What’s going on in Amish communities is horrific.
There is sexual violence, domestic violence,
child abuse, child sexual abuse.
Incest rates are just staggering.
It’s just been generations and generations and generations of abuse.
Misty: This is not happening to one just Amish child or one Amish woman.
This is happening in Amish communities across the United States.
I remember not being safe in my room from my own fucking brother.
If I made it to my room before he caught me and got the door locked,
he would take the door off by the hinges.
I called the sheriff’s department and reported it.
Don Henry: We had put a wire on Mary,
and she talked to Johnny about the abuse.
And Johnny didn’t deny it to her either.
Tim Gaskell: Amish will come in droves to the courtroom
when they have somebody involved in a court proceeding.
Mary: They literally paraded them up on the witness stand
to testify as to what a good Amish man he is,
and people practically cried on demand.
It’s not that it’s awful that he’s a rapist.
It’s that it’s awful that I am unforgiving and reported it.
The judge, as he was sentencing, I can remember him saying,
"I see all you people here in support of the defendant."
That was a very small triumph.
It was like, "Oh, my God. This is unheard of.
He’s going to actually do the right thing."
I thought he’d get 20 years.
I hoped.
Henry: I mean, there’s not just
the Mary Byler case out there.
Woman: My child came to me and she said,
"Mommy, does a daddy put his hands up your dress?"
He told me it wasn’t a bad thing, but that it was just a secret.
And I can’t tell you what it feels like as a mother
to sit there beside your child and listen to them tell you
what was done to them by their own father.
I reached out to a friend, and I said, "What do I do?"
And she said, "Audrey, you have to report it."
These cases involving Plain community defendants
are a little bit unusual in the sense
that these defendants never go to trial.
They generally admit to what they have done and accept the consequences.
A plea agreement is where the sentence is agreed to
by the commonwealth and the defendant in advance,
but they don’t go to trial.
Eli got eight years. He got probably a little more because he had a prior record.
David got four years.
And Johnny was by far the worst of them three
between Johnny, Eli, and David.
By far.
The courtroom is completely packed
with Amish people,
who made a mockery out of that courtroom.
They bussed in four busloads of Amish people,
and the thing that was craziest about that
is that not a single one of them was there in court for me.
I thought justice was going to be served.
Gaskell: The judge sentenced Johnny
to ten years of probation
and one year in our county jail.
We were dumbfounded.
We were angry.
We were literally in shock
as to what had just happened,
how somebody that would go to the extent,
who removed door hinges to get inside a room
to sexually assault his own sister
could be walking away without a significant prison sentence.
I was numb.
I don’t even think it really sank in.
I could’ve been knocked off my chair with a feather. I could not believe it.
He should’ve been sent to prison for a number of years.
There’s no justification for a year in the county jail
for as many times as he sexually assaulted Mary, in my opinion.
He was also given Huber privileges
which means that he was able to go out and work during the day,
and then he’d come back to jail and basically spend the night.
Mary: How is it justice to allow an Amish perpetrator
to go to jail for one year in county with Huber,
and then allow him to continue going to church
where he has access to more victims?
How do you get perpetrator saying in court to a judge,
"I raped her close 75 times"?
How do you get that and one year in the county jail with a work release,
and ten years supervision
and a $16,000 restitution fee to pay for therapy?
I still don’t see
how that’s actually rehabilitating somebody
or preventing somebody from reoffending.
We’ll be coming up to where Mary Byler’s place was.
That’s the big house right there.
Doesn’t look like much a place anymore.
Mary told me yesterday on the phone
that Eli is still here.
That might be Eli right there.
He’s gonna come and beat us with his fishing pole.
- What’s up? - What are you doing?
- Driving along. - Take that camera and shove it
- somewhere the sun don’t shine. - Okay.
I hate them stupid things, and I don’t want my picture taken.
- Okay. - Point that stupid thing somewhere else.
- Are you Eli? - Yes, I am.
I thought you were. Have a good day, Eli.
Jasper: There’s a lot of evilness
and a lot of terrible things that happen
behind the essence of what America loves to see, which is beauty.
When you go down the road and it’s quilts and they have hotels,
and people want to take buggy rides and things like that,
and I think it’s just because they are stuck in that time period,
that 1800s kind of time period,
with the horse and the buggy and no electricity.
That fascinates people.
See the gentle people. See the kind Amish.
They are just pretty much angelic.
