Dethroning the Hierophant

Article first published as Dethroning the Hierophant on Blogcritics.

A few years ago, I observed that the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church was hitting a critical point, as a glut of news reports was beginning to directly implicate the Vatican. I suggested then that what was happening in the Catholic Church was an indicator of the dismantling of hierarchical systems more broadly and that in the Motherpeace Tarot, such patriarchal, spiritual authority is represented by the Hierophant.

At its root, the word "hierophant" means bringer to light of sacred things. In the traditional Tarot, the Hierophant represents a priest or Pope, the paternal religious authority.... Representing a hierarchical view of religion, the Hierophant stands on a pedestal, raised up from the earth, above the common person. In the Motherpeace image, he has taken over the robes and skirt of the High Priestess, along with her breasts which symbolize her sacred power, but he has forsaken her "Sophia" or wisdom.... The authority of the Hierophant is based, in large part, on repression of women and the natural instincts that women symbolize.

The The Motherpeace Tarot Playbook explains how to read the card when it comes up in a spread.

The Hierophant represents spiritual authority. He represents ritual and ceremonial magic which manifests as organized religion in this culture. Or he represents the psychic control exercised by mostly male, authority figures in our culture, such as psychiatrists, gurus, doctors and courtroom judges. Since he is also the internalized parent or superego authority, he represents conventional morality.

The text goes on to explain how to read this card when it presents as reversed, or ill-dignified.

The reversal shows a full-scale rebellion. You can no longer tolerate external roles and conventional morality; you have begun to call on your deeper conscience for advice You are able to stop kneeling to the priest or the doctor or the father, choosing instead to take your own advice, heed your own counsel.

I believe that this is the fight that is now full-on. After several years of observing and cataloging the scandals and failures of leadership in the Catholic Church, as well as the public break-down of other patriarchal, spiritual groups -- James Ray International, Warren Jeffs's FLDS, and even the strange, little splinter group of Amish in Bergholz, Ohio -- I see followers in even some very unexpected religious contexts beginning to take their power back. More recently there have been upheavals in organizations as diverse as Scientology and a prominent Zen Buddhist organization.

What I have found particularly moving in these cases is the courage of women who are standing up to religious abusers, often with little to no support, and sometimes, at great personal risk. It is after all, women and children who suffer the most in oppressive, patriarchal systems. It is axiomatic in these institutions, large and small, that women and teen girls are sexually exploited. Only in the Catholic Church -- with it's ostensibly celibate priesthood and apparently overflowing gay closet -- did such abuse of women take a back seat to the abuse of children.

On February 11, Pope Benedict XVI shocked the world when he announced his resignation. For all the apologia about this being a reasoned decision by a reasonable man, nothing changes the fact that it stands centuries old tradition on its head. Benedict's seismic action takes place at one of the most tenuous times in the Church's history -- a period pointed to by prophecy that it takes far more seriously than it publicly admits. I think it would be hard to overstate the importance of this turn of events and that it speaks to a greater realignment of world power. The patriarchal authority represented by the iconic, hierophantic position of the pope, God's representative on earth from the time of St. Peter, has been so eroded that it is now a job you can quit.

We'll probably never know everything that factored into Benedict's decision, but it is arguable that he really is just exhausted -- that he is too old and sick to weather the hard rain that has begun to fall on the Church. Over the past eight years, he has presided over a Church in steep decline -- one that has lost the moral authority to hold the respect of even one of the most Catholic countries in the world: Ireland.

In an interconnected world of instant media, a Church that has spent decades and billions of dollars concealing crimes and protecting pedophiles at the expense of children has found itself unable to quell the outrage. Such deference to authority has reached its expiration date. And in that respect, the Catholic Church finds itself in good company, as religions big and small face a new level of scrutiny and an inability to stifle the dissent.

LRH aka., L. Ron Hubbard
Father of the Church of Scientology

The Church of Scientology, for instance, had a good run. They managed for some time to effectively silence their critics and intimidate the press. In the popular imagination, Scientology has long been something of a joke. The bizarre antics of celebrities like Tom Cruise, John Travolta, and Kirstie Allie, have made it seem glamorous and funny at the same time. Sure, they're kooky, but no one's getting hurt -- except perhaps financially. But there is a very dark side to Scientology -- a grotesque underbelly that only avid Scientology watchers have been aware of for years. Locals in the Clearwater, Florida area tell tales of an obvious cult in their midst, with slave-like conditions and rumors of disappearances. With the burgeoning of the internet, sites like Operation Clambake began to collect documentation of secret beliefs and evidence of abuse and mind control. But many former Scientologists have been too afraid to tell their stories. Threats of litigation, cutting people off from family, surveillance, character assassination, and other intimidation tactics kept the majority of Scientology's critics quiet.

Over the past few years things have begun to open up and Scientology's ruthless message discipline seems to be breaking down. Former members are becoming more emboldened and the Tampa Bay Times started a landmark series on their neighbor across the bay. And now, suddenly, it's open season on the Church of Scientology. They are facing a multipronged media attack. Books by prominent authors have drawn major press coverage and a thinly veiled biopic of L. Ron Hubbard drew the ire of Scientologists.

The open disgruntlement of followers, disenchanted after having turned over huge sums for a dubious real estate scheme, has people seriously questioning whether this is the beginning of the end for an organization claiming a massive expansion. Some of the major funders of Ideal Org building purchases and renovations have become angry enough over a venture that has only seemed to enrich the central organization that they are suing.

A new book, Going Clear, by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Lawrence Wright has been making the rounds and making waves, but one of the most damning critiques is coming from Church of Scientology leader David Miscavige's own niece. In Beyond Belief, Jenna Miscavige Hill tells her story of what could fairly be described as a childhood of slave labor and teen years spent under cruel oppression.

Scientology seems like an equal opportunity abuser but, as is so typical, women and children are subject to extraordinary control and exploitation -- particularly in their religious order Sea Org. Women sacrifice their reproductive freedom. Marriage within the order is accepted as long as couples agree not to have children. Women who get pregnant are coerced into aborting or put into filthy rehabilitation centers where they are forced into hard, physical labor, and other conditions that are decidedly unsafe for pregnant women.

Children of Sea Org parents, like third-generation Scientologist Miscavige Hill, are also a cheap labor force. She spent her early childhood on "the Ranch," receiving a minimal Scientology-only education and putting in a six day week of hard, physical labor. These small children do mainly construction and landscaping, wielding dangerous equipment and hauling rocks and dirt. She rarely saw her parents and all her phone conversations with them were supervised. At age 7 she signed one of Sea Org's thousand year contracts and took on even more adult responsibilities.

Her parents left first and the then 16 year old Miscavige Hill's connection to these SPs (suppressive persons) made her suspect. She was subject to even more restrictive control. Later, she chose to leave as well, risking her marriage to Dallas Hill, who was threatened with separation from his own very committed Scientologist family. They are now both out of Scientology and have done many things that they could not have done had they remained -- like read anti-Scientology literature and procreate. They have two children, Winnie and Archie.

Miscavage Hill also created exscientologykids.com with Kendra Wiseman and Astra Woodcraft. Woodcraft was also a Sea Org member, married at 15 to a man five years her senior, she spent a harrowing youth of emotional abuse, sexual harassment, and molestation -- something the Church of Scientology covers up so effectively the Catholic Church could only be envious.

