October 25, 2024 • 67 mins
For most people in the United States, the Amish are a sociological curiosity: a group of people motivated by theological imperatives that require them to exist within society, yet separate from all its secular trappings. However, as we dive into this episode, Matt, Noel and I learn there's something rotten within this community... a series of intergenerational, likely ongoing, conspiracies involving sexual abuse, crime and more. Please note this episode may not be appropriate for all audiences.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Norman.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
They call me Ben. We are joined as always with
our super producer Andrew trefors Howard. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't
want you to know. My fellow Americans, what do you
think of when you hear the word abbish?
Speaker 4 (00:49):
Barack Obama, Barack Hussein Obama.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
That was like maybe a third Barack at the beginning,
And then I just started, who.
Speaker 4 (00:58):
Is cartoon Barack? And I'm here for it.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Wait somebody, it's somebody explain this. What does amish have
to do with Barack Obama?
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Oh, it's just my fellow Americans, is a thing President say?
Speaker 5 (01:11):
Oh, he's just opening the floor for questions in common?
You know, I'll tell you. There is this great documentary
called The Devil's Backbone that I remember from many years ago,
with an exclusively Aphex Twins soundtrack. It's got all this
stuff from like selected ambient Works Volume two.
Speaker 4 (01:32):
It's very beautifully used. He's not a guy that licenses
at his music for stuff, and it's very well used.
Speaker 5 (01:37):
It obviously describes the Amish practice of sort of allowing
young people to go out into the world and live
for I believe a year. Some of them come running back,
and some of them, you know, stay and become kind
of yeah, de amished.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
I guess wait, wait, wait, Aphex Twin is one guy.
Speaker 4 (01:57):
Yeah, so's Tame and Paula bro It's crazy. Yeah, Richard D.
James is a fixed twin.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
But wait, how many pilots are in twenty one pilots?
Speaker 4 (02:06):
Only two? There's only two pilots, but really quickly.
Speaker 5 (02:09):
This film is fascinating because a big thing that happens
with a lot of these kids who will go out
on this kind of like journey of self discovery is
some of them become they get absolutely taken in by
the corrupt the corruption of the world and become like
drug addicts, and there's all kinds of horrible things that happen,
and then some of them come back and live a pure,
(02:31):
you know, fully Amish life. It's very interesting phenomenon of
the Amish culture that they have this whole kind of
trial period called rum Springer.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
I was gonna say, guys, I have a very clear
picture of a film, also not a documentary, a movie
called Kingpin that came out in ninety six, all about
kind of that like being corrupted by the world. I
think it's Dennis No, Randy Quaid, Randy Quaid, I think
that's right. I think is Randy Amish, Yeah, yeah, and
(03:03):
amish like guy who doesn't know much about the world,
but he happens to be excellent in bowling and then
he gets taken in and he goes yeah, gets taken over.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
Yeah, and that's a country mouse, meat city mouse kind
of true.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Yes, exactly exactly, but with bowling at the heart of it.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
Jeez.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
I remember really liking that movie and thinking like quoting
it a lot, but I don't know how well it
holds up. So sorry if you go back and watch
it now and there's problems, but I really liked it.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
Well. You can hang out with us, folks. If ever
you find yourself in our grand city of Atlanta, be
you Amish or other, which will play into tonight's episode,
you can always hang out with your fellow conspiracy realist.
We will take you bowling. You will probably win because
I don't know about you, guys, but I am terrible
(03:54):
at that sport.
Speaker 5 (03:56):
It's very difficult sport. I don't have the chops, I
don't have the form. If I ever am good at bullying,
it's the same way I'm good at darts, which is
accidentally good.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Guys, I spent a lot of time in Ohio.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
I won't you know.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
I won't like take your money on purpose, but I'm sorry.
Speaker 4 (04:16):
Ohio huge.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Okay, okay, bully is huge. Matt's got that shark elbow.
Speaker 4 (04:25):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Welcome back, fellow conspiracy realist. As you may or may
not know, we have been on and off the road.
As a result, we had some microphone shenanigans. We wanted
to let you know you are not crazy. Uh, the
audio is a little different at the beginning. However, we
(04:53):
got everything in line with all prise due to our
super producer Andrew rifles Howard. And now on with the show. Now,
I'm not gonna get you into the personal bowling curse,
which is a story for another day. But we're we're
(05:14):
talking about what we hear, what the word amish conjures
in our minds. America as a continent or a series
of continents and a country is, as we all know,
far from perfect, but the idea is pretty fantastic. One
of the biggest wins that ever happened in the history
(05:37):
of the world was the United States idea of religious tolerance.
The US has always, in theory, guaranteed residents the right
to worship as they choose, so long as they don't
mess with other people. And Christianity Islam, Judaism, they're all
(05:58):
these people book right, abramac panopolies of interpretation, doctrinal difference.
I would argue Christianity is probably the most diverse umbrella
group of those three big concepts, and for the past
few millennia, since the time of Jesus Christ, guy who
(06:23):
is famously known for, you know, bread and fish and
being cool.
Speaker 4 (06:30):
You know what, It's true.
Speaker 5 (06:32):
There's a really great song with it's been called King
Missile called Jesus is way cool, and it's true.
Speaker 4 (06:37):
And I don't enough people give him credit for that.
And I appreciate that.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
Ben.
Speaker 4 (06:39):
You always wanted to give credit where credit is due.
And Jesus was way cool.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Jesus was our big lebowski. I don't know why kingpen
is making me thinking of ye, that's for sure, he did.
The dude abides so like. For thousands of years, people
have been fighting about which interpretation of Christianity is woosh
woosh correct. In tonight's episode, we are examining a particular
(07:05):
group of Christian communities, largely in the United States. They're
known for their separation from the larger secular world and
surrounding neighborhoods. In the US, we usually call these communities
just the Amish, but as we'll discover, they are not
(07:27):
a monolith, and there is unfortunately a positively unholy intergenerational
conspiracy afoot in some of these places that don't really
meet with the modern world. I guess before we close
our cold open, we do have to give you a disclaimer.
(07:47):
Tonight's episode contains at times graphic descriptions of assault, incest,
and violence. As such, it may not be appropriate for
all listeners. Here are the facts, all right? What do
we mean though when we say Amish? Aside from the documentaries,
(08:08):
Aside from one weird out Yankovic song, who are the Amish?
Speaker 5 (08:13):
Well, in the US, the term amish kind of as
you mentioned, Beny who kind of tend to conjure a
particular representation of what this might mean.
Speaker 4 (08:21):
Some of that might be accurate, and some of that
might be wildly off the mark.
Speaker 5 (08:25):
But let's just start with maybe sort of the image
that might be popping into one's head.
Speaker 4 (08:29):
The idea of a.
Speaker 5 (08:30):
Particular type of garb, you know, dark suits and broad
brimmed hats, a bit more of a conservative kind of
form of dress. The idea of farming horse drawn wagons.
Probably thinking a bit of Middle America, you know, Pennsylvania
is a big area for Amish communities today. These communities
(08:52):
are often considered to be a bit of a mystery
within our kind of more modern American life, and that's
by design. Are a people frozen in time, essentially by
their own choice. The Amish live by choice without modern
modes of transportation like automobiles or even electricity. If I'm
(09:13):
not mistaken, Some of these communities may you know, still
use outhouses and maybe you have like a well or
a pump, but not like indoor plumbing. And this is
all in an attempt to live in a way that
is more godly, that in a way that is more
close to maybe the simpler times where people weren't as
(09:36):
distracted by all kinds of you know, modern trappings like
money and entertainment and all the kind of things that
can lead to let's just be honest, guys, it can
lead to the erosion of the soul.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Yeah, I would I would say one of the primary
things about this group is the concept of removing yourself
from anything that will make you less close to God, right, yes,
less close to being an example of like for the
world essentially of what Jesus' teachings were, or what the
Bible's teachings were.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
From the bishop to the child, you live in service
of a higher power.
Speaker 5 (10:14):
And maybe just to get it out of the way
up front, because we are going to talk about some
horrible things that happen within these communities at times.
Speaker 4 (10:21):
But on paper, I think we would all love to
be able to.
Speaker 5 (10:25):
Remove ourselves from some of the stuff that we've gotten
so deeply invested in and embedded in, you know, from social.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
Media to politics to whatever.
Speaker 5 (10:35):
I mean, there are these are things that can just
really make you go a little crazy and kind of
not be your truest, purest self.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
And a good side note there, and I love that point, Noel,
there are these things called blue zones. There are only
a few throughout the entire globe, and a blue zone
is a place where an extraordinaryunt of people live past
one hundred years old. And one of the formative variables
(11:08):
for a blue zone is an intense connection with community.
Community is one of the earliest, if not the earliest
human technology. It predates language right and it has very
real effects for good or for ill. The point about
(11:28):
an Amish community, or a Mennonite or an Old Order
Amish community, or a plain community as they're called. The
point of it is to avoid things that distract one
in theory from the pursuit of the service of God
a higher power. As such, education is considered only a
(11:51):
means to an end. It concludes around what we would
call eighth grade in the United States. In your life
largely centers on the growth and maintenance of your community,
which includes farming and includes participation in religious and social mores.
(12:13):
When you hear law enforcement secular law enforcement, you'll often
hear them refer to the Amish as a plane community
p lai n. But the history is fascinating too, because
the story of what we call Amish in the United
States begins before the creation of the United States as
(12:40):
an idea itself.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Oh yeah, and you can go The Anabaptist movement, which
is part of basically the Protestant Reformation, goes way back.
I think sixteenth century is when some of the concepts
begin to arise, and then you get the Mennonites, which
then splinter off into a couple different groups, which then
become the Amish. The Amish is one of the splits
basically that occurs.
Speaker 5 (13:03):
It's interesting too, because you know where I grew up
in Augusta, Georgia, there's quite a large Mennonite community, and
I always associated them directly with the Amish. And while
they have the commonalities, it's not the same. They were
like part of a group that splintered and then became
the Amish. They might share some beliefs and some lifestyle choices,
but they are not the same am I Is that
(13:24):
about the shape of it. The Amish are an offshoot
of the Mennonites, and the Mennonites are still around in
their own capacity.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
Yes, yeah, yeah, one hundred percent. Going back. As as
Matt said to Anabaptist, the schism between the Protestants and
the Catholics we got a shout out reluctantly. A guy
named Jacob Ahmann amm a n He is an elder
(13:54):
in the Mennonite Anabaptist movement, born around like the late
seventeenth century sixteen nineties. He said that lying about anything
is grounds for ex communication, and the Mennonites at the
time had a different vibe on what was meant by
(14:18):
ex communication. We'll get into it, but essentially they meant shunning.
If your community is your most important thing, then the
way you punish people who violate your social morase is
to remove them from that community, to remove them from communication,
to put a fine point on it, to x communicate them. Also,
(14:44):
this guy wanted everybody to wear similar clothing, wanted them
to have similar facial hair, and wanted them to not
ever mess with the state church. Be that in Germany,
be that in parts of France, be that in Switzerland.
The term amish, I don't think a lot of us
(15:06):
know this. The term amish was first used in the
early eighteenth century. In seventeen ten as an insult and Noel,
we're gonna defer to you as our former What do
you say, we German boy?
Speaker 5 (15:20):
I always what's a small German boy. Yes, it's true,
and I'm no experts. My German knowledge remains at a
kindergarten level. But I did come by it honestly, the
word being shandanama, which is an insult. It's sort of
like your ops, you know, but a shanda though. I
was just gonna mention this is literally an observation. I
(15:43):
don't necessarily have too much data to back this up,
but the Amish and the Hasidic Jewish community have some
things in common in terms of their use of kind
of this Yiddish type slang or this sort of German
you know, kind of these German German sort of slang,
but also in the dress, I mean, the beard and
the hats, and like the clothing and the simplicity. And
(16:04):
I know they're they're coming at it from different places,
but it does seem like there's a similar approach to
being more godly by simplifying one's life and by.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Excluding secular community exactly very them versus us. Yeah, and
we say that as a show several of us have
Jewish heritage. And I love that you're bringing this up, Noll,
because you can also see similar insular religious pursuits. Sure,
(16:34):
for anybody unfamiliar with Judaism as a whole. There are
branches of Judaism, orthodox Judaism that would not interact necessarily
or not go out of their way to interact with
people you might consider reformed, right, Reform Judaism is very different.
