“So, what are you planning on majoring in?” he asked looking at me with a hint of curiosity.
“Nursing,” I answered enthusiastically. I was surprised to see him furrow his brow with disappointment.
“Have you ever thought of doing some sort of professional writing?” He seemed to get a spark in his eye as he had said it.
I stared at him. What? Me?
“Uh, you mean for a newspaper?”
“Well, yeah, a journalist or a novelist. You would be great as a novelist.” He tapped my paper. “This story you wrote about your sister mixing up cherries and plums and making a cherry plum pie—you described it so well, I felt I was in sitting in that kitchen. By the time I was done reading it, I could taste the pie.” He smacked his lips together. “I can still taste it,” he said as he grinned at me.
“Well, I don’t think I could ever write a book or anything …, ” I said, smiling at him shyly.
“Well, think about it,” he said, smiling back.
“I will,” I said as I watched him write an A at the top of my paper.
As I ran off the campus to catch the bus that would take me to my waitressing job, I laughed. I could never write anything, I thought. I barely had an education.
Sadly, after that semester, I lost track of the kind professor. If only he knew how those words would ring in my ears as I sat down at a computer five years later. After much typing and erasing, I stared at what I had written and nodded my head. There were four words written on that page. Only four words, but those four words had me grasping the table with all of my strength. My knuckles were white, and all of a sudden, tears spilled down my cheeks. Those four words told my entire life’s story. Tears of the Silenced. Yes. That is what I was going to call my memoir.
Doing my prerequisites for nursing school part-time while working full-time took years, and I had to start from the bottom. My husband started his long journey towards becoming a psychologist. Years passed, but we had fun. I ended up completing an LVN ( Licensed Vocational Nurse) program and an EMT course. From there, I planned to finish my last couple of prerequisites and start a Bachelor’s in Registered Nursing bridge program. This was my plan, but only two months after graduating as an LVN, I started something that would drastically change my life forever.
It was a warm day in July as I sat down at the computer. I was thinking hard about an idea I had been mulling over for a few months already.
“I should write a memoir,” I said aloud to my husband.
“Yeah, you should,” he replied.
Surprised, I stared at him to see if he was joking, but he was serious and nodding his head.
It could help others. But would anyone read it? I am a nobody. A waitress at a little pizza restaurant.
I could not stand the fact that the misery I had seen would just drift away in the wind. Somewhere out there, there might be an Amish girl crying. She might need help. Maybe there was a child being abused. Maybe there was a neighbor that knew, someone who needed a nudge. Maybe my story could nudge them. I thought about the words of my English professor and a history professor that had come after him. Could I really do this?
It had been a little over seven years since I had left the Amish. I had lost contact with everyone. Two years after I left the Amish, Samantha and I both moved. I should have tried harder to stay in contact with her, but I didn’t. I stopped calling Aunty Laura and I stopped calling Karen. I had found out there was more to Karen’s story than she had told me. I felt betrayed, but despite her crime-filled life (past and present), I will forever be grateful for her help. It is ironic that I would receive more help from a criminal than the supposed kind, Christian church I had belonged to.
I am not proud that I lost contact with Samantha and Aunty Laura for all of those years, but it was what I needed at the time. Aunty Laura was a constant reminder of a life that still haunted my dreams and Samantha’s vague letters only reminded me of the sister I had lost. Above all, they both reminded me that I was a failure. I felt I had failed Grandma, Fanny, and the Bishop’s children. Seven years later, the nightmares and the pain were just as real as they had been on the day I had left Seattle. I was happy in my new life, with my husband and friends, but the old life would not let go.
I was encouraged to see a psychologist. I knew I had blocked out some of the most terrible things that had happened to me, as a child and later when the Bishop had attacked me. I did not want to remember these things, so every time I was about to make an appointment, I backed out. To this day, I still do not remember everything. Something deep inside myself tells me that I should not unlock the Pandora’s box of new horrors. I already had too many.
After a year and a half, I had written and self-published the first edition of Tears of the Silenced. I had written feverishly while still working full-time. I was no professional and had no money for an editor. I ended up with a memoir that was around seven hundred pages. Eagerly I uploaded it to Amazon and felt so much better that the nightmares came less often.
If only it helps one person, I thought … This was three years before the Me Too and Times UP movement. People did not like to talk about these things.
To my surprise, my memoir started selling. Good reviews started to pour in, in despite the fact that it was terribly long and riddled with punctuation and grammatical mistakes. I knew it was not perfect but tears streamed down my cheeks as I read reviews commending my bravery.
Maybe I was not such a failure?
Over the next couple of years, I spent more time pouring over my manuscript, correcting the errors and trying to cut it down as well as taking out some of the more graphic content. I had not realized how triggering it would be for child abuse and sexual assault survivors to read such details. It had been my life, and sadly, it had been my normal. But for others it was shocking.