You know, that’s the message that’s given out,
and people buy into it.
Why are people so fascinated
that they’re getting on double-decker buses
to drive by farms
that are filled with abusers?
Misty: This lie just keeps perpetuating,
and it’s a shame because, you know,
if people really knew what the Amish were,
there would be no Amish tours.
We have Amish and Mennonite everywhere.
You look around, and kids are playing and they look happy.
And they don’t bother anybody.
They have their cute little horse and buggies that go down the road,
and the kids are always waving when you go by.
That’s our view. That’s our perception of people in the Plain community.
As long as the facade is able to be maintained,
abusers will always have an upper hand.
Jasper: They even sold this idea that
somehow it is this idealistic life
that they want to live.
Challenging that is very difficult
because there’s a lot of money on the line.
They silence victims, they protect perpetrators,
because it’s more important to protect the branding.
And when you have a religion that also is a brand,
people get it confused as to what they really are.
If you meet an Amish buggy and you see a little girl
sitting in there in their Amish outfits,
and they’re so innocent-- I can’t help it,
I think, "Is that little girl being abused?
Is she going to be abused?"
I look at them little boys,
and are they gonna grow up and abuse their sisters?
And I worry about it.
I mean, there’s not just the Mary Byler case out there.
I was born in Lafayette, Indiana,
on February 9th, 1978.
My parents started migrating through churches
getting more and more and more conservative until we ended up in one
of the most conservative Amish groups in the country.
I wanted a beautiful home. I wanted a peaceful home.
I thought staying Amish was the way to do that,
and I threw everything into it that I had. Everything.
In communities that I was in,
a woman wasn’t allowed to just be single.
You always have to be under a male figure of some kind.
Mike and I dated for several months,
and then we were married in the summer of 2001.
It was a really big deal when Mike started dating me
because his father was a minister who later became a bishop.
His family held a lot of political clout in the community,
and so it was a big deal.
I mean, that’s what everybody wants.
You want to marry up.
I had no sex education.
I had zero knowledge of my body,
of men, of relationships, of sex, nothing.
They shove a couple books at you and say, "Read this,"
the last week right before you get married.
"Read this, but don’t talk about it."
And you’re ready for marriage. You’re ready for sex.
You’re ready for raising kids. You’re ready for all of it.
I had no clue. No clue.
I was pregnant within the first month,
and nine months later we had a baby.
By all standards, we had a perfect Amish life,
and our family started growing and everything was idyllic.
But slowly, something started to feel off.
I now have five children,
and I’m extremely busy, I’m homeschooling all of them.
But at that point, I was overwhelmed, I was tired.
We were taught that it was a woman’s job to please her husband
and then the children came next.
And if you do that, you’re fulfilling your Biblical role
and you should be happy.
We were taught to take a nap in the afternoon
so that we were sexually ready for our husbands when they got home.
You know, he needed sex every three days, because after 72 hours,
a man’s gonna go looking somewhere else if you don’t give him what he needs.
The children were physically abused by him from the beginning.
We were taught that you start disciplining by six months.
The children were expected to sit through a three hour service and make no noise.
The oldest was always her wild, crazy self.
He would take her out of church and beat her and beat her.
I was brainwashed into believing that it wasn’t abuse, it was discipline,
and it’s what God wanted him to do
because that was his place in the home.
With time, I started to see the effects on the children
and especially my two oldest girls.
They started to struggle with depression,
and the day came when I discovered that Marlena,
my oldest one, was cutting herself.
And I’m like, "Why? What’s wrong?"
I automatically assumed it was the physical abuse from her father
and just the emotional trauma of where our marriage was.
I thought it was just his anger,
and I told him that over and over.
"We need space and we need to feel safe,
and you need to go get help."
The only way I knew to fix it at that point was for him to leave.
And so I filed for the divorce to force him out of the house
so that we could have peace and safety.
The church excommunicated me for filing for divorce.
It was so backwards,
me filing for divorce to protect us from him
was a greater sin than his abuse.
Hinton: Plain community people, Amish and Mennonite,
they talk about mistakes,
they talk about moral misgivings, things like that,
but for the person who has been excommunicated
and kicked out of the Amish community permanently,
"They’re defiant.
They were wild.
They were sinful."
And their only sin is that they couldn’t forgive their abuser
or that they spoke up about the abuse.
Audrey: I was suddenly adrift.
