TWO members of a breakaway Amish group in the US – Johnny and Lester Mullet – have been charged with “degrading” a 74-year-old Amisher by removing his beard.
The pair of Mullets – aged 38 and 26, respectively – are, according to this report in the Philadephia Inquirer, the sons of Amish “bishop” Sam Mullet who heads the rebel group, which lives in a compound with houses, barns, outbuildings, and a schoolhouse in a valley near the Ohio River in Bergholz, Jefferson County.
- Amish ‘godfather’ Sam Mullet
A third man, Levi Miller, 53, was also charged. All three are accused of kidnapping and burglary following an attack on Tuesday on the elderly Amish man. He was in bed with his wife when six men broke into their home and held him in a chair. They used scissors and clippers to debeard him.
A grand jury is also considering charges following an attack on Myron Miller, a bishop of the Mechanicstown Amish church. A September 6 attack in Trumbull County is also under investigation. In that case, an older couple who had left the Bergholz group were set upon by their children, who are still in the group, according to Myron Miller’s wife, Arlene.
In all of the cases, the attackers cut the beards of Amish men or the hair of Amish women. Once married, Amish men let their beards grow and women do the same with their hair, following what they believe are biblical orders. Cutting off an Amish man’s beard or an Amish woman’s hair is regarded as both a religious and a physical attack.
Jefferson County Sheriff Fred Abdalla said:
One Amish told me he’d rather die than have his beard cut off. It’s humiliating, embarrassing, degrading to them.
“It’s bizarre,” he said of the crimes, which have received extensive national and international cover.
I guess the reason it’s gaining so much publicity is that no one has ever heard of Amish-on-Amish crime like this.
Abdalla said it was believed the attacks stemmed from a bollocking the elder Mullet received four years ago when 300 bishops from Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New York convened and criticized him for his leadership of his group, and for ordering the “shunning” of two families. Said Abdalla:
They brought him on the carpet, and he told them to go to hell. He thumbed his nose at them.
Asked whether Mullet would be charged with any of the crimes, Abdalla said:
Not at this time.
But asked whether Mullet was a person of interest in the investigations, he said:
He’s more than that. Nothing moves without him saying it’s OK; everybody out there answers to him. Nobody does anything without him putting his blessing on it.
Abdalla said that he had been investigating activities of the elder Mullet and his group for years but that until the most recent victims of the attacks decided to press charges, he was stuck.
He said he had received reports, but had not been able to confirm, that the group held a man in a chicken coop for 10 to 15 days. He said the suspects confirmed during questioning that they had held the man against his will.
The attacks have caused fear throughout the Amish community nationwide, he added.
These people had a hit list. We know four other people they were going to target. Who knows when it would have ended?
Hat tip: Diesel Balaam and Barriejohn
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
October 9th, 2011 at 2:56 pm
Well, I guess cutting off beards is better than cutting off hands, but really, why is it that religion seems to breed such vindictiveness and enmity?
October 9th, 2011 at 4:07 pm
@JohnMwhite
Indeed. Main reason is that a lot of it is about power.
I like this story because I get cheesed off with people saying how lovely and sane the Amish are. All simple and in touch with community and nature. Bollocks. Individual Amish people are no doubt lovely, but the beliefs are ridiculous and the organisation as controlling as any religion.
October 9th, 2011 at 4:21 pm
@Lucy: The Amish have a poor record on the treatment of animals eg their horses. Probably because the horses do not have souls.
October 9th, 2011 at 4:48 pm
I saw a porno featuring Amish-on-Amish action when I was an impressionable young lad. “Behind the Green Barn Door” it was called. Made in the 70s. There were Mullets in that too.
October 9th, 2011 at 5:10 pm
I like to think of myself as rational and serious, but the Mullet aspect is too much. It has a funny side.
But this helps raise a serious point; that the hands off approach to the Amish, and buying into that tourist-attraction, ‘Witness’ version of their cult leaves a lot of people vulnerable to to some seriously nasty ‘elders’.
Behind the buggies and the barn raisings there is a lot of bad stuff being given a pass.
October 9th, 2011 at 5:56 pm
2009
Sexual Abuse in the Amish Community
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/sto.....038;page=1
Congratulations! You’re a cult.
October 9th, 2011 at 6:37 pm
Apologies. This is OT I’m afraid, friends, but I have just been reading about Rowan Williams’ current visit to Zimbabwe http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15228798 and I felt I needed to share this.
Now, good on the Bish, I say, for going to a country that is ruled by a despicable little despot and trying to do what he can to undermine said tin-pot fascist. Apparently, in his sermon Williams declared: “…we have seen years in which the land has not been used to feed people and lies idle; and we have begun to see how this mineral wealth can become a curse – as it so often has been in Africa, as people are killed and communities destroyed in the fight for diamonds that will forever be marked with the blood of the innocent.”
All well and good. However, he also said that: “How strange it is that we so often behave – yes, even we who are Christians – as though we cannot survive unless we silence all voices of challenge or criticism.”
Hmmm – now, call me old-fashioned, but how patronising and utterly out of touch can you be? Even Christians trying to silence those who disagree with them? I thought that’s precisely what they tried to do on a daily basis. Or am I misunderstanding the Daily Fail, the CLC, the Catholic League and just about every other xtian organisation on the planet?
October 9th, 2011 at 8:40 pm
It could end up doing some good though. If these “degraded” individuals manage to end up leading perfectly decent and dignified lives with neither beards nor the approval of leading twats, it could provide asign to them and others that they don’t actually need to be in accordance with made-up rules to live well. Just like the first person who broke any given superstitious rule and did perfectly well, it could lead to a dawning awareness that it’s all a lad of bollocks.
That’s what exposure to the world will do to you, which is why every patriarch will try to keep “his” women and subordinates sealed off from the world, and hopefully the men without beards will soon come to terms with their status in a world that’s atually not so bad.
October 9th, 2011 at 9:08 pm
I have read about this, but it sounds like a joke, or the synopsis of a sitcom. What’s next: a drive-by with razors and scissors, get-a-way buggies on the high-way?
October 10th, 2011 at 12:14 am
You’ve got to be kidding me…an Amish hit squad !!! LMFAO !
What is scary is this quote:
(He’s more than that. Nothing moves without him saying it’s OK; everybody out there answers to him. Nobody does anything without him putting his blessing on it.)
Sounds more like Charlie Manson’s cult the “The Familyâ€, they did nothing without his say so…and he had a hit list as well.
October 10th, 2011 at 5:31 am
Something for the weekend, Sir?
October 10th, 2011 at 9:09 am
Is this anything more than a case of common assault?
I shaved off my beard yesterday. I had grown it for about 6 months for a part in Fiddler on the Roof. It was, though I say it, quite magnificent, and it suited me. But it’s not the most hygienic of things. I can’t imagine why god sets so much importance by them.
October 10th, 2011 at 10:25 am
This bloke, Sam Mullet, a bit like an immam then, is he? He seems to wield the same power over his gullible flock.
October 10th, 2011 at 12:18 pm
Not to mention the scissors.
October 10th, 2011 at 1:40 pm
Clip Clop, Clip Clop…. BANG, Clippety Clop, Clippety Clop…
(Amish drive-by shooting)
October 10th, 2011 at 2:55 pm
Been spendin’ most my life, living in an Amish paradise…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....38;ob=av3e
October 10th, 2011 at 3:50 pm
Obviously not “true Amish”.