Page 108 - Cosmopolitan - USA (February 2020)
P. 108
T H E
M E M O R I E S
C O M E T O
H E R I N
F R A G M E N T S .
The bed creaking late at night after one of her brothers
snuck into her room and pulled her to the edge of her mat-
tress. Her underwear shoved to the side as his body hov-
ered over hers, one of his feet still on the floor.
Her ripped dresses, the clothespins that bent apart on
her apron as another brother grabbed her at dusk by the
hogpen after they finished feeding the pigs. Sometimes So she didn’t.
she’d pry herself free and sprint toward the house, but Even on the day the police showed up on her doorstep
“they were bigger and stronger,” she says. They usually got to question then-12-year-old Sadie’s father about his
what they wanted. alleged abuse of his daughters.
As a child, Sadie* was carefully shielded from outside Even on the day when, almost two years later,
influences, never allowed to watch TV or listen to pop Abner was sentenced by a circuit court judge to just
music or get her learner’s permit. Instead, she attended five years’ probation.
a one-room Amish schoolhouse and rode a horse and And even on the day when, at 14, she says she was cor-
buggy to church—a life designed to be humble and disci- nered in the pantry by one of her brothers and raped on
plined and godly. the sink, and then felt a gush and saw blood running down
By age 9, she says, she’d been raped by one of her older her leg, and cleaned up alone while he walked away,
brothers. By 12, she’d been abused by her father, Abner*, and gingerly placed her underwear in a bucket of cold
a chiropractor who penetrated her with his fingers on water before going back to her chores. A friend helped her
the same table where he saw patients, telling her he was realize years later: While being raped, she had probably
“flipping her uterus” to ensure her fertility. By 14, she suffered a miscarriage.
says, three more brothers had raped her and she was being It wasn’t until now that Sadie decided to speak up, to
attacked in the hayloft or in her own bed multiple times reveal the darkness beneath the bucolic surface of her
a week. She would roll over afterward, ashamed and childhood. She’s tired of keeping quiet.
confused. The sisters who shared Sadie’s room (and even
her bed) never woke up—or if they did, never said any- O V E R T H E P A S T Y E A R , I ’ V E I N T E R V I E W E D N E A R LY
thing, although some later confided that they were being three dozen Amish people, in addition to law enforcement,
raped too. judges, attorneys, outreach workers, and scholars. I’ve
Sadie’s small world was built around adherence to learned that sexual abuse in their communities is an A MY SANCET TA/ASSOCIATED PRESS.
rules—and keeping quiet was one of them. “There was no open secret spanning generations. Victims told me stories
love or support,” she says. “We didn’t feel that we had any-
where to go to say anything.” *Name has been changed.
98 Cosmopolitan Februar y 2020