(16:58):
And I'm only laughing because there were this great bit
Billy Crystal did. Do you guys remember Billy Crystal? Of course, yeah,
from earlier. You could forget Billy Crystal from earlier. Yeah, yeah,
City Slickers, Stone Cold Classic up there with vibes Curley's goal.
Oh yes, thank you for mentioning vibes. Man, I appreciate that.
Speaker 5 (17:18):
But yes, shanda nama is just a you know, a
German word for an insult. So the term Amish initially
was a term of abuse referring to folks who were
opponents of Aman.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
Yes of Jacob, and these groups, as you describe them,
these kind of spinoffs or these franchises of this original schism,
they start migrating to what we call modern day Pennsylvania
in the early seventeen hundreds, and they come entirely because
(17:53):
of two reasons. Religious tolerance, which was still a freshly
baked thing, and affordable offers on land. Between seventeen seventeen
and seventeen fifty, about five hundred Homish people migrated to
North America, and I believe they first went to Burks County, Pennsylvania,
(18:19):
but then they had to relocate due to land disputes
and the chaos of something called the French and Indian War,
which is a weird name. And by the way, Native
Americans and the French do not call it the French
in Indian War.
Speaker 5 (18:36):
No, it's the one that kind of stuck. But I've
always found it a little perplexing. There are other related
groups that immigrated in the eighteen hundreds to places like Ohio, Illinois,
and Iowa, as well as more northern regions including the
southern parts of Ontario in Canada.
Speaker 4 (18:56):
A little later you would.
Speaker 5 (18:57):
See communities started to spring forth in Kansas, Maine, Zira, Wisconsin, Minnesota,
and even as far south as North Carolina.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
Yeah, and still to the earlier point, these communities are
incredibly insular. Interaction with the outside world is highly regulated.
Matt Nol We were talking about this with Trifors a
little bit before we we rolled. We were we were
thinking through our own personal experiences with these communities, Matt,
(19:34):
what's the what's the outsider word? What do they call it?
Not the Dutch, but they call us.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
Oh, I believe the term often is English. So if
somebody who is more in the mainstream of society, there's
a generalized term that's used. Like let's say you have
a neighbor that has a home and does not live
in a Mennonite or Amish lifestyle. Often that person be
referred to as my English neighbor.
Speaker 5 (20:00):
Yes, like guys, A lot of that terminology does come
up in that documentary that I was talking about, The
Devil's Backbone. So it really is a great view because
there's parts of it that are completely set within the
communities themselves, and then they follow the individuals they go out,
you know, and their kind of adolescent journey into the
wicked world.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
And people are people. So just to be clear, I
think we can all agree your Amish neighbors are not
hauling you a jerk. They're not mad at you.
Speaker 4 (20:32):
No, it's like being a gentile.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
Right, yeah, it's just following a different path, right. No
one's going to be rude to you, or.
Speaker 4 (20:40):
They might not let their daughters date your son though,
I mean.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
Yeah, I want to make just one really quick point
here about as we're migrating, we're imagining all of these
different groups moving to different parts of the United States.
One of the things that separates a lot of these
faiths is that there's not some big central church. There's
not a Vatican necessarily in most instances. Here some you know,
(21:07):
there is a Mennonite church there. There isn't like a
form of Amish church if you really start to break
down the different you know, offshoots. But often when you've
got a group of families, let's say, moving out to Maine,
you're going to have twenty forty families that move out together,
and then that group of human beings becomes like the
(21:30):
Mennonite church that's there, or the Amish church community that's right, right,
and so they govern things on their own. Everything is insular,
as we're saying.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
Here, every centralized, right, Yes, So.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
There's not there's not some other big organization that they're
writing to or getting phone calls from, and all that kind.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
Of stuff is just there's no pope.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
Yeah, we handle our stuff here, yes.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
And the which means that your end municipal authority, your mayor,
your president, your pope will be someone called the bishop,
and there is a strict hierarchy involved. Women and children,
by the way, are at the bottom of that hierarchy.
These communities. I love this point, Matt. These communities see
(22:18):
such regulation in interaction with the English or the outside
secular world that violating the terms of that outside interaction
is seen as sinful. It can be seen as a
mortal sin, like if you betray a member of the
(22:40):
community to the authorities, even when there is just cause,
you are endangering your chance to get into paradise or
the good part of the afterlife. I mean today, the
historic Amish community is itself diverse an interpretation of doctrine
(23:02):
which I think goes to that earlier point about decentralization.
It still holds to many of the precepts that mentioned earlier,
created or discovered or realized by our pal Jacob back
in the day. One of the biggest cultural touchstones is
the concept of something we call ordnung, which is a
(23:24):
codecs of unwritten laws of behavior. There are in these communities,
again decentralized, there are written versions of this behavior, and
those written versions are called the ordinal. They guide all
behavior for all members of the community and this is
(23:44):
up to the interpretation of the elders and the bishop.
The bishop is the top dog again, the mayor, the president,
the pope, the comptroller, that guy is the guy in charge.
Speaker 4 (23:58):
Yeah, Ordnung's just another German.
Speaker 5 (24:00):
I mean, I guess there's the Dutch heritage, and there
are some commonalities between Dutch and German. But it is
interesting how many German like straight up German words they
use to describe some of their concepts. Or um just
refers to like order and kind of like finding a
routine and sort of like an organized way of life.
Speaker 4 (24:18):
Which the Germans are also quite fond of.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
Oh yeah, Man Germany is the one place I almost
got arrested for jaywalking at three in the morning local
time because there are rules.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Yeah, bro, there's rules around here.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
There's rules.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Speaking of rules, let's talk about that thing we were.
Speaker 3 (24:38):
Gonna mention earlier, my dunge shunning, shut.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Yeah, shunning, excommunication, all that stuff. So this internal behavioral
mechanism that exists, it is. It varies, let's say, from
sect to sect, but one of the very one of
the very common things that you'll find in these groups
is the practice of going up in front of the
(25:03):
church and professing your sins or your crimes, like literal,
actual terrible crimes, and you go up in front of
the by the church, I just mean the other members
of your community, and you say the stuff out loud.
Then you are not allowed to eat with anybody. And
the time here varies, but usually it's like six weeks
(25:24):
where you can't go and eat communally with anybody. You
have to stay away on your own. And the belief
or maybe the order to it is that the rest
of the community after those six weeks or however much
time has passed, they everybody forgives you and is supposed
to forget that you ever committed said crime or sin
(25:46):
or whatever it is, and everybody just moves on and
you rejoin the community.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
It's in the past.
Speaker 4 (25:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
Yeah, it's a magic trick.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
You're absolved, which could be an incredible thing if it
was something like, you know, I lied about this thing
that occurred, and like, oh dang, nobody likes that you
did that. Go away for a while, come back where
we can all live simpatico again.
Speaker 3 (26:12):
Go in time out.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
Yeah, but if it's something heinous, like we're going to
be talking about today, I don't know how to express
how underwhelming that punishment is.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
Right, Yeah, the idea of my dongue or I'm sorry,
my manner is coming out me I d u n g.
The idea of shunning, we can call it we the
English is, in theory, a way for the community to
self regulate, to solve internal problems of largely obedience and compliance,
(26:47):
and keep everybody not just in physical uniform, but an
ideological uniform, which is even more disturbing. We should also
know to the aspect of shunning, it is collective punishment
because women and children are largely considered property. If a
dude gets in trouble in many of these communities, then
(27:11):
the spouse and the children encounter shunning as well. It's
not just people icing you out. These communities rely on
each other for sustenance, right for continued survival. So these
folks who are shunning you are also not helping you
(27:32):
build stuff, They're not helping you harvest crops. You're not
allowed to help them. I would imagine that's why there
is a window of time. Right, you simply cannot exist
in this community. If you are shunned for life, there's
no way to live without the village at that point.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
Yeah, that's a really great point, man. The difference between
going through a period of shunning and and being excommunicated
from your church, which is effectively like you're saying, from
your community, from your family, from everybody you've known for
the past x years, perhaps your entire life. Right, that's
a huge, huge potential punishment that can be enacted on
(28:18):
somebody in the community.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
Yeah, and look again, it's like any other thing in
the United States. Cool in theory, right, sounds good on paper. However,
increasing evidence shows that this internal regulatory system, in particular,
has been used to maintain order at the cost of
(28:43):
people's lives, at the cost of their well being and
their safety. The idea of or nung, the idea of
the ordinal, has been used repeatedly to cover up some serious,
deeply disturbing conspiracy. We're talking intergenerational sexual crimes again, fellow
(29:05):
conspiracy realists. This is a warning. The rest of this
show contains graphic depictions of unclean things. We said it
at the top. We want to give you one more chance.
The conspiracy is real. It may not be appropriate for
all listeners. We will pause for a word from our sponsors.
You can turn back now or learn the stuff the
(29:28):
Amish don't want you to know years where it gets crazy.
Not all Amish communities hashtag not all, but many Amish
communities have long records of intense intergenerational sexual abuse. And
(29:52):
I will pause it that the larger what we call
them at the English, the larger surround and communities knew
about this. It had to be an open secret for
more than two centuries now. However, as we all know,
outside of these communities, more of the abuse came to
(30:16):
light to the larger public, primarily due to the age
of information. Would we agree with that?
Speaker 4 (30:23):
Absolutely?
Speaker 2 (30:25):
Yeah, I think that's absolutely true. And in particular, there
was I would say, a helpful movement towards exposing this
kind of stuff when we you know, what is referred
to as the me too movement was in full swing
and occurring where people began to be not as fearful
to speak the truth out in a public setting as
(30:48):
you're saying. It's social media primarily, but also people writing
about it in major publications. These kinds of incidents that
would for a long time just be kept quiet out
of you know, fear and.
Speaker 5 (30:59):
For other whether it be fear of retaliation, or fear
of not being believed, or just outright shame, you know,
and to see others describing things that we ourselves perhaps
have also experienced is incredibly powerful. So you know this,
this applies to the Catholic Church and all of that
stuff coming to light in a much larger way than
(31:20):
it had in the past.
Speaker 4 (31:21):
All of the crazy stuff with Hollywood, this is no different.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
Yeah, multiple documentaries, multiple interviews, some of which were in
print and sat in the back shelf of an editor's
to do lists for many years, an unholy amount of years.
We're also talking court cases depicting just how profoundly these people,
(31:47):
often women, often children, were sexualized, objectified, assaulted, raped, and
then forced to you know, forgive their accuser because they
did a little had talk at the church, and then
further forced to aid and a bet further crimes within
(32:07):
the community's larger ongoing system, a very real conspiracy. And
with this in mind, there's a thing that we talk
about in the world of academia and poetry, which is
you find the universal via the specific. So let's dive
into a couple of stories. We're going to meet Mary
(32:30):
and Sarah. This is not pleasant. These are just very
brave people. They knew that they were ending their lives
in their community by coming forward. The first one we
want to introduce you to is Mary Buyler.
Speaker 4 (32:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (32:50):
Mary, from the age of four or five until she
left the community at seventeen, was repeatedly sexually assaulted by
many members of her very close knit Amish community in Wisconsin.
This included blood relations, cousins and her biological brothers, even
Johnny David and Eli Biler. Her biological father was also
(33:17):
guilty of this behavior.
Speaker 4 (33:20):
It's hard to even talk about.
Speaker 5 (33:21):
When local law enforcement sent Mary back to her community
wearing a wire. Johnny was caught on tape confessing to
assaulting her at least two hundred separate times.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
As a child. This was an elder brother again, as
you said, the biological brother, including cousins, including a biological father.
