? What do
Speaker 3: we mean though when we say Amish? Aside from the documentaries,
Speaker 3: Aside from one weird out Yankovic song, who are the Amish?
Speaker 5: Well, in the US, the term amish kind of as
Speaker 5: you mentioned, Beny who kind of tend to conjure a
Speaker 5: particular representation of what this might mean.
Speaker 4: Some of that might be accurate, and some of that
Speaker 4: might be wildly off the mark.
Speaker 5: But let's just start with maybe sort of the image
Speaker 5: that might be popping into one's head.
Speaker 4: The idea of a.
Speaker 5: Particular type of garb, you know, dark suits and broad
Speaker 5: brimmed hats, a bit more of a conservative kind of
Speaker 5: form of dress. The idea of farming horse drawn wagons.
Speaker 5: Probably thinking a bit of Middle America, you know, Pennsylvania
Speaker 5: is a big area for Amish communities today. These communities
Speaker 5: are often considered to be a bit of a mystery
Speaker 5: within our kind of more modern American life, and that's
Speaker 5: by design. Are a people frozen in time, essentially by
Speaker 5: their own choice. The Amish live by choice without modern
Speaker 5: modes of transportation like automobiles or even electricity. If I'm
Speaker 5: not mistaken, Some of these communities may you know, still
Speaker 5: use outhouses and maybe you have like a well or
Speaker 5: a pump, but not like indoor plumbing. And this is
Speaker 5: all in an attempt to live in a way that
Speaker 5: is more godly, that in a way that is more
Speaker 5: close to maybe the simpler times where people weren't as
Speaker 5: distracted by all kinds of you know, modern trappings like
Speaker 5: money and entertainment and all the kind of things that
Speaker 5: can lead to let's just be honest, guys, it can
Speaker 5: lead to the erosion of the soul.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would I would say one of the primary
Speaker 2: things about this group is the concept of removing yourself
Speaker 2: from anything that will make you less close to God, right, yes,
Speaker 2: less close to being an example of like for the
Speaker 2: world essentially of what Jesus' teachings were, or what the
Speaker 2: Bible's teachings were.
Speaker 3: From the bishop to the child, you live in service
Speaker 3: of a higher power.
Speaker 5: And maybe just to get it out of the way
Speaker 5: up front, because we are going to talk about some
Speaker 5: horrible things that happen within these communities at times.
Speaker 4: But on paper, I think we would all love to
Speaker 4: be able to.
Speaker 5: Remove ourselves from some of the stuff that we've gotten
Speaker 5: so deeply invested in and embedded in, you know, from social.
Speaker 4: Media to politics to whatever.
Speaker 5: I mean, there are these are things that can just
Speaker 5: really make you go a little crazy and kind of
Speaker 5: not be your truest, purest self.
Speaker 3: And a good side note there, and I love that point, Noel,
Speaker 3: there are these things called blue zones. There are only
Speaker 3: a few throughout the entire globe, and a blue zone
Speaker 3: is a place where an extraordinaryunt of people live past
Speaker 3: one hundred years old. And one of the formative variables
Speaker 3: for a blue zone is an intense connection with community.
Speaker 3: Community is one of the earliest, if not the earliest
Speaker 3: human technology. It predates language right and it has very
Speaker 3: real effects for good or for ill. The point about
Speaker 3: an Amish community, or a Mennonite or an Old Order
Speaker 3: Amish community, or a plain community as they're called. The
Speaker 3: point of it is to avoid things that distract one
Speaker 3: in theory from the pursuit of the service of God
Speaker 3: a higher power. As such, education is considered only a
Speaker 3: means to an end. It concludes around what we would
Speaker 3: call eighth grade in the United States. In your life
Speaker 3: largely centers on the growth and maintenance of your community,
Speaker 3: which includes farming and includes participation in religious and social mores.
Speaker 3: When you hear law enforcement secular law enforcement, you'll often
Speaker 3: hear them refer to the Amish as a plane community
Speaker 3: p lai n. But the history is fascinating too, because
Speaker 3: the story of what we call Amish in the United
Speaker 3: States begins before the creation of the United States as
Speaker 3: an idea itself.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and you can go The Anabaptist movement, which
Speaker 2: is part of basically the Protestant Reformation, goes way back.
Speaker 2: I think sixteenth century is when some of the concepts
Speaker 2: begin to arise, and then you get the Mennonites, which
Speaker 2: then splinter off into a couple different groups, which then
Speaker 2: become the Amish. The Amish is one of the splits
Speaker 2: basically that occurs.
Speaker 5: It's interesting too, because you know where I grew up
Speaker 5: in Augusta, Georgia, there's quite a large Mennonite community, and
Speaker 5: I always associated them directly with the Amish. And while
Speaker 5: they have the commonalities, it's not the same. They were
Speaker 5: like part of a group that splintered and then became
Speaker 5: the Amish. They might share some beliefs and some lifestyle choices,
Speaker 5: but they are not the same am I Is that
Speaker 5: about the shape of it. The Amish are an offshoot
Speaker 5: of the Mennonites, and the Mennonites are still around in
Speaker 5: their own capacity.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, yeah, one hundred percent. Going back. As as
Speaker 3: Matt said to Anabaptist, the schism between the Protestants and
Speaker 3: the Catholics we got a shout out reluctantly. A guy
Speaker 3: named Jacob Ahmann amm a n He is an elder
Speaker 3: in the Mennonite Anabaptist movement, born around like the late
Speaker 3: seventeenth century sixteen nineties. He said that lying about anything
Speaker 3: is grounds for ex communication, and the Mennonites at the
Speaker 3: time had a different vibe on what was meant by
Speaker 3: ex communication. We'll get into it, but essentially they meant shunning.
Speaker 3: If your community is your most important thing, then the
Speaker 3: way you punish people who violate your social morase is
Speaker 3: to remove them from that community, to remove them from communication,
Speaker 3: to put a fine point on it, to x communicate them. Also,
Speaker 3: this guy wanted everybody to wear similar clothing, wanted them
Speaker 3: to have similar facial hair, and wanted them to not
Speaker 3: ever mess with the state church. Be that in Germany,
Speaker 3: be that in parts of France, be that in Switzerland.
Speaker 3: The term amish, I don't think a lot of us
Speaker 3: know this. The term amish was first used in the
Speaker 3: early eighteenth century. In seventeen ten as an insult and Noel,
Speaker 3: we're gonna defer to you as our former What do
Speaker 3: you say, we German boy?
