OHIO
Sacramento Bee
By JOHN SEEWER
Associated Press
CLEVELAND — An Amish bishop accused of orchestrating hair-cutting attacks in Ohio coerced women at his settlement into having sex with him so he could turn them into better wives, one of the women testified Thursday.
The woman said what started out as hugs turned into kisses and then sex. She said she resisted at first.
“He would say things like, ‘I can’t understand why you won’t obey me, the other ladies can,'” the woman testified. “I always gave up. I was afraid not to.”
Prosecutors say the alleged sexual “counseling” of married women shows the control Samuel Mullet Sr. had over followers at the Amish settlement he founded two decades ago. The 16 people accused of carrying out the hair-cutting attacks last fall all lived on Mullet’s settlement in eastern Ohio near the West Virginia panhandle.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.