You can learn more about this in a documentary called
Sins of the Amish. I believe the court cases went
through in two thousand and four. They were undertaken when
(33:58):
she was nineteen years old.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
Well, yeah, and this is a really rare case where
a trial actually went forward. The fact that Mary was
given the chance to wear a wire and go in
and get a confession is not the norm that occurs here, honestly,
that she would even get the chance to do that.
And I guess we can talk about it more, but
(34:22):
just this thing that occurs in often in these cases
where the community itself often rallies around the family member
that could be sent away to prison for a long time,
rather than the person, the person who was abused, the
person who's saying, hey, I need help, somebody is hurting me.
(34:45):
The community sees that, but I don't. I can't speak
for the community, but my sense is that the community
somehow believes we can take care of that person who
was abused somehow, or we can show we alter that
person still in our ways. We just can't lose to
this other community member who is the actual abuser. And
(35:08):
that makes sense.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
Which are more important than women. That's part of it.
That's a huge part of it, because women are Look
and I don't want to ruffle any feathers here saying this,
but it is clear in the structural social functions here
that the hierarchy goes bishop and then elders, all dudes,
(35:33):
and then dudes and then women. Oh yeah, and juvenile
males are above women because they have one day the
chance to evolve into something past property. Women are taught
in these communities and these abusive communities that if someone
(35:54):
sexually assaults you, it is your fault because you should
have done better, which is unclean. It's unclean. There's not there,
There is no there is no moral parcore that can
make that rational.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (36:16):
No, And you know, we talked a little bit about
this off air, but I just wanted to bring it
up here. You know, when you hear about these types
of situations and among communities or organizations where there is
this like wholesale it's really like, you know, big picture
attempt to separate oneself from the evils of the world,
(36:36):
you know, or whatever, even the evils of humans, whether
it be the Catholic Church or the Amish community or
similar allegations of abuse happened in like the Mormon community.
You see this kind of stuff pop up, and you
have to wonder, like, is it that attempt to kind
of separate oneself that maybe it's almost like poking the
(36:58):
bear or something, or like give it doesn't have an outlet.
And then there's also just of course the inherent potential
for evil in humans that can just kind.
Speaker 4 (37:07):
Of fester in these situations. I don't know.
Speaker 5 (37:10):
I don't want to draw any false equivalencies, but you
see it a lot, and it seems like these situations
arise in cases where there's this kind of almost prohibition
type attitude. And I don't know, I don't want to
overstate the case here, but I was wondering what you
guys thought about that.
Speaker 3 (37:25):
I dig it. Yeah, the call is coming from inside
the house. It's something philosophy wrestles with and continues to.
It reminds me a bit now that we're framing this
and contextualizing it. It reminds me a bit of the horrors
in Pitcairn Island. You guys know about Pitcairn Island. I
(37:45):
have to refresh. Oh, it's a it's a world away.
I imagine. Very few members of the Amish community have visited,
but Pitcairn Island is notorious then and now for systematic
abuse of children. It's an archipelago out in I want
(38:09):
to say, French Polynesia. It's in the middle of the
ocean like picture Australia, right. If you're looking at US
printed world map, picture Australia, and they go way to
the right, like off the map, middle of nowhere.
Speaker 5 (38:28):
So isolated by its geography already, and then I imagine
that there's sort of like that, you know, by design
kind of thing to maintain that isolation and to have
sort of like a owned and operated culture and community.
And yet these things spring up disconnected from all of
the evils of like pop culture and whatever, television, entertainment, music,
(38:52):
all of the trappings of kind of modern life that
folks like the Amish are doing everything they can to
separate themselves from. And yes, this stuff kind of thrives
without any of that influence.
Speaker 3 (39:03):
Yeah, the argument that we're getting close to here would
be very familiar to Jacoboman. We're positing the idea of
call it opportunism, call it original sin, call it normalization.
Thereof it's deep, it's deep stuff, and it's not good.
(39:26):
I know that's an understate the of the decade. But look,
if we go to Mary Byler's case, as we said earlier,
that you point out this is a very rare thing, right,
and there's incredibly rare for this to go to the
English court, and we see that her brothers were brought
(39:50):
to account, all three of them pled guilty again, that's
Johnny Biler, Eli Biler, David Biler. David Biler got a
four year sentence in federal prison, not because of what
he did to his sister, Mary, but because of his
(40:10):
conviction for second degree sexual assault against Mary's even younger sister.
Eli Biler had a prior misdemeanor conviction, and as a
result of that prior he got eight years in prison.
Johnny Biler was examined pretty in depth in some of
(40:32):
these documentaries. He was given what we could only call
a sweetheart deal. It's not the kind of thing that
in any other context, it is not the kind of
thing that you would expect a court to give a
serial rapist. Can we talk about what his quote unquote
(40:52):
sentence was.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
Yeah, somebody who admitted to essentially two hundred separate counts
of child sexual abuse. It reminds me of that deal
that was given to Epstein when he was able to
come over to the jail, the prison, whatever it was,
(41:14):
spend the night there, and then in the morning wake
up and go to work. Because you know, his work's
really important, so he has to be able to go
to work. But then he'll come back and he'll stay
the night in the jail and we'll watch him.
Speaker 3 (41:28):
He got the sleepover sentence. Let's not call this sweetheart
deal a sleepover deal. Yeah, this is even weirder because
Johnny Biler is spending nights at the county jail for
what one year?
Speaker 5 (41:45):
Man, And you know, I mean, you hear that, and
you just have to wonder why, Like I just don't
understand the slap on the wrist quality of this kind
of sentence.
Speaker 4 (41:57):
And we're going to find out why.
Speaker 5 (41:59):
There was some support and within that patriarchal community that
maybe led to a little bit of lenience in the
court's decision. So let's take a quick break here from
our sponsor and then come back with more on this
disturbing case.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
And we're back, and we're still in the aftermath the
sentencing and trial of the abusers of Mary Buyler that
we've been talking about. So as we spoke about before,
a lot of the community members will show up in
support of the person accused of something again to show
support that they need that person in their community. They
don't want that person to get a long jail sentence.
(42:44):
They want that person back with them. So in the
case of Johnny Buyler, when he is being sentenced one
hundred and fifty members of his community, and I guess
that the Amish community at large traveled to the courtroom
on that day he was going to get sentenced to
do you support him, the guy that's accused of this stuff,
the guy that just went through a trial about all
(43:06):
this stuff. And it just shows you this thing. It
shows you that thing.
Speaker 4 (43:11):
Man.
Speaker 2 (43:12):
I've learned a lot about this, and I think we
all did from Sarah McClure, who wrote a piece in
Cosmopolitan back in twenty twenty, and in that she talks
She talks about a whole bunch of different cases and
gives a lot of specifics about them that you cannot unread.
But it is very good to read them. I just
mean that it's harring to read them, and it will
(43:33):
not leave your mind for a while. But they She
talks often about this very thing where even sometimes the
initial accuser, the person who says he raises their hand
and says, hey, you've been abusing me, ends up in
the courtroom as a part of the trial or at
some point in the trial and says writes a letter
or something that says, hey, please don't send my brother
(43:55):
or my dad to jail.
Speaker 3 (43:58):
Right, and in this case, uh yeah, in this case
a similar thing occurred. I do also because you guys know,
I'm I do also want to point out that those
Amish supporters went to that courtroom via greyhound, which is
a internal combustion autopia.
Speaker 2 (44:19):
Well, it depends on which sect they're in, because some
of some of the more modern Amish scrims just but
but the whole point in that, guys, is that the
community will then convince or coerce and someone who is
being abused to sit there and support the person who's
abusing them out of a sense of community.
Speaker 3 (44:40):
Yeah, they'll they'll show up and they'll say, actually, none
of that happened. You're making it sound worse than it is.
And it's pronounced jazz lighting.
Speaker 5 (44:50):
Well, it reminds me of some of the correspondents that
we've gotten from listeners, you know, around sexual abuse and
these kinds of horrific experiences and so often. I believe
it was one listener in particularly the Road, and it
made the point that you know, kids or younger people
or if they're isolated especially, they don't know that what's happening.
Speaker 3 (45:09):
Is bad, Like they don't know it's not normal.
Speaker 5 (45:11):
They don't, Yes, certainly, but it is possible to with
that kind of iron fisted control over information, over a community,
the lack of outside influence, to maintain these types of
situations for a really, really long time before anybody will
dare do what this young woman did in wearing a
(45:33):
wire that is, to your point, been very out of
the ordinary.
Speaker 3 (45:37):
Yeah, it's it's something that feels with the benefit of
being outside of an isolated community. It feels like a
no brainer. Obviously, if you saw any child being abused,
if you saw any person being abused, you would feel
(46:00):
that is part of your social contract to assist that
person right, to save them from adversity. And the issue
here is that culturally it's a very different social contract.
If you have ever had the dubious privilege of being
(46:21):
on the wrong side of the courtroom, then you will
know that letters of support character carried great weight with judges.
In the various legal proceedings pertaining to the decade plus
assault of Mary Byler. There were letters that Matt is
(46:42):
referring to. One of these letters was written by Mary
Byler's biological mother, statistically herself likely a victim of abuse
at some point, and her mother wrote a letter disowning
her daughter, but come on more so, saying that her
(47:05):
daughter had always made things quote sound worse than they
actually were, and that everybody involved regretted things had been
confessed and forgiven by the community of matching your own
parent doing that.
Speaker 4 (47:21):
It would be heartbreaking.
Speaker 5 (47:22):
I mean, I can't imagine just the level of betrayal
that that would cause one to feel. Rightfully, so I
have to mention though, been like these letters that you're
talking about, you know, it's obviously up to the judges
discretion to like determine like is this valid, Like what
is the nature of this sentiment?
Speaker 4 (47:39):
You know, And it.
Speaker 5 (47:40):
Really makes me think of like some people that have
gotten in real hot water for writing letters of support
to pretty clearly guilty individuals, Like remember that case with
I believe his name is Danny Masterson.
Speaker 4 (47:52):
He was on that seventies show.
Speaker 5 (47:54):
And Scientologist Scientology, but like he was a rapist, and
I think Melak Kunas and Ashton Kutcher wrote letters of
support to him for on his behalf that were read
in the court room and they got majorly uh, you know, lampooned,
and and you know, borderline canceled for that. So I
just you have to wonder, like where is the court
(48:15):
of public opinion in this, Like where is the judge's
discretion and saying I am here to protect this person,
and yet I'm giving credence to these letters that seem
coerced and of themselves.
Speaker 3 (48:27):
I just don't get a sticky point to Matt to
mass point earlier, you know, or these So intent is
always one of the most difficult things to prove, right now.
That's that's the reason why there are separate forms of
punishment for crimes of passion versus premeditated murder or homicide.
(48:52):
So in this, you know, it's it's very difficult to
navigate the degree of consent or coercion toward the writing
of these kind of letters, right of these sorts of
statements against your own child. And this is something that
the judge in the case, in the Johnny Byler case
(49:14):
brought up. And you can see multiple recordings of this
courtroom recordings. The judge, Michael Rosebrow says, I see a
lot of you. I'm paraphrasing here, but he says, I
see so many of you here in support of the accused,
and I see people weeping. You know, from the community,
(49:38):
how many of you have ever cried for the victim?
How many of you have cried for Mary Biolet? And
this guy clearly not amish, but he is asking a
very valid question.
Speaker 5 (49:54):
Yeah, yeah, but also seemed to give a lot of
credence to those letters. That's why I'm confused because says
what he just said, which seems to side with the victim,
you know, and the duteons. I'm not supposed to take
sides per se, but that sentence is insulting.
Speaker 4 (50:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (50:15):
One of the things that Sarah McClure talks about is
that often the accuser will be coerced to lessen the charge,
essentially like seeking justice for something that would be considered
a misdemeanor versus a felony. And that's often the case
where again the abused is coerced by the community then
(50:40):
to say, oh, well, he just he groped me, he
didn't it. We're going to consider it, you know this
rather than full you know, we'll call it sexual assault
rather than rape, right.
