Johnny Mast - Breakaway Amish: Growing Up with the Bergholz Beard Cutters
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Breakaway Amish: Growing Up with the Bergholz Beard Cutters: summary, description and annotation
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I am the grandson of Bishop Sam Mullet, who was arrested for the Amish beard-cutting attacks. This is my story.
Beard-cutting attacks on Amish people in the middle of the night. Five incidents. Nine victims. How could members of a Christian tradition known for peace and forgiveness enact such violence? What could make members of one Amish group turn against other Amish? In Breakaway Amish, Johnny Mast tells in riveting detail how his Amish community became increasingly isolated from other Amish people, and how the wishes and edicts of his grandfather, Bishop Sam Mullet, overtook daily life in the group. Over time, members became convinced that cutting their own hair was a sign of repentance and remorse. When that conviction led them to cut off the beards of those outside their community, however, it was more than a strange religious ritual. It was a crime.
Here is an eyewitness account of the disturbing events at Bergholz, an Amish community gone awry. Yet redemption dwells even here, in the bravery and conviction of one who chose to break free.
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Breakaway Amish is an honest, insightful, insiders view of the strange doings among the Bergholz beard cutters, whose troubles intrigued and appalled the nation. Seldom do outsiders get such a revealing glimpse of what happens to an isolated group when, as Johnny Mast writes, You learn to ignore the voices in your head telling you, This isnt right. None of this is right. An eyewitness account of a leaders twisted descent into mental hell and of the havoc it can cause among people who only seek to be devout and faithful.
TOM SHACHTMAN, AUTHOR OF RUMSPRINGA: TO BE OR NOT TO BE AMISH
Absolutely riveting! What an honest account of how the Bergholz community starts out nice and Amish and then goes down a dark road. Thank goodness Johnny Mast had the courage to break away, find his rightful path, and write this book!
SALOMA MILLER FURLONG, AUTHOR OF WHY I LEFT THE AMISH AND BONNET STRINGS
Breakaway Amish is a riveting story of betrayal. Johnny Mast should have been able to count on the love and faith of his family. Instead he was manipulated by his grandfather, Sam Mullet, who turned his pacifist Amish community into an aggressive, revenge-seeking cult. In this heartbreaking eyewitness account of life in the Bergholz community, Mast recounts the slow descent of his family and friends into isolation, violence, and physical and sexual abuse. Sadly, for telling the truth, Johnny Mast has been ostracized by the very people who should have protected him.
KAREN JOHNSON-WEINER, COAUTHOR OF THE AMISH
A normal Amish youth, Johnny Mast grows up into the ways of his fathers, with the simple hopes and dreams common in such a world. But then comes a dark turn down bleak roads, not only for Johnny but for an entire community caught in the grip of bishop Sam Mullets powerful and destructive personality. This raw, riveting insiders account of a strange and chilling story is absolutely unique in the annals of Amish history.
IRA WAGLER, AUTHOR OF GROWING UP AMISH
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Mast, Johnny, 1990-author. | Smucker, Shawn, author.
Title: Breakaway Amish: growing up with the Bergholz beard cutters / Johnny Mast with Shawn Smucker.
Description: Harrisonburg, Virginia: Herald Press, [2016]
Identifiers: LCCN 2016008106 (print) | LCCN 2016015246 (ebook) | ISBN 9781513800219 (pbk.: alk. paper) | ISBN 9781513801049 (hardcover: alk. paper) | ISBN 9781513800226 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Mast, Johnny, 1990-| Hate crimes--Ohio--Amish Country. | Amish--Violence against--Ohio--Amish Country. | Amish--Ohio. | Amish--Customs and practices. | Amish--Doctrines. | Violence--Religious aspects--Amish. | Beards--Religious aspects. | Hair--Religious aspects.