At this point, my oldest one’s still cutting,
and my second one, Dorthea,
starts attempting suicide.
She starts trying to hang herself.
A little bit before I was 12, I got incredible depressed,
and I went to a hospital because I tried to kill myself,
and I just knew that I had to find a way to protect myself.
And at some points if, you know,
taking myself out of this world
meant that it wouldn’t happen to me,
then that’s just how it was gonna be.
Audrey: I begged her to talk to me, but she was so locked down.
It was really hard for me because I was like, "What are they not telling me?"
I knew something deeper was wrong,
but I didn’t know what.
I had no idea that my whole world was about to change.
My oldest daughter Marlena came to me first.
When I finally opened up to my mom about what was happening,
it was because I had heard her
telling some of my siblings around a campfire
the usual thing that a mother would tell their children.
"If somebody ever touches you in this place,
that’s a no-no, and you need to tell an adult."
That was the moment that I realized that it wasn’t normal.
It was sexual assault.
Audrey: She opened up and asked me if it was normal
for dads to touch their daughter’s butts.
And I remember sitting there frozen, all of a sudden understanding
that this picture was a whole lot bigger than I even imagined.
As she proceed to tell me the different things
that he had been doing to her and places he was touching her,
I wasn’t even sure if I had enough information for it to be reportable.
I reached out to a friend who had a lot of experience in that area.
I told her what my daughter told me.
I said, "What do I do?"
And she said, "Audrey, you have to report it."
And I knew with his powerful family,
if I would report this and make this kind of an accusation,
it could set the wheels in motion for a huge court battle
and for me to possibly lose my kids.
All these things are racing through their mind.
"Is my child gonna be taken away? I don’t know the system."
What do they do know about it has told to them by the leaders or the men,
and so it’s not correct information.
It was terrifying for me to get the authorities involved
because my ex-husband straight out told me
that if I went to the law
that he would get custody of the children.
And biggest fear was losing my children,
the very thing I was fighting for.
I filed for a restraining order
the same day I made the report
because I knew the first thing he was gonna do
was come after the kids.
Ahh!
I’m gonna cry...
( laughing )
- ( muffled chatter ) - What?
It’s so good to see you.
- But you’ll be okay, right? - I always am.
- One day. - Within this group of survivors that I put together,
we all come from different communities,
from different parts of the country,
from different levels of Amish, strict to liberal,
but shockingly, all of our stories are the same.
Gosh, I can’t believe you’re here.
Audrey: When you’ve walked through this kind of hell,
and you can connect with people from the same cultural background,
you form a deep bond even if you don’t even know each other that well.
Mine was 17 years ago. Yours was, what, 16, 15?
- 16. 16 years. - Yeah.
I can’t begin to describe how momentous it is
to have multiple survivors gather together
and doing things together
for the betterment of future generations of Amish people.
For me, it’s validating and empowering,
and it’s comforting to my younger self
to know that even though I didn’t know each of you, I wasn’t alone.
So to sit here and have this conversation with a group of women
who have all walked away, who found their voice, who told their stories
it’s validating, it’s empowering,
and it’s just comforting to that younger part of me that was never believed.
I’d be a millionaire if I had a dollar
for every single time somebody’s looked at me and said,
"But are you sure he would really do something like that?"
- Right, right. - "I mean, isn’t this just a case of he said, she said?"
Do you know how many times I’ve heard that?
Where did that come from, "he said, she said"?
Because so many of the cases, sexual assault cases, that’s all you have.
Parents have to believe the child no matter what.
I mean, there were times that even though I just could hardly believe it was possible,
I still always believed my children.
I’ve heard them tell countless people, "Mom always believed me."
And they’d be like, "How did you have the courage to tell?"
And they were like, "Mommy believed me. She always believed me."
I still sometimes can’t really process it all.
It still kind of feels like that was another life, another person, another world.
Mom, do you need help with anything?
I don’t think so. I think we’ve almost got it, like, literally.
- How’s you? - Good.
Audrey: She said, "I’ll never forget the night
I sat straight up in bed and said,
"What the fuck?
I’ve been sexually abused my whole life
and I didn’t even know that’s what it was."
’Cause it started when she was so small, it’s all she ever knew.
Then I said, "How did you not know to tell me?"
And she said, "Mike would tell me that if I told,
he would do it to the other children."
And so she said,
"In order to spare my siblings, I didn’t tell."