Gradually, I was able to get the memoir into a more readable format. After a few months, I included my email. Maybe there is someone like me out there who needs help. Maybe I can help them!
After that, I started a Facebook page. Maybe someone would see it, someone who was in a bad situation.
I never expected to become a voice for the voiceless. I was just a waitress and a part-time student in a bachelor’s in nursing degree program. I had no idea how many people would reach out. And how as a result, I would feverishly write several Reddit posts about sexual abuse among the Amish. Barcroft TV would eventually make a short documentary about me. I never thought that a last effort to raise awareness about child and sexual assault would one day line the shelves in stores or that it would help so many abuse survivors around the world.
And so one April morning in 2016, I stumbled towards the couch with my cup of coffee. I had only had about three hours sleep, but I was a nursing student and sleep was now a luxury. My path to becoming a nurse was taking a lot longer than I had expected. Life had gotten in the way, and over the past year and a half I had spent a lot of time editing and re-editing my memoir. No matter how many times I went through it, there always seemed to be an endless number of mistakes. But my husband and I were still proud of my accomplishment.
By that April, I was happily enjoying my life as a university student, a wife and a self- published author. My husband had finished his internship and was now starting his own psychology practice. I could finally stop working and focus on school. Tears of the Silenced was selling steadily. I intentionally kept the price low but was still surprised when the e-book began selling in the thousands every month; it had no backing and almost no advertising at that time.
I sighed as I sat down on the couch that morning. I was tired and I glared at my textbook on the coffee table. The couch was so comfortable.
“Hey, don’t you have a test tomorrow?” My husband’s sleepy voice somehow managed to reach me.
“What?” I sat up on the couch and my eyes flew to the clock.
9:30! I
jumped up. We were going to be late for church and I had not studied even one word. My coffee was cold and my husband was grinning because I had fallen asleep on the couch.
“Well, no sleep for me tonight,” I muttered as I raced to get ready. For the next 24 hours, I was going to study and pray I could pass my exam.
After church and a quick lunch, I dove into my studies, but, hard as I tried, I could not concentrate. Every so often, I opened my laptop and checked my email. I had received an email from a child abuse survivor, one of many I had read by that time. I blinked back tears as I read what she had never told anyone. She told me that my story had given her the courage to go back to school and pursue her love of cooking. I happily replied and told her how proud I was of her decision and how sorry I was for what she had gone through. I assured her it had not been her fault.
After sending the email, I randomly clicked on the other tabs that were open on my computer.
I should be studying, I thought, my guilt over my procrastination rising by the second.
Despite this, I clicked on my Facebook page to see if there were any messages from the book’s fans. Not finding any, I clicked on my Goodreads author page where people often left questions for me. I was desperately looking for any reason not to study.
As my eyes fell on the page, I felt dizzy. The breath left my lungs and I almost fell forward. I quickly sucked in air through clenched teeth and blinked my eyes a couple of times. There were two messages. Were they real or was someone playing a mean trick on me?
“I have information on Katie and the rest of the children you might be interested in. You will be happy to learn that she and the children are now free of Phyllis and Peter.”
I swallowed, a thousand emotions running through me.
“Katie has read parts of your book and would like to contact you. Can you send me an email where she can write you?”
My hands were shaking. I sent my reply, and a couple of hours later, after I had frantically checked my email for the thousandth time, I saw one from the Bishop’s oldest daughter, Katie. She was now twenty-two years old.
The tears flowed as I read the email and learned the awful story of what had happened the previous ten years. Over the next few months, I would piece-by-piece learn more through phone calls, emails, texts, and their social worker.
The story that unfolded was shocking. Eleven years earlier, when I had left the Bishop’s house, Phyllis and Peter had told the children that I was a bad woman who was trying to steal their father, and that when I could not get him, I had called the police. According to them, I had also been trying to take the children. Katie told me that the children had believed their parents and never learned why I had really left or why I had called the police until they had stumbled across Tears of the Silenced. The children were told that they had to go to Canada to get away from me and the police or the children would all be taken away and separated.
They had lived in Canada for about a year and half. When Peter had tried to get citizenship, Canadian officials learned they were in the country illegally and the family were given the option to either be deported back to the United States or leave on their own. They had returned to the United States, bouncing from Kentucky and to nearby states before finally living on Peter’s brother’s farm. They eventually moved to another state, and that is when the three oldest girls in the family got the courage to ask a non-Amish lady for help.
I learned Peter had been molesting Katie since she was four years old. My church had shunned him for six weeks and he still remained the Bishop. The entire time I had been in the community, the entire church had known he was a child molester. They had seen his children in church every Sunday and must have wondered… How could they have done this? He had molested almost all of the now eleven children, even the boys. My church had left him in that house, knowing what he was doing.
