I strongly recommend an
article by Nadya Labi, "The Gentle People," in the current issue of Legal
Affairs. It argues that incest is rife within Amish communities and
that, basically, the community does next to nothing to control it, other than
pressing the victims to "forgive" the perpetrators (who go on
perpetrating). It is, I think, an essential "corrective," as it were, to
the image of the Amish portrayed in Yoder. At the very least, there
seems to be no good reason to be less concerned about child abuse within the
Amish community than, say, the abuse that is alleged with regard to polygamous
"old-Mormon" communities or, indeed, pedophilia within the Catholic
Church. Even if the article is off by 50% with regard to the actual
number of young women who are raped or otherwise abused by their fathers
and, especially, brothers, it nevertheless states a powerful claim.
One of its central points is the practical inability of the formal legal
system to do much about this, inasmuch as some prosecutors treat the
perpetrators like football players in Virginia (i.e., there's a lot of turning
the eye away); more seriouis, perhaps, is the very strong code within the
Amish community that effectively prevents "going to law" to resolve such
problems. The only effective remedy appears to be physically running
away, by young women who, of course, have received nothing that could possibly
count as an education adequate to allow them to flourish in what is
disdainfully termed, by the Amish, the "English" society. No doubt there
are many wonderful people among the Amish, though, of course, I suspect that
most of us have never met anyone who actually lives within that community,
just as most of us have never had the pleasure of meeting a Satmar Hasid from
Kiryat Joel. We are ultimately reduced to a version of "making up
stories" about how they actually live their lives and (mis)treat their
children and whether the FE Clause gives them a pass from any genuine
monitoring by the "external" legal order.
A Happy New Year to all!
sandy
