Inside: Shocking ‘incest instructions’ given to 11-year-old Amish girls as chilling details of rape and abuse revealed

A SHOCKING new documentary shows how 11-year-old girls in the Amish community were given “incest leaders” and told it was their fault if they were raped.

Sins of the Amish exposes decades of sexual and physical abuse of young girls living in the religious sect.

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Four women – Meg, Mary, Misty and Audrey, whose last names have not been revealed to protect their privacy – told their stories of abuse and their escape in Peacock’s two-part documentary.

Her reports reveal a systematic brainwashing of youth by Amish leaders into believing that nightmares such as rape and incest are not only normal, but are always the girl’s fault.

In a disturbing move, the Elders presented girls at age 11 with a sex education pamphlet titled “To the Girl of Eleven,” which details how incest is natural according to some members of the cult.

“This sexual urge, once aroused and active in a young boy through puberty and beyond, can become a powerful inner driver,” reads Mary, who received the pamphlet.

“Any decent girl will do her best to help him and not make it any harder for him.

“Even in your own home, if you have teenage brothers, you should be aware of this.

“Your brother, approaching you innocently and seeing your partially uncovered body, can suddenly awaken strong sexual desires in him.

“His intentions weren’t bad, but he suddenly finds himself the victim of your carelessness in the lust of his own body.”

The booklet also encourages young girls not to dress in skimpy sleepwear or climb ladders around male family members and to keep their clothes closed at all times.

They are also told to close their door at night so that their family members are not inclined to sexually abuse them in bed.

But a closed door didn’t stop Mary’s brother from harassing her in the middle of the night.

The traumatized woman said she sprinted to her room earlier before he could catch up and locked her door, which wasn’t enough to stop him.

“He would take the hinges off. I remember he grabbed me, and then I remember splitting into two immediately. Like I wasn’t even there,” she recalled painfully.

“When I came back, the door closed and he was gone.”

Mary eventually left the church and took her two brothers to court.

Her eldest brother, Johnny, confessed to raping her more than 200 times, but received only a one-year prison sentence with the ability to leave and work, and 10 years of probation.

Mary recalls that busloads of Amish people came to the hearing to defend her brother.

“I have a feeling she’s doing this out of defiance more than anything,” Mary’s own mother wrote to the judge.

“Ever since I met Mary in person, she’s had a habit of making things sound worse than they really are.”

Mary was vilely mistreated because the community believed that speaking out against rape was worse than the sin of rape itself.

Publicly accusing an Amish brother of rape is tantamount to treason, and thus victims are encouraged to forgive their attackers rather than go to the police or speak to others.

He would take the hinges off. I remember that he grabbed me and then I remember that I immediately split into two people. As if I hadn’t been there at all.

Maria

Additionally, Amish fathers are encouraged to discipline their child from the age of three months, according to the documentary.

They claim that elders conscientiously applied a “commandment of the Lord” to allow fathers to hit their children from infancy.

One woman shared how her father asked her little sister to clap and smile and hit her when she didn’t.

One of the most disturbing revelations came from mother of five, Audrey, who recently left the community.

She remembers the day her little one dropped a bombshell of revelations during a conversation about sex education.

“She opened up and asked me if it’s normal for fathers to touch their daughter’s butt,” she said.

“I remember sitting there frozen and suddenly realizing that this picture was much bigger than I had imagined.

“I was brainwashed into thinking that it wasn’t abuse, it was discipline, and that’s what God wanted to do because that was his place in the house.”

Audrey took her ex to court despite the prospect of losing custody of their five children and won.

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