Right before they went in for interviews,
my other two daughters came to me,
and my second oldest, Dorthea, said,
"Mom, I know I’m gonna have to tell them what Dad did to me,
so I guess I might as well tell you."
There’s a lot of challenges for interviewers
in communicating with Amish children when they do present.
I personally can’t imagine what they’re going through,
the sadness in their heart to know that someone they love,
trusted, can do these horrific things to them?
When they become aware that it is wrong,
it’s devastating.
Audrey: My youngest daughter came to me.
Angie remembers graphic details.
Her story was one of the most graphic.
She said from the age of about four or five
until she was between seven and nine, he raped her.
And I think her story cut me the most
realizing that my ex-husband was raping a five-year-old child
and she’s bleeding and begging him to stop.
And he says, "Just wait a little bit longer. It’ll all be over soon."
And I can’t tell you what it feels like as a mother
to sit there beside your child and listen to them tell you
what was done to them by their own father.
Farrell: For those naysayers the don’t believe kids
or say it’s a he said, she said case,
when a child gives me details or tells me
it felt like a tree trunk was going into their body,
the detailed pattern print of her dad’s boxer shorts,
the smells around,
those are the things kids don’t just make up.
Usually children tell me,
you know, "I’ve never told this much
because I don’t want anyone to know about how it felt.
I don’t want anyone to know the shame and guilt I have."
Audrey: The trooper filed the charges.
32 counts,
19 felonies,
9 first-degree.
He was arrested a day or two later,
and the community supported him from the get go.
The community put the bail money together.
The community excommunicated me.
The community has sheltered him and harbored him
and paid for his attorney.
From the very get go, they have coddled him
and they left me to fend for myself.
How does it make you feel
to see Audrey fighting for her kids?
It’s okay to cry.
It’s almost unfathomable to think that any parent
inside of an Amish home could ever,
ever even begin to fight for their kids.
Misty: It’s just so structured over the years
that you just push it aside, you make them be quiet,
and forgive and move on, and that’s just how it’s done.
I can remember the first time I called the police
I was terrified out of my mind.
I didn’t even know how to do it,
and I was afraid there would be some type of repercussions.
I was terrified of what would happen when Mike found out
that I called the cops
because there’s always repercussions.
You don’t do that.
You’ve got neighbors that spy on you, right?
Yeah, that’s why I built that fence.
They would stand in those windows
and watch everything we did.
They’d stand in there and watch us swimming on Sundays.
Meg: So they are on Mike’s side or...
- Oh, yeah. - ...they’re just nosy?
Audrey: No, they’re on Mike’s side.
February of 2020 was when the physical harassment started.
That was when they first broke into my home.
They were looking for dirt on me.
In the Amish world, it’s a social game
of whoever can make the other person look worse.
So it became this cycle of them breaking into my house.
And they would stand down there by my children’s beds
in the dark in the doorways.
Dorthea: I used to not be able to sleep at night,
and I would just lay there, and it felt like any minute
someone was gonna come into my room with a gun.
Or it felt like anytime was home by myself, you know,
I was gonna hear somebody and they were gonna hurt me.
It’s, like, every time I came home, it felt like somebody was gonna be here.
Audrey: There’s something that it does to you psychologically
when your last safe place on the face of the Earth
is no longer safe.
That’s the kind of stuff that they do
to try to destroy the people who speak up.
Sometimes pressure is put on victims by the Amish community
to not cooperate with law enforcement,
or various things to prevent them from engaging
in the criminal justice system like anyone else would.
Woman: There’s a lot of emphasis on,
"We deal with problems as a church.
We do not go world, as they term it, for help.
There’s this very strong expectation
that even if there is an abuse case,
you just quietly suffer for the sake of the Lord.
In their desire to try to exonerate the offender or minimize what he’s done
and make it not be quite so horrible and evil and terrible,
they’re willing to assign blame to the victim.
Hinton: Every bit of their theology is twisted.
There’s this theology that rape happens,
abuse happens, people fall into temptation,
and that’s okay because God is a very giving God.
grace can wipe all of that out,
and we’re all gonna be in heaven singing together
and, you know, praying together,
except for those who spoke out about abuse.
Reinaker: They can be subjected to a lot of pressure
and ostracization from the rest of the community.
They can be shunned by the community.
They can basically be removed from the Amish community,
and that’s the only life they’ve known.
