Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

GENERATION­S OF PAIN

After years of abuse, a Mennonite couple found a new way to live; now they pray they made the change in time to save their family

- By Shelly Bradbury and Peter Smith

The Old Order Mennonite bishop leveled a finger at the unwed, pregnant teenager who stood before him and jabbed it toward her.

“You,” she remembered him saying, “can’t be a church member until after the baby is born.”

Diane Snyder stood silently beside her boyfriend as the bishop made his declaratio­n. She did not protest when her boyfriend escaped the punishment she was to suffer for the baby growing inside her.

And she stayed silent during the ensuing

months, keeping to herself the gnawing fear that she’d die before the baby was born — die and go to hell because she wasn’t a church member.

She married her boyfriend, Jim Burkholder, and for years she never protested when he demanded sex, even when she was pregnant with one child, nursing another. It was her duty to satisfy him, and she couldn’t say no. This, she believed, was what married women had to do.

But nearly three decades and 13 children later, Diane and Jim Burkholder have had a revelation about their own sexuality, and subsequent­ly about how the separatist Plain faiths handle sexuality among members.

“There is such a lack of knowledge there,” Diane said of the way sexuality is approached in some Amish and Mennonite communitie­s, and the way it worked through much of her marriage. “My sexuality was raped by somebody else who didn’t understand their sexuality, and that’s how it’s working. And then dads and moms come in on the scene and they don’t know what to do about it because it happened to them, too. So it’s a generation­al crisis.”

As the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is reporting this month, a growing network of survivors of abuse among the conservati­ve Amish and Mennonite communitie­s, or Plain People, is seeking to reform a culture in which they say an ignorance about sexuality is putting its young people at greater risk. They say churches often have handled abuse cases internally without reporting perpetrato­rs to the law, although church leaders say they have improved practices and now cooperate with authoritie­s.

About three years ago, Jim and Diane resolved to break the generation­al cycle they perceived.

But they faced significan­t pushback in their horse-and-buggy church community and eventually concluded they couldn’t create change from within the church. They left, forging a new life and becoming outspoken critics of the way Plain churches handle sexual abuse — even as they discovered recent abuse within their own family and wrestled with the consequenc­es.

“God has laid on both of our hearts to become vocal and be sympatheti­c to both victims and perpetrato­rs, to have empathy for both of them,” Jim said. “Not pity, but empathy . ... Because for me, I was a victim. I’m also a perpetrato­r. I also violated my wife in many, in many ways.”

One day during Diane’s final year of school — eighth grade — a friend pointed to a teenage boy chopping wood on an adjacent property.

“And my friend at school says, ‘Hey, that’s Jimmy Burkholder, and he’s a good friend of my brother, you need to get to know him,’” Diane recalled. She was 15, he was 16, almost 17.

The pair began an intense relationsh­ip, sneaking out in the middle of the night to visit each other, and soon started having sex.

“I didn’t have a voice; I felt like I didn’t have a choice,” Diane said. In the conservati­ve Mennonite household she grew up in, love was not expressed — no hugs, no words of affirmatio­n. She felt further isolated by the death of her father when she was young and found that she clung to the relationsh­ip with Jim, craving the physical and emotional connection he provided.

Before him, she’d had sexual contact with one of her male relatives and a neighbor boy, she said.

“I think they had kind of conspired together that they were going to try out and get to know what sex is,” she said. “And invited [another girl] and I to engage with them in that, and our search for love was so deep and so intense, I don’t think we ever thought to say no.”

Jim, too, was involved with sexual acts growing up, he said. Once, when he was between the ages of 9 and 13, was with a male relative. Other times, he participat­ed in bestiality.

“I did not know what it looked like to have self-control over my sexuality,” he said.

In his conservati­ve Plain culture, sex and healthy sexual practices were never discussed, he said.

As a young boy, Jim used to look at the church’s directory, which listed the names of church members, and yearn for the time that his and his future wife’s names would be listed there, a long list of children underneath.

After he and Diane married, the list of names under theirs grew and grew.

“Eleven of the children conceived out of my own lust,” Jim said.

It was during Diane’s 11th pregnancy that everything began to change. She was depressed and sometimes suicidal, she said. She’d sit in church and wonder who Jim would marry after she was dead.

“What she didn’t know is that I was hurting as deeply,” Jim said. “We lived in our own house, divorced at heart, for 20 years, not knowing how to put this together. Had divorce been an option, we would have walked. But for her it was not, with the horse-and-buggy [culture], there was no way possible for her to get out, to get any help. That just doesn’t happen in that culture.”