Speaker 5: I always what's a small German boy. Yes, it's true,
Speaker 5: and I'm no experts. My German knowledge remains at a
Speaker 5: kindergarten level. But I did come by it honestly, the
Speaker 5: word being shandanama, which is an insult. It's sort of
Speaker 5: like your ops, you know, but a shanda though. I
Speaker 5: was just gonna mention this is literally an observation. I
Speaker 5: don't necessarily have too much data to back this up,
Speaker 5: but the Amish and the Hasidic Jewish community have some
Speaker 5: things in common in terms of their use of kind
Speaker 5: of this Yiddish type slang or this sort of German
Speaker 5: you know, kind of these German German sort of slang,
Speaker 5: but also in the dress, I mean, the beard and
Speaker 5: the hats, and like the clothing and the simplicity. And
Speaker 5: I know they're they're coming at it from different places,
Speaker 5: but it does seem like there's a similar approach to
Speaker 5: being more godly by simplifying one's life and by.
Speaker 3: Excluding secular community exactly very them versus us. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: we say that as a show several of us have
Speaker 3: Jewish heritage. And I love that you're bringing this up, Noll,
Speaker 3: because you can also see similar insular religious pursuits. Sure,
Speaker 3: for anybody unfamiliar with Judaism as a whole. There are
Speaker 3: branches of Judaism, orthodox Judaism that would not interact necessarily
Speaker 3: or not go out of their way to interact with
Speaker 3: people you might consider reformed, right, Reform Judaism is very different.
Speaker 3: And I'm only laughing because there were this great bit
Speaker 3: Billy Crystal did. Do you guys remember Billy Crystal? Of course, yeah,
Speaker 3: from earlier. You could forget Billy Crystal from earlier. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: City Slickers, Stone Cold Classic up there with vibes Curley's goal.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, thank you for mentioning vibes. Man, I appreciate that.
Speaker 5: But yes, shanda nama is just a you know, a
Speaker 5: German word for an insult. So the term Amish initially
Speaker 5: was a term of abuse referring to folks who were
Speaker 5: opponents of Aman.
Speaker 3: Yes of Jacob, and these groups, as you describe them,
Speaker 3: these kind of spinoffs or these franchises of this original schism,
Speaker 3: they start migrating to what we call modern day Pennsylvania
Speaker 3: in the early seventeen hundreds, and they come entirely because
Speaker 3: of two reasons. Religious tolerance, which was still a freshly
Speaker 3: baked thing, and affordable offers on land. Between seventeen seventeen
Speaker 3: and seventeen fifty, about five hundred Homish people migrated to
Speaker 3: North America, and I believe they first went to Burks County, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 3: but then they had to relocate due to land disputes
Speaker 3: and the chaos of something called the French and Indian War,
Speaker 3: which is a weird name. And by the way, Native
Speaker 3: Americans and the French do not call it the French
Speaker 3: in Indian War.
Speaker 5: No, it's the one that kind of stuck. But I've
Speaker 5: always found it a little perplexing. There are other related
Speaker 5: groups that immigrated in the eighteen hundreds to places like Ohio, Illinois,
Speaker 5: and Iowa, as well as more northern regions including the
Speaker 5: southern parts of Ontario in Canada.
Speaker 4: A little later you would.
Speaker 5: See communities started to spring forth in Kansas, Maine, Zira, Wisconsin, Minnesota,
Speaker 5: and even as far south as North Carolina.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and still to the earlier point, these communities are
Speaker 3: incredibly insular. Interaction with the outside world is highly regulated.
Speaker 3: Matt Nol We were talking about this with Trifors a
Speaker 3: little bit before we we rolled. We were we were
Speaker 3: thinking through our own personal experiences with these communities, Matt,
Speaker 3: what's the what's the outsider word? What do they call it?
Speaker 3: Not the Dutch, but they call us.
Speaker 2: Oh, I believe the term often is English. So if
Speaker 2: somebody who is more in the mainstream of society, there's
Speaker 2: a generalized term that's used. Like let's say you have
Speaker 2: a neighbor that has a home and does not live
Speaker 2: in a Mennonite or Amish lifestyle. Often that person be
Speaker 2: referred to as my English neighbor.
Speaker 5: Yes, like guys, A lot of that terminology does come
Speaker 5: up in that documentary that I was talking about, The
Speaker 5: Devil's Backbone. So it really is a great view because
Speaker 5: there's parts of it that are completely set within the
Speaker 5: communities themselves, and then they follow the individuals they go out,
Speaker 5: you know, and their kind of adolescent journey into the
Speaker 5: wicked world.
Speaker 3: And people are people. So just to be clear, I
Speaker 3: think we can all agree your Amish neighbors are not
Speaker 3: hauling you a jerk. They're not mad at you.
Speaker 4: No, it's like being a gentile.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, it's just following a different path, right. No
Speaker 3: one's going to be rude to you, or.
Speaker 4: They might not let their daughters date your son though,
Speaker 4: I mean.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to make just one really quick point
Speaker 2: here about as we're migrating, we're imagining all of these
Speaker 2: different groups moving to different parts of the United States.
Speaker 2: One of the things that separates a lot of these
Speaker 2: faiths is that there's not some big central church. There's
Speaker 2: not a Vatican necessarily in most instances. Here some you know,
Speaker 2: there is a Mennonite church there. There isn't like a
Speaker 2: form of Amish church if you really start to break
Speaker 2: down the different you know, offshoots. But often when you've
Speaker 2: got a group of families, let's say, moving out to Maine,
Speaker 2: you're going to have twenty forty families that move out together,
Speaker 2: and then that group of human beings becomes like the
Speaker 2: Mennonite church that's there, or the Amish church community that's right, right,
Speaker 2: and so they govern things on their own. Everything is insular,
Speaker 2: as we're saying.
Speaker 3: Here, every centralized, right, Yes, So.
Speaker 2: There's not there's not some other big organization that they're
Speaker 2: writing to or getting phone calls from, and all that kind.
Speaker 3: Of stuff is just there's no pope.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we handle our stuff here, yes.
Speaker 3: And the which means that your end municipal authority, your mayor,
Speaker 3: your president, your pope will be someone called the bishop,
Speaker 3: and there is a strict hierarchy involved. Women and children,
Speaker 3: by the way, are at the bottom of that hierarchy.