At 19 Woodcraft resolved to exit Scientology. She did this by deliberately violating the rules. She got pregnant and refused to abort. Her choice has cut her off from her husband, the father of her child, and her own mother, but left her with a real life and a beautiful daughter. In this interview, she, along with her father and sister, provide a damning portrait of life deep inside the Church of Scientology. She goes into graphic detail on her lack of education, excessive and bizarre responsibilities, and emotional torment. No one could listen to this story and come to the conclusion that the Church of Scientology is anything but a dangerous, mind-control cult.

Warren Jeffs ~ Incarcerated Leader & Prophet of FLDS

Also in disarray is the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or FLDS. Leader Warren Jeffs is serving out a life sentence in a Texas prison for sexually abusing underage girls -- some of his many "celestial wives." While he maintains a stranglehold on the church community, he is simultaneously destroying it. Excommunications, draconian restrictions like a no sex edict, and ignoring legal moves against his many properties, appear to have resulted in a dwindling footprint. It's hard to say how many are excommunicated, how many may have deserted, and how many are being deliberately relocated to secret locations.

What is certain is that state and local authorities around Jeffs's most developed communities are using a variety of legal maneuvers to effectively put him out of business. Texas, which successfully prosecuted him for sexual abuse, is now moving to seize the sprawling Yearning for Zion ranch on the grounds that it was used as a base for illegal operations. Arizona is pressing forward with attempts to reign in what it insists is a crooked Marshal's Office in the border towns of Colorado City, AZ and Hilldale, UT. Despite one failed legislative attempt to dissolve the force, the State is pressing forward.

In January Arizona's AG Tom Horne introduced Ruby Jessop to the press. This courageous woman has fought long and hard to regain her freedom and her children. Forced into marriage at 14, and relocated numerous times to hide her from her outspoken, apostate sister Flora Jessop, she at long last escaped and won temporary custody of her six children.

Ruby, it is claimed, was forced not only to marry her own step-brother, but to have sex with other men, as well. Flora, who had also been forced into marriage as a child, spoke for Ruby.

Twelve years ago, I got a call from my sister who has 14 years old [stet] and had been placed in an arranged marriage. She had managed to get away and I gave her a promise that I would do everything I could to keep her safe. Then, before I could get to her and get her help, she disappeared and was taken back into the group.

. . .

Ruby is one of thousands that have been trapped and abused and held under the regime of Warren Jeffs and she is just so happy to be out and her children are excited and able to go to a school for the first time. To watch them play with toys and learn to become children has just been amazing.

It is women like Flora and Ruby Jessop, in open rebellion against the sex slavery of Jeffs's FLDS, who are tearing through the fabric of his empire.

In one of the most repressive lifestyles extant in the United States (and Canada), women and girls who've known no other life are finding their voices and telling their horrible stories of rape, abuse, and virtual imprisonment. In 2007 Elissa Wall, who was forced by Jeffs to marry her first cousin when she was 14, testified in a Utah court. Jeffs was convicted as an accomplice to rape. That conviction was later overturned on a technicality. But Wall went on to write a book about her experiences within FLDS. It bears mentioning that she and Jenna Miscavige Hill had the same co-author, Lisa Pulitzer.

While Jeffs was awaiting that trial in Utah, he reportedly contacted William E. Jessop, confessed to incest and pedophilia, and attempted to hand him the reigns of FLDS. He reneged but Jessop has gone on to start his own church -- one which allows for polygamy, or "celestial marriage," but prohibits the institutionalized sex abuse of adolescent girls. So Jeffs has also created a competitor who, at least appears to be rejecting the flesh trade which has long defined the sect.

Jeffs was convicted in Texas due in no small part to the testimony of people he'd molested as children. One was his niece, Jerusha Jeffs, who told the court that he'd molested her when she was just 7 years old. No longer in FLDS, she now counsels others who are trying to break from the sect.

Others who had been molested by Jeffs testified in Texas, including his nephew Brent, who told the court about being raped by Jeffs when he was only 5. There is no overstating the courage it takes to stand up to your abuser like that... and put a stop to him.

Samuel Mullet ~ Incarcerated Bishop of the Bergholz Amish

Bishop Samuel Mullet had his comeuppance in a federal court. He will likely serve most if not all of the remainder of his life in prison. He was convicted for masterminding a series of hate crimes against other Amish. Members of his breakaway sect in Bergholz, Ohio, waged a reign of terror against their Amish critics, attacking them with hair clippers. Cutting the beards of Amish men and the hair of Amish women is an assault on their understanding of the Bible and goes to the core of their Amish identity.

There was plenty of evidence of Mullet's complicity in the attacks, even though he sat safely in his home as they were happening. The hair of the victims and other trophies were presented to him by the attackers. Photos of the attacks were recovered from his property. There were even very damning jailhouse recordings. But federal prosecutors proved their case largely by establishing the degree of mental and emotional control Mullet had over the members of his community.

Jurors learned of draconian punishments for vague infractions. Men were subjected to beatings and forced to sleep in a chicken coop. Women were coerced into sexual relationships with Mullet, a form of "counseling" to "cleanse them of the devil."

His own daughter-in-law testified to Mullet's insistence that she live in his house while her husband was in a mental ward recovering from a nervous breakdown. Mullet blamed her for his son's mental state and insisted that if he could just teach her to have sex properly, she'd be a better wife. When she balked, he informed her that "the other ladies" did as they were told. When she refused to continue with this twisted arrangement, he called her a whore.

Lovina Miller, the wife of Mullet's nephew Eli, may have become pregnant while she was receiving her "sexual counseling." She was found in Mullet's bedroom when the FBI was raiding the property.

Both judge and jury seemed satisfied that the multiple abuses and indignities Mullet heaped upon his followers only served to bend them to his will and bind them to his purposes. One hopes that while he serves his sentence, his remaining followers will awaken from the spell of this most unlikely charismatic leader.

James Arthur Ray ~ Incarcerated... For Now

It is somewhat ironic that another charismatic leader -- who was convicted for causing the deaths of Kirby Brown, James Shore, and Liz Neuman -- is serving a much shorter sentence than Bishop Mullet did for ordering haircuts. In fact he will probably be getting out presently. The law is a rather clumsy instrument. Still, after sitting through a four month trial -- thanks to the wonders of our electronic age -- I was gratified that he was convicted and sentenced, if inadequately.

In a trial, and ensuing coverage, that I cataloged pretty thoroughly, we learned a great deal about the degree of psychological control Mr. Ray exerted on people who paid him an awful lot of money:

• How he played at being God with the power over life and death
• How he denied them food and water for thirty-six hours in the desert
• How he repeatedly degraded them by controlling their bodily functions and elimination
• How he broke them down through sleep deprivation
• How he leveraged their emotional vulnerabilities
• How he compelled them to drudge up their sexual histories and traumas
• How he sexually and emotionally exploited groupies
• How he intimidated them into cutting off all their hair
• How he made them walk the edge of a cliff blindfolded
• How he publicly shamed them if they tried to leave a dangerously superheated environment
• How he sat calmly in the shade and shrugged as people were dying

Joshu Sasaki ~ Founder of the Mount Baldy Zen Center

In the very different world of Zen Buddhism, another prolific molester has also, at long last been brought to heel. For decades, the inappropriateness of the legendary Joshu Sasaki was an open secret. Women who complained about being groped and sexually coerced were ignored, even shunned.