And then one day, Diane spotted a book on an end table at a friend’s house. The volume had a dove on the cover, and in big letters said, “Counseling the Sexually Abused.”

Diane borrowed the book. She soaked it up.

“And for the first time, I went to Jim and I said I had been sexually violated as a child,” she said. “And so we began, for the first time in our life, we began to talk in an intimate way about what happened to us as children.”

After that, Diane went to a threeweek counseling program and began to understand the trauma of child sexual abuse. Jim went to a men’s group in which the leader challenged the husbands to go home

and pray for their wives every day for 30 days.

Beginning that night, they knelt beside their bed together, holding hands, and prayed. They never stopped, Jim said, even after the 30 days ended. They attended counseling. And then they realized their sexuality needed to change.

“One day he looks at me, and he says, ‘Why don’t you just get honest with the fact that I raped you?’” Diane said. “And you know, I think something in my heart changed that day with respect and honor for him that I had never felt before.”

“That was part of the healing process, to allow for me to give her space to say, ‘Hey, I did this to you. I take ownership of that,’” Jim said. Diane found her voice.

“[He] began to tell me, ‘You need a voice and you need a choice in this,’” she said. “And you can say, ‘No.’ You know, ‘Honey, if you don’t feel like having sex tonight, I can wait till tomorrow,’ or whatever. And it’s beautiful to have that voice and that choice. And I’m not sure how many women in that circle actually have that voice and that choice, because of what religion has taught them is right.”

As Jim and Diane began to reconcile in their marriage, Jim started asking broader questions about their Old Order Mennonite faith, first of his father, and then of elders in the church.

“I started to recognize that there is more lying on my shoulders than just following after what

the church tells you to do,” he said. “My whole life I have looked up to a denominati­on to raise my children.”

Jim and Diane began to push back against some parts of the Plain culture, particular­ly at school. At one point, they met with the school board about their children being bullied. Diane remembers telling the board that they should teach students about their own sexuality.

One board member responded, a blush of red creeping up his neck, that it should be a private conversati­on between parents and their children, Diane said.

The more she and Jim learned, the more questions they had, and the more feathers they ruffled in the community, they said. The Burkholder­s wanted to change the church and change the culture from within, but they slowly realized they couldn’t do it.

They began to talk about leaving the Plain world.

One Sunday in February 2016, Jim was one of the lead singers in church. He was given a song to sing, a farewell song in German. The moment felt right.

“On the carriage, we’re going home, I turned to my wife and said, ‘For some reason, there is something very deeply settled, today is the last day we’re going back,’” he said.

That was the last time he ever drove a buggy.

On a recent spring afternoon, the Burkholder­s’ older daughters flipped flour across the kitchen table and methodical­ly rolled out dough as they prepared dinner for a friend.

The younger kids dashed in and out, chattering. The boys aren’t in suspenders anymore. The girls sometimes wear pants instead of skirts. These days, they play around on cellphones, sing into microphone­s in the basement and tap away on an accordion.

“When we left the culture, we now took everything away from our children that they knew to be normal,” Diane said.

It was hard on the entire family. They lost friends, the close community of the church, and a way of life.

They also suffered financiall­y. Before they left their church, Jim had grown his agricultur­e constructi­on business, building silos for farms, to a three-crew operation with nine workers.

After the family left, his workers, all Plain men, quit one by one, Jim said. His Plain neighbors stopped coming to him for their needs too, instead funneling their business to a Plain competitor, he said.

“It has really tested my faith,” Jim said. They’ve heard through the grapevine that they’ve been labeled as blasphemer­s, as bitter, unforgivin­g people.

It’s been hard — but they’ve also found some freedom outside the church.

“My wife and I are walking right now in deeper intimacy than we have ever dreamt possible this side of heaven,” Jim said.

They’ve changed the way they raise their daughters, focusing on developing their talents and abilities instead of training them solely for life as married mothers. Jim and Diane have spoken at conference­s about sexual abuse among Plain People. They’ve gone to court hearings to support sexual abuse victims. They attend a nondenomin­ational church.

But they’re also dealing with deep pain within their family. In January, Jim and Diane learned of sexual abuse among their own family members.

Some of the abuse happened when the Burkholder­s were still in the Mennonite culture, and some happened after they left. The Post-Gazette is not identifyin­g the relatives involved in order to protect the identities of the victims.

When Jim and Diane found out about the abuse, they had to decide whether to contact law enforcemen­t or to keep it secret.