Speaker 3: These communities. I love this point, Matt. These communities see
Speaker 3: such regulation in interaction with the English or the outside
Speaker 3: secular world that violating the terms of that outside interaction
Speaker 3: is seen as sinful. It can be seen as a
Speaker 3: mortal sin, like if you betray a member of the
Speaker 3: community to the authorities, even when there is just cause,
Speaker 3: you are endangering your chance to get into paradise or
Speaker 3: the good part of the afterlife. I mean today, the
Speaker 3: historic Amish community is itself diverse an interpretation of doctrine
Speaker 3: which I think goes to that earlier point about decentralization.
Speaker 3: It still holds to many of the precepts that mentioned earlier,
Speaker 3: created or discovered or realized by our pal Jacob back
Speaker 3: in the day. One of the biggest cultural touchstones is
Speaker 3: the concept of something we call ordnung, which is a
Speaker 3: codecs of unwritten laws of behavior. There are in these communities,
Speaker 3: again decentralized, there are written versions of this behavior, and
Speaker 3: those written versions are called the ordinal. They guide all
Speaker 3: behavior for all members of the community and this is
Speaker 3: up to the interpretation of the elders and the bishop.
Speaker 3: The bishop is the top dog again, the mayor, the president,
Speaker 3: the pope, the comptroller, that guy is the guy in charge.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Ordnung's just another German.
Speaker 5: I mean, I guess there's the Dutch heritage, and there
Speaker 5: are some commonalities between Dutch and German. But it is
Speaker 5: interesting how many German like straight up German words they
Speaker 5: use to describe some of their concepts. Or um just
Speaker 5: refers to like order and kind of like finding a
Speaker 5: routine and sort of like an organized way of life.
Speaker 4: Which the Germans are also quite fond of.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, Man Germany is the one place I almost
Speaker 3: got arrested for jaywalking at three in the morning local
Speaker 3: time because there are rules.
Speaker 2: Yeah, bro, there's rules around here.
Speaker 3: There's rules.
Speaker 2: Speaking of rules, let's talk about that thing we were.
Speaker 3: Gonna mention earlier, my dunge shunning, shut.
Speaker 2: Yeah, shunning, excommunication, all that stuff. So this internal behavioral
Speaker 2: mechanism that exists, it is. It varies, let's say, from
Speaker 2: sect to sect, but one of the very one of
Speaker 2: the very common things that you'll find in these groups
Speaker 2: is the practice of going up in front of the
Speaker 2: church and professing your sins or your crimes, like literal,
Speaker 2: actual terrible crimes, and you go up in front of
Speaker 2: the by the church, I just mean the other members
Speaker 2: of your community, and you say the stuff out loud.
Speaker 2: Then you are not allowed to eat with anybody. And
Speaker 2: the time here varies, but usually it's like six weeks
Speaker 2: where you can't go and eat communally with anybody. You
Speaker 2: have to stay away on your own. And the belief
Speaker 2: or maybe the order to it is that the rest
Speaker 2: of the community after those six weeks or however much
Speaker 2: time has passed, they everybody forgives you and is supposed
Speaker 2: to forget that you ever committed said crime or sin
Speaker 2: or whatever it is, and everybody just moves on and
Speaker 2: you rejoin the community.
Speaker 3: It's in the past.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a magic trick.
Speaker 2: You're absolved, which could be an incredible thing if it
Speaker 2: was something like, you know, I lied about this thing
Speaker 2: that occurred, and like, oh dang, nobody likes that you
Speaker 2: did that. Go away for a while, come back where
Speaker 2: we can all live simpatico again.
Speaker 3: Go in time out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but if it's something heinous, like we're going to
Speaker 2: be talking about today, I don't know how to express
Speaker 2: how underwhelming that punishment is.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, the idea of my dongue or I'm sorry,
Speaker 3: my manner is coming out me I d u n g.
Speaker 3: The idea of shunning, we can call it we the
Speaker 3: English is, in theory, a way for the community to
Speaker 3: self regulate, to solve internal problems of largely obedience and compliance,
Speaker 3: and keep everybody not just in physical uniform, but an
Speaker 3: ideological uniform, which is even more disturbing. We should also
Speaker 3: know to the aspect of shunning, it is collective punishment
Speaker 3: because women and children are largely considered property. If a
Speaker 3: dude gets in trouble in many of these communities, then
Speaker 3: the spouse and the children encounter shunning as well. It's
Speaker 3: not just people icing you out. These communities rely on
Speaker 3: each other for sustenance, right for continued survival. So these
Speaker 3: folks who are shunning you are also not helping you
Speaker 3: build stuff, They're not helping you harvest crops. You're not
Speaker 3: allowed to help them. I would imagine that's why there
Speaker 3: is a window of time. Right, you simply cannot exist
Speaker 3: in this community. If you are shunned for life, there's
Speaker 3: no way to live without the village at that point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a really great point, man. The difference between
Speaker 2: going through a period of shunning and and being excommunicated
Speaker 2: from your church, which is effectively like you're saying, from
Speaker 2: your community, from your family, from everybody you've known for
Speaker 2: the past x years, perhaps your entire life. Right, that's
Speaker 2: a huge, huge potential punishment that can be enacted on
Speaker 2: somebody in the community.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and look again, it's like any other thing in
Speaker 3: the United States. Cool in theory, right, sounds good on paper. However,
Speaker 3: increasing evidence shows that this internal regulatory system, in particular,
Speaker 3: has been used to maintain order at the cost of
Speaker 3: people's lives, at the cost of their well being and
Speaker 3: their safety. The idea of or nung, the idea of
Speaker 3: the ordinal, has been used repeatedly to cover up some serious,
Speaker 3: deeply disturbing conspiracy. We're talking intergenerational sexual crimes again, fellow
Speaker 3: conspiracy realists. This is a warning. The rest of this
Speaker 3: show contains graphic depictions of unclean things. We said it
Speaker 3: at the top. We want to give you one more chance.
Speaker 3: The conspiracy is real. It may not be appropriate for
Speaker 3: all listeners. We will pause for a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 3: You can turn back now or learn the stuff the
Speaker 3: Amish don't want you to know years where it gets crazy.
