By Kat Cisar

kcisar@themonroetimes.net

DARLINGTON — The first of three Amish male relatives charged in Lafayette County Circuit Court with incest and sexual abuse of their female family members was sentenced July 15.

Elmer Esch Stoltzfus, 26, Cuba City, pleaded guilty in January to two counts of repeated sexual assault of the same child and two counts of incest with a child, all Class C felonies punishable by up to 40 years.

As part of a joint plea deal, a Class C felony charge of second-degree sexual assault of a mentally ill victim was dismissed.

Judge John Hyland accepted the joint sentence recommendation of three years on probation, with requirements that Stoltzfus register for life as a sex offender and participate in sex offender treatment. He gave Stoltzfus’ probation officer the discretion and authority to discharge him from probation after two years.

“There is nothing more here that’s needed,” Hyland told Stoltzfus. “You do not need to be confined ... but you do need work. You are still a work in progress and I’m trusting that the Department of Corrections won’t look over you (as someone who will fail).”

“If one good thing comes out of this ... it keeps some other individual from being a victim.”

The other two Amish men facing similar charges in pending Lafayette County cases are Elam Stoltzfus Allgyer, 37, Darlington, due for sentencing Aug. 25, and Benjamin Esh Allgyer, 31, Mineral Point, due for sentencing Oct. 2.

Investigation into the cases began with a woman who spoke up about depression among women and girls locally in the Amish community.

“It’s finally been discovered why these individuals have depression and what’s been going on,” District Attorney Jenna Gill said. She noted similar cases in the state, including in Columbia and Grant counties.

A recently formed nonprofit organization, the Amish Heritage Foundation, has a mission to empower Amish women and children through education and raise awareness “about the crises hidden in Amish society.”

The founder, Torah Bontrager, is the outspoken victim in an ongoing Columbia County case and says she escaped the Amish community at age 15. She went on to get a college degree and is now fighting to overturn a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allows the Amish Church to keep children from attending school beyond eighth grade.

“There’s been a large, unfortunate shining on (sexual abuse in) the Amish community,” Gill said. Part of the problem is that Amish youth receive “little to no sex education through their eighth-grade education so they’re simply left to teach themselves and learn through their peers.”

Another factor is that Amish women are taught to be submissive to men, but “simply because that is the nature of their culture does not make it OK for (abuse) to occur,” Gill said.

Defense attorney Andrea Winder noted that her client received no sex education. She said during a recent psycho-sexual evaluation, the evaluator had to explain to Stoltzfus what the word “masturbation” means.

“When he was 16, he took it upon himself to research the reproductive system using an encyclopedia. He wasn’t told the dos and don’ts of sexual relations or why we have what’s called ‘the age of consent,’” Winder said.

Stoltzfus was younger than 16 at the time of the offenses, which occurred in 2008 and 2009 and involved girls who were about 10 and 15 years old at the time, Gill said. If the allegations had come forward at the time, she noted, Stoltzfus’ case would have been handled in juvenile court.

When allegations came forward against the Allgyers and Stoltzfus last year, all three men agreed to meet separately with an investigator. They admitted to and provided details of specific assaults, some occurring as long as 20 years ago and some as recent as about four years ago.

According to the criminal complaints, the assaults they described all occurred one-on-one when each was able to get alone with a girl. For some of the younger victims, as young as 3, the assault was preceded by a game like “mom and dad,” “dog,” “hide-and-seek” or “hide under a blanket.”

A small number of the assaults were described as consensual, but the majority were either forced or committed while the girl “cooperated” or “just stood there,” in one man’s words. One of the victims, an older teenager at the time, is described as having a birth defect that caused her to have “a mind more like a child.”

Stoltzfus told an investigator he was “scared” of getting a girl pregnant and that after one of the assaults, he recalled thinking, “Why did I do that again?” After an assault of another victim, Stoltzfus said he “knew it was not right.”

Gill and Winder cited several mitigating factors in support of probation for Stoltzfus.

His primary victim “does not want punishment,” and in fact she and Stoltzfus “have a great relationship,” Winder said.

“This is someone who sits before you who has no criminal mindset. He has a fantastic support system, as you can see, (and) his wife is here,” Winder told the judge at the sentencing hearing in the Lafayette County Courthouse.

Gill said Stoltzfus is at a low risk to reoffend and also recognized his family support.

“Luckily we have a victim who’s saying this hasn’t negatively impacted her,” she said. Still, it has been frustrating to hear Amish “suggesting that because of the community they live in, that somehow diminishes the seriousness of the offense.”

Amish children deserve better, Gill said, and she hopes Stoltzfus takes what he learns in his sex offender treatment and passes along this education to his children and to his community.

When given the opportunity to speak at the hearing, Stoltzfus said he carried his regrets with him for 10 years but he’s relieved the case is over and “the regrets are out there.”