Classification: LCC HV6773.53.O3 M37 2016 (print) | LCC HV6773.53.O3 (ebook) | DDC 364.15/55--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016008106
This is a work of nonfiction and as such, the author has attempted to adhere to the facts of the events described. Every effort has been made to ensure that the events occurred as the author has described.
BREAKAWAY AMISH
2016 by Herald Press, Harrisonburg, Virginia 22802
Released simultaneously in Canada by Herald Press,
Kitchener, Ontario N2G 3R1. All rights reserved.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016008106
International Standard Book Number: 978-1-5138-0021-9 (paperback edition)
International Standard Book Number: 978-1-5138-0104-9 (hardcover edition)
Printed in United States of America
Cover and interior design by Reuben Graham
Photo on p. 118 courtesy of Willard/iStock/Thinkstock. Unless attributed otherwise, other interior photos are courtesy of the author or used as evidence in the trial.
All rights reserved. This publication may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in whole or in part, in any form, by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior permission of the copyright owners.
For orders or information, call 800-245-7894 or visit HeraldPress.com.
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B reakaway Amish is not only about growing up in a wayward Amish group. Johnny Masts story, which he and Shawn Smucker tell so ably in these pages, is a story of human tragedy. It chronicles what happens when men, in the name of God, abuse positions of power to exploit, harm, and denigrate others. Its an important, cautionary tale, and the rest of us would do well to listen carefully.
I first learned to know Johnny Mast when I read his lengthy testimony at the three-week federal trial in Cleveland in 2012. We both testified at the trial but never met each other. As a witness for the prosecution, he provided a riveting account that incriminated his grandfather, bishop Sam Mullet, and fifteen other members of a breakaway Amish community in eastern Ohio. Among other crimes, the sixteen defendants were found guilty of federal hate crimes for attacking Amish people in several different counties.
Johnny and a couple of his teenage cousins lived in a second-floor apartment of their grandfathers barn. Johnny, whom his grandfather favored, had the inside scoop on everything leading up to the attacks. He was an eyewitness to the FBIs surprise arrests in the early morning darkness just before Thanksgiving 2011.
All the Bergholz defendants were sentenced to federal prisons. The court gave Johnnys grandfather, the ringleader of the church, a fifteen-year term. A journalist who later visited Bergholz told me that Johnny wanted a copy of my book Renegade Amish: Beard Cutting, Hate Crimes, and the Trial of the Bergholz Barbers. I sent him a copy, and we talked occasionally by telephone and email. I learned that he and some of his cousins had left Bergholz and were living on their own for the first time. I was so impressed with Johnnys grasp of the Bergholz tragedy, his levelheadedness and mature self-understanding, that on a whim I invited him to a one-day seminarHate Crimes and the Bergholz Barbersorganized by the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown (Pa.) College.
Early on the morning of that conference, I met Johnny for the first time over sausage and pancakes in the breakfast bar of a hotel. I was anxious. I had no idea if inviting him was a wise or foolish move. I knew this was the first time he would step on a college campus. He had never addressed a public audience about Bergholz. But I soon relaxed. At the conference, Johnny spoke and answered questions for about an hour. He was calm, clear, and thoughtful, and he didnt appear embittered by his Bergholz trauma.
After the seminar, we met privately for about two hours before he returned to Ohio. He wanted to write a book. Why? I asked. Because, he said, so much gossip, innuendo, and false information continued to swirl around about the Bergholz events. Nobody knew the truth. Nobody, he said, had ever told the truth from an insiders perspective. He worried that the same excruciating tragedy could visit other Amish churchesor churches of any kind. Johnny worried that leaders in other churches might become authoritarian, deceitful, and abusive, threatening people and leading them astray. I was struck by his sincerity, integrity, and passion for truth telling.
I gladly explained to him some dos and donts about writing and publishing. I offered to meet him again and accompany him to meet with a publisher. Several months later, in Geauga County, Ohio, about eight miles from where his grandfather grew up, I met with Johnny, his girlfriend, Clara, and a publisher to talk more about a book.
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