Speaker 3: Not all Amish communities hashtag not all, but many Amish
Speaker 3: communities have long records of intense intergenerational sexual abuse. And
Speaker 3: I will pause it that the larger what we call
Speaker 3: them at the English, the larger surround and communities knew
Speaker 3: about this. It had to be an open secret for
Speaker 3: more than two centuries now. However, as we all know,
Speaker 3: outside of these communities, more of the abuse came to
Speaker 3: light to the larger public, primarily due to the age
Speaker 3: of information. Would we agree with that?
Speaker 4: Absolutely?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's absolutely true. And in particular, there
Speaker 2: was I would say, a helpful movement towards exposing this
Speaker 2: kind of stuff when we you know, what is referred
Speaker 2: to as the me too movement was in full swing
Speaker 2: and occurring where people began to be not as fearful
Speaker 2: to speak the truth out in a public setting as
Speaker 2: you're saying. It's social media primarily, but also people writing
Speaker 2: about it in major publications. These kinds of incidents that
Speaker 2: would for a long time just be kept quiet out
Speaker 2: of you know, fear and.
Speaker 5: For other whether it be fear of retaliation, or fear
Speaker 5: of not being believed, or just outright shame, you know,
Speaker 5: and to see others describing things that we ourselves perhaps
Speaker 5: have also experienced is incredibly powerful. So you know this,
Speaker 5: this applies to the Catholic Church and all of that
Speaker 5: stuff coming to light in a much larger way than
Speaker 5: it had in the past.
Speaker 4: All of the crazy stuff with Hollywood, this is no different.
Speaker 3: Yeah, multiple documentaries, multiple interviews, some of which were in
Speaker 3: print and sat in the back shelf of an editor's
Speaker 3: to do lists for many years, an unholy amount of years.
Speaker 3: We're also talking court cases depicting just how profoundly these people,
Speaker 3: often women, often children, were sexualized, objectified, assaulted, raped, and
Speaker 3: then forced to you know, forgive their accuser because they
Speaker 3: did a little had talk at the church, and then
Speaker 3: further forced to aid and a bet further crimes within
Speaker 3: the community's larger ongoing system, a very real conspiracy. And
Speaker 3: with this in mind, there's a thing that we talk
Speaker 3: about in the world of academia and poetry, which is
Speaker 3: you find the universal via the specific. So let's dive
Speaker 3: into a couple of stories. We're going to meet Mary
Speaker 3: and Sarah. This is not pleasant. These are just very
Speaker 3: brave people. They knew that they were ending their lives
Speaker 3: in their community by coming forward. The first one we
Speaker 3: want to introduce you to is Mary Buyler.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Mary, from the age of four or five until she
Speaker 5: left the community at seventeen, was repeatedly sexually assaulted by
Speaker 5: many members of her very close knit Amish community in Wisconsin.
Speaker 5: This included blood relations, cousins and her biological brothers, even
Speaker 5: Johnny David and Eli Biler. Her biological father was also
Speaker 5: guilty of this behavior.
Speaker 4: It's hard to even talk about.
Speaker 5: When local law enforcement sent Mary back to her community
Speaker 5: wearing a wire. Johnny was caught on tape confessing to
Speaker 5: assaulting her at least two hundred separate times.
Speaker 3: As a child. This was an elder brother again, as
Speaker 3: you said, the biological brother, including cousins, including a biological father.
Speaker 3: You can learn more about this in a documentary called
Speaker 3: Sins of the Amish. I believe the court cases went
Speaker 3: through in two thousand and four. They were undertaken when
Speaker 3: she was nineteen years old.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, and this is a really rare case where
Speaker 2: a trial actually went forward. The fact that Mary was
Speaker 2: given the chance to wear a wire and go in
Speaker 2: and get a confession is not the norm that occurs here, honestly,
Speaker 2: that she would even get the chance to do that.
Speaker 2: And I guess we can talk about it more, but
Speaker 2: just this thing that occurs in often in these cases
Speaker 2: where the community itself often rallies around the family member
Speaker 2: that could be sent away to prison for a long time,
Speaker 2: rather than the person, the person who was abused, the
Speaker 2: person who's saying, hey, I need help, somebody is hurting me.
Speaker 2: The community sees that, but I don't. I can't speak
Speaker 2: for the community, but my sense is that the community
Speaker 2: somehow believes we can take care of that person who
Speaker 2: was abused somehow, or we can show we alter that
Speaker 2: person still in our ways. We just can't lose to
Speaker 2: this other community member who is the actual abuser. And
Speaker 2: that makes sense.
Speaker 3: Which are more important than women. That's part of it.
Speaker 3: That's a huge part of it, because women are Look
Speaker 3: and I don't want to ruffle any feathers here saying this,
Speaker 3: but it is clear in the structural social functions here
Speaker 3: that the hierarchy goes bishop and then elders, all dudes,
Speaker 3: and then dudes and then women. Oh yeah, and juvenile
Speaker 3: males are above women because they have one day the
Speaker 3: chance to evolve into something past property. Women are taught
Speaker 3: in these communities and these abusive communities that if someone
Speaker 3: sexually assaults you, it is your fault because you should
Speaker 3: have done better, which is unclean. It's unclean. There's not there,
Speaker 3: There is no there is no moral parcore that can
Speaker 3: make that rational.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: No, And you know, we talked a little bit about
Speaker 5: this off air, but I just wanted to bring it
Speaker 5: up here. You know, when you hear about these types
Speaker 5: of situations and among communities or organizations where there is
Speaker 5: this like wholesale it's really like, you know, big picture
Speaker 5: attempt to separate oneself from the evils of the world,
Speaker 5: you know, or whatever, even the evils of humans, whether
Speaker 5: it be the Catholic Church or the Amish community or
Speaker 5: similar allegations of abuse happened in like the Mormon community.
Speaker 5: You see this kind of stuff pop up, and you
Speaker 5: have to wonder, like, is it that attempt to kind
Speaker 5: of separate oneself that maybe it's almost like poking the
Speaker 5: bear or something, or like give it doesn't have an outlet.
Speaker 5: And then there's also just of course the inherent potential
Speaker 5: for evil in humans that can just kind.
Speaker 4: Of fester in these situations. I don't know.
Speaker 5: I don't want to draw any false equivalencies, but you
Speaker 5: see it a lot, and it seems like these situations
Speaker 5: arise in cases where there's this kind of almost prohibition
Speaker 5: type attitude. And I don't know, I don't want to
Speaker 5: overstate the case here, but I was wondering what you
Speaker 5: guys thought about that.