At first they just started following me to work,
and parking and watching me around town.
And then they would drive back and forth past the house real slow,
and of course terrify my kids out of their minds.
The cops were like, "We’ll put up a trail camera
and we’ll get license plates." It wasn’t enough.
They were watching everything we did.
They knew exactly when we came and went for every single thing.
I know they’re trying to push me out of my home.
They’re trying to force me away. I won’t leave.
It’s my home and I’m not going anywhere.
And it’s like the cops told me multiple times,
"You do what you have to do and we’ll clean up the mess when we get there."
I’m armed all the time and I don’t mess around.
I was working, and I was trying to take care of children
- who were suicidal and who weren’t okay. - Yeah.
And so it was, like, dealing with all
the constant trauma of my children and their needs,
and then trying to deal with all the trauma of not knowing
- what’s gonna happen next or what they could do. - Yeah.
You and I both know what they’re capable of.
Yep. That we do.
Audrey: "Dear Audrey, we write this letter with heavy hearts
and a longing to see you return to God’s way.
However, you continue to choose a selfish and sinful path
at the expense of your children’s security,
your husband’s heart, and your own soul.
We long for you to find rest again.
I know life has dealt you some hard blows,
but it’s only the beginning unless you get rid of the bitterness.
We don’t want that for you and the children.
We want peace and rest for you all.
With love and prayers, Leroy Kauffman and Irving Kauffman."
Since I left the DA’s office in January of 2017,
I’ve had a lot of Amish cases since then.
I would say a majority of the times that I have a defendant who’s Amish,
they typically admit it right away.
They say they’ve done it, so it’s less of, you know,
this whole thing of defending.
It’s more of just trying to mitigate their sentence.
Now working with the defendant, I have to, first of all,
show them that they’re going to lose, show them the evidence and say,
"There’s no way that a jury’s gonna find you not guilty
based on what we have here,"
then give them the best advice I can
as to what they should do going forward.
I have to keep explaining to them,
you know, what they did, and why that’s a crime,
and what they’re looking at for punishment.
And they feel as though they’ve corrected it within their community.
This person’s been remorseful, has admitted to the sin,
has done whatever their bishop has told them to do,
and for them that’s it.
But then here we come from outside telling them,
"Oh, no, you’re going to state prison,"
and they don’t like that at all.
They never wanna have the victim testify.
The victims sometimes are very inarticulate either because they’re young
or because they’re just not experienced in this area.
So they don’t even know how to describe
certain parts of their body.
And when they talk to the police,
they’re descriptions sometimes are really, really difficult
to understand what may have happened.
And the person I represent will say, you know,
"I did molest this person, but I didn’t do these things,"
And that’s usually the worst of it, is figuring out,
"Well, he said he did this but not quite this,
and can we drop these charges?"
That’s usually it.
You have this Amish defendant who has all this support
from the community and the family.
I think that the English person may come out of it
with a worse sentence than the Amish.
Audrey: Today I’m meeting with the DA and the prosecution team
to discuss plea bargain versus trial,
what types of safety measures can be put in place,
whether they incarcerate him upon agreeing to a guilty plea
rather than waiting for a separate date to turn himself in.
We’re hoping for a million dollar cash bond.
We really don’t want him walking the streets.
I’m not really sure that they changed a whole lot
because I went into the meeting pretty open ended.
I would say with everything considered
and all the different topics we discussed today,
a plea is going to be a guarantee.
A trial might not be.
The first question the older ones are probably gonna have is,
"Well, so give me numbers. Like, how long are we talking?"
And they’re gonna be disappointed.
So...
As I learned today,
Cumberland County is one of the most lenient counties
for offenders in Pennsylvania.
But his defense attorney says,
"We recognize he’s gonna have to plead guilty to some felonies.
We’re willing to accept Megan’s Law
and sexually violent predator.
My client is thinking
two years in county work release
because he has a lot of family members
that depend on him for financial support.
And if they don’t have that support,
they’re just not gonna be able to make it."
So he wants two years and then work release
and only sexually violent predator?
He’s a fucking pedophile!
He wants two years on work release.
- Wait, meaning what? - No incarceration.
- No! - Yes, exactly.
- No! What the fuck? - No, he’s not gonna get that,
but that’s the bargain they came with.
Most times they won’t even accept Megan’s Law
- or a sexually violent predator. - What’s Megan’s Law?