Speaker 3 (50:51):
Just aggravated molestation something like that.
Speaker 2 (50:55):
It's horrifying. And Sarah, by the way, found fifty two
official cases.
Speaker 3 (51:00):
Yes, yeah, we're gonna. Sarah McClure, an investigative journalists, spent
a year reporting on sexual abuse among the Amish. She
did uncover fifty two cases of abuse, which include sexual
assault and incest. And she found this across seven states
over the past twenty years.
Speaker 4 (51:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (51:19):
Yeah, And just to add to that there, like, here's
a quote from somebody named Esther. This person isn't actually
named Esther, their name was changed for this reporting. But
this is a quote from somebody in one of the
communities that says, we're told that it's not christ like
to report, right. Uh's this is someone who was abused
by her brother and a neighbor boy when she was
(51:41):
nine years old.
Speaker 4 (51:42):
But Christ's pook truth to power. Christ called people out.
That was his whole time. I'm sorry. This is her.
Speaker 2 (51:48):
This is her quote, and she also says, quote, it's
so ingrained. There are so many people who go to
church and just endure basically endure ongoing abuse.
Speaker 5 (51:58):
I don't buy that depiction of Christ at all. Remember
when he flipped over the money Changers table.
Speaker 3 (52:03):
Over when he did a distrack essentially and cursed the
tree because it didn't have figs. I can't remember which
version of you guys book that makes it.
Speaker 5 (52:13):
And yeah, he endured being you know the crucifixion where
you know, there's all these biblical scholars or whatever who
argue that he could have changed the course of his
destiny if he chose, but instead he let.
Speaker 4 (52:25):
It happen basically because it needed to happen.
Speaker 5 (52:27):
Whatever, like, whatever your take is on the spiritual side,
of the prophecy side of it or whatever. But you
cannot say that Jesus was a good little boy.
Speaker 4 (52:35):
You kept his mouth shut. That is not true.
Speaker 3 (52:39):
Well, the money changers have entered the chat, I imagine.
Here's what we know. The Amish community, time and time again,
not just in the Biler case, has argued that they
already meeted out appropriate punishment to these people who have
(53:00):
provably done these monstrous acts. Their argument, really internally is
that there is a true sin. People make mistakes, they say,
but the real sin is reporting it to the outside world,
because that would endanger the community, the exclusivity, the insular nature,
(53:24):
and the long term sustainability of the grand project. And
this is far from the end of the story. There
are many, many more cases of sexual abuse, community based
and family based. There are children born as a result
(53:44):
of these violent things.
Speaker 1 (53:47):
And.
Speaker 3 (53:49):
Some of those children are alive today. We could argue
with validity that there is a high likely or a
higher than average likelihood of this occurring in the insular community.
Predators find opportunity, right, A predator is I don't know.
It goes back to a conversation we're having earlier about
(54:10):
the the nature of original sin and evil. We know,
when outside accountability it self becomes the crime, right, then
things get very skewed very quickly.
Speaker 5 (54:23):
Well, and it's also just highly inconvenient for the status
quo of a community like that, whether there be accurate
allegations of this kind of abuse or it's just literally
maintaining their way of life. To have a criminal case
before the eyes of the public out in the secular world,
that's about the worst possible thing they could imagine in
(54:45):
terms of, like, you know, the hierarchy and then the
control over that society.
Speaker 2 (54:51):
Yeah, we want to point everybody over to another article
that you can check out right now, and it spotlights
this exact thing. Just how many examples of this exist?
Look up what they wore Amish Country exhibit spotlight's sex
abuse and this is somebody's written in ap News by
Peter Smith back in twenty twenty two, and it describes
(55:15):
essentially an exhibit that was put on where there are
the clothes of the girls like as young as four,
the exact clothes or recreations of the clothes that these
girls wore when they were sexually abused.
Speaker 3 (55:30):
And very conservative, you know, we're talking like all the way.
Speaker 2 (55:36):
Yeah, imagine imagine the traditional garb of a Mennonite or
an Amish community.
Speaker 3 (55:41):
Imagine like a house on the prairie. What's the name
of that shop.
Speaker 2 (55:44):
Yeah, that's a good way to think about it, for sure, for.
Speaker 3 (55:47):
Not Amish in the audience.
Speaker 2 (55:49):
Yeah, including bonnets, right, And they are strung up on
a clothesline with a small piece of paper that just
states how old the child was and what they were wearing. Basically,
it describes the clothing when they were abused. And it
is just a striking way to view how prevalent this is,
(56:11):
and it is heartbreaking to see some of the tiny
clothes that are strung up on that clothesline.
Speaker 3 (56:16):
I'd like to also add the note from the documentary
which is fairly recent, called Sins of the Amish quotation
at the very beginning The odds of an Amish woman
getting raped to buy a guy on the street are
almost zero, but from a guy within their own communities
it is one out of every six on a good day. Harrowing.
(56:44):
We also know there are more non sexual crimes that
occur between these communities and the outside world. We're talking
drug trafficking, weirdly enough, shaving, oh jeez, yeah, murder, Well,
it's a big deal. It's a big deal.
Speaker 4 (57:04):
There, I know.
Speaker 5 (57:05):
But as a bearded a man who's been bearded for
a very long time, I could personally attest that would
be a crime against humanity if someone ever did that
to me without without my consent.
Speaker 4 (57:15):
No, I'm making light because.
Speaker 5 (57:18):
That's the only thing I know how to do when
it comes to heavy stuff like this. The drug trafficking
stuff is also addressed in that doc that I mentioned
the Devil's Backbone, because some of the kids that do
take that sabbatical.
Speaker 4 (57:30):
And go out into the real world.
Speaker 5 (57:31):
There's a handful of stories that involve methamphetamines and bring
that back into the community and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3 (57:39):
Yeah, I'm thinking in particular of Abner King Stoolfitz and
Abner Stolfitz, not related. I'm thinking of a New York
Times article back in nineteen ninety eight when they became
the first two members of Pennsylvania Amish to be arrested
(57:59):
for afficking cocaine and meth. This was in step with
the Pagan motorcycle gang. We should probably do an episode
on outlaw bikers as well, the original one percenters, right,
And maybe the biggest takeaway is this conspiracy thrives in
a lack of transparency. In the Amish community, we witness
(58:21):
clear misogyny, and we see with any community practicing this,
the same horrifying stories over and over. Women is not
quite people, not quite property, not given the same rights.
And unfortunately, many of our fellow listeners, folks, some of
us in the audience tonight, have experienced similar situations in
(58:46):
likewise insular communities. We already shouted out Sarah McClure, investigative
journalist who has done so much tremendous work for people here.
We also want to recommend the Plain People podcast, launched
in twenty eighteen, which explores in depth more stories of
(59:08):
sexual abuse and Amish and Mennonite communities.
Speaker 2 (59:12):
For sure, we were talking for a while about you know,
how could this happen? Why is this happening? And Sarah
McClure in her piece again look it up right now.
The Amish keep to themselves and they're hiding a horrifying secret.
She explains it in a way that I think I understand,
and I think we all understand at least a little better.
She says, it's not one thing, right. You can't point
(59:34):
to one thing. You can't point to a couple things
that make these communities ripe for this type of abuse.
But she calls it a perfect storm of factors. I'm
just gonna list these off really quickly because I think this.
You can find these factors, sometimes separately in groups, and
then when you see them begin to combine, that's where
(59:54):
the real trouble begins, she says. One a patriarchal and
isolated lifestyle in which victims have little exposure to police, coaches,
or anyone else who might help them. An education system
that ends at eighth grade and fails to teach children
about their bodies and about sex. A culture of victim
blaming and shaming. Little access to the technology that enables
(01:00:16):
communication for broader social awareness of what's going on about
your body, about what others are experiencing and a religion
that prioritizes repentance and forgiveness over actual punishment and rehabilitation.
So really, in this episode, guys, what we've done is
outlined all of that stuff. I think Sarah just puts
that into one concise thing where you can just kind
(01:00:39):
of see it and go, oh wow, okay, if you've
got all of those factors going at the same time,
this leads to a place where it's a I think
it's in that documentary that you mentioned, Ben. In the
trailer for it, they call it a paradise for abusers.
Speaker 3 (01:00:57):
Yes, they call it pedophiles paradise. And there's another I mean,
there is a town called Paradise as well. And this
is an interesting point here, Matt, because astute fellow conspiracy realist,
we can already note the factors listed by McClure. The
(01:01:18):
factors we explore here are not unique to any single ideology,
to any single creed, to any single region of the
human experience. And maybe we begin our ending with this. Obviously,
not every person in any Amish or Mennonite community is
(01:01:38):
abusing children, like imagine any longstanding theocratic civilization. The majority
of people in those civilizations. Then as of now and
in the future, are people just like you. They do
not wake up each day excited to hurt themselves or others.
(01:02:01):
But the problem is the lack of transparency, that is
the original sin, the insular nature of the them versus
us mentality, This intense continual indoctrination right, the brainwashing of
rules and also loopholes to that rules, that makes the
(01:02:21):
ordinal the Ordnung twist. And as we record to date,
the most heartbreaking part is there is very little indication
that the Amish community overall, being decentralized as it is,
will take any serious action to address past abuse or
to prevent future abuse.
Speaker 2 (01:02:42):
Guys, the one thing we haven't talked about yet in
this episode is something particularly horrifying which is a practice
in several communities that was outlined in a couple of
places we found online where women, young girls even sometimes
are sent to a type of institution where they are
(01:03:04):
to receive treatment to get right with God. And the
people who run those institutions often are a part of
the church in one way or another, and they will
medicate young girls and women with stuff like olanzapine, which
is an antipsychotic medication.
Speaker 3 (01:03:24):
It's a very heavy duty antipsychotic medication.
Speaker 2 (01:03:28):
Yeah, it's generally a treatment for schizophrenia and is only
recommended for patients above the age of thirteen for manic
episodes and bipolar disorder and all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 3 (01:03:39):
Very yellow wallpaper. To be honest with you.
Speaker 2 (01:03:41):
That's a great way to describe it. It is people
who have gone through the experience, young women especially report
coming back as zombies or their friends coming back as
zombies and just existing basically being told by the church
via this or organization, you just need to be obedient.
(01:04:03):
You just need to you know, comply exactly. To me,
it's just another horrifying aspect of a way to control
someone or an entire group of women.
Speaker 3 (01:04:14):
I think it's a horrifying aspect to all of us.
You know this, this this idea dates back to earlier.
As you said, Matt control attempts right lobottomize, medicate zombie
fie victims right of a system, rather than changing the
(01:04:34):
system that produces these victims through active conspiracy. This is
this is it, you know, the there are more things ahead.
We were absolutely not spinning you a tail. These conspiracies
are real. They continue this evening, and for any fellow
(01:04:55):
listeners with experience in these communities, having survived these things,
we want to end by saying this, we very much
hope you are safe. We are here to learn your stories.
Please listen all the way to the end of this
episode and thank you for being here with us. Folks.
(01:05:16):
We are going to tell you how to contact us
via social media, via telephone, via our direct email address,
which we can all see and respond to. We do
try to be easy to find online.
Speaker 5 (01:05:32):
You can find us at the handle Conspiracy Stuff on
x FKA Twitter. You can get to us that way.
You can also find our Facebook group under that handle.
It's called Here's where it Gets Crazy, and it's a
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with your fellow conspiracy realists. We're also Conspiracy Stuff on YouTube.
We have tons of video content for you to enjoy.
(01:05:54):
On Instagram and TikTok also great ways to get in touch.
You can find us at the handle Conspiracy Stuff Show.
Speaker 2 (01:06:00):
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(01:06:20):
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Speaker 4 (01:06:25):
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Speaker 3 (01:06:26):
Entities that read every piece of correspondence we receive. Be
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some of you tonight check your email. There's a message
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(01:06:47):
Now join us out here in the dark conspiracy at
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Speaker 2 (00:25):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Norman.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
They call me Ben. We are joined as always with
our super producer Andrew trefors Howard. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't
want you to know. My fellow Americans, what do you
think of when you hear the word abbish?
