Mullet had repeatedly called her into his bedroom for sex in , at one point sending his wife to fetch her. The testimony of the daughter-in-law, Nancy Mullet, provided some of the most dramatic moments yet in a trial filled with accounts of violent attacks and bitter feuds among the normally peaceful Amish. It also provided the strongest evidence yet of what prosecutors and his Amish critics describe as Mr. Mullet, nine other men and six women are charged with conspiracy and federal hate crimes in a series of assaults last fall in which members of the Bergholz community cut off the beards and hair of men and women they perceived as enemies.

He cited an article published in the Washington Post in , which reported a drug bust in a rural community, involving two young men. The other defendant was Abner King Stoltzfus, 23, who was of no relation. The sect, sometimes called the Pennsylvania Dutch, are a group of traditionalist Protestant church fellowships with Swiss origins. The Amish are a group of people who follow the teachings of Jacob Ammann, a 17th-century citizen of Switzerland. The Amish, most of whom live in the United States, follow simple customs and refuse to take oaths, vote, or perform military service.

The memories come to her in fragments. The bed creaking late at night after one of her brothers snuck into her room and pulled her to the edge of her mattress. Her underwear shoved to the side as his body hovered 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.