“We’re walking alongside victims of sexual abuse and we’re telling them to report,” Diane said. “And now we are faced with the very difficult question of what we do now. And I think Jim and I both knew instinctiv­ely that the right thing to do would be to report it.”

They took the cases to law enforcemen­t and cooperated fully with the legal system. It’s been excruciati­ng to watch their relatives go through the court system, they said. The process feels impersonal and harsh.

In Lancaster County, the Plain community has a board of elders that works closely with law enforcemen­t, child protective services and the district attorney’s office. The elders help facilitate the process and communicat­ion between Plain People and the court system.

The Burkholder­s, who left the church, have no such support, no inside connection.

“It just left us spinning,” Diane said of the court system.

But they’ve also seen a victim of abuse become empowered when she was believed, and they’ve watched her feel free of shame or guilt.

If she had to do it again, Diane would report the abuse again, she said, but she’d also be sure to have a defense attorney involved from the beginning.

“I feel in my heart we did the right thing,” she said. “We had the right intentions, we wanted this cleaned out of our family once and for all. What I do wish we would have had is for somebody to prepare us for what we were going to meet in the court.”

As their relatives go through the court system, the Burkholder­s are working hard to create a healthy environmen­t at home as they raise their younger children, nine of whom still live in the farmhouse.

She and Jim plan to keep on speaking about sexual abuse in the Mennonite and Amish communitie­s.

“I’m starting to grab a hold of the fact that ... the mountainto­p experience­s, that’s not really life,” Jim said. “It’s in the dark times that you actually grow.”

 ?? Stephanie Strasburg/Post-Gazette ?? Diane Burkholder, of East Earl, Lancaster County, sings during an Easter service April 21 with the Bethesda Christian Fellowship congregati­on at Hinkletown Mennonite School in Ephrata. The congregati­on welcomes those who have left the Plain churches. After leaving their life as horse-and-buggy Old Order Mennonites, the Burkholder­s are looking for a faith community where they fit in.
Stephanie Strasburg/Post-Gazette Diane Burkholder, of East Earl, Lancaster County, sings during an Easter service April 21 with the Bethesda Christian Fellowship congregati­on at Hinkletown Mennonite School in Ephrata. The congregati­on welcomes those who have left the Plain churches. After leaving their life as horse-and-buggy Old Order Mennonites, the Burkholder­s are looking for a faith community where they fit in.
 ??  ?? The Burkholder family joins hands in prayer before lunch after a Sunday church service April 21 at their home in East Earl, Lancaster County. “God is rewriting the lyrics of our song,” Jim Burkholder says. “It is changing. Because what the enemy meant for harm, God will use for good.”
The Burkholder family joins hands in prayer before lunch after a Sunday church service April 21 at their home in East Earl, Lancaster County. “God is rewriting the lyrics of our song,” Jim Burkholder says. “It is changing. Because what the enemy meant for harm, God will use for good.”
 ??  ?? Jim Burkholder and his son, Jeremy, 6, snuggle on the couch. “We started speaking out to the children that we love them,” says Jim’s wife, Diane, discussing their efforts to refocus energy on building loving relationsh­ips with their children after years of disconnect­ion.
Jim Burkholder and his son, Jeremy, 6, snuggle on the couch. “We started speaking out to the children that we love them,” says Jim’s wife, Diane, discussing their efforts to refocus energy on building loving relationsh­ips with their children after years of disconnect­ion.
 ??  ?? Family photos of Diane and Jim Burkholder in “You know,” Diane says, “I didn’t know that looking for was love.”
Family photos of Diane and Jim Burkholder in “You know,” Diane says, “I didn’t know that looking for was love.”
 ?? Stephanie Strasburg/Post-Gazette photos ??
Stephanie Strasburg/Post-Gazette photos
 ??  ?? Burkholder siblings, from left, Jeremy, 6; Joshua, 2; Bethany, 14; and Sheldon, 8, fawn over a new colt. Riding for pleasure is frowned upon in horse-and-buggy culture, especially for women. But the Burkholder­s are encouragin­g their daughters develop interests and talents outside the traditiona­l path of motherhood.
Burkholder siblings, from left, Jeremy, 6; Joshua, 2; Bethany, 14; and Sheldon, 8, fawn over a new colt. Riding for pleasure is frowned upon in horse-and-buggy culture, especially for women. But the Burkholder­s are encouragin­g their daughters develop interests and talents outside the traditiona­l path of motherhood.
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