Speaker 4 (00:49):
Barack Obama, Barack Hussein Obama.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
That was like maybe a third Barack at the beginning,
And then I just started, who.
Speaker 4 (00:58):
Is cartoon Barack? And I'm here for it.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Wait somebody, it's somebody explain this. What does amish have
to do with Barack Obama?
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Oh, it's just my fellow Americans, is a thing President say?
Speaker 5 (01:11):
Oh, he's just opening the floor for questions in common?
You know, I'll tell you. There is this great documentary
called The Devil's Backbone that I remember from many years ago,
with an exclusively Aphex Twins soundtrack. It's got all this
stuff from like selected ambient Works Volume two.
Speaker 4 (01:32):
It's very beautifully used. He's not a guy that licenses
at his music for stuff, and it's very well used.
Speaker 5 (01:37):
It obviously describes the Amish practice of sort of allowing
young people to go out into the world and live
for I believe a year. Some of them come running back,
and some of them, you know, stay and become kind
of yeah, de amished.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
I guess wait, wait, wait, Aphex Twin is one guy.
Speaker 4 (01:57):
Yeah, so's Tame and Paula bro It's crazy. Yeah, Richard D.
James is a fixed twin.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
But wait, how many pilots are in twenty one pilots?
Speaker 4 (02:06):
Only two? There's only two pilots, but really quickly.
Speaker 5 (02:09):
This film is fascinating because a big thing that happens
with a lot of these kids who will go out
on this kind of like journey of self discovery is
some of them become they get absolutely taken in by
the corrupt the corruption of the world and become like
drug addicts, and there's all kinds of horrible things that happen,
and then some of them come back and live a pure,
(02:31):
you know, fully Amish life. It's very interesting phenomenon of
the Amish culture that they have this whole kind of
trial period called rum Springer.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
I was gonna say, guys, I have a very clear
picture of a film, also not a documentary, a movie
called Kingpin that came out in ninety six, all about
kind of that like being corrupted by the world. I
think it's Dennis No, Randy Quaid, Randy Quaid, I think
that's right. I think is Randy Amish, Yeah, yeah, and
(03:03):
amish like guy who doesn't know much about the world,
but he happens to be excellent in bowling and then
he gets taken in and he goes yeah, gets taken over.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
Yeah, and that's a country mouse, meat city mouse kind
of true.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Yes, exactly exactly, but with bowling at the heart of it.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
Jeez.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
I remember really liking that movie and thinking like quoting
it a lot, but I don't know how well it
holds up. So sorry if you go back and watch
it now and there's problems, but I really liked it.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
Well. You can hang out with us, folks. If ever
you find yourself in our grand city of Atlanta, be
you Amish or other, which will play into tonight's episode,
you can always hang out with your fellow conspiracy realist.
We will take you bowling. You will probably win because
I don't know about you, guys, but I am terrible
(03:54):
at that sport.
Speaker 5 (03:56):
It's very difficult sport. I don't have the chops, I
don't have the form. If I ever am good at bullying,
it's the same way I'm good at darts, which is
accidentally good.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Guys, I spent a lot of time in Ohio.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
I won't you know.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
I won't like take your money on purpose, but I'm sorry.
Speaker 4 (04:16):
Ohio huge.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Okay, okay, bully is huge. Matt's got that shark elbow.
Speaker 4 (04:25):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Welcome back, fellow conspiracy realist. As you may or may
not know, we have been on and off the road.
As a result, we had some microphone shenanigans. We wanted
to let you know you are not crazy. Uh, the
audio is a little different at the beginning. However, we
(04:53):
got everything in line with all prise due to our
super producer Andrew rifles Howard. And now on with the show. Now,
I'm not gonna get you into the personal bowling curse,
which is a story for another day. But we're we're
(05:14):
talking about what we hear, what the word amish conjures
in our minds. America as a continent or a series
of continents and a country is, as we all know,
far from perfect, but the idea is pretty fantastic. One
of the biggest wins that ever happened in the history
(05:37):
of the world was the United States idea of religious tolerance.
The US has always, in theory, guaranteed residents the right
to worship as they choose, so long as they don't
mess with other people. And Christianity Islam, Judaism, they're all
(05:58):
these people book right, abramac panopolies of interpretation, doctrinal difference.
I would argue Christianity is probably the most diverse umbrella
group of those three big concepts, and for the past
few millennia, since the time of Jesus Christ, guy who
(06:23):
is famously known for, you know, bread and fish and
being cool.
Speaker 4 (06:30):
You know what, It's true.
Speaker 5 (06:32):
There's a really great song with it's been called King
Missile called Jesus is way cool, and it's true.
Speaker 4 (06:37):
And I don't enough people give him credit for that.
And I appreciate that.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
Ben.
Speaker 4 (06:39):
You always wanted to give credit where credit is due.
And Jesus was way cool.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Jesus was our big lebowski. I don't know why kingpen
is making me thinking of ye, that's for sure, he did.
The dude abides so like. For thousands of years, people
have been fighting about which interpretation of Christianity is woosh
woosh correct. In tonight's episode, we are examining a particular
(07:05):
group of Christian communities, largely in the United States. They're
known for their separation from the larger secular world and
surrounding neighborhoods. In the US, we usually call these communities
just the Amish, but as we'll discover, they are not
(07:27):
a monolith, and there is unfortunately a positively unholy intergenerational
conspiracy afoot in some of these places that don't really
meet with the modern world. I guess before we close
our cold open, we do have to give you a disclaimer.
(07:47):
Tonight's episode contains at times graphic descriptions of assault, incest,
and violence. As such, it may not be appropriate for
all listeners. Here are the facts, all right? What do
we mean though when we say Amish? Aside from the documentaries,
(08:08):
Aside from one weird out Yankovic song, who are the Amish?
Speaker 5 (08:13):
Well, in the US, the term amish kind of as
you mentioned, Beny who kind of tend to conjure a
particular representation of what this might mean.
Speaker 4 (08:21):
Some of that might be accurate, and some of that
might be wildly off the mark.
Speaker 5 (08:25):
But let's just start with maybe sort of the image
that might be popping into one's head.
Speaker 4 (08:29):
The idea of a.
Speaker 5 (08:30):
Particular type of garb, you know, dark suits and broad
brimmed hats, a bit more of a conservative kind of
form of dress. The idea of farming horse drawn wagons.
Probably thinking a bit of Middle America, you know, Pennsylvania
is a big area for Amish communities today. These communities
(08:52):
are often considered to be a bit of a mystery
within our kind of more modern American life, and that's
by design. Are a people frozen in time, essentially by
their own choice. The Amish live by choice without modern
modes of transportation like automobiles or even electricity. If I'm
(09:13):
not mistaken, Some of these communities may you know, still
use outhouses and maybe you have like a well or
a pump, but not like indoor plumbing. And this is
all in an attempt to live in a way that
is more godly, that in a way that is more
close to maybe the simpler times where people weren't as
(09:36):
distracted by all kinds of you know, modern trappings like
money and entertainment and all the kind of things that
can lead to let's just be honest, guys, it can
lead to the erosion of the soul.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Yeah, I would I would say one of the primary
things about this group is the concept of removing yourself
from anything that will make you less close to God, right, yes,
less close to being an example of like for the
world essentially of what Jesus' teachings were, or what the
Bible's teachings were.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
From the bishop to the child, you live in service
of a higher power.
Speaker 5 (10:14):
And maybe just to get it out of the way
up front, because we are going to talk about some
horrible things that happen within these communities at times.
Speaker 4 (10:21):
But on paper, I think we would all love to
be able to.
Speaker 5 (10:25):
Remove ourselves from some of the stuff that we've gotten
so deeply invested in and embedded in, you know, from social.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
Media to politics to whatever.
Speaker 5 (10:35):
I mean, there are these are things that can just
really make you go a little crazy and kind of
not be your truest, purest self.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
And a good side note there, and I love that point, Noel,
there are these things called blue zones. There are only
a few throughout the entire globe, and a blue zone
is a place where an extraordinaryunt of people live past
one hundred years old. And one of the formative variables
(11:08):
for a blue zone is an intense connection with community.
Community is one of the earliest, if not the earliest
human technology. It predates language right and it has very
real effects for good or for ill. The point about
(11:28):
an Amish community, or a Mennonite or an Old Order
Amish community, or a plain community as they're called. The
point of it is to avoid things that distract one
in theory from the pursuit of the service of God
a higher power. As such, education is considered only a
(11:51):
means to an end. It concludes around what we would
call eighth grade in the United States. In your life
largely centers on the growth and maintenance of your community,
which includes farming and includes participation in religious and social mores.
(12:13):
When you hear law enforcement secular law enforcement, you'll often
hear them refer to the Amish as a plane community
p lai n. But the history is fascinating too, because
the story of what we call Amish in the United
States begins before the creation of the United States as
(12:40):
an idea itself.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Oh yeah, and you can go The Anabaptist movement, which
is part of basically the Protestant Reformation, goes way back.
I think sixteenth century is when some of the concepts
begin to arise, and then you get the Mennonites, which
then splinter off into a couple different groups, which then
become the Amish. The Amish is one of the splits
basically that occurs.
Speaker 5 (13:03):
It's interesting too, because you know where I grew up
in Augusta, Georgia, there's quite a large Mennonite community, and
I always associated them directly with the Amish. And while
they have the commonalities, it's not the same. They were
like part of a group that splintered and then became
the Amish. They might share some beliefs and some lifestyle choices,
but they are not the same am I Is that
(13:24):
about the shape of it. The Amish are an offshoot
of the Mennonites, and the Mennonites are still around in
their own capacity.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
Yes, yeah, yeah, one hundred percent. Going back. As as
Matt said to Anabaptist, the schism between the Protestants and
the Catholics we got a shout out reluctantly. A guy
named Jacob Ahmann amm a n He is an elder
(13:54):
in the Mennonite Anabaptist movement, born around like the late
seventeenth century sixteen nineties. He said that lying about anything
is grounds for ex communication, and the Mennonites at the
time had a different vibe on what was meant by
(14:18):
ex communication. We'll get into it, but essentially they meant shunning.
If your community is your most important thing, then the
way you punish people who violate your social morase is
to remove them from that community, to remove them from communication,
to put a fine point on it, to x communicate them. Also,
(14:44):
this guy wanted everybody to wear similar clothing, wanted them
to have similar facial hair, and wanted them to not
ever mess with the state church. Be that in Germany,
be that in parts of France, be that in Switzerland.
The term amish, I don't think a lot of us
(15:06):
know this. The term amish was first used in the
early eighteenth century. In seventeen ten as an insult and Noel,
we're gonna defer to you as our former What do
you say, we German boy?
Speaker 5 (15:20):
I always what's a small German boy. Yes, it's true,
and I'm no experts. My German knowledge remains at a
kindergarten level. But I did come by it honestly, the
word being shandanama, which is an insult. It's sort of
like your ops, you know, but a shanda though. I
was just gonna mention this is literally an observation. I
(15:43):
don't necessarily have too much data to back this up,
but the Amish and the Hasidic Jewish community have some
things in common in terms of their use of kind
of this Yiddish type slang or this sort of German
you know, kind of these German German sort of slang,
but also in the dress, I mean, the beard and
the hats, and like the clothing and the simplicity. And
(16:04):
I know they're they're coming at it from different places,
but it does seem like there's a similar approach to
being more godly by simplifying one's life and by.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Excluding secular community exactly very them versus us. Yeah, and
we say that as a show several of us have
Jewish heritage. And I love that you're bringing this up, Noll,
because you can also see similar insular religious pursuits. Sure,
(16:34):
for anybody unfamiliar with Judaism as a whole. There are
branches of Judaism, orthodox Judaism that would not interact necessarily
or not go out of their way to interact with
people you might consider reformed, right, Reform Judaism is very different.
