Lancaster County Amish man sentenced to 38-76 years in prison for sexually abusing 4 girls

By Peter Smith
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
January 24, 2020

https://www.post-gazette.com/news/crime-courts/2020/01/24/Lancaster-County-Amish-David-Stoltzfus-Smucker-sentencing-sex-abuse/stories/202001240122

A judge imposed a 38- to 76-year prison sentence Friday on an elderly Amish man for years of sexually abusing four girls in a case that highlighted growing awareness of sexual abuse among Amish and related church groups.

“It is hard for me to imagine anything more offensive or evil than the conduct you have perpetrated,” Lancaster County Court of Common Pleas Judge Dennis Reinaker told David Stoltzfus Smucker, 75, who sat without emotion in his wheelchair and declined to say anything in his defense. He was handcuffed by a female officer and wheeled out immediately at the end of the hearing.

The hearing had the heavy, quiet atmosphere of a funeral.

Members of his church and family in dark suits and dresses looked on from behind him. Across from him sat survivors of sexual abuse from Amish and Mennonite backgrounds who traveled from miles around for Smucker’s judgment day.

The judge and Assistant District Attorney Fritz Haverstick said Smucker’s conduct was even more monstrous because he abused his position as a grandfather, molesting the girls routinely and severely during their visits to his house.

“That man used his grandchildren as sex toys,” Mr. Haverstick said.

Devastatingly, the girls, already traumatized by the death of their mother, were so severely wounded that the cycle of abuse is continuing in their own lives and behavior, he said.

“I don’t think he has a shred of remorse,” Mr. Haverstick said.

Smucker, of East Earl, Lancaster County, pleaded no-contest in December to 20 felony counts of sexually assaulting the girls. The charges included rape, incest and involuntary deviate sexual intercourse with a child, actions he would take while telling the children rhymes and stories.

Smucker was arrested in March 2019. The assaults began when the girls were 4 or 5 and continuing until they were 10 or 11 when the abuse came to light in late 2018.

His case was among several documented in 2019 in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s series “Coverings,” about sexual abuse in “Plain” Anabaptist communities such as the Amish and Mennonites. The Lancaster County area is home to the nation’s largest Amish community.

Asked if he wanted to say anything, Smucker shook his head slightly and said quietly, “No.” Judge Reinaker said that unlike other Amish convicted of sexual abuse, Smucker denied his victims even the small healing gesture of taking responsibility for his actions.

The one witness at the sentencing, caseworker Lauren Grimm of Lancaster County Children and Youth Social Service Agency, testified that the victims are struggling now to control their own behavior with children in their large extended family and in the community. She referred to what’s known clinically as “sexually reactive behavior” among victims of molestation.

“The girls report they do not feel safe around children,” she testified. “They don’t want to act out, they don’t want to be doing this, but it’s almost an instinct.. ... We don’t know how many children are impacted.”

The girls are now housed separately with caregivers in various parts of Lancaster County, and they are in therapy provided by a community counseling service. But they continue to recover from trauma and from being away from the home of their father and step-mother, missing out on birthdays and other gatherings. “The church is really big in the girls’ lives,” Ms. Grimm added. “They are no longer allowed to go to church.”

The girls' case is being managed by the county agency as a matter of child protection, and they have not been brought into the juvenile justice system, according to the district attorney's office.

The blame for this, Mr. Haverstick said, lies squarely with Smucker. Mr. Haverstick outlined the particulars in graphic detail, including Smucker raping one of the girls and digitally penetrating all of them,

“We’re talking about extraordinarily young girls that that man set on their path,” he said, as Smucker kept his eyes shut..

Watching from the jury box were survivors of sexual abuse in Plain churches and their advocates, who had traveled from various counties to bear silent witness on behalf of victims.

The case illustrates one of their biggest goals, which is to end the cycle of abuse across generations, they said.

“It’s so important to victims to know they’re not alone,” Joanna Yoder of Mifflinburg said after the sentencing.

“I hope that some day they will find out how big of an army is behind them and rallying around them,” said Ms. Yoder, whose own pursuit of justice over the abuse she suffered as a child was chronicled in the “Coverings” series.

Traditionally, Plain elders often have considered sexual abuse allegations as sins to be dealt with through internal church discipline rather than as crimes, with perpetrators who profess repentance being restored to their families — leaving children vulnerable to further abuse.

In recent years, Lancaster County-area public officials and church elders said their communication has grown and that church members have followed the legal mandate to report child endangerment in cases such as Smucker’s.

Many of those sitting behind Smucker in the courtroom were members of his own extended family. He has been married for 50 years and has numerous adult children and about 65 grandchildren.

One Amish man who observed the hearing said afterward the group turned out on behalf of the “whole family,” referring to the victims. “We support the court system,” he said, declining to give his name.

The complexity of a family with both the perpetrator and victims was evident even in the statement by Smucker’s attorney, Christopher Sarno. He made a brief appeal to Smucker’s financial generosity to others in need.

But even though the Amish community as a whole was not on trial, Mr. Sarno also spoke in its defense.

Despite past instances in which the community failed to report abuse, in this case “the family did the right thing” by turning him in.

Mr. Sarno spoke of Smucker’s severe health problems.

He’s had strokes and surgery on his back and heart. Smucker cannot use the toilet on his own. When he was initially jailed after his arrest in Lancaster County Prison, Smucker slipped on his own waste and hit his head, Mr. Sarno said. The judge later allowed Smucker out on bond until his sentencing so Smucker could stay at Whispering Hope, an unlicensed residential center for men from Amish and other Plain communities in Cumberland County.

But Judge Reinaker said he gives “no discount” for a defendant’s age or infirmities and added up several multi-year, consecutive sentences to get to the total. He said Smucker would now have to go to the county prison until the state Department of Corrections could place him. The department does have facilities for infirm prisoners.