Speaker 3: I dig it. Yeah, the call is coming from inside
Speaker 3: the house. It's something philosophy wrestles with and continues to.
Speaker 3: It reminds me a bit now that we're framing this
Speaker 3: and contextualizing it. It reminds me a bit of the horrors
Speaker 3: in Pitcairn Island. You guys know about Pitcairn Island. I
Speaker 3: have to refresh. Oh, it's a it's a world away.
Speaker 3: I imagine. Very few members of the Amish community have visited,
Speaker 3: but Pitcairn Island is notorious then and now for systematic
Speaker 3: abuse of children. It's an archipelago out in I want
Speaker 3: to say, French Polynesia. It's in the middle of the
Speaker 3: ocean like picture Australia, right. If you're looking at US
Speaker 3: printed world map, picture Australia, and they go way to
Speaker 3: the right, like off the map, middle of nowhere.
Speaker 5: So isolated by its geography already, and then I imagine
Speaker 5: that there's sort of like that, you know, by design
Speaker 5: kind of thing to maintain that isolation and to have
Speaker 5: sort of like a owned and operated culture and community.
Speaker 5: And yet these things spring up disconnected from all of
Speaker 5: the evils of like pop culture and whatever, television, entertainment, music,
Speaker 5: all of the trappings of kind of modern life that
Speaker 5: folks like the Amish are doing everything they can to
Speaker 5: separate themselves from. And yes, this stuff kind of thrives
Speaker 5: without any of that influence.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the argument that we're getting close to here would
Speaker 3: be very familiar to Jacoboman. We're positing the idea of
Speaker 3: call it opportunism, call it original sin, call it normalization.
Speaker 3: Thereof it's deep, it's deep stuff, and it's not good.
Speaker 3: I know that's an understate the of the decade. But look,
Speaker 3: if we go to Mary Byler's case, as we said earlier,
Speaker 3: that you point out this is a very rare thing, right,
Speaker 3: and there's incredibly rare for this to go to the
Speaker 3: English court, and we see that her brothers were brought
Speaker 3: to account, all three of them pled guilty again, that's
Speaker 3: Johnny Biler, Eli Biler, David Biler. David Biler got a
Speaker 3: four year sentence in federal prison, not because of what
Speaker 3: he did to his sister, Mary, but because of his
Speaker 3: conviction for second degree sexual assault against Mary's even younger sister.
Speaker 3: Eli Biler had a prior misdemeanor conviction, and as a
Speaker 3: result of that prior he got eight years in prison.
Speaker 3: Johnny Biler was examined pretty in depth in some of
Speaker 3: these documentaries. He was given what we could only call
Speaker 3: a sweetheart deal. It's not the kind of thing that
Speaker 3: in any other context, it is not the kind of
Speaker 3: thing that you would expect a court to give a
Speaker 3: serial rapist. Can we talk about what his quote unquote
Speaker 3: sentence was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, somebody who admitted to essentially two hundred separate counts
Speaker 2: of child sexual abuse. It reminds me of that deal
Speaker 2: that was given to Epstein when he was able to
Speaker 2: come over to the jail, the prison, whatever it was,
Speaker 2: spend the night there, and then in the morning wake
Speaker 2: up and go to work. Because you know, his work's
Speaker 2: really important, so he has to be able to go
Speaker 2: to work. But then he'll come back and he'll stay
Speaker 2: the night in the jail and we'll watch him.
Speaker 3: He got the sleepover sentence. Let's not call this sweetheart
Speaker 3: deal a sleepover deal. Yeah, this is even weirder because
Speaker 3: Johnny Biler is spending nights at the county jail for
Speaker 3: what one year?
Speaker 5: Man, And you know, I mean, you hear that, and
Speaker 5: you just have to wonder why, Like I just don't
Speaker 5: understand the slap on the wrist quality of this kind
Speaker 5: of sentence.
Speaker 4: And we're going to find out why.
Speaker 5: There was some support and within that patriarchal community that
Speaker 5: maybe led to a little bit of lenience in the
Speaker 5: court's decision. So let's take a quick break here from
Speaker 5: our sponsor and then come back with more on this
Speaker 5: disturbing case.
Speaker 2: And we're back, and we're still in the aftermath the
Speaker 2: sentencing and trial of the abusers of Mary Buyler that
Speaker 2: we've been talking about. So as we spoke about before,
Speaker 2: a lot of the community members will show up in
Speaker 2: support of the person accused of something again to show
Speaker 2: support that they need that person in their community. They
Speaker 2: don't want that person to get a long jail sentence.
Speaker 2: They want that person back with them. So in the
Speaker 2: case of Johnny Buyler, when he is being sentenced one
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty members of his community, and I guess
Speaker 2: that the Amish community at large traveled to the courtroom
Speaker 2: on that day he was going to get sentenced to
Speaker 2: do you support him, the guy that's accused of this stuff,
Speaker 2: the guy that just went through a trial about all
Speaker 2: this stuff. And it just shows you this thing. It
Speaker 2: shows you that thing.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 2: I've learned a lot about this, and I think we
Speaker 2: all did from Sarah McClure, who wrote a piece in
Speaker 2: Cosmopolitan back in twenty twenty, and in that she talks
Speaker 2: She talks about a whole bunch of different cases and
Speaker 2: gives a lot of specifics about them that you cannot unread.
Speaker 2: But it is very good to read them. I just
Speaker 2: mean that it's harring to read them, and it will
Speaker 2: not leave your mind for a while. But they She
Speaker 2: talks often about this very thing where even sometimes the
Speaker 2: initial accuser, the person who says he raises their hand
Speaker 2: and says, hey, you've been abusing me, ends up in
Speaker 2: the courtroom as a part of the trial or at
Speaker 2: some point in the trial and says writes a letter
Speaker 2: or something that says, hey, please don't send my brother
Speaker 2: or my dad to jail.
Speaker 3: Right, and in this case, uh yeah, in this case
Speaker 3: a similar thing occurred. I do also because you guys know,
Speaker 3: I'm I do also want to point out that those
Speaker 3: Amish supporters went to that courtroom via greyhound, which is
Speaker 3: a internal combustion autopia.
