When Misty was six years old, her family started to live and dress like the Amish. Misty and her sister were basically kept as slaves on a mountain ranch. They were subjected to almost complete isolation, sexual abuse and extreme physical violence. The two young girls were too terrified to escape. They also knew that no rescue would ever come because only a few people even knew they existed and they didn’t know them well enough to care, so they thought. Then as teenagers, they were adopted into Amish families and things seemed so much better at first but then went from bad to worse.

Misty escaped and is here to tell her story and so much more. She inspires us to stand up for and be committed to protect children from abuse.

You can listen to the full conversation by clicking ‘play’ below, or on the following podcast platforms:

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• Google Play
• Stitcher

The Secrets Inside an Amish Community:
One Woman’s Story of Survival

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The following is just a taste of Misty’s thoughts about child abuse and about her commitment to making this world a safer place for the vulnerable and defenseless.

Q: When your Amish abusers confessed, they were excommunicated for a short while and then they were forgiven. What does forgiveness mean to you?
Misty: I don’t think forced forgiveness is really forgiveness. I believe forgiveness is something that has to come from your heart. It has to be true and it has to be when you’re ready.

Q: Why have the Amish been romanticized a lot over time?
Misty: The Amish have been romanticized because people literally do not know anything about them. When you don’t know about something, you make up your own presumptions.

Q: Why didn’t you escape much sooner from your abusers when you had opportunities?
Misty: When talking about a child abuse victim, you have to think of it like a domestic violence situation: If victims of domestic violence aren’t sure they can get out of that situation, they’re not going to talk or even consider an escape.

Q: How has the abuse you suffered as a child influenced who you are today?
Misty: When I left the Amish, I told myself that, somehow, I was going to make a difference and put a stop to this abuse.

When I ask if there’s one last thing she’d like our listeners to hear, Misty says, “If you suspect child abuse, don’t look the other way. Don’t think somebody else is going to report it. Don’t just brush it off, because it could be a case like mine.”

Misty Griffin is the author of Tears of the Silenced: An Amish True Crime Memoir of Childhood Sexual Abuse, Brutal Betrayal, and Ultimate Survival, an inspirational story of surviving abuse and standing up for the abused.

About Misty Griffin
When Misty was six years old, her family started to live and dress like the Amish. Misty and her sister were basically kept as slaves on a mountain ranch. They were subjected to almost complete isolation, sexual abuse and extreme physical violence. The two young girls were too terrified to escape. They also knew that no rescue would ever come because only a few people even knew they existed and they didn’t know them well enough to care, so they thought. Then as teenagers, they were adopted into Amish families and things seemed so much better at first but then went from bad to worse. Misty escaped and is here to tell her story and so much more. She inspires us to stand up for and be committed to protect children from abuse.

Find Misty on Social Media:
Twitter: @ExAmish101

Misty’s Book:
Tears of the Silenced: An Amish True Crime Memoir of Childhood Sexual Abuse, Brutal Betrayal, and Ultimate Survival

Book Mentioned in the Interview:
Love Is Complicated: A True Story of Brokenness and Healing, by Marlena Fiol, now available for pre-order on Amazon.

About Marlena Fiol, PhD
Marlena Fiol, PhD, is a globally recognized author, scholar and speaker. She is a spiritual seeker whose work explores the depths of who we are and what’s possible in our lives. Her significant body of publications on the topic, coupled with her own raw identity-changing experiences, makes her uniquely qualified to write about personal transformational change. She is also a certified tai chi instructor and freelance writer whose most recent work has appeared in numerous literary magazines and newsletters.

You can find Marlena in the following places:
https://marlenafiol.com
Facebook
Twitter: @marlenafiol

Podcast Transcript
Below is a complete transcript of the podcast. I used a transcription service to create this, please note that there may be errors. For a 100% accurate quote of what was said, please listen to the podcast itself via the links above.

Interviewer: Today, my guest is Misty Griffin, author of “Tears of the Silenced: An Amish True Crime Memoir of Childhood Sexual Abuse, Brutal Betrayal, and Ultimate Survival.” Which was first self-published and then re-released just last year by Mango Publishing, which by the way is the fastest growing Indie Publisher in the U.S.

When Misty was six years old, her family started to live and dress like the Amish. Misty and her sister were basically kept as slaves on a mountain ranch. They were subjected to almost complete isolation, sexual abuse, and extreme physical violence. The two young girls were too terrified to escape. They also knew that no rescue would ever come because only a few people even knew they existed and they didn’t know them well enough to care, so they thought. Then as teenagers, they were adopted into Amish families and things seemed so much better at first but then went from bad to worse. And we’ll talk about that today.