(16:58):
And I'm only laughing because there were this great bit
Billy Crystal did. Do you guys remember Billy Crystal? Of course, yeah,
from earlier. You could forget Billy Crystal from earlier. Yeah, yeah,
City Slickers, Stone Cold Classic up there with vibes Curley's goal.
Oh yes, thank you for mentioning vibes. Man, I appreciate that.
Speaker 5 (17:18):
But yes, shanda nama is just a you know, a
German word for an insult. So the term Amish initially
was a term of abuse referring to folks who were
opponents of Aman.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
Yes of Jacob, and these groups, as you describe them,
these kind of spinoffs or these franchises of this original schism,
they start migrating to what we call modern day Pennsylvania
in the early seventeen hundreds, and they come entirely because
(17:53):
of two reasons. Religious tolerance, which was still a freshly
baked thing, and affordable offers on land. Between seventeen seventeen
and seventeen fifty, about five hundred Homish people migrated to
North America, and I believe they first went to Burks County, Pennsylvania,
(18:19):
but then they had to relocate due to land disputes
and the chaos of something called the French and Indian War,
which is a weird name. And by the way, Native
Americans and the French do not call it the French
in Indian War.
Speaker 5 (18:36):
No, it's the one that kind of stuck. But I've
always found it a little perplexing. There are other related
groups that immigrated in the eighteen hundreds to places like Ohio, Illinois,
and Iowa, as well as more northern regions including the
southern parts of Ontario in Canada.
Speaker 4 (18:56):
A little later you would.
Speaker 5 (18:57):
See communities started to spring forth in Kansas, Maine, Zira, Wisconsin, Minnesota,
and even as far south as North Carolina.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
Yeah, and still to the earlier point, these communities are
incredibly insular. Interaction with the outside world is highly regulated.
Matt Nol We were talking about this with Trifors a
little bit before we we rolled. We were we were
thinking through our own personal experiences with these communities, Matt,
(19:34):
what's the what's the outsider word? What do they call it?
Not the Dutch, but they call us.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
Oh, I believe the term often is English. So if
somebody who is more in the mainstream of society, there's
a generalized term that's used. Like let's say you have
a neighbor that has a home and does not live
in a Mennonite or Amish lifestyle. Often that person be
referred to as my English neighbor.
Speaker 5 (20:00):
Yes, like guys, A lot of that terminology does come
up in that documentary that I was talking about, The
Devil's Backbone. So it really is a great view because
there's parts of it that are completely set within the
communities themselves, and then they follow the individuals they go out,
you know, and their kind of adolescent journey into the
wicked world.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
And people are people. So just to be clear, I
think we can all agree your Amish neighbors are not
hauling you a jerk. They're not mad at you.
Speaker 4 (20:32):
No, it's like being a gentile.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
Right, yeah, it's just following a different path, right. No
one's going to be rude to you, or.
Speaker 4 (20:40):
They might not let their daughters date your son though,
I mean.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
Yeah, I want to make just one really quick point
here about as we're migrating, we're imagining all of these
different groups moving to different parts of the United States.
One of the things that separates a lot of these
faiths is that there's not some big central church. There's
not a Vatican necessarily in most instances. Here some you know,
(21:07):
there is a Mennonite church there. There isn't like a
form of Amish church if you really start to break
down the different you know, offshoots. But often when you've
got a group of families, let's say, moving out to Maine,
you're going to have twenty forty families that move out together,
and then that group of human beings becomes like the
(21:30):
Mennonite church that's there, or the Amish church community that's right, right,
and so they govern things on their own. Everything is insular,
as we're saying.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
Here, every centralized, right, Yes, So.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
There's not there's not some other big organization that they're
writing to or getting phone calls from, and all that kind.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
Of stuff is just there's no pope.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
Yeah, we handle our stuff here, yes.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
And the which means that your end municipal authority, your mayor,
your president, your pope will be someone called the bishop,
and there is a strict hierarchy involved. Women and children,
by the way, are at the bottom of that hierarchy.
These communities. I love this point, Matt. These communities see
(22:18):
such regulation in interaction with the English or the outside
secular world that violating the terms of that outside interaction
is seen as sinful. It can be seen as a
mortal sin, like if you betray a member of the
(22:40):
community to the authorities, even when there is just cause,
you are endangering your chance to get into paradise or
the good part of the afterlife. I mean today, the
historic Amish community is itself diverse an interpretation of doctrine
(23:02):
which I think goes to that earlier point about decentralization.
It still holds to many of the precepts that mentioned earlier,
created or discovered or realized by our pal Jacob back
in the day. One of the biggest cultural touchstones is
the concept of something we call ordnung, which is a
(23:24):
codecs of unwritten laws of behavior. There are in these communities,
again decentralized, there are written versions of this behavior, and
those written versions are called the ordinal. They guide all
behavior for all members of the community and this is
(23:44):
up to the interpretation of the elders and the bishop.
The bishop is the top dog again, the mayor, the president,
the pope, the comptroller, that guy is the guy in charge.
Speaker 4 (23:58):
Yeah, Ordnung's just another German.
Speaker 5 (24:00):
I mean, I guess there's the Dutch heritage, and there
are some commonalities between Dutch and German. But it is
interesting how many German like straight up German words they
use to describe some of their concepts. Or um just
refers to like order and kind of like finding a
routine and sort of like an organized way of life.
Speaker 4 (24:18):
Which the Germans are also quite fond of.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
Oh yeah, Man Germany is the one place I almost
got arrested for jaywalking at three in the morning local
time because there are rules.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Yeah, bro, there's rules around here.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
There's rules.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Speaking of rules, let's talk about that thing we were.
Speaker 3 (24:38):
Gonna mention earlier, my dunge shunning, shut.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Yeah, shunning, excommunication, all that stuff. So this internal behavioral
mechanism that exists, it is. It varies, let's say, from
sect to sect, but one of the very one of
the very common things that you'll find in these groups
is the practice of going up in front of the
(25:03):
church and professing your sins or your crimes, like literal,
actual terrible crimes, and you go up in front of
the by the church, I just mean the other members
of your community, and you say the stuff out loud.
Then you are not allowed to eat with anybody. And
the time here varies, but usually it's like six weeks
(25:24):
where you can't go and eat communally with anybody. You
have to stay away on your own. And the belief
or maybe the order to it is that the rest
of the community after those six weeks or however much
time has passed, they everybody forgives you and is supposed
to forget that you ever committed said crime or sin
(25:46):
or whatever it is, and everybody just moves on and
you rejoin the community.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
It's in the past.
Speaker 4 (25:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
Yeah, it's a magic trick.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
You're absolved, which could be an incredible thing if it
was something like, you know, I lied about this thing
that occurred, and like, oh dang, nobody likes that you
did that. Go away for a while, come back where
we can all live simpatico again.
Speaker 3 (26:12):
Go in time out.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
Yeah, but if it's something heinous, like we're going to
be talking about today, I don't know how to express
how underwhelming that punishment is.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
Right, Yeah, the idea of my dongue or I'm sorry,
my manner is coming out me I d u n g.
The idea of shunning, we can call it we the
English is, in theory, a way for the community to
self regulate, to solve internal problems of largely obedience and compliance,
(26:47):
and keep everybody not just in physical uniform, but an
ideological uniform, which is even more disturbing. We should also
know to the aspect of shunning, it is collective punishment
because women and children are largely considered property. If a
dude gets in trouble in many of these communities, then
(27:11):
the spouse and the children encounter shunning as well. It's
not just people icing you out. These communities rely on
each other for sustenance, right for continued survival. So these
folks who are shunning you are also not helping you
(27:32):
build stuff, They're not helping you harvest crops. You're not
allowed to help them. I would imagine that's why there
is a window of time. Right, you simply cannot exist
in this community. If you are shunned for life, there's
no way to live without the village at that point.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
Yeah, that's a really great point, man. The difference between
going through a period of shunning and and being excommunicated
from your church, which is effectively like you're saying, from
your community, from your family, from everybody you've known for
the past x years, perhaps your entire life. Right, that's
a huge, huge potential punishment that can be enacted on
(28:18):
somebody in the community.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
Yeah, and look again, it's like any other thing in
the United States. Cool in theory, right, sounds good on paper. However,
increasing evidence shows that this internal regulatory system, in particular,
has been used to maintain order at the cost of
(28:43):
people's lives, at the cost of their well being and
their safety. The idea of or nung, the idea of
the ordinal, has been used repeatedly to cover up some serious,
deeply disturbing conspiracy. We're talking intergenerational sexual crimes again, fellow
(29:05):
conspiracy realists. This is a warning. The rest of this
show contains graphic depictions of unclean things. We said it
at the top. We want to give you one more chance.
The conspiracy is real. It may not be appropriate for
all listeners. We will pause for a word from our sponsors.
You can turn back now or learn the stuff the
(29:28):
Amish don't want you to know years where it gets crazy.
Not all Amish communities hashtag not all, but many Amish
communities have long records of intense intergenerational sexual abuse. And
(29:52):
I will pause it that the larger what we call
them at the English, the larger surround and communities knew
about this. It had to be an open secret for
more than two centuries now. However, as we all know,
outside of these communities, more of the abuse came to
(30:16):
light to the larger public, primarily due to the age
of information. Would we agree with that?
Speaker 4 (30:23):
Absolutely?
Speaker 2 (30:25):
Yeah, I think that's absolutely true. And in particular, there
was I would say, a helpful movement towards exposing this
kind of stuff when we you know, what is referred
to as the me too movement was in full swing
and occurring where people began to be not as fearful
to speak the truth out in a public setting as
(30:48):
you're saying. It's social media primarily, but also people writing
about it in major publications. These kinds of incidents that
would for a long time just be kept quiet out
of you know, fear and.
Speaker 5 (30:59):
For other whether it be fear of retaliation, or fear
of not being believed, or just outright shame, you know,
and to see others describing things that we ourselves perhaps
have also experienced is incredibly powerful. So you know this,
this applies to the Catholic Church and all of that
stuff coming to light in a much larger way than
(31:20):
it had in the past.
Speaker 4 (31:21):
All of the crazy stuff with Hollywood, this is no different.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
Yeah, multiple documentaries, multiple interviews, some of which were in
print and sat in the back shelf of an editor's
to do lists for many years, an unholy amount of years.
We're also talking court cases depicting just how profoundly these people,
(31:47):
often women, often children, were sexualized, objectified, assaulted, raped, and
then forced to you know, forgive their accuser because they
did a little had talk at the church, and then
further forced to aid and a bet further crimes within
(32:07):
the community's larger ongoing system, a very real conspiracy. And
with this in mind, there's a thing that we talk
about in the world of academia and poetry, which is
you find the universal via the specific. So let's dive
into a couple of stories. We're going to meet Mary
(32:30):
and Sarah. This is not pleasant. These are just very
brave people. They knew that they were ending their lives
in their community by coming forward. The first one we
want to introduce you to is Mary Buyler.
Speaker 4 (32:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (32:50):
Mary, from the age of four or five until she
left the community at seventeen, was repeatedly sexually assaulted by
many members of her very close knit Amish community in Wisconsin.
This included blood relations, cousins and her biological brothers, even
Johnny David and Eli Biler. Her biological father was also
(33:17):
guilty of this behavior.
Speaker 4 (33:20):
It's hard to even talk about.
Speaker 5 (33:21):
When local law enforcement sent Mary back to her community
wearing a wire. Johnny was caught on tape confessing to
assaulting her at least two hundred separate times.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
As a child. This was an elder brother again, as
you said, the biological brother, including cousins, including a biological father.
You can learn more about this in a documentary called
Sins of the Amish. I believe the court cases went
through in two thousand and four. They were undertaken when
(33:58):
she was nineteen years old.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
Well, yeah, and this is a really rare case where
a trial actually went forward. The fact that Mary was
given the chance to wear a wire and go in
and get a confession is not the norm that occurs here, honestly,
that she would even get the chance to do that.
And I guess we can talk about it more, but
(34:22):
just this thing that occurs in often in these cases
where the community itself often rallies around the family member
that could be sent away to prison for a long time,
rather than the person, the person who was abused, the
person who's saying, hey, I need help, somebody is hurting me.
