Amish America

Vandalized

Here's a pretty mundane news story about Amish buggy warning signs being painted over with big red X's in Minnesota.

This sort of thing goes on to greater and lesser degrees in many places where the Amish live.  Could the culprits be English bigots, kids out for a prank, Amish youth even?  Does it matter?  Just a dumb thing to do.


More interesting was the comment of a local highway engineer, who described himself as being 'sickened.'  The general rational-thinking public seems to react pretty strongly whenever it seems the Amish are being picked on.  And perhaps even moreso today, post-Nickel Mines.  It's true this could have potentially endangered some buggy drivers.

Why do some non-Amish come out so strongly for the Amish?  Some English idolize the Amish, perhaps having a misguided, false-nostalgiac view of them as representing a lost, purer past.  Some idealize them as innocent, more virtuous than the common man, even helpless to a degree, and thus deserving of extra protection.  That's a pretty condescending viewpoint to take.  Most Amish certainly don't see themselves that way, or wouldn't want to be viewed in that manner anyway. 

In any case, it often works to the benefit of the Amish, from the times of conflict over schooling to the present day, seen in the support given after the shootings.  Yet as the story shows, some seem to have quite opposite feelings towards the Amish.  It's funny how a group that claims itself to be not of this world can in fact be so polarizing among those of this world. 

Beyond harassment

Philadelphia Daily News is reporting an arsonist's work in Lancaster County.  The result:  one Amish schoolhouse burned, causing an estimated $20,000 in damage. 

Were these run-of-the-mill delinquents or someone with a grudge?

The Amish are naturally an easy target.  A policy of not fighting back makes them too tempting for some mindless troublemakers to resist.

Yet other incidents of harassment and violence have come from individuals, for whatever reason, harboring ills towards the community--perhaps an English person with a longstanding score to settle or someone formerly of the community 'getting back' for a long-ago wrong.

Whoever did it, the result is the same, and given the history of the area, a stomach-churning reminder of past tragedy.

Amish (comment) on drugs at the E-town Conference

"If we were not Amish, would there even be a story?"

That's one Amish person telling it like it is, regarding an infamous 1998 Lancaster Amish drug bust.

The comments were heard at the 'largest Amish conference ever' held through today at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania.

The Lancaster New Era reports that topics covered have ranged from the controversial (Witness, Amish in the City) to the practical and academic (farm safety, Amish roots).

On the nearly decade-old drug incident, an Ohio man made a point that often gets missed:  "We're human like everyone else and this won't be the last time we do anything wrong," he said. "What we need is your compassion and understanding in situations like that."

An Amish killer's attempt to return

The crime was horrendous.

But the point now is not the crime--it's the hard issues at hand for the Amish community of Ed Gingerich--allegedly the only Amishman ever tried and convicted for the death of another human being. 

Gingerich killed his wife in a fit of insanity in 1993. 

A paranoid schizophrenic, he was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and served a few years in a prison psychiatric ward.  He was released in 1998 and moved to Harmony Haven, an Amish-run retreat and mental home in Michigan.

photo:  Tom Boyle, Titusville Herald
While the practice of shunning gets a lot of attention from outsiders, Amish belief also includes an important provision for forgiveness.

The process for getting back in shape looks like this, in a nutshell:  errant members confess and can be reinstated after showing repentance and a change of heart.

But as Dr. Steven Nolt of Goshen College says that the process 'more supposes someone who buys a car' than someone who commits such a heinously violent act. 

Amish in Gingerich's small northwestern PA community are terrified of him.  Sympathetic others, including outsiders, support what they see as his attempt at reconciliation.

His community's bishop has excommunicated members who have contact with him, including two of his brothers.  Members of Gingerich's family have been accused of harassing others in the church, causing some to move away. 

Gingerich has received particular sympathy from some members of the New Order Amish, who preach a more personal form of spirituality.  After his wife's killing, Gingerich was quartered in Harmony Haven, a Michigan mental home for Amish and Mennonites.  It was there that he came into contact with the New Order.

"I love Ed immensely. I've prayed with the man. I've cried with the man" said one New Order supporter.

Should Gingerich have a shot at redemption, as many say he should?  Do the wishes of his community, some of whom asked that he be 'locked up forever' count for more than the state's judgment? 

Are outsiders, including more progressive New Order Amish, overstepping their bounds by advocating so strongly for Gingerich?

I won't go further, but this article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where I've taken a lot of the facts on the case from, is a thought-provoking look at a thankfully rare situation in the Amish world.