Speaker 2: Well, it depends on which sect they're in, because some
Speaker 2: of some of the more modern Amish scrims just but
Speaker 2: but the whole point in that, guys, is that the
Speaker 2: community will then convince or coerce and someone who is
Speaker 2: being abused to sit there and support the person who's
Speaker 2: abusing them out of a sense of community.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they'll they'll show up and they'll say, actually, none
Speaker 3: of that happened. You're making it sound worse than it is.
Speaker 3: And it's pronounced jazz lighting.
Speaker 5: Well, it reminds me of some of the correspondents that
Speaker 5: we've gotten from listeners, you know, around sexual abuse and
Speaker 5: these kinds of horrific experiences and so often. I believe
Speaker 5: it was one listener in particularly the Road, and it
Speaker 5: made the point that you know, kids or younger people
Speaker 5: or if they're isolated especially, they don't know that what's happening.
Speaker 3: Is bad, Like they don't know it's not normal.
Speaker 5: They don't, Yes, certainly, but it is possible to with
Speaker 5: that kind of iron fisted control over information, over a community,
Speaker 5: the lack of outside influence, to maintain these types of
Speaker 5: situations for a really, really long time before anybody will
Speaker 5: dare do what this young woman did in wearing a
Speaker 5: wire that is, to your point, been very out of
Speaker 5: the ordinary.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's something that feels with the benefit of
Speaker 3: being outside of an isolated community. It feels like a
Speaker 3: no brainer. Obviously, if you saw any child being abused,
Speaker 3: if you saw any person being abused, you would feel
Speaker 3: that is part of your social contract to assist that
Speaker 3: person right, to save them from adversity. And the issue
Speaker 3: here is that culturally it's a very different social contract.
Speaker 3: If you have ever had the dubious privilege of being
Speaker 3: on the wrong side of the courtroom, then you will
Speaker 3: know that letters of support character carried great weight with judges.
Speaker 3: In the various legal proceedings pertaining to the decade plus
Speaker 3: assault of Mary Byler. There were letters that Matt is
Speaker 3: referring to. One of these letters was written by Mary
Speaker 3: Byler's biological mother, statistically herself likely a victim of abuse
Speaker 3: at some point, and her mother wrote a letter disowning
Speaker 3: her daughter, but come on more so, saying that her
Speaker 3: daughter had always made things quote sound worse than they
Speaker 3: actually were, and that everybody involved regretted things had been
Speaker 3: confessed and forgiven by the community of matching your own
Speaker 3: parent doing that.
Speaker 4: It would be heartbreaking.
Speaker 5: I mean, I can't imagine just the level of betrayal
Speaker 5: that that would cause one to feel. Rightfully, so I
Speaker 5: have to mention though, been like these letters that you're
Speaker 5: talking about, you know, it's obviously up to the judges
Speaker 5: discretion to like determine like is this valid, Like what
Speaker 5: is the nature of this sentiment?
Speaker 4: You know, And it.
Speaker 5: Really makes me think of like some people that have
Speaker 5: gotten in real hot water for writing letters of support
Speaker 5: to pretty clearly guilty individuals, Like remember that case with
Speaker 5: I believe his name is Danny Masterson.
Speaker 4: He was on that seventies show.
Speaker 5: And Scientologist Scientology, but like he was a rapist, and
Speaker 5: I think Melak Kunas and Ashton Kutcher wrote letters of
Speaker 5: support to him for on his behalf that were read
Speaker 5: in the court room and they got majorly uh, you know, lampooned,
Speaker 5: and and you know, borderline canceled for that. So I
Speaker 5: just you have to wonder, like where is the court
Speaker 5: of public opinion in this, Like where is the judge's
Speaker 5: discretion and saying I am here to protect this person,
Speaker 5: and yet I'm giving credence to these letters that seem
Speaker 5: coerced and of themselves.
Speaker 3: I just don't get a sticky point to Matt to
Speaker 3: mass point earlier, you know, or these So intent is
Speaker 3: always one of the most difficult things to prove, right now.
Speaker 3: That's that's the reason why there are separate forms of
Speaker 3: punishment for crimes of passion versus premeditated murder or homicide.
Speaker 3: So in this, you know, it's it's very difficult to
Speaker 3: navigate the degree of consent or coercion toward the writing
Speaker 3: of these kind of letters, right of these sorts of
Speaker 3: statements against your own child. And this is something that
Speaker 3: the judge in the case, in the Johnny Byler case
Speaker 3: brought up. And you can see multiple recordings of this
Speaker 3: courtroom recordings. The judge, Michael Rosebrow says, I see a
Speaker 3: lot of you. I'm paraphrasing here, but he says, I
Speaker 3: see so many of you here in support of the accused,
Speaker 3: and I see people weeping. You know, from the community,
Speaker 3: how many of you have ever cried for the victim?
Speaker 3: How many of you have cried for Mary Biolet? And
Speaker 3: this guy clearly not amish, but he is asking a
Speaker 3: very valid question.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, but also seemed to give a lot of
Speaker 5: credence to those letters. That's why I'm confused because says
Speaker 5: what he just said, which seems to side with the victim,
Speaker 5: you know, and the duteons. I'm not supposed to take
Speaker 5: sides per se, but that sentence is insulting.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: One of the things that Sarah McClure talks about is
Speaker 2: that often the accuser will be coerced to lessen the charge,
Speaker 2: essentially like seeking justice for something that would be considered
Speaker 2: a misdemeanor versus a felony. And that's often the case
Speaker 2: where again the abused is coerced by the community then
Speaker 2: to say, oh, well, he just he groped me, he
Speaker 2: didn't it. We're going to consider it, you know this
Speaker 2: rather than full you know, we'll call it sexual assault
Speaker 2: rather than rape, right.
Speaker 3: Just aggravated molestation something like that.
Speaker 2: It's horrifying. And Sarah, by the way, found fifty two
Speaker 2: official cases.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, we're gonna. Sarah McClure, an investigative journalists, spent
Speaker 3: a year reporting on sexual abuse among the Amish. She
Speaker 3: did uncover fifty two cases of abuse, which include sexual
Speaker 3: assault and incest. And she found this across seven states
Speaker 3: over the past twenty years.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And just to add to that there, like, here's
Speaker 2: a quote from somebody named Esther. This person isn't actually
Speaker 2: named Esther, their name was changed for this reporting. But
Speaker 2: this is a quote from somebody in one of the
Speaker 2: communities that says, we're told that it's not christ like
Speaker 2: to report, right. Uh's this is someone who was abused
Speaker 2: by her brother and a neighbor boy when she was
Speaker 2: nine years old.