It took several men in positions of authority to break the silence and force the community to take the problem seriously. They took a lot of abuse, themselves, for doing so. The story broke wide when Adam Tebbe, editor of the online magazine Sweeping Zen, published a piece by Joshu Martin. Martin was taught and ordained by Sasaki and has gone on to run the Victoria Zen Center in Vancouver. Many used his competitor status to dismiss his accusations. But his piece was followed by a painfully detailed article by Giko David Rubin, who had spent years in Sasaki's service as a priest and personal translator.

An independent council of Zen teachers then collected stories and statements from the survivors of Sasaki's abuse. There was a snowballing of media attention, including a feature in the New York Times. A Sasaki Archive was set up to compile the articles and statements and provide a record of the scandal.

At the ripe old age of 105, Sasaki is unlikely to face any real consequences for his years of abuse, other than the damage to his reputation and legacy. In the years that stopping him would have really mattered and protected unaware women from victimization, radio silence was strictly enforced.

As with the pedophilia scandal in the Catholic Church, the way the organization enabled the abuser in their midst for decades is as horrifying as the abuse itself. The monks who served Sasaki, when confronted by women who'd been violated and degraded, shrugged it off or told them they should just go ahead and show him their breasts... because, eh, why not?

Even those, within his organization, who tried to get him to stop met stiff resistance from the monks and lies and evasions from Sasaki -- something Giko David Rubin learned through painful experience.

Even now, some of the apologia for Sasaki's behavior is stunning. It forms what Michael Sigman terms a "counter-narrative." It really just continues a long kept inner tradition in Rinzai-ji of accepting a certain duality in their leader. Monk Bob Mammoser told the New York Times:

“What’s important and is overlooked is that, besides this aspect, Roshi was a commanding and inspiring figure using Buddhist practice to help thousands find more peace, clarity and happiness in their own lives. It seems to be the kind of thing that, you get the person as a whole, good and bad, just like you marry somebody and you get their strengths and wonderful qualities as well as their weaknesses.”

Sure. If you're gonna make an omelet, ya gotta break a few ova.

It's interesting that Mammoser chooses marriage as a metaphor because this is exactly the kind of thing that  happens in some families of sexual abusers. In many cases, spouses and other family members know the abuse is happening and look the other way because they rely on the abuser's income... or because they are more besotted with the abuser than with their children.

This dependency was something Sasaki exploited whenever he faced serious confrontation from some of his monks. He would simply threaten to take his leadership and his teaching away from them and they would fall in line.

Sazaki was protected by an army of followers who aggressively stifled any hint of uprising. Sandy Stewart, whose wife Susanna was one of many women he knew to have been abused, was actually lured back into Rinzai-ji with promises that the abuse had stopped. When he learned that it had not, he wrote a letter to the board. The result was a deluge of hate mail. Said Stewart, "People … thought I was stupid and crazy. They said, 'Have you no respect?' and said I should be lashed and beaten."

Others tried to protect Sasaki from himself, even going so far as to try to arrange a marriage for him, in the vain hope that he could restrict his attention to a single pair of breasts. The attempt was unsuccessful.

Even the masthead on the Sasaki Archive appears to be apologia for his behavior -- either that or some very strange attempt at irony. The two quotes enshrined there are one generally laudatory one and a statement which appears to be from one of the very small minority of women who welcomed Sasaki's advances. In addition to being not at all representative of the overall content, the quote is virtually unsourced. It's excerpted from a comment by an unnamed woman which was claimed by a Sasaki apologist to have appeared on Eshu Martin's Facebook page. Out of all the pained statements from women who were brave enough to give testimony to Sasaki's abuse, this is the quote that appears at the top of the website cataloging the scandal: "I 'suffered Roshi's abuse' – and it was the closest I ever got to god."

Needless to say, the bulk of the material on the archive and in the council report does not present Sasaki in such glowing terms. Their voices are better summed up by the poem of Chizuko Karen Joy Tasaka, who did not live to see her teacher forced finally to face the music. What follows is an excerpt:

my friend—she was inji sex with roshi she tried to say no  you demanded, demanded, demanded  demon demand the force of a tornado sex with roshi for whose best interest? I told you I don’t like it. I asked you why you do this? You said, “nonattachment, nonattachment, you nonattachment I told you as shoji, “women very angry, very upset” I asked you why you do this. You said: “Be good daughter to roshi, and good wife to G.  [her husband]. Roshi, that is incest So many women trying to shake the shame from their voices of Sex with roshi We came to you with the trust of a student You were our teacher You betrayed us You violated our bodies You rape our souls

Sasaki is a classic Hierophant, as defined in Motherpeace. He presented himself as a gateway to enlightenment. The same could be said of any of these spiritual leaders and many more like them. To their students and followers, they are intermediaries between themselves and the ineffable world of spirit. Whether the goal is heaven, nirvana, or simply a more purposeful life, human beings have, throughout recorded history, felt incapable of achieving those goals on their own. We've relied on gurus, priests, and other teachers, not as wayshowers, but as the way. They held the secrets. They kept them close to the vest. And to attain them, people accepted again and again a devil's bargain.

This is the dark side of patriarchy. Human beings are commodities to exploit financially, sexually, and spiritually. Women and children are less than people -- second class citizens reduced to their bodies. They are devoured in these systems.

Invariably, enough people know about outrageous abuses that the abusers could be stopped... but they aren't. Human beings are sacrificed to maintain a power structure that people believe will set them free. All the while, they are becoming more enmeshed, more ensnared, in the world of illusion -- willingly pulling the wool over their own eyes. But the veil is slipping.

"The kingdom of God is within you." ~ Luke 17:21

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI

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Sam Mullet to Go Away for Awhile

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Click to See Press Conference Video

Samuel Mullet, the bishop of the rogue Amish sect that terrorized Amish in four Ohio counties with  hair clippers, was sentenced today by U.S. District Court Judge Daniel Aaron Polster to fifteen years in prison. Fifteen of his followers who carried out the brutal attacks will all do some jail time, with sentences ranging from one year and a day to seven years.

The most complete record of today's proceedings I've been able to locate is from WKYC in Cleveland, and it includes a partial transcript of comments. Each of the defendants took responsibility and many offered to take on the punishment for others. In particular, several of the husbands offered to serve for their wives so that they could go home to their children. Judge Polster gave the lightest sentences to the women and deferred a number of them until after their husbands are released so that the children would be protected.

Many of the defendants were characteristically Amish -- apologetic, contrite, and accepting of justice for their fully confessed wrong-doing. To my ear Sam Mullet still managed to come off as a self-pitying martyr.

"I am being blamed for being a cult leader....I am not going to be here much longer...my goal in life is to help the younger people...if somebody needs to be punished, I'll take the punishment for everybody....let these mothers and fathers go home to their children"

"I'm not taking the farm with me. I'm not going to be here much longer. My goal in life has been to help people that are the underdog, to help people who are frowned on, mocked.....,"

"Let these dads and moms go home to their families, raise their children, I'll take the punishment for everybody. There's a lot more things I could say, but everything I say is twisted and turned."

Well. At least he offered to do the right thing, even if he resents it.

Said Judge Polster:

"You deserve the longest and harshest sentence...you ran the Bergholz community with an iron hand....sadly, I consider you are a danger to the community.....I think a sentence of life in prison is longer than necessary so I am opposing [sic] a sentence of 15 years."

But for a 67 year old man, that could be a life sentence. Judge Polster also had harsh words for the rest of the defendants.

"Each and every one of you did more than terrorize, traumatize and disfigure the victims," said U.S. District Judge Dan Aaron Polster. "You trampled on the Constitution."