On Stutzman's trail

Jim Hillibish decribes tracking Eli Stutzman, father of Little Boy Blue, in this piece for the Canton Repository. 

Authorities are to check Stutzman's DNA and fingerprints in connection with the 1985 murders of two Colorado men. 

Ongoing coverage and commentary can be found at crimerant.com.

The Amish and drugs, continued

The Amish and drugs--it's another one of those things that grab our attention because it seems so odd, so out-of-place.  Recall the media reaction to two young Amish men busted for dealing coke among Lancaster Amish gangs in 1998. 

But following up yesterday's post, it's worth remembering that 'heavy',  as the Lagrange meth problem was described, may be relative. 

Meth has clearly been a big problem in places like Oregon, where over 50% of children in orphanages are there because their parents are meth addicts, or in inner-city Sydney. 

Meth users in the US.  Darkness indicates severity.  Find an interactive version of this map at pbs/frontline.

When 'real world' ails hit the Amish, a little can seem like a lot.  In this case, 'heavy' may mean a handful of cases. 

But that's speculation.   It's based on the idea that what we consider mild, often strikes the Amish as over-the-top--i.e. knee-length skirts, Seinfeld, lyrics to pop songs.

Anyone with further insight on drugs within the Amish, your comments are invited.

Why Eli Stutzman fascinates us

The body of ex-Amishman Eli Stutzman--convicted of one murder, suspected in four others--lies in a Texas morgue, unclaimed by his former Ohio Amish community.

Stutzman's DNA may be the case-breaker in the 1985 deaths of two Colorado men.

Gregg Olsen, author of Abandoned Prayers, commented on the case which has hounded him for the past 20 years.

Olsen makes an interesting point--if Ida (Stutzman's wife and supposed first victim) hadn't been Amish, there would have been a full investigation of her death.

We often perceive the Amish as above blame.  As many Amish and ex-Amish insist, however, they are just like the rest of the world. 

But not exactly. 

Violent crime such as murder is extremely rare in Amish society.  When it happens, we notice.  Nickel Mines is one horrific instance of that.

But in the 250-year-old Lancaster County settlement, the only other killing in memory occurred when an Amish woman was murdered by a non-Amish neighbor in 1982.

Why does the Amish-violence mix get so much attention?

The Amish are famously pacifist. 

They submitted to massacre by Indians in the 18th century. 

They took physical and verbal abuse as conscientious objectors during the World Wars. 

When faux-Amish Harrison Ford decked the bear-baiting goon in Witness, the real-life community went into uproar.

It's the seeming incongruities--like when we see an Amishman on a cell phone, or filling up a Big Gulp--that fascinate us.

Thankfully, the sight of an Amishman on Verizon or at the Quik-E-Mart is much more common than in the nightly crime round-up. 

To the grave

Former Amishman Eli Stutzman's death has been ruled a suicide.

The father of Little Boy Blue, suspected in three other deaths in addition to that of his son, killed himself in a Fort Worth, Texas apartment last week.

Gregg Olsen, who chronicled the case in Abandoned Prayers, says the story might not be over.

“I think it would be a pretty big thing to take to your grave, don’t you think?”, said the author.

A link to a haunting letter from a friend of Stutzman's at crimerant.com. 

Little Boy Blue

Convicted murderer Eli Stutzman, formerly of the Amish of Wayne County, Ohio, has died.

Stutzman gained notoriety after his nine-year old son's body was found frozen in Nebraska in 1985.

Stutzman was never convicted of murder in that case, only of lesser charges.  He was also suspected in his wife's mysterious death in a barn fire, as well as in two other deaths. 

Stutzman was sentenced for the 1985 killing of a Texas man, and served thirteen years. 

'Little Boy Blue' was the nickname given to the unknown boy by local residents.

The case got a lot of attention. 

Reader's Digest covered it in a story in 1987. A book, Abandoned Prayers, by crime writer Gregg Olsen investigated the case in great detail.  Another, shorter account of it can be found in Dorcas Sharp Hoover's House Calls and Hitching Posts.   

Violent crime--and non-violent crime, for that matter--is so unusual among the Amish that any time it happens, it's bound to get attention. 

When you are dealing with a people that as a whole are exceptionally peaceful and law-abiding, violent individuals and miscreant behavior stand out even more. 

The Amish know that just being Amish is not a free pass.  The individual and the decisions he makes are what count.  They acknowledge that there is good and bad behavior within their own communities, just as the same is true in the modern world.

They also realize that by virtue of the way they live, the spotlight is on them even more.  The Eli Stutzman story, as well as being tragic and unfortunate, is an extreme example of that.