The Feds moved in this morning and arrested seven members of the so-called ‘Bergholz Clan’, a cult-like breakaway Amish group responsible for a harrowing wave of beard-cutting incidents in Amish Country aimed at religious backsliders. Federal charges are under the Matthew Shepard-James Byrd Hate Crimes Prevention Act. The FBI affidavit also alleges additional ‘cult-like’ practices such as leader Samuel Mullet “‘counseling’ the married women in the Bergholz clan and taking them into his home so that he may cleanse them of the devil with acts of sexual intimacy.”
TPM Editor’s Blog
Tough Times in Bergholz
