USA - They're known around the world for their simple, peace-loving lifestyle – but members of an American Amish community have been caught up in a bizarre and violent feud.
A doctrinal split has torn the sect apart and, in gruesome raids, one side has attacked the other by raiding homes and cutting off women’s hair and men’s beards.
The victims, who also included children as young as 13, were targeted by as many as 27 men from a rival settlement who are supporters of one of the sect’s former leaders.
She said: ‘The guys came up and surrounded him and cut off a chunk of his beard. They were unable to get any more because he struggled so hard against them. The [attackers] say this is to uncover sins, and it’s to straighten us out.’
One 57-year-old woman said her sons and a son-in-law who had joined the rival group attacked her and her husband. After chopping off her husband’s whiskers, they shaved her head.
‘They did this to me,’ she said, taking off a bandana to show her baldness.
The attackers are from the self-styled Bergholz Clan who have set up their own compound in the mid-western state of Ohio. They are allegedly seeking to ‘degrade’ their victims, who believe it is their religious duty to grow beards.
Traditionally, the Amish settle their differences peaceably and do not co-operate with police, but the Millers have pressed charges.
‘This is not a religious fight,’ Mrs Miller said. ‘We believe we’re in danger. They’re like hate crimes. They’re terrorising people and communities.’
The Bergholz group has built a village in a picturesque valley near the Ohio River where about 16 families, who dress in their religion’s Victorian-style costumes, are raising a large number of children.
They are educated in a small schoolhouse and help their parents farm the land and maintain the traditional carriages and horses they travel in.
Mrs Miller claimed that the break-away group’s leader, Bishop Sam Mullet, was using cult-like practices, including sleep-deprivation and brain-washing, to keep his followers loyal.
‘They totally separate themselves,’ she said.
An Amish man who knows members of the Bergholz Clan said the attacks were motivated by religious fanaticism. He said that members of the group had shaved off their own beards and hair ‘under the impression that would cleanse them before God’.
He added: ‘They long ago moved from being a church to a cult.’
Known for their plain dress and distrust of modern technology, the Amish are a Protestant sect created by a religious schism in Switzerland in the late 17th Century.
They have their own schools, and adherents are required to marry within the faith. They value manual labour, ride around in horse-drawn carts and are largely isolated from the communities around them – an aspect of life that was vividly portrayed in the 1985 Harrison Ford film Witness, about a young Amish boy who is the sole witness to a murder.
Last night, Bishop Mullet denied being directly involved in the beard and hair attacks. But he said some young men he knew may have been involved in the raids and that he had given them ‘a talking to’.
He admitted, however, that he had fallen out with the victims, saying they had been ‘excommunicated’ for being insufficiently principled.
He added that since the attacks had been motivated by ‘religion’, the police had no right to intervene.
‘It’s all religion,’ he said. ‘We can’t understand why the sheriff has his nose in our business, but that seems to be what they did here.’
Mullet admitted the incidents stemmed from doctrinal differences.
‘It started with us excommunicating members that weren’t listening or obeying our laws,’ he said.
Four men have been arrested in connection with the attacks.