Okay, so Megan’s Law means he’s going to have to sign up
for the rest of his life, register everywhere he lives.
- As a sex offender. - As a sex offender.
He’s not a fucking sex offender. He’s a pedophile!
- I understand that. - He’s a child predator.
He’s not just a sexual offender.
- I know. - What the fuck?
Does the rape of a six-year-old not mean anything?
This isn’t fair.
It’s not fair. It’s not.
And he just gets off with all of this?
It’s not going to be fair. I understand.
So, we can insist on taking this to trial,
but you must understand this is what trial could look like.
But if they’re willing to do a plea bargain,
then we should exhaust those options first.
Maybe we can get ten years servable
and ten years probation.
At this point,
it’s probably gonna be about the best we’re gonna get.
So it’s a lose-lose. It really doesn’t matter.
We’re not gonna get anything that we want.
We’re not going to get the level that we wanted, no.
I’m sorry.
When I see the big picture,
I see that an Amish man
can rape a child and have a reduced sentence.
You can get longer for burglary,
for possession of a small amount of whatever,
than you do for raping a child for 15 years.
Audrey: Just take for example,
Mike’s charges carry a minimum of five and a maximum of ten.
- How is that even possible? - How is that possible?
And he’s raped three of his kids.
That’s fucked up.
Misty: Torturing a child for so many years
and that’s okay to let them out after five or ten years?
Does our justice system really believe that is justice?
The day of the plea hearing was...
...hard for all of us in different ways.
The prior agreement was that he would plead guilty.
And like I told the DA beforehand,
I said, "They always have an ace up their sleeve."
So I said, "We’ll wait to see what this one is."
He had two rape charges, rape and forcible rape.
They wanted us to drop the rape charge
because without that word,
he can spin the narrative to his community,
"Well, you know, he didn’t rape them."
But to us, the word wasn’t as important as closure.
Taking it to trial would’ve probably gotten him
a heavier sentence.
It could’ve dragged on for another whole year.
And that was-- it was time to wrap it up for the kids’ sake.
And so we agreed to it with the understanding
with the DA that she would specifically spell out
during the hearing
the specific acts that he did on each child.
She spelled out in detail how he raped them.
The judge asked him if he did it,
and he said yes.
And she asked him if he believes that the court could prove him guilty
beyond all reasonable doubt, and he said yes.
And she asked him how he pleads,
and he said, "No contest."
He admitted that he knows you can prove it,
but he won’t admit it.
The agreement was he would plead guilty.
If I would’ve known he wasn’t gonna plead guilty,
I probably wouldn’t have agreed to dropping the rape charge.
- Misty: The sentencing is finally almost here and... - Audrey: Almost.
...we’re just here to support you and let you know that you’re not alone.
It’s, you know, the last leg of the journey hopefully.
We’re kind of here to hold up your arms when their getting tired, right?
Just realizing that people care enough
to sit there and listen and then respond is huge.
We want to do that for you.
And hopefully it will not be a repeat situation
of what happened in my court sentencing.
I hope they send him away for a long, long time,
so that your children can feel safe in their own beds,
so you can feel safe in your own home.
I deserve to be able to go to sleep at night
and not have to be afraid of who’s gonna break into my home.
I shouldn’t have to carry a gun with me ready to shoot at any moment.
I shouldn’t have to do that all the time.
It’s time for that to end.
My darkest moment was when I realized
that the man that I married was a monster.
All of the dreams that I had
for a normal healthy family have been shattered.
Even though we will come out of this stronger in some ways,
we will never know what normal is.
We’re gonna park in the parking garage.
The rape crisis advocate is gonna meet us outside the courthouse.
As a mother, realizing that I didn’t know
that the person that was supposed to be
the safest and the closest to my children and to me
was committing such evil crimes against them is life-altering.
Is there a way to be ready for a day like this? I don’t know.
- No, not really. - I don’t think there is.
I don’t know if this road really ever ends,
but at least safety should begin after today,
a small measure of justice maybe.
Yes.
Yeah.
First of all, Judge Peck, I, Audrey Kauffman,
the mother of the victims and the ex-wife of the perpetrator,
want to thank you for the opportunity to be heard
and to tell my truth.
How does a father use the power
he inherently possesses for love and protection
to rape and abuse, dehumanize,
intimidate his own blood?
And how do I describe a culture
where sexual abuse is completely normal?
A culture that not only hides abuse,
but rallies to protect the evil perpetrators.