He further made the point that they had all benefited from First Amendment religious protections which allowed them to do things like avoid jury service and leave school at 14 years of age. Defense attorneys argued for light sentences, proffered letters of support from family and business associates, and argued that long sentences would be a hardship for the community and children.

In rebuttal, prosecutors underscored the violent nature of the attacks, the terror they inflicted on the greater Amish community, and the religious implications of targeting hair and beards. U.S. Attorney Bridget Brennan also pointed out that the attacks did not stop when some of the attackers were arrested. They only stopped once Bishop Mullet was behind bars.

One hopes that his continuing incarceration will be the end of attempts by his followers to violently impose their brand of Amish on others. But, where the convicted perpetrators have expressed deep regret and promised that this would never happen again, the reaction from the Bergholz community is telling.

Mr. Mullet’s community of about 135 has stood by him, vowing to continue living in isolation from other Amish, whom they condemn for drinking, smoking and playing musical instruments.

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Please Keep Sam Mullet in Jail

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

That is the urgent plea of 14 Amish letter writers from as far away as Pennsylvania and New York state. For their family members who are married to Mullets, for their grandchildren, for the good of the Amish, please don't let him "become loose."

The content varies little. Sam Mullet is running a cult. His followers are brainwashed. Things have begun to improve in Bergholz since his incarceration. But the strangest wrinkle is that letter after letter extends thanks -- to the judge, the prosecutors, and the FBI by name. That is how afraid the greater Amish community is of Sam Mullet. The Amish, one of the most independent, self-reliant populations in the country -- a network of communities that almost always wants to handle things internally assisted by nothing but God's grace and their own ability to forgive just about anything -- is grateful that the government stepped in. And they won't feel safe unless Sam Mullet spends the rest of his days in a federal penitentiary. And that is exactly what prosecutors are asking for.

Federal sentencing guidelines call for a level 32 punishment, which translates to 10 to 13 years, but prosecutors are asking the judge for what's known as an upward enhancement. More time. They want life in prison for Mullet.

Mullet and his merry band of hair-cutters are due to be sentenced tomorrow.

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Religious Abusers in Prison Maintain Strict Authority

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Incarcerated FLDS leader Warren Jeffs is maintaining an iron grip on followers even as his prophetic proclamations fail to manifest. I say that only because it's 2013 and the world hasn't ended.

“The consensus seems to be that Warren is indicating that by the end of the year, the end of the world will be here," Brower said.

A CNN reporter dispatched to the community's main enclave in Colorado City, Ariz., and Hildale, Utah, was rejected by FLDS members who refused to speak to him. Meanwhile, the abrupt closing of the area's only grocery story and "central gathering" point for the community has added to fears Jeff's followers are gearing up for doomsday, according to the report.

The global cataclysm appears to have been rescheduled after an earlier prediction that would have ended the world on December 23rd also failed to pan out.

There is nothing exactly new about Jeffs's apocalyptic prophecies. As his former FLDS follower Isaac Wyler points out, it's one of his best techniques for ramping up fervor in his followers.

“They are all supposed to make these grey or blue backpacks, 2x2x1, pack them with essentials,” Wyler said. “Be ready to go at a moment’s notice.”

Wyler said he’s heard it all before: “it’s just Warren whipping them up into another frenzy to gather money.”

And when the end doesn’t come? Wyler said Jeffs will still be right and blame his followers for not having enough faith for it to happen.

Yes, Jeffs seems to have hit on a winning formula for maintaining control. All of his failures can be blamed on his followers for not being obedient enough. They become more submissive than ever and Jeffs's inaccuracy is explained away.

The mutability of doomsday prophecy is hardly unique to Jeffs's FLDS. It's long been known that such spectacular failures can increase rather than decrease loyalty in cult followers. Originally published in 1956, When Prophecy Fails described the seminal research of Leon Festinger, et al., who infiltrated a UFO cult as they awaited alien rescue from a global flood. When neither event occurred at the appointed time, a new revelation from their prophet explained that by their demonstration of faith they had averted the world-ending cataclysm. The group's faith was not only renewed but intensified.

Festinger pointed to this case study as validation of his "cognitive dissonance" theory. As discussed here, when our thoughts, feelings, and actions, are in conflict, we need to resolve the disconnect and regain our equilibrium. When people have sacrificed much of their material lives -- jobs, families, education -- to wait for a prophesized UFO rescue that doesn't come, they are highly motivated to find validation for the tangible commitments they've made, rather than upend their lives again.

In the case of FLDS followers, the commitment is multigenerational. This is the only way of life these people have ever known and they are materially dependent on the continuation of the larger community. They're thoroughly acculturated to the beliefs and morés of the church. To let a little thing like the continuation of a world that was supposed to have ended overwrite the belief and commitment that not only defines but dictates their lives would be far more complicated than simply accepting Jeffs's explanations and trying harder to follow his edicts.

As discussed, FLDS has been subject to increasingly demanding edicts and called to dramatic demonstrations of devotion. FLDS schools now do almost nothing but indoctrinate fanatical devotion to their incarcerated leader.

You may have heard how the FLDS have been told their righteousness and faith will free their prophet, Warren Jeffs, from prison.

Attorney Roger Hoole on Wednesday showed reporter Jim Dalrymple and me a drawing that illustrates the point well. The drawing is of a rose with six words written across it.

"Uncle Warrens Deliverance Depends Upon Me!" The last word is underlined. And, yes, there should be an apostrophe before the final letter in "Warrens."

Hoole says he found the drawing in the Holm School, where many FLDS sent their children until the private school’s leader was excommunicated on Dec. 15, 2011.

As Jeffs becomes more and more demanding, the potential for just how far his followers go to resolve whatever disequilibrium has resulted from his continued incarceration has surrounding communities and law enforcement on high alert.

While much of Jeffs' predictions [stet] seem like the mere rantings of a man who will not have the opportunity for freedom until his 93rd birthday, former member Wyler said the continuing obedience of some in the FLDS community is unpredictable and frightening in its strength.

“There’s always that fear that Warren would see how far he could take them,” Wyler told KUTV. “I’ve got a brother-in-law who once told my sister ‘if the prophet told me to I’d slit your throat without even thinking about it."

Meanwhile, in the Amish sect that people have similarly compared to a potential Jonestown, followers await the sentencing of the unfortunately named Bishop Mullet and his merry band of haircutters. A number of the men and women convicted last October remain free on bond until sentencing but are busily making arrangements for their many, many children should they receive jail terms. As per the New York Times, it looks like sentencing was pushed back to February 8 -- I had recorded a date of January 24. They are praying for miracles like short sentences and probation for some members.

One hopes that Bishop Mullet at least will go to jail for a very long time. It seems likely. Judge Dan Aaron Polster has wide discretion due to the kidnapping charges and he has shown little inclination towards leniency with these defendants. He recently refused to grant Sam Mullet a new trial and affirmed his certainty that jury's verdict was correct.

“Suffice it to say, the evidence at trial conclusively established that defendant, as bishop of Bergholz, ran his community with an iron fist,” the judge wrote in a ruling on Dec. 6. “Nothing of significance happened without his knowledge and approval.”

Sam Mullet continues to claim that his only error was in not stopping the attacks once he learned of them. He now even claims that he might have been victimized by his own parishioners if he'd protested their behavior.

“I guess I didn’t want my beard cut off, and that probably would have happened if I had tried to stop them,” he said. “The only thing I did wrong was that I didn’t tell them to stop.”

