Woman Who Escaped Amish Community Shares Horrific Way Sex Offenders Are Dealt With
Misty Griffin has spent years trying to shed light on the horrific abuses women and children suffer within Amish communities.
Her book,Tears of The Silenced, details her own traumatic experiences both at the hands of her family and the church leader she was sent to live with as a teenager.
Just 18 at the time, she attempted to escape her mother and step-father's isolated mountain ranch, where she says she beaten constantly.
She was then sent to live with a nearby Amish community, first living with an 'adopted' family, before eventually moving in with the bishop and his wife and children.
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Speaking to UNILAD, the mum-of-one says Amish women are powerless to speak out, and that sex offenders within the community are hardly ever brought to justice.
Rather than get the police involved, rapists are simply 'shunned' for a few weeks before being allowed back into the fold to carry out further heinous acts on women and children.
"The Amish church is highly regulated, and if you step out of line, you will be severely punished," explains Misty.
"I mean, you will get shunned for six weeks, put outside of the church, nobody will have any contact with you.
"But on the flip side, they have the same punishment for everything. So say, on one Sunday, you have a girl, a teenage girl, who's a church member, who's wearing her dress is too short, and you have an Amish father who has been raping his daughter for years.
"They'll both be brought in front of the church to confess to their sin, and they'll both get the same punishment, the girl will be put aside for six weeks to think about what she did, and if she fixes her dresses, she'll be let back into the church as a full member.
"However, the man who's been raping his daughter for 10 years, he'll also be put aside for six weeks, and he just comes back, says, 'I'm sorry', and is taken back into the church."
After that, Misty says, all is forgiven.
She goes on: "You're not supposed to talk about it again, you're not supposed to mention it, he's been forgiven, you know, he's turned over a new leaf; this is new life for him.
"But the girl who was wearing her dress that was too short, she'll be watched like a hawk, because she could make somebody stumble."
In 2005, after discovering that the bishop was also abusing his own children, Misty managed to escape and built up the courage to tell the police what had happened.
Despite the cops not believing her at the time, the bishop was eventually arrested after running away to Canada, and is currently in prison.
Misty is now campaigning for better federal protection of children in religious communities.
She is urging the government to enforce the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA), which makes it mandatory for people in certain professions to report suspected child abuse and neglect.
Currently, there is little, if any, safeguards fro children who are homeschooled or who are brought up in isolated religious communities such as the Amish.
You can find out more about Misty's campaign here.
If you’ve been affected by any of these issues and want to speak to someone in confidence regarding the welfare of a child, contact the NSPCC on 0808 800 5000, 8am–10pm Monday to Friday, 9am–6pm weekends. If you are a child seeking advice and support, call Childline for free on 0800 1111
Dominic Smithers