(34:45):
The community sees that, but I don't. I can't speak
for the community, but my sense is that the community
somehow believes we can take care of that person who
was abused somehow, or we can show we alter that
person still in our ways. We just can't lose to
this other community member who is the actual abuser. And
(35:08):
that makes sense.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
Which are more important than women. That's part of it.
That's a huge part of it, because women are Look
and I don't want to ruffle any feathers here saying this,
but it is clear in the structural social functions here
that the hierarchy goes bishop and then elders, all dudes,
(35:33):
and then dudes and then women. Oh yeah, and juvenile
males are above women because they have one day the
chance to evolve into something past property. Women are taught
in these communities and these abusive communities that if someone
(35:54):
sexually assaults you, it is your fault because you should
have done better, which is unclean. It's unclean. There's not there,
There is no there is no moral parcore that can
make that rational.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (36:16):
No, And you know, we talked a little bit about
this off air, but I just wanted to bring it
up here. You know, when you hear about these types
of situations and among communities or organizations where there is
this like wholesale it's really like, you know, big picture
attempt to separate oneself from the evils of the world,
(36:36):
you know, or whatever, even the evils of humans, whether
it be the Catholic Church or the Amish community or
similar allegations of abuse happened in like the Mormon community.
You see this kind of stuff pop up, and you
have to wonder, like, is it that attempt to kind
of separate oneself that maybe it's almost like poking the
(36:58):
bear or something, or like give it doesn't have an outlet.
And then there's also just of course the inherent potential
for evil in humans that can just kind.
Speaker 4 (37:07):
Of fester in these situations. I don't know.
Speaker 5 (37:10):
I don't want to draw any false equivalencies, but you
see it a lot, and it seems like these situations
arise in cases where there's this kind of almost prohibition
type attitude. And I don't know, I don't want to
overstate the case here, but I was wondering what you
guys thought about that.
Speaker 3 (37:25):
I dig it. Yeah, the call is coming from inside
the house. It's something philosophy wrestles with and continues to.
It reminds me a bit now that we're framing this
and contextualizing it. It reminds me a bit of the horrors
in Pitcairn Island. You guys know about Pitcairn Island. I
(37:45):
have to refresh. Oh, it's a it's a world away.
I imagine. Very few members of the Amish community have visited,
but Pitcairn Island is notorious then and now for systematic
abuse of children. It's an archipelago out in I want
(38:09):
to say, French Polynesia. It's in the middle of the
ocean like picture Australia, right. If you're looking at US
printed world map, picture Australia, and they go way to
the right, like off the map, middle of nowhere.
Speaker 5 (38:28):
So isolated by its geography already, and then I imagine
that there's sort of like that, you know, by design
kind of thing to maintain that isolation and to have
sort of like a owned and operated culture and community.
And yet these things spring up disconnected from all of
the evils of like pop culture and whatever, television, entertainment, music,
(38:52):
all of the trappings of kind of modern life that
folks like the Amish are doing everything they can to
separate themselves from. And yes, this stuff kind of thrives
without any of that influence.
Speaker 3 (39:03):
Yeah, the argument that we're getting close to here would
be very familiar to Jacoboman. We're positing the idea of
call it opportunism, call it original sin, call it normalization.
Thereof it's deep, it's deep stuff, and it's not good.
(39:26):
I know that's an understate the of the decade. But look,
if we go to Mary Byler's case, as we said earlier,
that you point out this is a very rare thing, right,
and there's incredibly rare for this to go to the
English court, and we see that her brothers were brought
(39:50):
to account, all three of them pled guilty again, that's
Johnny Biler, Eli Biler, David Biler. David Biler got a
four year sentence in federal prison, not because of what
he did to his sister, Mary, but because of his
(40:10):
conviction for second degree sexual assault against Mary's even younger sister.
Eli Biler had a prior misdemeanor conviction, and as a
result of that prior he got eight years in prison.
Johnny Biler was examined pretty in depth in some of
(40:32):
these documentaries. He was given what we could only call
a sweetheart deal. It's not the kind of thing that
in any other context, it is not the kind of
thing that you would expect a court to give a
serial rapist. Can we talk about what his quote unquote
(40:52):
sentence was.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
Yeah, somebody who admitted to essentially two hundred separate counts
of child sexual abuse. It reminds me of that deal
that was given to Epstein when he was able to
come over to the jail, the prison, whatever it was,
(41:14):
spend the night there, and then in the morning wake
up and go to work. Because you know, his work's
really important, so he has to be able to go
to work. But then he'll come back and he'll stay
the night in the jail and we'll watch him.
Speaker 3 (41:28):
He got the sleepover sentence. Let's not call this sweetheart
deal a sleepover deal. Yeah, this is even weirder because
Johnny Biler is spending nights at the county jail for
what one year?
Speaker 5 (41:45):
Man, And you know, I mean, you hear that, and
you just have to wonder why, Like I just don't
understand the slap on the wrist quality of this kind
of sentence.
Speaker 4 (41:57):
And we're going to find out why.
Speaker 5 (41:59):
There was some support and within that patriarchal community that
maybe led to a little bit of lenience in the
court's decision. So let's take a quick break here from
our sponsor and then come back with more on this
disturbing case.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
And we're back, and we're still in the aftermath the
sentencing and trial of the abusers of Mary Buyler that
we've been talking about. So as we spoke about before,
a lot of the community members will show up in
support of the person accused of something again to show
support that they need that person in their community. They
don't want that person to get a long jail sentence.
(42:44):
They want that person back with them. So in the
case of Johnny Buyler, when he is being sentenced one
hundred and fifty members of his community, and I guess
that the Amish community at large traveled to the courtroom
on that day he was going to get sentenced to
do you support him, the guy that's accused of this stuff,
the guy that just went through a trial about all
(43:06):
this stuff. And it just shows you this thing. It
shows you that thing.
Speaker 4 (43:11):
Man.
Speaker 2 (43:12):
I've learned a lot about this, and I think we
all did from Sarah McClure, who wrote a piece in
Cosmopolitan back in twenty twenty, and in that she talks
She talks about a whole bunch of different cases and
gives a lot of specifics about them that you cannot unread.
But it is very good to read them. I just
mean that it's harring to read them, and it will
(43:33):
not leave your mind for a while. But they She
talks often about this very thing where even sometimes the
initial accuser, the person who says he raises their hand
and says, hey, you've been abusing me, ends up in
the courtroom as a part of the trial or at
some point in the trial and says writes a letter
or something that says, hey, please don't send my brother
(43:55):
or my dad to jail.
Speaker 3 (43:58):
Right, and in this case, uh yeah, in this case
a similar thing occurred. I do also because you guys know,
I'm I do also want to point out that those
Amish supporters went to that courtroom via greyhound, which is
a internal combustion autopia.
Speaker 2 (44:19):
Well, it depends on which sect they're in, because some
of some of the more modern Amish scrims just but
but the whole point in that, guys, is that the
community will then convince or coerce and someone who is
being abused to sit there and support the person who's
abusing them out of a sense of community.
Speaker 3 (44:40):
Yeah, they'll they'll show up and they'll say, actually, none
of that happened. You're making it sound worse than it is.
And it's pronounced jazz lighting.
Speaker 5 (44:50):
Well, it reminds me of some of the correspondents that
we've gotten from listeners, you know, around sexual abuse and
these kinds of horrific experiences and so often. I believe
it was one listener in particularly the Road, and it
made the point that you know, kids or younger people
or if they're isolated especially, they don't know that what's happening.
Speaker 3 (45:09):
Is bad, Like they don't know it's not normal.
Speaker 5 (45:11):
They don't, Yes, certainly, but it is possible to with
that kind of iron fisted control over information, over a community,
the lack of outside influence, to maintain these types of
situations for a really, really long time before anybody will
dare do what this young woman did in wearing a
(45:33):
wire that is, to your point, been very out of
the ordinary.
Speaker 3 (45:37):
Yeah, it's it's something that feels with the benefit of
being outside of an isolated community. It feels like a
no brainer. Obviously, if you saw any child being abused,
if you saw any person being abused, you would feel
(46:00):
that is part of your social contract to assist that
person right, to save them from adversity. And the issue
here is that culturally it's a very different social contract.
If you have ever had the dubious privilege of being
(46:21):
on the wrong side of the courtroom, then you will
know that letters of support character carried great weight with judges.
In the various legal proceedings pertaining to the decade plus
assault of Mary Byler. There were letters that Matt is
(46:42):
referring to. One of these letters was written by Mary
Byler's biological mother, statistically herself likely a victim of abuse
at some point, and her mother wrote a letter disowning
her daughter, but come on more so, saying that her
(47:05):
daughter had always made things quote sound worse than they
actually were, and that everybody involved regretted things had been
confessed and forgiven by the community of matching your own
parent doing that.
Speaker 4 (47:21):
It would be heartbreaking.
Speaker 5 (47:22):
I mean, I can't imagine just the level of betrayal
that that would cause one to feel. Rightfully, so I
have to mention though, been like these letters that you're
talking about, you know, it's obviously up to the judges
discretion to like determine like is this valid, Like what
is the nature of this sentiment?
Speaker 4 (47:39):
You know, And it.
Speaker 5 (47:40):
Really makes me think of like some people that have
gotten in real hot water for writing letters of support
to pretty clearly guilty individuals, Like remember that case with
I believe his name is Danny Masterson.
Speaker 4 (47:52):
He was on that seventies show.
Speaker 5 (47:54):
And Scientologist Scientology, but like he was a rapist, and
I think Melak Kunas and Ashton Kutcher wrote letters of
support to him for on his behalf that were read
in the court room and they got majorly uh, you know, lampooned,
and and you know, borderline canceled for that. So I
just you have to wonder, like where is the court
(48:15):
of public opinion in this, Like where is the judge's
discretion and saying I am here to protect this person,
and yet I'm giving credence to these letters that seem
coerced and of themselves.
Speaker 3 (48:27):
I just don't get a sticky point to Matt to
mass point earlier, you know, or these So intent is
always one of the most difficult things to prove, right now.
That's that's the reason why there are separate forms of
punishment for crimes of passion versus premeditated murder or homicide.
(48:52):
So in this, you know, it's it's very difficult to
navigate the degree of consent or coercion toward the writing
of these kind of letters, right of these sorts of
statements against your own child. And this is something that
the judge in the case, in the Johnny Byler case
(49:14):
brought up. And you can see multiple recordings of this
courtroom recordings. The judge, Michael Rosebrow says, I see a
lot of you. I'm paraphrasing here, but he says, I
see so many of you here in support of the accused,
and I see people weeping. You know, from the community,
(49:38):
how many of you have ever cried for the victim?
How many of you have cried for Mary Biolet? And
this guy clearly not amish, but he is asking a
very valid question.
Speaker 5 (49:54):
Yeah, yeah, but also seemed to give a lot of
credence to those letters. That's why I'm confused because says
what he just said, which seems to side with the victim,
you know, and the duteons. I'm not supposed to take
sides per se, but that sentence is insulting.
Speaker 4 (50:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (50:15):
One of the things that Sarah McClure talks about is
that often the accuser will be coerced to lessen the charge,
essentially like seeking justice for something that would be considered
a misdemeanor versus a felony. And that's often the case
where again the abused is coerced by the community then
(50:40):
to say, oh, well, he just he groped me, he
didn't it. We're going to consider it, you know this
rather than full you know, we'll call it sexual assault
rather than rape, right.
Speaker 3 (50:51):
Just aggravated molestation something like that.
Speaker 2 (50:55):
It's horrifying. And Sarah, by the way, found fifty two
official cases.
Speaker 3 (51:00):
Yes, yeah, we're gonna. Sarah McClure, an investigative journalists, spent
a year reporting on sexual abuse among the Amish. She
did uncover fifty two cases of abuse, which include sexual
assault and incest. And she found this across seven states
over the past twenty years.