The suggestion is risible. But Sam Mullet has been casting himself as a hapless victim from the beginning. To hear him tell it, he and his entire community were treated unfairly by all the other Amish, by the police, and now by the criminal justice system. But when push comes to shove, the Bishop is more than willing throw his followers under the bus. He is a victim among victims.

What strikes me over and over with Bishop Mullet is how not characteristically Amish he is. When I was reading up on the disturbing prevalence of sex abuse in Amish communities, one of the things I found most fascinating was the willingness of perpetrators to come clean when pressed. And not just within their own process of repentance and reconciliation. Even police have found them to be surprisingly open about these utterly shameful crimes against children. The Amish consider all sin forgivable and don't seem to see any reason to lie. Coming clean about transgressions is part of their process and part of their culture.

Sam Mullet, on the other hand, lies shamelessly, even when the evidence against him is overwhelming... which it was. He still claims that he did not endorse the haircutting attacks, despite having been caught on tape laughing about future raids and warning followers to keep their mouths shut. He relegates claims that he slept with other men's wives to "lurid rumor" by "rival Amish" despite the fact that when the FBI arrested him, he was in his bedroom with one Lovina Miller, whom he may have impregnated.

Sam Mullet is a "you gonna believe me or your own lying eyes" kind of a guy.

I was surprised early on at the Bishop's willingness to appear on camera. And as the above video demonstrates, his followers are also very open to being filmed and photographed. It seems the surrounding Amish are very aware of how far from traditional Amish values and practices the Bergholz clan is, and find them terrifying. But Bishop Mullet and his followers are convinced that they are the ones who are truly Amish and that it is everyone else whom "God is not with."

The Bergholz community is in a mutually reinforced version of reality that is very much at odds with the world outside of it. And that, even more than the degrading punishments, the sexual exploitation, and the attacks on "sinful" outsiders, is reason for concern in the months and years ahead.

It's very clear from the New York Times coverage that they are sticking by Sam Mullet and are still taking orders from him even as he regales them with sad stories about the horrors of prison life.  Daughter Wilma explains, “No matter if he gets life in prison, he will still be our bishop here.”

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Amish Hair-Cutters Found Guilty

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

I can't say I'm terribly surprised to see Sam Mullet and his band of hair-cutters go down. As stated, I thought federal prosecutors put on a strong case. I'll be the first to admit, I thought they might have been reaching by making this a test case of a newly expanded federal hate crimes statute, but they laid it out well. From the New York Times:

Samuel Mullet Sr., the domineering leader of a renegade Amish sect, and 15 followers were convicted of federal conspiracy and hate crimes Thursday for orchestrating a series of bizarre beard- and hair-cutting attacks last fall that spread fear through the Amish of eastern Ohio.

The convictions of Mr. Mullet and his followers and family members who carried out the assaults could bring lengthy prison terms. The jury’s verdict vindicated federal prosecutors, who made a risky decision to apply a 2009 federal hate-crimes law to the sect’s violent efforts to humiliate Amish rivals.

The Times story paints a vivid picture of the bizarreness of this case -- one which actually caused several Amish communities to break with tradition and bring their concerns to the authorities. Many of them came to court allowing themselves to be snapped at fairly close range by news photographers. It speaks to the extremity of the circumstances that such private people allowed this intrusion. Sam Mullet was a bigger threat to their way of life than the modernity of the English world.

During the testimony, the 16 defendants, in traditional attire, and their lawyers had sat around four tables that filled half the courtroom. In the gallery sat dozens of Amish supporters of the victims, including several of Mr. Mullet’s elderly siblings, who shook their heads as witnesses described Mr. Mullet’s unorthodox methods. Also in the gallery was Mr. Mullet’s wife, who had sat impassively as a woman who used to live in Bergholz spoke of how Mr. Mullet pressured her to come to his bed repeatedly.

I, for one, am just glad to see the criminal justice system found a way to stop this guy before more people got hurt -- and that includes his own followers. As I've said previously, Sam Mullet is one sick twist, and I don't think concerns that this could have escalated into a Jim Jones scenario are unfounded. As one prosecution witness put it in an interview last November:

Sociologist Donald Kraybill told Barbara that Mullet acted much like a cult leader. "He's not accountable to anyone. He's not in fellowship with other Amish groups. He thinks he is invincible," Kraybill said. "So under the guise of religion he is trying to protect himself, so he can do whatever he wants to do."

But Sam Mullet was also a victim of his own arrogance. He seemed to believe that he would not be accountable to other Amish communities, or the law, for really outrageous behavior. Slapped down by hundreds of Amish bishops for improper excommunications, Mullet has now been slapped down by a federal court for retaliating against those bishops.

Mullet and his followers face sentences of ten years or more. I hope the senior Mullet, at least, goes away for a good, long time.

Addendum: Federal officials have made statements regarding the verdict. From the Los Angeles Times:

At a televised news conference after the verdict was returned, officials said the case was an important application of anti-hate laws and rejected claims that Mullet and his followers had been singled out for their religious beliefs.

“From day one, this case has been about the rule of law and defending the right of people to worship in peace,” said Steven Dettelbach, U.S. attorney for the northern district of Ohio. “Our nation was founded on the bedrock principle that everyone is free to worship how they see fit. Violent attempts to attack this most basic freedom have no place in our country.”

Officials took a similar tack in a statement released by the Department of Justice in Washington.

“The violent and offensive actions of these defendants, which were aimed at beliefs and symbols held sacred by this country's Amish citizens, are an affront to religious freedom and tolerance, which are core values protected by our Constitution and our civil rights laws,” said Thomas E. Perez, assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division. “Those laws prohibit the use of violence to settle religious differences and the Department of Justice and the Civil Rights Division will vigorously enforce those laws.”

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Verdict Watch: Amish Hair-Cutting Trial

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Sam Mullet

In its fourth day of deliberations, the jury in the Amish hair-cutting trial has now twice sought clarity on the fine points. It isn't surprising that they would need both time and clarification with this case. Bear in mind that they have to determine the guilt or innocence of sixteen defendants, dressed in matching styles, and variously named Mullet and Miller. They are facing different sets of charges and have multiple defense attorneys with differing arguments.

Today the jury attempted to parse the fine points of their individual culpability in a conspiracy that may not involve all the parties.

The U.S. District Court jury in the trial of 16 Amish reconvened and promptly asked the judge if a conspiracy could involve just some of the defendants.

Judge Dan Aaron Polster told the jury that a conspiracy wouldn't necessarily need to involve all nine victims in the five attacks or all 16 defendants. Defense attorneys argued that the indictment specified a plot against nine victims, but Polster overruled them.

The indictment charges the defendants with conspiring to cause bodily harm to the victims. The judge said that if all 12 jurors agree that the government proved a conspiracy, the jury then must separately decide who plotted.

Last week, only three hours into deliberations, jurors called for more explanation of the hate crimes statute.

They asked for the definitions of "disfigurement" and "mental faculty."

Once all the attorneys and defendants assembled in the courtroom by 11:45 a.m., Polster said his reply would be "As for disfigurement, Congress did not define disfigurement so I am not either...so use your own common sense and your everyday experiences....look at how bodily injury is defined in the instructions as any injury to the body..."

".....as for mental faculty, (prosecutors) have not argued that any victim suffered an injury of a mental capacity...."

Prosecutors did not object to his language and only two defense attorneys asked for a minor modification but Polster denied the modifications.

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Amish Hair-Cutting Case Goes to the Jury

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

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The jury will begin deliberations today as to the guilt or innocence of Sam Mullet and fifteen of his followers.

