[Last update: August 19, 2004 at 7:10 AM
Amish sex scandal: An 8-year penalty for years of pain
Paul Levy
Star Tribune
Published August 19, 2004
VIROQUA, WIS. -- As Mary Byler sat in the courtroom on Wednesday, awaiting the sentencing of her brother for sexual assault, she had to wonder who'd really been on trial.
"I was molested by my father when I was 3 and gang-raped day after day by my cousins and brothers, starting when I was 6 or 7," she told the Star Tribune before Wednesday's sentencing. Byler, 20, alleges that she was raped more than 200 times by members of the Amish family in which she grew up. "And when I'd tell my mother about it, she'd tell me that if I had prayed harder, fought harder, these things wouldn't happen.
"I was sent to school ... and my mother told me, 'If you truly don't want this to happen, it won't.' I've been judged by the Amish all my life. I've been on trial all my life."
Eli Byler, 24, who told the Star Tribune in April that he first raped his sister when Mary was 8 and he was 12, was sentenced to eight years in prison Wednesday after previously pleading guilty to one count of the sexual assault of a child.
"Eli, I hope you still hear my screaming in your nightmares," Mary Byler said in court, reading from a prepared statement as family members and nearly two dozen other Amish listened.
"You were my brother. "You should have protected me . . . and you raped me."
Eli Byler, one of three brothers charged with sexual assault of a child, told the court, "I believe God will forgive me."
In the interview with the Star Tribune before Wednesday's sentencing, Mary Byler trembled as she recounted a lifetime of nightmares that led to the largest reported case of sexual assault in Amish-American history.
Eli Byler's confession was part of a plea bargain in which Judge Michael Rosborough also sentenced him to four years' probation. Byler had been charged with five counts of sexual assault of a child after his arrest in April.
Another brother, Johnny E. Byler, 25, also charged with five similar counts, pleaded guilty to two counts earlier this month. Sentencing is scheduled for October.
David Byler, 18, is charged with two counts of the sexual assault of a child, a relative who is now 6 years old. For Mary Byler, the alleged assaults by her younger brother were the breaking point that prompted her to contact authorities in southwestern Wisconsin's Vernon County. Viroqua is about 25 miles southeast of La Crosse.
'Couldn't tell a soul'
"I don't want her to grow up like I did," Mary Byler said, her shaky hands lighting one cigarette after another. "It scares the hell out of me. More than a dozen women who left the Amish have contacted me and told me they were raped by their fathers, brothers, uncles and cousins.
"But they couldn't tell a soul because it's such a closed society."
Mary Byler, whose name was withheld in earlier Star Tribune stories, said she now wants to be identified because it should help make people more aware of what happened to her. She said that since the newspaper articles appeared, other media organizations have contacted her about telling her story.
It started after Amish church leaders in the Viroqua area tried to resolve the matter with punishment that was severe by Amish standards: Johnny Byler would be banished from the church for six weeks. Eli Byler would not be allowed to associate with anyone at church until he improved his character.
"Johnny would get six weeks, and I've had nightmares for 16 years?" Mary Byler said, slamming her palm against a table. "No! No! No!
"I knew I had to leave the Amish. I had to tell somebody."
As a youngster, she never had an option, she said. Going to a stranger outside the Amish community would have been intimidating, especially for a child whose primary language was Pennsylvania Dutch. And family members within her home were sexually assaulting her, looking the other way or accusing her of instigating rape.
"If it happened many times, it's not rape anymore. She's probably asking for it," said Byler's stepfather, William Kempf, 78, in a Star Tribune interview in April. On Wednesday, he said before the sentencing: "Mary's been brainwashed."
Kempf, charged with three counts of sexual assault and one count of battery against Mary Byler, pleaded no contest last month to lesser charges of misdemeanor battery and disorderly conduct and was sentenced to 18 months probation. His comments were typical of what Mary Byler said she's heard since her childhood in western Pennsylvania, where the sexual assaults began, she said.
She recalls her father, Abraham Byler, awakening her "and just plain molesting me" when she was 3 or 4.
"How was I to know what that was?" she asked. "I remember thinking that this had gone on even before that and that I never wanted to go to sleep again . . . because if I do, he'll wake me again."
She says that she told her mother what was happening, but that "my mom was the one who made me sit on his lap and told me to forgive him."
Her mother, Sally Kempf, 49, pleaded no contest to one count of failure to report a crime, a misdemeanor. She was given a stayed 30-day sentence and ordered to serve two years probation. "The betrayal by my mother hurt me more than anything else," Byler said. "She's dead to me."
Looking to the future
Abraham Byler was killed while the family was still living in Pennsylvania when a car hit a horse-drawn buggy in which he was riding. But the sexual assaults against his daughter continued, Mary Byler said.
She said she was 6 or 7 when she was raped for the first time -- by a cousin who was 17 or 18. Often three or four cousins held her down and took turns raping her, Byler said.
"Between 8 and 14 it was just horrible, pure hell," said Byler. "Sometimes they'd even be laughing when they'd hold my dress up to the top of my head. I'd feel like I was suffocating in that dress. I was so alone. And I was brainwashed into thinking: You don't talk about that stuff. You just forgive them."
Seven years ago, the Bylers moved to Wisconsin. Depressed, worried that she could get pregnant, and "living in the same home as some of my abusers," Mary told her mother she was seeking therapy or leaving the Amish.
Therapy began last September -- and with it came stories that Byler's friends outside the Amish community urged her to tell to Wisconsin authorities. She couldn't, she said. The Amish didn't do that sort of thing.
But when the 6-year-old family member talked about being abused by David Byler, Mary Byler broke down. She left the Amish in March and called the Vernon County sheriff.
A lost childhood
"She was imprisoned in her own home," said Vernon County District Attorney Tim Gaskell. "Simply put, she lost her childhood."
Now, Mary Byler said, she's trying to capture the rest of the adolescence that eluded her. She watches Seinfeld reruns and listens to Loretta Lynn. She earned her high school equivalency diploma -- the Amish typically attend school only through the eighth grade -- and got her driver's license two months ago. A hospital housekeeper, Byler says she hopes to attend college and become a nurse.
She says her boyfriend, Rudy Mast, 28, who also left the Amish community, has talked to her about marriage.
"[The Amish] don't care," she said. "They think I'm going to hell. Not because I turned them in. They think I'm going to hell because I left the Amish."
Paul Levy is at
plevy@startribune.com.
© Copyright 2004 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.
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