Documentary Examines Sexual Abuse and Silencing of Survivors in Amish Communities

“Keep Quiet and Forgive,” a documentary, examines sexual abuse in Amish communities and the code of silence that the film says enables it. It features sexual assault survivors from Amish communities in Lancaster and elsewhere in the United States. The film recently played the Philadelphia Film Festival and will air on PBS next year.

The documentary calls attention to what it presents as a widespread problem within insular Amish fellowships. Women recall repeated abuse by deacons, uncles, fathers and brothers, sometimes beginning when they were just 9 years old. Those who confided in a trusted adult were told to bury the secret, even as the abuse continued, a concern for the vulnerable at the center of these accounts (Proverbs 31:8-9).

The film is an expansion of journalist Sarah McClure’s widely read exposé in Cosmopolitan, and several sources followed her into the documentary. It is partially set in Lancaster County, home of the largest and oldest Amish community in the U.S.

McClure said she was first drawn to the subject after spending time in Lancaster, where she later moved, and trying to learn more about her future neighbors. After attending educational conferences at Franklin & Marshall College, she met a formerly Amish woman who shared her own history of abuse and stressed that such stories were all too common. “The way that she basically painted the picture in this very first conversation was that it happens a lot,” McClure said. “She said, ‘I have this friend, I have this family member, I have this friend, I have this cousin.’ And she basically gave me contacts for 10 people.”

One of those contacts was Lizzie Hershberger, the documentary’s primary subject. Hershberger pursued charges against her abuser, who was sentenced in 2019 to 45 days in jail and 10 years of probation for sexual crimes committed decades earlier in Minnesota. Hershberger now accompanies other women to the trials of their alleged abusers, which the documentary describes as a particularly fraught environment. As the film shows, crowds of Amish typically attend to support the defendant, and Hershberger believes they intimidate the survivors.

Hershberger and most of the film’s subjects left their Anabaptist congregations long ago, but the film presents leaving as a painful process. Those who leave are typically pressured to return and are shunned if they do not. Because the Amish avoid most technology and stop educating their children after the eighth grade, starting a new life is exceptionally difficult. McClure likens it to immigrating to a new country. “It takes beyond courage to be able to just decide, I can’t stay here anymore, because there’s harm being done to me or my children,” she said. “Once they leave, sometimes they don’t have a physical ID. They don’t have their marriage license, they don’t have a driver’s license, obviously. They don’t know the systems that we’ve grown up with since we were 10, I guess. They’re kind of lost.”

Ex-Amish activists such as Hershberger are working to ease that transition. McClure’s cameras follow her to conferences and workshops for survivors and show her taking calls from strangers seeking help. The film also highlights the work of Safe Communities, a Lancaster-based organization that is poised to close at the end of 2025 after five years in operation.

The documentary wrapped its second showing at the Philadelphia Film Festival on Friday and will play select screenings around the country before its PBS debut on March 23. After that broadcast, McClure hopes to take the film on a “barn tour” of Amish communities. These screenings would include pamphlets with resources and information, along with experts and detectives available to talk with audiences. “The wonderful thing about documentary work is that the work doesn’t end after the film is edited,” McClure said. “A lot of films like this one, I think, have great potential for social impact. … It’s really about specializing in providing not just the film, but using it as a vehicle to explore those resources and the needs, allowing people a space to just come and talk. They’ll show up. I’ve seen it.”

Source: Read the original report