A few months prior to contacting me, the non-Amish lady the girls had confided in had called the police who in turn called in child protective services—CPS. One of the officers on the case was reading Tears of the Silenced at the time. He brought it to a meeting and told the social worker that he thought the bishop in the book was the man they were investigating. He suggested the social worker read it and she gave it to Katie and the children who immediately recognized me.
By the time Katie had contacted me, Peter and Phyllis had both been removed from the home. Katie had become the foster parent of the eight children who were still under eighteen and they were no longer dressing or living as Amish.
The social worker told me that my memoir had come to the children at a critical point. Katie had not been sure that she had wanted to go through with pressing charges. Their Amish grandparents were writing and telling them how they were dishonoring their mother and should go back to her and be her good obedient children.
After reading what really happened to me and why I had really left, the oldest children decided that their father was a real danger and that to save the youngest children—one of whom was only three—they had to press charges and put him in prison.
The social worker asked if I would be willing to testify against Peter. The thought of seeing him again made me feel panic. I told her that if they really needed me to, I would, but I would rather not. I cautioned her and the children not to let their parents know that they had found me or it might blow the case. Peter’s lawyer was looking for any reason to get Peter off the hook and was even trying to argue to the judge that in the six months since he had been arrested, Peter had been fully rehabilitated. I did not want anything to mess up the case. Since most of the children were underage and had told investigators that they had been molested, I knew the children were the best chance of putting him away.
That August, Peter was sent to prison for molesting nearly all of his eleven children. Months later, Phyllis completely lost her parental rights of all of the children. I was so proud of the children. Katie and I texted back and forth frequently and we still do. I hope to go visit them this fall.
On the day I had learned Peter was sent to prison, I tried not to feel anger. I was angry that the police had not listened to me ten and half years earlier when I had begged for help. They could see I was scared and shaken. Same with Grandma and Fanny. Even though they kept saying I had no evidence, at some point a frightened face and shaking body should count as evidence. Something needs to be done to change this.
About a month after Katie contacted me, I sent a letter to Samantha. It had been eight years since I had heard from her. I sent it to an old address I had but did not expect for it to make its way to her since I knew she had moved. A few weeks later, I jumped with happiness when I saw her familiar handwriting on the outside of an envelope postmarked in Illinois.
I was no longer the person I had been when we lost contact. I was now a person who helped other survivors. I had seen how speaking out had helped to convict the man who had sexually assaulted me. And it had saved his children too. I felt strong and ready to do whatever I could to stop child abuse and sexual assault.
Eagerly, I ripped open the envelope and quickly devoured the short letter. Samantha now had three children. The oldest was a nine-year-old girl who was so much like me Samantha said it was eerie. Tears started streaming down my face when I read that Fanny had died a year before. Samantha still wrote Mamma and Brian a few times a year because they wrote her. Mamma had written that Fanny had died, not how she had died or where she was buried. Samantha had been afraid to ask questions.
Fanny’s death was heartbreaking and final; no one could rescue her now. Since my book had been published, some had criticized me for not going back and trying to save Fanny again. I had tried but was constantly rejected by law enforcement and adult protection services. It should not have been so hard for me to help, and I’d given it everything I’d had.
Going back years later would not have made a difference. As time passed, I had less evidence. I h
ad been away a long time and could not say with certainty what was going on in that house at that time, although I could have guessed.
About six months ago, I was also in contact with several other ex-Amish and learned they were related to the family that had adopted Samantha. One of the older gentleman read my book and then said he gave it to Samantha’s adoptive aunt. She had left the Amish before I had come to the community. This ex-Amish man said she asked to read my book. When she brought it back, she stared at the floor and then told him the same thing had happened to her. She would not go into detail or talk about her siblings. All she had said was that she had been sexually abused by her father for years and that her mother knew. After saying this, she left quickly, leaving my friend in shock with book in hand.
This man was Samantha’s adopted Amish grandfather. Was he one of the Amish sexual predators Samantha had talked about? I had not realized the abuse was also in Samantha’s family. Now I worried about my little nieces and nephews. This man would now be in his late sixties. I had no evidence to bring against him. It leaves me frustrated and angry, but to all that read this and say I should do something: there is nothing I can do without proof.
In the summer of 2016, I received an email from a guy who was asking if I had a mother named Sue and a sister named Samantha. I was in the Sears parking lot when I got the notification on my cell.
“If you do have a sister named Samantha and Mom named Sue, I think you might be my sister,” I read with widened eyes.
Later, I replied, telling him what I could remember from my early childhood when we were all still in contact with each other. Could this be my long lost brother? While I had been in Seattle, I had called around Arizona some, looking for my father and brother but had had no luck.
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