Speaker 4 (51:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (51:19):
Yeah, And just to add to that there, like, here's
a quote from somebody named Esther. This person isn't actually
named Esther, their name was changed for this reporting. But
this is a quote from somebody in one of the
communities that says, we're told that it's not christ like
to report, right. Uh's this is someone who was abused
by her brother and a neighbor boy when she was
(51:41):
nine years old.
Speaker 4 (51:42):
But Christ's pook truth to power. Christ called people out.
That was his whole time. I'm sorry. This is her.
Speaker 2 (51:48):
This is her quote, and she also says, quote, it's
so ingrained. There are so many people who go to
church and just endure basically endure ongoing abuse.
Speaker 5 (51:58):
I don't buy that depiction of Christ at all. Remember
when he flipped over the money Changers table.
Speaker 3 (52:03):
Over when he did a distrack essentially and cursed the
tree because it didn't have figs. I can't remember which
version of you guys book that makes it.
Speaker 5 (52:13):
And yeah, he endured being you know the crucifixion where
you know, there's all these biblical scholars or whatever who
argue that he could have changed the course of his
destiny if he chose, but instead he let.
Speaker 4 (52:25):
It happen basically because it needed to happen.
Speaker 5 (52:27):
Whatever, like, whatever your take is on the spiritual side,
of the prophecy side of it or whatever. But you
cannot say that Jesus was a good little boy.
Speaker 4 (52:35):
You kept his mouth shut. That is not true.
Speaker 3 (52:39):
Well, the money changers have entered the chat, I imagine.
Here's what we know. The Amish community, time and time again,
not just in the Biler case, has argued that they
already meeted out appropriate punishment to these people who have
(53:00):
provably done these monstrous acts. Their argument, really internally is
that there is a true sin. People make mistakes, they say,
but the real sin is reporting it to the outside world,
because that would endanger the community, the exclusivity, the insular nature,
(53:24):
and the long term sustainability of the grand project. And
this is far from the end of the story. There
are many, many more cases of sexual abuse, community based
and family based. There are children born as a result
(53:44):
of these violent things.
Speaker 1 (53:47):
And.
Speaker 3 (53:49):
Some of those children are alive today. We could argue
with validity that there is a high likely or a
higher than average likelihood of this occurring in the insular community.
Predators find opportunity, right, A predator is I don't know.
It goes back to a conversation we're having earlier about
(54:10):
the the nature of original sin and evil. We know,
when outside accountability it self becomes the crime, right, then
things get very skewed very quickly.
Speaker 5 (54:23):
Well, and it's also just highly inconvenient for the status
quo of a community like that, whether there be accurate
allegations of this kind of abuse or it's just literally
maintaining their way of life. To have a criminal case
before the eyes of the public out in the secular world,
that's about the worst possible thing they could imagine in
(54:45):
terms of, like, you know, the hierarchy and then the
control over that society.
Speaker 2 (54:51):
Yeah, we want to point everybody over to another article
that you can check out right now, and it spotlights
this exact thing. Just how many examples of this exist?
Look up what they wore Amish Country exhibit spotlight's sex
abuse and this is somebody's written in ap News by
Peter Smith back in twenty twenty two, and it describes
(55:15):
essentially an exhibit that was put on where there are
the clothes of the girls like as young as four,
the exact clothes or recreations of the clothes that these
girls wore when they were sexually abused.
Speaker 3 (55:30):
And very conservative, you know, we're talking like all the way.
Speaker 2 (55:36):
Yeah, imagine imagine the traditional garb of a Mennonite or
an Amish community.
Speaker 3 (55:41):
Imagine like a house on the prairie. What's the name
of that shop.
Speaker 2 (55:44):
Yeah, that's a good way to think about it, for sure, for.
Speaker 3 (55:47):
Not Amish in the audience.
Speaker 2 (55:49):
Yeah, including bonnets, right, And they are strung up on
a clothesline with a small piece of paper that just
states how old the child was and what they were wearing. Basically,
it describes the clothing when they were abused. And it
is just a striking way to view how prevalent this is,
(56:11):
and it is heartbreaking to see some of the tiny
clothes that are strung up on that clothesline.
Speaker 3 (56:16):
I'd like to also add the note from the documentary
which is fairly recent, called Sins of the Amish quotation
at the very beginning The odds of an Amish woman
getting raped to buy a guy on the street are
almost zero, but from a guy within their own communities
it is one out of every six on a good day. Harrowing.
(56:44):
We also know there are more non sexual crimes that
occur between these communities and the outside world. We're talking
drug trafficking, weirdly enough, shaving, oh jeez, yeah, murder, Well,
it's a big deal. It's a big deal.
Speaker 4 (57:04):
There, I know.
Speaker 5 (57:05):
But as a bearded a man who's been bearded for
a very long time, I could personally attest that would
be a crime against humanity if someone ever did that
to me without without my consent.
Speaker 4 (57:15):
No, I'm making light because.
Speaker 5 (57:18):
That's the only thing I know how to do when
it comes to heavy stuff like this. The drug trafficking
stuff is also addressed in that doc that I mentioned
the Devil's Backbone, because some of the kids that do
take that sabbatical.
Speaker 4 (57:30):
And go out into the real world.
Speaker 5 (57:31):
There's a handful of stories that involve methamphetamines and bring
that back into the community and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3 (57:39):
Yeah, I'm thinking in particular of Abner King Stoolfitz and
Abner Stolfitz, not related. I'm thinking of a New York
Times article back in nineteen ninety eight when they became
the first two members of Pennsylvania Amish to be arrested
(57:59):
for afficking cocaine and meth. This was in step with
the Pagan motorcycle gang. We should probably do an episode
on outlaw bikers as well, the original one percenters, right,
And maybe the biggest takeaway is this conspiracy thrives in
a lack of transparency. In the Amish community, we witness
(58:21):
clear misogyny, and we see with any community practicing this,
the same horrifying stories over and over. Women is not
quite people, not quite property, not given the same rights.
And unfortunately, many of our fellow listeners, folks, some of
us in the audience tonight, have experienced similar situations in
(58:46):
likewise insular communities. We already shouted out Sarah McClure, investigative
journalist who has done so much tremendous work for people here.
We also want to recommend the Plain People podcast, launched
in twenty eighteen, which explores in depth more stories of
(59:08):
sexual abuse and Amish and Mennonite communities.
Speaker 2 (59:12):
For sure, we were talking for a while about you know,
how could this happen? Why is this happening? And Sarah
McClure in her piece again look it up right now.
The Amish keep to themselves and they're hiding a horrifying secret.
She explains it in a way that I think I understand,
and I think we all understand at least a little better.
She says, it's not one thing, right. You can't point
(59:34):
to one thing. You can't point to a couple things
that make these communities ripe for this type of abuse.
But she calls it a perfect storm of factors. I'm
just gonna list these off really quickly because I think this.
You can find these factors, sometimes separately in groups, and
then when you see them begin to combine, that's where
(59:54):
the real trouble begins, she says. One a patriarchal and
isolated lifestyle in which victims have little exposure to police, coaches,
or anyone else who might help them. An education system
that ends at eighth grade and fails to teach children
about their bodies and about sex. A culture of victim
blaming and shaming. Little access to the technology that enables
(01:00:16):
communication for broader social awareness of what's going on about
your body, about what others are experiencing and a religion
that prioritizes repentance and forgiveness over actual punishment and rehabilitation.
So really, in this episode, guys, what we've done is
outlined all of that stuff. I think Sarah just puts
that into one concise thing where you can just kind
(01:00:39):
of see it and go, oh wow, okay, if you've
got all of those factors going at the same time,
this leads to a place where it's a I think
it's in that documentary that you mentioned, Ben. In the
trailer for it, they call it a paradise for abusers.
Speaker 3 (01:00:57):
Yes, they call it pedophiles paradise. And there's another I mean,
there is a town called Paradise as well. And this
is an interesting point here, Matt, because astute fellow conspiracy realist,
we can already note the factors listed by McClure. The
(01:01:18):
factors we explore here are not unique to any single ideology,
to any single creed, to any single region of the
human experience. And maybe we begin our ending with this. Obviously,
not every person in any Amish or Mennonite community is
(01:01:38):
abusing children, like imagine any longstanding theocratic civilization. The majority
of people in those civilizations. Then as of now and
in the future, are people just like you. They do
not wake up each day excited to hurt themselves or others.
(01:02:01):
But the problem is the lack of transparency, that is
the original sin, the insular nature of the them versus
us mentality, This intense continual indoctrination right, the brainwashing of
rules and also loopholes to that rules, that makes the
(01:02:21):
ordinal the Ordnung twist. And as we record to date,
the most heartbreaking part is there is very little indication
that the Amish community overall, being decentralized as it is,
will take any serious action to address past abuse or
to prevent future abuse.
Speaker 2 (01:02:42):
Guys, the one thing we haven't talked about yet in
this episode is something particularly horrifying which is a practice
in several communities that was outlined in a couple of
places we found online where women, young girls even sometimes
are sent to a type of institution where they are
(01:03:04):
to receive treatment to get right with God. And the
people who run those institutions often are a part of
the church in one way or another, and they will
medicate young girls and women with stuff like olanzapine, which
is an antipsychotic medication.
Speaker 3 (01:03:24):
It's a very heavy duty antipsychotic medication.
Speaker 2 (01:03:28):
Yeah, it's generally a treatment for schizophrenia and is only
recommended for patients above the age of thirteen for manic
episodes and bipolar disorder and all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 3 (01:03:39):
Very yellow wallpaper. To be honest with you.
Speaker 2 (01:03:41):
That's a great way to describe it. It is people
who have gone through the experience, young women especially report
coming back as zombies or their friends coming back as
zombies and just existing basically being told by the church
via this or organization, you just need to be obedient.
(01:04:03):
You just need to you know, comply exactly. To me,
it's just another horrifying aspect of a way to control
someone or an entire group of women.
Speaker 3 (01:04:14):
I think it's a horrifying aspect to all of us.
You know this, this this idea dates back to earlier.
As you said, Matt control attempts right lobottomize, medicate zombie
fie victims right of a system, rather than changing the
(01:04:34):
system that produces these victims through active conspiracy. This is
this is it, you know, the there are more things ahead.
We were absolutely not spinning you a tail. These conspiracies
are real. They continue this evening, and for any fellow
(01:04:55):
listeners with experience in these communities, having survived these things,
we want to end by saying this, we very much
hope you are safe. We are here to learn your stories.
Please listen all the way to the end of this
episode and thank you for being here with us. Folks.
(01:05:16):
We are going to tell you how to contact us
via social media, via telephone, via our direct email address,
which we can all see and respond to. We do
try to be easy to find online.
Speaker 5 (01:05:32):
You can find us at the handle Conspiracy Stuff on
x FKA Twitter. You can get to us that way.
You can also find our Facebook group under that handle.
It's called Here's where it Gets Crazy, and it's a
great way to share stories with us and have conversations
with your fellow conspiracy realists. We're also Conspiracy Stuff on YouTube.
We have tons of video content for you to enjoy.
(01:05:54):
On Instagram and TikTok also great ways to get in touch.
You can find us at the handle Conspiracy Stuff Show.
Speaker 2 (01:06:00):
Do you want to call us and tell us your
story or do you want to call us in give
us an offshoot topic that has something to do with
this or something completely off the wall. Why not call
one eight three three std WYTK. When you call in,
give yourself a nickname and let us know if we
can use your name and message on the air. If
you've got more to say than can fit in a
(01:06:20):
three minute voicemail, why not instead send us a good
old fashioned email.
Speaker 4 (01:06:25):
We are the.
Speaker 3 (01:06:26):
Entities that read every piece of correspondence we receive. Be
well aware, yet I'm afraid Sometimes the void writes back, Actually,
some of you tonight check your email. There's a message
on the way. We hope this finds you in good
health and amid grand adventures. Will be back tomorrow evening.
(01:06:47):
Now join us out here in the dark conspiracy at
iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (01:07:11):
Stuff they Don't Want You to Know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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