The leader of a breakaway Amish group allowed the beatings of those who disobeyed him, made some members sleep in a chicken coop and had sexual relations with married women to “cleanse them,” federal authorities said on Wednesday as they charged him and six others with hate crimes in hair--cutting attacks against other Amish.
Authorities raided the group’s compound in eastern Ohio earlier in the day and arrested seven men, including group leader Sam Mullet and three of his sons.
Several members of the group carried out the attacks in September, last month and this month by forcefully cutting the beards and hair of Amish men and women and then taking photographs of them, authorities said.
Cutting the hair is a highly offensive act to the Amish, who believe the Bible instructs women to let their hair grow long and men to grow beards and stop shaving once they marry.
One victim told the FBI he would rather have been “beaten black and blue than to suffer the disfigurement and humiliation of having his hair removed,” according to court papers.
The attacks struck at the core of the Amish identity and tested their principles. They are pacifists and strongly believe that they must be forgiving for God to forgive them, which often means handing out their own punishment and not reporting crimes to law enforcement.
The attacks had terrorized Amish communities, Jefferson County Sheriff Fred Abdalla said at a news conference on Wednesday.
“You’ve got Amish all over the state of Ohio and Pennsylvania and Indiana that are concerned. We’ve received hundreds and hundreds of calls from people living in fear,” he said. “They are buying Mace, some are sitting with shotguns, getting locks on their doors because of Sam Mullet. Sam Mullet is evil.”
A defense attorney for Sam Mullet said his client would fight the federal charges.
Mullet said last month that he did not order the hair-cutting, but did not stop his sons and others from carrying it out.
“They changed the rulings of our church here, and they’re trying to force their way down our throat, make us do like they want us to do, and we’re not going to do that,” Mullet said.
US Attorney Steven Dettelbach said on Wednesday that religious differences should be a matter of theological debate, not disputes “resolved by late night visits to people’s homes with weapons and violent attacks.”
Those arrested include Mullet; his sons Johnny, Lester and Daniel; Levi Miller; Eli Miller, and Emanuel Schrock. The charges carry a penalty of up 10 years in prison.
The men appeared in US District Court in Youngstown on Wednesday afternoon, and Magistrate Judge George Limbert ordered them detained by the US Marshals Service pending hearings next week.
Lawyer Andy Hyde, who represents Sam Mullet in the state case, said Mullet would contest the federal charges, but said he did not know if he would represent Mullet in federal court.
Prosecutor Steve Knowling, who filed state charges against five of the same defendants last month, said he would dismiss those counts and let federal prosecutors take the lead in the case.
An FBI affidavit said Johnny, Lester and Daniel Mullet and Levi and Eli Miller all confessed in early October to taking part in at least a couple of the attacks.
Johnny Mullet told detectives that it was his idea to cut the hair and beards and that he discussed the idea with his father, who gave him the addresses of two victims, the affidavit said.
One of Mullet’s daughters-in-law and a former brother-in-law told investigators that Mullet allowed others to beat members of the group who disobeyed him, according to the affidavit filed in federal court Wednesday.
Mullet punished some by making them sleep in a chicken coop for days and was sexually intimate with married women in the community so that he could “cleanse them of the devil,” the two said in the affidavit.
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