The following article is from the London Free Press in Ontario, Canada.
There are interesting parallels between this case and those involving the Borg. It is a closed community wherein members are completely reliant on the community and risk shunning if too outspoken. Women are also second class citizens within this community much like they are in the JW realm.
I noted the reporter highlighted that their upbringing even affects how they answer questions (well maybe, probably etc). This can cause some to question the validity of the claims when in fact such clarifiers are the direct result of the same environment that made it so easy to terroize those abused.
Interesting use of Satan to create fear in those abused. I have thought it possible that threats of Satan were behind "some" of the comments of Satanic ritual abuse, was it actually ceremonial abuse or was Satan just used to intimidate the abused?
Here's the article and link:
http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/LondonFreePress/News/2004/04/23/432718.html
Amish girl recounts abuse Her aunt is on trial on 19 sex and violence charges involving five nieces and nephews.
JANE SIMS, Free Press Justice Reporter | 2004-04-23 |
ST. THOMAS -- With her starched white bonnet and long blue dress pressed in place, the teenager testifying yesterday was the picture of a proper Amish woman. What she described to a Superior Court of Justice jury seemed at odds with her appearance -- horrible acts of sexual abuse and violence inflicted upon her within her closed community by her aunt
The 13-year-old recounted the horrors under questions by assistant Crown attorney Douglas Walker at the trial of a 34-year-old woman who has pleaded not guilty to 19 charges involving five children -- her nieces and nephews.
"She sexually abused us," the girl said with a clipped Pennsylvania Dutch accent.
The identities of the accused and the complainants are protected by a court-ordered publication ban.
The jury and others in the cavernous old courtroom watched the girl speak into a microphone on closed-circuit television. The technology allowed her to be in another part of the courthouse, away from where her aunt sat in the prisoner's box.
Members of the Amish community and family watched with rapt attention as the girl, about to end her school days when she completes Grade 8 next month, described what she remembered:
- Touching of her "private parts" by her aunt, either with her hands or with a knife.
- Numerous beatings "all over the body."
- Attempted suffocation of the children with string around their necks or a plastic bag over their heads.
- Forcing them to eat manure, dead animals and ingesting urine, sometimes telling them it would hurt them and other times indicating "our parents eat things like that."
One of the more bizarre circumstances the girl described took place, she said, in the aunt's bedroom. She said when she was either naked or dressed, she would wear an artificial beard.
The girl also recounted how her aunt would put insects into her and would tell her and other children to do it to her.
"She'd say she was Satan or changed into a man," the girl said, and recalled her aunt also made up "a little song about Satan.''
The girl said her aunt "would say things to scare us" or would "say 'if it feels good' and things like that."
Her aunt also would threaten the children, warning "she'll kill us" and not to tell.
She said the assaults took place at her home -- in the barn and house -- and at her aunt's home. But she couldn't say how many times she was abused and often could not be specific about who was there.
Often, she said, the assaults took place in front of other children, but she could not be sure which ones.
She insisted she and her siblings never traded stories about the abuse. "Us children didn't really talk about it," she said. "Not what (the aunt) did to us."
She said before her family went to a counselling centre, she was "blocking out" any memory of the attacks.
She had also blocked out the memory of an abuse by her uncle, she said. He was present for some abuse inflicted on her by the aunt, she said.
When pressed by LeRoy, she denied she had substituted her aunt as the abuser to forget it was the uncle.
"It isn't like that, no," the girl said.
The jury also heard from the girl's mother, who described the daily routine of their home, the family's relationship and how her daughter often would couch her descriptions with words such as "maybe," "probably" and "perhaps."
"In our culture, we tend not to be so sure of ourselves when we say something," the mother explained in answering LeRoy's question. "I'd say it is one reason she does this, but it's more than that.
"I think children who are abused tend not to be so sure of themselves."
The trial continues today.
Copyright © The London Free Press 2001,2002,2003
Uzzah
(edited to include the article)