Jurors will begin deliberating on Thursday whether Samuel Mullet Sr. and 15 of his followers are guilty of federal hate crimes for the attacks on nine Amish men and women last fall.

All 16 were charged with conspiracy to commit a hate crime, and some face charges of lying to police or withholding evidence. They face up to life in prison if convicted.

It's hard to get a sense of how a trial is going from press reports alone. But from those accounts, I can't help thinking this trial was a slam dunk for the federal prosecutors. They built a strong case and the defense closed quickly providing no witnesses. Sam Mullet's attorney Edward Bryan is certainly right that the burden of proof is on the prosecution and the defense has no requirement to mount a defense at all. But in this case it looks like they didn't present a case because they just didn't have a reasonable defense to present.

From the press accounts, their various defense strategies look to have been all over the map and internally contradictory. They disputed none of the factual elements of the case, neither the attacks themselves, nor the shocking disciplinary and sexual demands of the Bergholz bishop. They simultaneously claimed that these were not religiously motivated attacks, but based entirely on family and financial disputes, and that the attackers acted out of concern for the souls of their victims, which would seem to imply a religious motivation.

"These were acts of love," said attorney Dean Carro, who represents Lester Miller, who is accused of cutting his father's hair.

Miller and his siblings didn't intend to hurt their father or mother, Carro said. "The reasons they did these things is because they thought they deviated from the Amish path," he said.

Defense arguments wandered into the completely implausible and ridiculous.

"Use common sense," defense attorney Neal Atway told jurors. "What happened was offensive, but what crime was committed?"

Um... assault and battery? Is it a hate crime? That's debatable and something the jury will have to determine, but there's little question that these people were violated. I just don't think that trivializing the suffering of very sympathetic witnesses, who wept openly about their terror and shame as a result of these attacks, will go over too well. And some of these attorneys sound like schoolyard bullies telling victims to just get over it.

Attorney Brian M. Pierce scoffed at the idea that the haircutting amounted to bodily injury. Some of the victims said the shears used to take their hair bloodied their scalps. One bishop whose beard was cut refused to preach until it grew back.

"Emotional harm is not bodily injury," Pierce said. "The beards grew back."

As for Sam Mullet, who did not participate in the attacks themselves, prosecutors had to prove his direct involvement. They have definitely demonstrated that he had a dictatorial control over his followers, convincing them to spend up to twelve days in a chicken coop and to cut their own hair and beards, when they stepped out of line. He also used his authority to coerce sex from his own very reluctant daughter-in-law among others.

More damning still are some details that came out in the write-ups on the prosecution's closing argument.

The defendants openly discussed the attacks before and after they happened, and Mullet's followers brought him hair they cut as trophies and took pictures so he could see what the victims looked like after the attacks, Parker said.

Lest we forget, some of these trophies were recovered from Sam Mullet's property. And the prosecutor's reasoning is pretty solid.

"He is different from everyone else. He didn't get any blood or hair on himself, but none of the terror would have happened without him," Parker said.

All of the victims, she said, were people who had a dispute with Mullet over his religious practices and his authoritarian rule over the settlement he founded.

Mullet and his followers "believed they knew best how to practice the Amish faith and held the keys to heaven," Parker said. "If these assaults were merely personal, why did the defendants zero in on the beards and head hair?"

But the strongest indication that the prosecution put on a very strong case comes from Sam Mullet's attorney.

Mullet's attorney, Ed Bryan, said prosecutors presented a "pretty little package" that read like a movie script.

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Amish Trial Closes With Damning Testimony

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Federal prosecutors wrapped up their case against the Amish hair-cutting ring this week with strong testimony from several witnesses, including Sam Mullet's daughter.

Barbara Yoder was reluctant to testify against her father but, all the same, gave a very damning account.

Mullet's daughter, Barbara Yoder, testified that she never heard her father order any of the four hair- and beard-cutting attacks, but confirmed her father had endorsed the humiliating hair-shearings as disciplinary measures, and laughed when the men reported back to him in the aftermath of the attacks.

. . .

"He said it would help stop people from being Amish hypocrites," Yoder testified.

This is not the first evidence jurors have heard that Sam Mullet found the brutal, humiliating attacks hilarious.

As they listened to calls between Samuel Mullet Sr. and his nephew Lester Miller, the jury read an English translation because the pair had spoken in Pennsylvania Dutch, the primary language of the Amish. The jury was told the calls had originated from the Holmes County jail in Ohio.

On the recording, Mullet was heard laughing about members of the community carrying out more attacks and told his nephew to stay strong and to keep his mouth closed after Miller was arrested last October. "They are trying to tear this whole thing apart," Mullet said, referring to his community.

Yoder also testified to her father's bizarre disciplinary and sexual practices.

Barbara Yoder also described other means of self-discipline and penance advocated by her father, including spending up to 12 days at a time living in a chicken coop, submitting themselves to voluntary hair- and beard-cutting, and engaging in sexual relations with the wives of his followers.

Mullet's sexual exploits may well overshadow everything else in this trial. The extremely un-Amish-like behavior underscores the cultish nature of the Bergholz clan, whether prosecutors can use that word themselves or not. One salacious detail after another has come out in court, all thoroughly in context with the prosecution's theory that Mullet had absolute control over his flock.

FBI Agent Michael Sirohnen testified that when he arrested Sam Mullet, the bishop was in his bedroom with Lovina Miller, a married woman and one of about 18 families who are members of Mullet's Old Order Amish settlement in Bergholz, located about 100 miles southeast of Cleveland.

Lovina Miller is the daughter-in-law of Barbara Miller, who testified against her brother earlier in the trial. This makes her Mullet's niece-in-law. We already know that he coerced his own daughter-in-law into a sexual relationship. Lovina, though, he may have impregnated.

Barbara Miller, Sam Mullet's sister, said that her son's wife Lovina was also ordered to live with Mullet and became pregnant.

'I had a reason to dispute that (the baby) was Eli's,' Mrs Miller said. 'Once I found out she was pregnant it arose: Who is the Daddy?'

For all his claims of moving to Bergholz to live a more traditional Amish life, nothing about Sam Mullet seems terribly orthodox. Conservative to him seems to mean authoritarian. As his sister told the court, he was less about the New Testament compassion and forgiveness, that the Amish are so well-known for, and all about Old Testament "'eye for an eye' syndrome."

Tuesday the jury heard from cultural anthropologist and Amish expert Dennis Kraybill who testified that Mullet's Bergholz community is a "lone ranger group," with all the hallmarks of a cult. He was shocked and dismayed by the chicken coop, spankings, and "sexual counseling," explaining that none of it was consistent with Amish culture and religion. Their religious practice also seems to gone by the wayside.

"There was ample evidence that since 2009 they no longer held church services, and showed a complete disregard for traditional Amish doctrine," testified Kraybill, a cultural anthropologist and professor from Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania.

Kraybill also put into some context the relevant background on the rupture between Sam Mullet and the Amish community writ large.

Kraybill cited a historic 2006 bishop's meeting in Ulysses, Pa., at which more than 300 bishops learned about Mullet's shunnings and how some members of his clan were fearful of Mullet and were abandoning the Bergholz settlement in the middle of the night.

The bishops voted to overturn a half-dozen of Mullet's excommunications of Bergholz Amish members who had challenged his rulings or offended him by moving away. The conclave decided Mullet's excommunications were not made for biblical or religious reasons, and that he failed to consult his congregation, as required by Amish law.

"This was like an earthquake in the Amish world," Kraybill said.