A culture that people support, romanticize, and enable
because they don’t want to believe
it is anything more than harmless,
peaceful people, strong work ethic,
and delicious baked goods.
Each of my children are Michael’s victims,
each one in a different way.
They will spend the rest of their lives
fighting demons and battles
that no one should ever have to,
much less a child.
Michael Kauffman chose to violate his children
in the worst of possible ways.
He chose to rape and assault and destroy
the very beings he helped create.
He is no father. He is a monster.
He stood in the pulpit publically leading devotions and congregational prayer
and then raped and assaulted his children behind closed doors.
No matter what legal consequences he receives today,
nothing in this life will ever bring back what he stole from us.
But this sentence will keep him from violating more children,
it will give his victims, including myself,
space to heal without fear.
This sentence will show the children
that there are people and authorities in this world
that believe them and want to keep them safe,
that there is some level of justice
not just on judgment day.
Honorable Judge Peck, at this moment,
you hold in your hands the opportunity to protect my children
and show them how much a child is worth.
Are you coming?
( indistinct chatter )
Are you taking Sunny?
You’re good.
I love you, baby.
It went well, as far as well can go.
I was impressed the judge called him out and called him what he was.
He’s the epitome of a pedophile and a sex offender.
They sentenced him to what we expected,
5 to 20 years, mandatory 10 years probation,
and he will be listed as a sexually violent predator.
It looks like about ten years
before he’s eligible for any release.
Obviously I’d like to see him in there for life,
but that’s not reasonable at this point.
I don’t look at him anymore as a father or a husband.
I look at him as a pedophile and a criminal.
- Just let me give you a hug. - Okay.
( sobbing )
I guess through the whole process
my biggest concern was our safety
because the family harassment we’ve had.
- I love you so much. - Love you, too.
Thank you so much for coming.
I know.
Well, it’s here. We did it. It’s over.
But there was a lot--
it took a lot to get to this point.
I guess I just want to take this opportunity
to thank each and every single person in this room
for everything you’ve done.
There’s just so much.
There’s so much, I could never process it all.
It’s going to be day by day for a while,
but the process of healing,
we’ve come so far just in the last year
that another year is going to bring another whole level.
So, you know, will I stay in the area?
I don’t know. Probably not permanently.
I’m here right now.
And their goal was to run me out from the beginning.
That’s what they do. And I refuse to run.
It’s my home, so guess they got to put up with me.
This is why I say there’s no justice.
Justice is a myth. There is no justice.
But you know what, Mary?
It feels like there’s no justice
and it can feel like there’s no hope.
But if I think about how alone you were at your court hearing
or how alone Audrey has been in her journey
or how alone Misty has been
or how alone that my mom was and I was in our story,
the four of us are now sitting together
and our stories are being heard.
And your story won’t be for naught.
It’ll give somebody else courage to come forward,
and I could imagine a flood happening.
We’re like the crack in the dam.
But when that flood comes,
justice has to follow.
We will never get justice in this life
for the crimes that have been committed against us.
But I hope that our story
will bring light and hope to other survivors.
Even if they never have the strength to come forward,
they need-- they deserve to know they’re not alone.
A group put together-- we have the Civil Rights movement,
we have the Women’s Rights movement.
I mean those movements, they created change.
So if people come on board and say, yes, we’re going to stand up
and we’re going to say no to this,
we’re going to change this scenario--
I mean, if enough people come together and do that,
we can change it.
The Amish and Mennonite children are America’s children,
and they are the forgotten children.
They are the invisible children.
We need America to help us to create a change.
We need the outside world.
What is happening within the Amish communities
cannot be ignored any longer,
and it is our nation’s duty to protect these children
and to start paying attention.
I think there might be some tiny shift
and some tiny change that is positive that is happening.
Because law enforcement, in some cases,
are making arrests
and district attorneys are pressing charges
against people who knew and failed to report.
I think change within the Plain community
has to come from people who are already inside of the Plain community,
and they have to have the courage to stand up to evil.
They have to stop going along with this broken system.
This system is so powerful. It’s so corrupt.
It’s so twisted. It’s so evil.
It’s so private.
Somebody from within that community
has to stand up to evil and say enough is enough.
Misty: This has to change. We are not going to be quiet.
We’re not going to be brushed aside.
You must do something to change this reality.
This can no longer happen.
And this is where it stops.