The theme running through all of our episodes for this podcast season titled “Becoming Who You Truly Are,” is that going through adversity sometimes leads us to more fully understand who we are and also to know at a deeper level what’s possible for us. Misty’s incredible journey and ultimately her ability to pursue her dreams even in the face of adversity certainly fit this theme. Misty, welcome.

Misty: Hi. Thanks for having me.

Interviewer: Your book is about religion, child abuse, and sex. Wow. Those are three grabbers. I provided just a tiny sketch of your childhood. Can you please tell our listeners more about your experiences on the mountain and then with the Amish?

Misty: Yeah, sure. So, my story is a little bit I mean, it’s not your conventional, I grew up Amish story and I left, you know, like breaking Amish and all of those. Mine is a little bit different because I was actually not born Amish. When I was four years old, my mom met a gold miner in Northern Arizona. He was like, 27 years older than she was. And she was just young. She was in her early 20s. She had me and my sister and we started living with this gold miner who became my stepdad. And both my mom and he were extremely, extremely abusive. And when I was about six years old, my stepfather got this idea that we should start following the plain lifestyle.

Interviewer: Yeah. And for our listeners, plain lifestyle is the lifestyle of the Amish.

Misty: Yeah. It was sort of starting to be a trend in the late 80s, early 90s, there was this trend of getting back you know, to the land, going off the grid, those kinds of things. And I think we sort of got a little bit swept up into that. But one difference was that my stepfather was extremely antisocial. I mean, we didn’t join a community, we just literally lived by ourselves. So, when I was about six years old, we started wearing plain or not plain, but like long dresses with flowers, you know, like flower dresses, headscarves and then when I was about nine or 10, we started dressing on full Amish garb. Like, we ordered it online from a company that made clothes for the more liberal Amish but we ordered dresses, head coverings, aprons, you know, all of those things and we started dressing Amish.

At that time we were living in travel trailers. We were going to Washington State in the summer and Arizona in the winter. So, we’re just traveling back and forth. And you know, I didn’t know it at the time, I didn’t know it until long after I left the Amish that my stepfather was actually a wanted child molester. So, I think that explains a little bit of why he chose this lifestyle. Because, one thing that I saw that they would literally abuse me and my sister in front of people, and I saw the people’s faces were shocked, but they didn’t do anything. And I think that was partly because of how we were dressed. And I think because my stepfather was afraid of getting caught, afraid that me and my sister might talk to somebody, he knew that starting to dress this way, would put up just one more barrier between us and everybody else because, you know, they told us the rest of the world is evil. You don’t talk to police, you don’t talk…if anybody ever asks you a question, you tell them, “I’m not allowed to talk to strangers.” That’s what we were told. So, yeah. So, that started.

Interviewer: Yeah. And then you began to live with the Amish and that seemed really like a much better deal at first, right?

Misty: It did because…So, when I was 11 years old, we moved to this mountain in Northern Washington outside of a tiny, tiny town. Only 1,000 people in the town. So, we lived on that mountain until…I lived there until I was almost 19 years old. So, me and my sister, we were isolated up there. We were physically and sexually abused. We didn’t have any friends, you know, we were just literally kept on that mountain unless we had to come down and go into town with my mom and stepdad to, you know, sell eggs, sell, you know, crafts along the road or bring stuff back to the farm. I mean, that’s the only reason we were allowed off the mountain. So, when I was 18 and a half years old, I tried to escape and you know, I started running down off of the mountain, but we were six and a half miles out of town on a dirt road and, you know, the mountains were full of sagebrush. So, you know, it was gonna take me a long time to get into town. And my mom and my stepdad, they came after me, took me back to the farm. And a few months later I was taken to an Amish community.

Interviewer: And that felt a lot safer at first?

Misty: It did. I mean, over the summer, we visited this community a few times and my stepdad, you know, made this deal that I would go first since I was the oldest, I was almost 19 by that time. And I would go first, they would do like a trial run to see if I was obedient, you know, if I obeyed the rules, if I could fit in, if I could learn German, those kinds of things. So, after visiting for the summer, I was taken to the Amish community to live there. It was just a few days after 9/11. And I started this like trial period of, you know, because we had been sort of raised Amish, but unless you’re actually on the Amish church, you have no idea what it entails. Like there’s a rule for every single tiny aspect of your life, even the width of your apron. I mean, the hem on your apron, everything has a rule.