One of the hair-cutting victims was a key figure in that decision was the prosecution's final witness. Bishop Raymond Hershberger helped to put into context how that decision was made and what a departure the whole thing was from Amish norms.

Hershberger was one of five Amish bishops who investigated the excommunication of eight families from Mullet's Bergholtz group in 2006 and voted to overturn those excommunications, which allowed other communities to accept the families.

Without that exception, a member or family shunned by one community would be shunned by all.

Despite the revolutionary nature of Mullet's excommunication policies and three hundred bishops' unprecedented rebuke of them, Bishop Hershberger was stunned to learn that Mullet and his followers were angry enough to take such brutal revenge. "I never realized Sam felt this way about me until this came up," he said.

Prosecutors rested their case in the Amish hair-cutting trial on Tuesday. So did the various defense attorneys representing a total of sixteen defendants, without calling a single witness. They did move to have the charges thrown out for lack of evidence, but Judge Polster disagreed and denied the motion, saying that a reasonable jury could conclude that there was a religious motivation.

Mullet's attorney Edward Bryan argued that there is no proof that he had coordinated the attacks but Judge Polster pointed to Mullet's having said, "We know what we did and why we did it," as evidence that could be reasonably construed as indicating Mullet's involvement.

Despite the fact that Sam Mullet did not choose to testify in his own defense, the jury heard plenty from the bishop in his own words. In addition to the jailhouse recording referenced above, an interview he did with WKYC-TV was entered as evidence. In it he actually takes responsibility for the attacks.

Mullet Sr. did admit that he knew about the raids, in which Amish men have their beards cut off, and Amish women and men have had their hair cut, but had nothing to do with the incidents.

"They say I did but they don't believe anything I say," Mullet said then, perched atop a bulldozer near the entrance of the road which houses his family enclave.

"Because I'm the oldest here and I'm the bishop, I'm responsible."

He also states explicitly, in that interview, that the attacks were religiously motivated, which will doubtlessly be unhelpful the defense's family disputes argument.

Closing arguments are being heard today and this case could go to the jury as early as this afternoon.

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Amish Bishop Uses the C Word

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Prosecutors in the Amish hair-cutting trial were proscribed from using words like "cult" to describe the Bergholz clan, in a pretrial decision by Judge Polster. But nothing prohibits witnesses from such characterizations and one of the brutally butchered bishops, Myron Miller, did so.

Pressed by the prosecutor to specify his concerns, Miller mentioned without details "cultic" activities and reported "brain-washing" of community members required to submit to Mullet's authority.

. . .

Ed Bryan, defense attorney for Mullet, asked Miller whether the dispute involved personal issues instead of religious differences as the government has argued in calling the attacks religion-based hate crimes.

"I have nothing against Sam Mullet," Miller responded. "What's going on in that community, or was going on, we were very concerned about interaction with any of our members."

Miller's excommunication of one of Mullet's sons was one of the key triggers to the series of attacks and he was the second victim to be targeted.

Days later, on the night of Oct. 4, Miller said, Amish men from nearby Bergholz rousted him from bed, grabbed him by the beard and pulled him outside. "I saw the flash of scissors, I knew what they were going to do, and I was powerless to stop them," he testified.

. . .

Miller was the second Amish bishop to have his beard chopped off. Witnesses described another attack, earlier that same night, on Raymond Hershberger, a 79-year-old Amish bishop from Holmes County.

Police described the aftermath of the first attack.

The officers recalled that clumps of gray hair lay on a rocking chair and on the floor of the living room, and a crowd of people were crying and yelling in Pennsylvania Dutch, their first language.

Hershberger’s son, Levi, told the officers that “Some guys broke in and gave Grandpa a bad haircut,” a Sheriff’s Department detective said.

. . .

Detective Joe Mullet, who is not related to any of the defendants, and his boss, Sheriff Timothy Zimmerly, described Raymond Hershberger as tearful and disconsolate, his hair and beard chopped off in chunks, and cuts bleeding on his scalp.

Hershberger’s son identified the “Bergholz Boys” as the attackers.

The "Berholz Boys" struck again against David Wengerd.

Another beard-cutting victim, David Wengerd of Knox County, south of Mansfield, said two of the Bergholz defendants, Levi Miller and Emanuel Shrock, lured him into a field to look at crops, then sheared him.

Wengerd said the men told him the attack was payback for Wengerd allegedly having spread rumors about Bergholz and for calling the sheriff to report them. Afterward, they snapped his photograph with a disposable camera.

The picture that is evolving in the prosecution's case is one of tensions built over time as Bishop Sam Mullet's Bergholz community was increasingly marginalized by other Amish communities who considered his bizarre leadership to be a growing danger. Their fears were only confirmed when Mullet's followers began to terrorize them with raids targeting their Amish identity -- so much so that they took the unusual step of involving the authorities.

The defense seems to be arguing several things at once and, to me, some of it seems mutually contradictory. On the one hand, they counter that these were simply personal and family disputes. Ed Bryan, for instance, raised the issue of dispute over a horse-and-buggy during his cross examination of Myron Miller.

On the other hand, they argue that Mullet was "disciplining" members of other sects, which I can't help but think only reinforces the prosecution's argument that these were religiously motivated attacks. According to some reports the defense has even argued that the defendants were acting out of compassion and concern for their victim's souls -- so this was more love crime than hate crime. Again, I think this argument actually works for the prosecution. It only reinforces the idea they targeted their victims for their religious practices.

The compassion argument seems like a long shot given the naked hostility exhibited in these raids. Levi Miller, for instance, claims to regret the attacks but mostly, by his own admission, he regrets getting caught. He also regrets that he didn't cut off more beard hair if he was going to get caught anyway. There's a real sense that the gang was gleefully taking these trophies, Sam Mullet's son reportedly telling his father, "We got two of them." And the motivation for their hostility seems clear from the statement of Mullet's grandson Melvin Schrock, Jr. "Because they weren't living right."

When they're not arguing that it was loving concern for the victims' souls, the defense argues that such harsh judgments were typical family spats, not religious differences.

Hair-cutting attacks against people in Amish communities outside the city were tinged with squabbles over money, child-rearing and even the way some women in the conservative settlements dressed, more like a family feud than a series of hate crimes, say attorneys for members of a breakaway group accused of carrying them out.

The defense attorneys, while not denying that the hair-cuttings took place, want to convince jurors that religious differences between the Amish were not the motivating factor and that the attacks didn’t amount to amount hate crimes — the most serious charges against the 16 defendants.

But the way women dress -- like their uncut hair -- is at the very heart of Amish religious practice and identity. And changes in women's apparel authorized by Sam Mullet, such as smaller caps that expose the ears, are seen as emblematic of his radicalism and debauchery.

Jury members and spectators alike received a crash course in Amish culture from testimony during the first week of the trial. They had heard a prior witness snap at an unwary lawyer who referred imprecisely to a hair covering, telling him, “It’s a cap, not a bonnet."

To many outside his clique, Mullet’s decision to have the women switch from caps to what others disparaged as “skimpy scarves" was one more sign that he was isolating his flock and leading them into sin.

Of course the fact that Mullet has been demanding sexual favors from a number of his women followers would actually seem to confirm those fears.

Sam Mullet himself has said from the beginning that this is a religious dispute and this case has been repeatedly characterized as a church-state issue by defense attorneys and journalists. I've been saying from the beginning that it's hard to argue that Mullet and his followers had a First Amendment protected right to abuse people but it only gets harder when you're also arguing that religion wasn't even the reason for those attacks.