Speaker 4: But Christ's pook truth to power. Christ called people out.
Speaker 4: That was his whole time. I'm sorry. This is her.
Speaker 2: This is her quote, and she also says, quote, it's
Speaker 2: so ingrained. There are so many people who go to
Speaker 2: church and just endure basically endure ongoing abuse.
Speaker 5: I don't buy that depiction of Christ at all. Remember
Speaker 5: when he flipped over the money Changers table.
Speaker 3: Over when he did a distrack essentially and cursed the
Speaker 3: tree because it didn't have figs. I can't remember which
Speaker 3: version of you guys book that makes it.
Speaker 5: And yeah, he endured being you know the crucifixion where
Speaker 5: you know, there's all these biblical scholars or whatever who
Speaker 5: argue that he could have changed the course of his
Speaker 5: destiny if he chose, but instead he let.
Speaker 4: It happen basically because it needed to happen.
Speaker 5: Whatever, like, whatever your take is on the spiritual side,
Speaker 5: of the prophecy side of it or whatever. But you
Speaker 5: cannot say that Jesus was a good little boy.
Speaker 4: You kept his mouth shut. That is not true.
Speaker 3: Well, the money changers have entered the chat, I imagine.
Speaker 3: Here's what we know. The Amish community, time and time again,
Speaker 3: not just in the Biler case, has argued that they
Speaker 3: already meeted out appropriate punishment to these people who have
Speaker 3: provably done these monstrous acts. Their argument, really internally is
Speaker 3: that there is a true sin. People make mistakes, they say,
Speaker 3: but the real sin is reporting it to the outside world,
Speaker 3: because that would endanger the community, the exclusivity, the insular nature,
Speaker 3: and the long term sustainability of the grand project. And
Speaker 3: this is far from the end of the story. There
Speaker 3: are many, many more cases of sexual abuse, community based
Speaker 3: and family based. There are children born as a result
Speaker 3: of these violent things.
Speaker 1: And.
Speaker 3: Some of those children are alive today. We could argue
Speaker 3: with validity that there is a high likely or a
Speaker 3: higher than average likelihood of this occurring in the insular community.
Speaker 3: Predators find opportunity, right, A predator is I don't know.
Speaker 3: It goes back to a conversation we're having earlier about
Speaker 3: the the nature of original sin and evil. We know,
Speaker 3: when outside accountability it self becomes the crime, right, then
Speaker 3: things get very skewed very quickly.
Speaker 5: Well, and it's also just highly inconvenient for the status
Speaker 5: quo of a community like that, whether there be accurate
Speaker 5: allegations of this kind of abuse or it's just literally
Speaker 5: maintaining their way of life. To have a criminal case
Speaker 5: before the eyes of the public out in the secular world,
Speaker 5: that's about the worst possible thing they could imagine in
Speaker 5: terms of, like, you know, the hierarchy and then the
Speaker 5: control over that society.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we want to point everybody over to another article
Speaker 2: that you can check out right now, and it spotlights
Speaker 2: this exact thing. Just how many examples of this exist?
Speaker 2: Look up what they wore Amish Country exhibit spotlight's sex
Speaker 2: abuse and this is somebody's written in ap News by
Speaker 2: Peter Smith back in twenty twenty two, and it describes
Speaker 2: essentially an exhibit that was put on where there are
Speaker 2: the clothes of the girls like as young as four,
Speaker 2: the exact clothes or recreations of the clothes that these
Speaker 2: girls wore when they were sexually abused.
Speaker 3: And very conservative, you know, we're talking like all the way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, imagine imagine the traditional garb of a Mennonite or
Speaker 2: an Amish community.
Speaker 3: Imagine like a house on the prairie. What's the name
Speaker 3: of that shop.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good way to think about it, for sure, for.
Speaker 3: Not Amish in the audience.
Speaker 2: Yeah, including bonnets, right, And they are strung up on
Speaker 2: a clothesline with a small piece of paper that just
Speaker 2: states how old the child was and what they were wearing. Basically,
Speaker 2: it describes the clothing when they were abused. And it
Speaker 2: is just a striking way to view how prevalent this is,
Speaker 2: and it is heartbreaking to see some of the tiny
Speaker 2: clothes that are strung up on that clothesline.
Speaker 3: I'd like to also add the note from the documentary
Speaker 3: which is fairly recent, called Sins of the Amish quotation
Speaker 3: at the very beginning The odds of an Amish woman
Speaker 3: getting raped to buy a guy on the street are
Speaker 3: almost zero, but from a guy within their own communities
Speaker 3: it is one out of every six on a good day. Harrowing.
Speaker 3: We also know there are more non sexual crimes that
Speaker 3: occur between these communities and the outside world. We're talking
Speaker 3: drug trafficking, weirdly enough, shaving, oh jeez, yeah, murder, Well,
Speaker 3: it's a big deal. It's a big deal.
Speaker 4: There, I know.
Speaker 5: But as a bearded a man who's been bearded for
Speaker 5: a very long time, I could personally attest that would
Speaker 5: be a crime against humanity if someone ever did that
Speaker 5: to me without without my consent.
Speaker 4: No, I'm making light because.
Speaker 5: That's the only thing I know how to do when
Speaker 5: it comes to heavy stuff like this. The drug trafficking
Speaker 5: stuff is also addressed in that doc that I mentioned
Speaker 5: the Devil's Backbone, because some of the kids that do
Speaker 5: take that sabbatical.
Speaker 4: And go out into the real world.
Speaker 5: There's a handful of stories that involve methamphetamines and bring
Speaker 5: that back into the community and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm thinking in particular of Abner King Stoolfitz and
Speaker 3: Abner Stolfitz, not related. I'm thinking of a New York
Speaker 3: Times article back in nineteen ninety eight when they became
Speaker 3: the first two members of Pennsylvania Amish to be arrested
Speaker 3: for afficking cocaine and meth. This was in step with
Speaker 3: the Pagan motorcycle gang. We should probably do an episode
Speaker 3: on outlaw bikers as well, the original one percenters, right,
Speaker 3: And maybe the biggest takeaway is this conspiracy thrives in
Speaker 3: a lack of transparency. In the Amish community, we witness
Speaker 3: clear misogyny, and we see with any community practicing this,
Speaker 3: the same horrifying stories over and over. Women is not
Speaker 3: quite people, not quite property, not given the same rights.
