Early-afternoon read: Amish Group charged with hate crimes

I’ve heard a few news stories about this in the last couple months and it’s caught my attention as the Amish here in St. Lawrence county have become more of a fixture in my everyday life.

Here’s some of the story, from the Washington Post’s blog (see link above):

“An Amish breakaway group in eastern Ohio, said to have cut off the hair and beard of several Amish men and the hair of several Amish women, has been charged with federal hate crimes.

Among the seven members arrested were the group’s leader, Sam Mullet, and three of his sons. The attacks, which occurred in September and October, were forcefully carried out with scissors and battery-operated clippers. In one incident, the New York Times reported, a married couple related to Mullet was attacked at night. The man was left with a “ragged beard,” according to a sheriff’s report, and the woman was missing large patches of her hair.

Cutting the hair is considered highly offensive and humiliating to the Amish, who believe that the Bible instructs women to let their hair grow long, and men not to shave after they marry. ”

Brian Mann blogged about these attacks a few weeks ago.

We reported a few months ago on the tragic deaths of several Amish men and women in Yates County in the Finger Lakes region–and at that time I spoke to SUNY Potsdam professor Karen Johnson-Weiner, who literally wrote the book on the Amish in New York. Here’s Martha Foley’s interview last year with Johnson-Weiner on the New York Amish communities.

It’s worth remembering the Ohio Amish and New York Amish groups aren’t the same people–Amish communities are independent of one another. But these attacks are a fascinating, if awful, view into a group that’s very much a part of our region, but in some ways very mysterious.

Tags: criminal justice