Amish 'gang' face court over cutting the beards and hair of fellow Amish in religious feud



The leader of a breakaway Amish group said an attack on fellow Amish in which a man's beard was cut off was a religious issue stemming from long-standing resentment of his group's treatment.

Sam Mullet, 66, said the goal was to send a message to Amish in Holmes County, Ohio, that they should be ashamed of themselves for the way they were treating Mullet and his community.

His two sons Johnny Mullet, 38, and Lester Mullet, 26, were arrested with another man, Levi Miller, 53, last week for the alleged role in crimes by 'The Bergholz Clan.'



Arrested: Lester Mullet (left) and Johnny Mullet (right) were arrested in Ohio for the alleged role in crimes by 'The Bergholz Clan'



Sam Mullet said: "We'd like to get up in the morning, be left alone, live like normal people," Mullet said yesterday. "They won't leave us be."

Mullet said he didn't order the hair-cutting but didn't stop his sons and the other man from carrying it out on a 74-year-old man in his home in rural eastern Ohio.

"I didn't order anything like that," he said, and added: "I didn't tell them not to, I'm still not going to tell them not to."

Levi Miller was also arrested in connection to the crime

Mullet said the Holmes County group changed the rulings of the church and were trying to force his community to change.

"We know what we did and why we did it," he told The Associated Press outside his house on the outskirts of Bergholz, a village of about 700 residents.



"We excommunicated some members here because they didn't want to obey the rules of the church."

Mullet said he's upset that his group, about 120 people living on several small farms, has been called a cult by detractors.



He said he moved the members of his group about 100 miles from Richland County to the hilly area in 1995 just to be by themselves.

"We're not a cult. We're just trying to live a peaceful life," said Mullet, who spoke with occasional bursts of passion for about an hour as children played nearby, a horse tethered to a buggy rested and men and women did chores.



"I was hoping I could move here, try to start a group of church people, do things in school and church the way we wanted."

Mullet said he should be allowed to punish people who break the laws of the church, just as police are allowed to punish people who break the laws of the state.

"You have your laws on the road and the town — if somebody doesn't obey them, you punish them. But I'm not allowed to punish the church people?" Mullet said.



"I just let them run over me? If every family would just do as they pleased, what kind of church would we have?"

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Renegades: Sam Mullet, the leader of the breakaway sect - and father of two of the suspects

Amish men typically grow beards as adults and stop trimming them when they marry, and the beards are held in high esteem.

The three men arrested were being held in Jefferson County jail on $250,000 bond each pending extradition to Holmes County and couldn't be reached for comment.

Jefferson County Sheriff Fred Abdalla said yesterday that he expects two more arrests this week.



He said the men hired a driver to carry them to Holmes County and to Carroll County, where a similar attack was carried out.



He said the driver didn't know what the men were doing.

A similar attack happened in Trumbull County in September, Abdalla said.

Five people were assaulted in Holmes County, including women who had their hair cut off, said Abdalla, who disputed Sam Mullet's account, alleging the group's leader ordered the punishments.

The men entered the home and said, "Sam Mullet sent us here, and we're here on religious business," Abdalla said.

Community on edge: The attacks occurred over the past month in the heart of Ohio's Amish population, one of the largest in the U.S.

He said they used scissors and battery-powered clippers in the attack.

The victims, which included children as young as 13, were targeted by as many as 27 members of the gang.



The attacks occurred over the past month in the heart of Ohio's Amish population, one of the largest in the United States.

Farmer’s wife Arlene Miller told how her husband Myron was dragged out of their bed by his beard, taken outside and assaulted.

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.’

A 57-year-old woman said her sons and a son-in-law who had joined the rival group and are involved in a cult 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.



Sheriff Abdalla described another savage attack in an interview with Fox8.com.

Religious rules: The Amish often shun modern conveniences as matter of spiritual principle

'In Holmes County, the bishop was supposed to perform a wedding yesterday for his son, and because they had cut his beard off, he refused to do it. He's scared to even come out of the house.'



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 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.



Savage attacks: Bergholz, Ohio was left on edge after a series of attacks where a gang cut off the beards of Amish men and the hair of Amish women

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.'

Donald Kraybill, a professor at Elizabethtown College and an expert on Amish life, said that Amish-on-Amish violence 'is extremely rare.'



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.