Speaker 3: And unfortunately, many of our fellow listeners, folks, some of
Speaker 3: us in the audience tonight, have experienced similar situations in
Speaker 3: likewise insular communities. We already shouted out Sarah McClure, investigative
Speaker 3: journalist who has done so much tremendous work for people here.
Speaker 3: We also want to recommend the Plain People podcast, launched
Speaker 3: in twenty eighteen, which explores in depth more stories of
Speaker 3: sexual abuse and Amish and Mennonite communities.
Speaker 2: For sure, we were talking for a while about you know,
Speaker 2: how could this happen? Why is this happening? And Sarah
Speaker 2: McClure in her piece again look it up right now.
Speaker 2: The Amish keep to themselves and they're hiding a horrifying secret.
Speaker 2: She explains it in a way that I think I understand,
Speaker 2: and I think we all understand at least a little better.
Speaker 2: She says, it's not one thing, right. You can't point
Speaker 2: to one thing. You can't point to a couple things
Speaker 2: that make these communities ripe for this type of abuse.
Speaker 2: But she calls it a perfect storm of factors. I'm
Speaker 2: just gonna list these off really quickly because I think this.
Speaker 2: You can find these factors, sometimes separately in groups, and
Speaker 2: then when you see them begin to combine, that's where
Speaker 2: the real trouble begins, she says. One a patriarchal and
Speaker 2: isolated lifestyle in which victims have little exposure to police, coaches,
Speaker 2: or anyone else who might help them. An education system
Speaker 2: that ends at eighth grade and fails to teach children
Speaker 2: about their bodies and about sex. A culture of victim
Speaker 2: blaming and shaming. Little access to the technology that enables
Speaker 2: communication for broader social awareness of what's going on about
Speaker 2: your body, about what others are experiencing and a religion
Speaker 2: that prioritizes repentance and forgiveness over actual punishment and rehabilitation.
Speaker 2: So really, in this episode, guys, what we've done is
Speaker 2: outlined all of that stuff. I think Sarah just puts
Speaker 2: that into one concise thing where you can just kind
Speaker 2: of see it and go, oh wow, okay, if you've
Speaker 2: got all of those factors going at the same time,
Speaker 2: this leads to a place where it's a I think
Speaker 2: it's in that documentary that you mentioned, Ben. In the
Speaker 2: trailer for it, they call it a paradise for abusers.
Speaker 3: Yes, they call it pedophiles paradise. And there's another I mean,
Speaker 3: there is a town called Paradise as well. And this
Speaker 3: is an interesting point here, Matt, because astute fellow conspiracy realist,
Speaker 3: we can already note the factors listed by McClure. The
Speaker 3: factors we explore here are not unique to any single ideology,
Speaker 3: to any single creed, to any single region of the
Speaker 3: human experience. And maybe we begin our ending with this. Obviously,
Speaker 3: not every person in any Amish or Mennonite community is
Speaker 3: abusing children, like imagine any longstanding theocratic civilization. The majority
Speaker 3: of people in those civilizations. Then as of now and
Speaker 3: in the future, are people just like you. They do
Speaker 3: not wake up each day excited to hurt themselves or others.
Speaker 3: But the problem is the lack of transparency, that is
Speaker 3: the original sin, the insular nature of the them versus
Speaker 3: us mentality, This intense continual indoctrination right, the brainwashing of
Speaker 3: rules and also loopholes to that rules, that makes the
Speaker 3: ordinal the Ordnung twist. And as we record to date,
Speaker 3: the most heartbreaking part is there is very little indication
Speaker 3: that the Amish community overall, being decentralized as it is,
Speaker 3: will take any serious action to address past abuse or
Speaker 3: to prevent future abuse.
Speaker 2: Guys, the one thing we haven't talked about yet in
Speaker 2: this episode is something particularly horrifying which is a practice
Speaker 2: in several communities that was outlined in a couple of
Speaker 2: places we found online where women, young girls even sometimes
Speaker 2: are sent to a type of institution where they are
Speaker 2: to receive treatment to get right with God. And the
Speaker 2: people who run those institutions often are a part of
Speaker 2: the church in one way or another, and they will
Speaker 2: medicate young girls and women with stuff like olanzapine, which
Speaker 2: is an antipsychotic medication.
Speaker 3: It's a very heavy duty antipsychotic medication.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's generally a treatment for schizophrenia and is only
Speaker 2: recommended for patients above the age of thirteen for manic
Speaker 2: episodes and bipolar disorder and all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 3: Very yellow wallpaper. To be honest with you.
Speaker 2: That's a great way to describe it. It is people
Speaker 2: who have gone through the experience, young women especially report
Speaker 2: coming back as zombies or their friends coming back as
Speaker 2: zombies and just existing basically being told by the church
Speaker 2: via this or organization, you just need to be obedient.
Speaker 2: You just need to you know, comply exactly. To me,
Speaker 2: it's just another horrifying aspect of a way to control
Speaker 2: someone or an entire group of women.
Speaker 3: I think it's a horrifying aspect to all of us.
Speaker 3: You know this, this this idea dates back to earlier.
Speaker 3: As you said, Matt control attempts right lobottomize, medicate zombie
Speaker 3: fie victims right of a system, rather than changing the
Speaker 3: system that produces these victims through active conspiracy. This is
Speaker 3: this is it, you know, the there are more things ahead.
Speaker 3: We were absolutely not spinning you a tail. These conspiracies
Speaker 3: are real. They continue this evening, and for any fellow
Speaker 3: listeners with experience in these communities, having survived these things,
Speaker 3: we want to end by saying this, we very much
Speaker 3: hope you are safe. We are here to learn your stories.
Speaker 3: Please listen all the way to the end of this
Speaker 3: episode and thank you for being here with us. Folks.
Speaker 3: We are going to tell you how to contact us
Speaker 3: via social media, via telephone, via our direct email address,
Speaker 3: which we can all see and respond to. We do
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Speaker 5: You can find us at the handle Conspiracy Stuff on
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Speaker 5: You can also find our Facebook group under that handle.
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Speaker 5: On Instagram and TikTok also great ways to get in touch.
Speaker 5: You can find us at the handle Conspiracy Stuff Show.
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