Impressed by their piety, courts have permitted the Amish to live outside the law. But in some places, the group’s ethic of forgive and forget has produced a plague of incest—and let many perpetrators go unpunished.
When she wrote the letter that she hoped would protect her sister, Mary Byler was lying on a twin bed, surrounded by rainbow-colored walls and a sky-blue ceiling decorated with bright white clouds. A stereo sat on the floor beside her. There were no signs of the Amish upbringing she had left behind—no plain wood furniture or chamber pot. Nothing except a stuffed doll that had belonged to her 6-year-old sister. The little girl had put the doll’s bonnet on backward.
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