(Well, here we go again, another cloistered religious community is discovered to have a protected epidemic of child sexual abuse. Comes with the territory, I guess. Heard on NPR today that social workers in these areas of rural Pennsylvania are told that sexual abuse of children is rife in these communities and are taught special tactics to deal with it. The woman subject of this article has been excommunicated from the Amish church because they believe in punishment then forgiveness, once the perp. has been "punished", to speak of the offense again is a sin.)
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"If somebody was raping me, I'd look up to the ceiling, count the blocks or count the cracks in the wall, or just I was completely not there emotionally. I would have committed suicide many times over if I wouldn't be strong," she said.
Through the years, by Mary's account, she was raped by several different attackers. But one abused her more often than the others — her brother Johnny. Johnny, one of Mary's eight brothers, began assaulting her when he was 12 and she was 6. The assaults continued into her teen years, she said.
"I couldn't go to the outhouse because there was always somebody waiting there. I couldn't go anywhere alone. There was just no place I could be alone," she said.
As time passed, another brother, Eli, followed suit.
"He'd rape me down in the milk house when I was cleaning up the milk house. He'd rape me down in the barn," she said.
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=316371&page=1