Some of the confusion and inconsistency may be a result of having too many cooks as I believe some of the sixteen defendants have different attorneys. Maybe they're not all on the same page strategy-wise. It's kind of hard to make sense of all that from news reports. But so far, it seems like kind of a muddle. Of course, muddying the waters and confusing the jury is also a tried and true defense tactic. Perhaps it will be clearer when the defense attorneys present their various cases.

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Amish Trial: Sexual Coercion & Violent Haircuts

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

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Well, now we know what "sexual counseling" from Sam Mullet meant. As per testimony from his, ahem, daughter-in-law, it was to help women become "better wives" and stop failing their poor husbands.

The woman said her husband had a mental breakdown in the summer of 2008 and was in the hospital when Mullet suggested that her husband's trouble stemmed from dissatisfaction with his marriage. Mullet told her he wanted to help the couple with marriage counseling, and she agreed to his request to move in with him, she said.

At first, he wanted hugs, from her she said, adding that she learned he had asked the same of other women.

"Next we had to kiss him or maybe we had to sit on his lap," she said. "I'm not sure what was first."

. . .

She went along with Mullet's wishes because she thought it would help her husband, she said.

Yes, that's right. Sam Mullet's son had a nervous breakdown because his wife wasn't good enough in bed and needed instruction from Sam Mullet  -- a lot of instruction.

A sobbing daughter-in-law of Samuel Mullet Sr., the Amish leader on trial here with 15 followers for terrorizing the Amish of eastern Ohio with beard-cutting attacks, said on Thursday that Mr. Mullet had repeatedly called her into his bedroom for sex in 2008, at one point sending his wife to fetch her.

The testimony of the daughter-in-law, Nancy Mullet, provided some of the most dramatic moments yet in a trial filled with accounts of violent attacks and bitter feuds among the normally peaceful Amish. It also provided the strongest evidence yet of what prosecutors and his Amish critics describe as Mr. Mullet’s cultlike domination of the 18 families, nearly all his relatives, who lived around him in an isolated valley near Bergholz, Ohio.

. . .

Trying to avoid the steady glare of Mr. Mullet, 66, Mrs. Mullet testified that after her husband, Eli, had psychiatric breakdowns, her father-in-law first told her to sit in his lap and kiss him, then days later had her sleep with him nightly for what he called marriage counseling.

“He told me the other ladies had done the same thing,” Mrs. Mullet said, and that her husband “would not get better” if she did not accept his attentions.

Nancy Mullet was "counseled" throughout the two months that she stayed with her father-in-law as her husband received psychiatric care. Even after her husband returned and she moved back into her own home, she was expected to return for regular instruction. She was terrified not to. The pressure from Sam Mullet was explicit, as he told her things like, "I can't understand why you won't obey me, the other ladies can." When she finally put an end to it, he called her a whore. She and her husband gathered a few belongings and fled to Pennsylvania a short time later.

Defense attorneys, who previously argued that evidence of Mullet's sexual "counseling" be excluded in part because it was unproven, did not dispute the accuracy of Mrs. Mullet's testimony, acknowledging that, "it was wrong." As with the hair-cutting attacks, the defense appears to be conceding all the factual elements, disputing only their motivation and relevance.

The prosecution is building a strong argument for their theory that Sam Mullet was an authoritarian leader with absolute control over the Bergholz community. His daughter-in-law also testified that he reserved the right to read and approve both outgoing and incoming mail.

His own sister described him as a "dictator" and his followers as "zombies" when she testified on Wednesday. Barbara Miller and her husband Martin followed most of her children to her brother's community but left after only a few months.

Miller, who is in her late 50s, offered a portrait of her brother that contradicted the benevolent, peace-loving image of an Amish clergyman who preaches the love and forgiveness of Jesus in the New Testament. Sam Mullet had become a fire-and-brimstone preacher who favored the Old Testament, she said.

"He was more about violence, anger and hatred. More of the 'eye-for-an-eye' syndrome -- If he does it to me, I'll do it to him," Miller testified.

Frightened by Mullet and heartbroken by the growing estrangement from her five sons, a daughter and their spouses, Miller and her husband decided to abandon Bergholz and return to their homestead in Mesopotamia. This infuriated her children, she said.

"They said if we go back we're going straight to hell," Miller recalled. "I have been shunned by my children."

Joy at seeing her son Lester at their door one night turned to terror as she and her husband were encircled by a gang and violently assaulted with hair-cutting implements, Lester grabbing his father's beard "so hard that it distorted his face."

Miller said her mind went blank for a while and later she saw her husband in a chair with all the men around him.

Lester had a pair of shears and her son-in-law Freeman Burkholder had a pair of clippers.

The men were screaming at Marty, saying things like, "Nothing is being changed up here."

Marty was saying "please, no," but the yelling continued, she said.

Marty was crying and begging, she said, at that point their daughter Nancy Burkholder pulled her mother around and shook her head.

The women in the group, two of whom were holding babies, sheared off two feet of her hair.

Under cross examination, Miller denied that their assailants had claimed they were attacking their parents for their poor parenting. The defense's aim is to show that this was an internal dispute, not a hate crime based on religion. But testimony like this will be hard to shake.

Another son screamed at me, " 'God is not with you,' and he screamed it twice," she said,

Mullet has clearly differentiated his brand of Amish and positioned himself against sects he doesn't believe are conservative enough. Miller also reported that some of the women sneered at her clothes. I still just find it strange that his quest for conservatism had his followers using cameras and other modern implements. I noticed plastic furniture in a picture of him in front of his home. He's also made himself a millionaire by allowing fracking on his land. I'm no expert, but much of this doesn't strike me as terribly traditional.

The nature of the attacks sends a message about the victims Amishness, or lack there-of. While this was not aimed at degrading them for being Amish, which would be an obvious hate crime, it says they're not true Amish as the Bergholz sect defines it. That's what makes this a hate crime.

The defendants stripped their victims of symbols of their Amish identity because they didn't think they were entitled to them. They shamed one victim so severely that he no longer felt able to preach.

A hair-cutting attack on an Amish bishop left him so ashamed that he stopped preaching and refused to attend a family wedding because he didn't want anyone to see him without his beard, his son testified Wednesday at the trial of 16 Amish men and women accused of carrying out a series of hate crimes on church leaders in Ohio.

In the minutes after the surprise encounter last fall, Andy Hershberger said he looked toward his 77-year-old father. Gray clumps of hair from the beard his father had grown since marriage covered the floor where he sat.

"He was shaking all over," Hershberger said. "He was crying and crying."

What Sam Mullet has created with his Berholz clan is a cultural climate of dominance and degradation. This is how he has kept his own flock in line and his followers clearly took a page from that book. It's a deeply disturbing portrait and sharply contrasts with what has been repeatedly described in media reports as the "peaceful" Amish. I would remind readers, however, that all has never been as idyllic in the Amish world as is commonly believed. While Mullet's forced attentions on women followers are explicit and alarming, there is nothing new or novel about sexual violations among the Amish. Sex abuse is an epidemic in some communities and women are expected to submit to male authority. What is happening in Bergholz is less an anomaly than an extreme and violent eruption of the dark, hidden elements that are always burbling away under the surface of Amish culture. And in true Amish fashion, victims were reluctant to turn this over to the authorities of the English world, hoping instead to handle this through forgiveness and reconciliation. It's an indication of just how outrageous Mullet's behavior is that he and his followers are now facing the possibility of hard time.

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