So, I had to learn all of these tiny rules. I had to learn how you’re supposed to behave and I had to start learning the language. You can’t get baptized into the church until you know the language unless you come back married to somebody that was Amish. So, I just like tried to learn all of that. And thankfully, I was a fast learner, but I mean, it was either do or die pretty much. So, that was my motivation. So, yeah, at first it seemed great. Like eight months later my sister came to live in the community and you know, after about six months of being in the Amish community, I started realizing that it wasn’t what it looked like from the outside.

Interviewer: So, tell us about some of those experiences that were not what you expected.

Misty: So, going into the Amish community, I knew because, I mean, we had sort of studied up our whole lives, you know, what it meant to be Amish. My stepdad had a lot of books on the Amish because we had to mimic them. I mean, that was our like facade. I mean, I don’t know how my stepdad got away with it for so long, you know, without somebody calling child protective services because we were just this one Amish family living all by ourselves. I mean, I found out later that a lot of people knew something was wrong. They just didn’t do anything. But once I got into the Amish, I was shocked by the amount of rules.

I knew there was going to be a lot of rules I had to learn, but I had no idea the amount of rules that I had to learn. And I started realizing that after my…shortly before my sister came to the community, I told some people a little bit about what had happened in my childhood and I was expecting this like shocked expression, “Oh my goodness, we have to do something.” You know, that kind of reaction because my sister was still there, my grandmother was there, and my mentally challenged aunt was still at the farm and they were all being abused. So, you know, I was getting into what I thought was this real you know, very Christian group. That’s what I thought.
And I thought they would just speak outraged at the thought of somebody being abused. And the reaction I received was sort of like, “So what?” That’s kind of the…and that was my first feeling that something was really wrong. My first real acknowledge that I acknowledged to myself because before that I had this like heavy feeling, but I didn’t know what it was. But that was like the first acknowledgment to myself that something’s not quite right here. And so, I had to literally plead with the church to let me call the police on my mom and stepdad to try and get my aunt and grandmother out of that situation. And the church was divided on it.

The bishop said I could, but just because I wasn’t a church member yet and just because they were not Amish, that was the parameters I was given. If they had been Amish and I had been a church member, I would not have been allowed to call the police. So, I mean, I did call the police you know, they dragged their feet. They did not want to get involved because, you know, it looked like two Amish families feuding. They would not investigate the abuse. So, that left me really a little bit perplexed at why this Amish community was not worried about these people that were being abused. My sister backed up my story. I mean, they knew we were telling the truth but they did not want to get involved. So, after that, I don’t know why, but some people started confiding in me about being sexually abused and that really, really alarmed me.

I learned about a 14-year-old girl in our community who had been sexually abused. And I started hearing jokes from the men because I knew the language by this time. They talked about it quite a bit, this case, and they said that this girl had been molested because she was too friendly. And the guy that molested her was in his early 50s and she was 14. And one thing that I found very alarming was that when a girl in a strict church like the Amish, the Mennonites, those kinds of things, when they are sexually abused, they have to find a reason. And the reason cannot be like a lot of churches will try to claim, you know, she wasn’t dressed right you know, she went to a party, you know, she did all of these things she wasn’t supposed to do.

And the Amish and Mennonites and other very strict churches, you can’t say that. You cannot say that she was not dressed right. Because you know, in the Amish you’re literally dressed from head to foot. I mean we had collars on our dresses, our dress was only six inches from the floor. We had long sleeves. So, I mean there was nothing you could say about the dress that would make it her fault. And so, the only thing they could come up with was that this girl, before she was molested, she was very friendly, outgoing girl. And that was the reason she was sexually abused. And you know, I found that and I heard them laughing about it. It was just really horrifying to me because this girl was my friend. And after that, the bishop’s wife, she confided in me that she had been sexually abused by her father, who was the deacon and all of her sisters had been abused. And her mother and all of her siblings had been abused by their father. So, I was just finding out this…

Interviewer: Pattern.

Misty: …pattern. And then I was like, “Why has nobody gone to the police? Why has nobody done anything about this?” And the bishop’s wife told me, she was like, “We can’t. We don’t go to the police. That’s not our way. We’re not allowed to go to the police. If you have a grievance against somebody, then you have to report them to the church.” And she said that her mother reported their father to the church five times, each time he was excommunicated for six weeks, approximately six weeks, and then he was taken back into the church. And among the Amish and all of the anti-baptist churches, when somebody is excommunicated and then taken back into the church, after they’re taken back into the church, everybody in the church must fully forgive them. And forgiveness means never mentioning their sin again. So, once they’re taken back into the church, you cannot mention that this, you know, this deacon he molested three of his daughters. You can’t talk, you’re not allowed to talk about it. And the bishop’s wife actually by telling me was breaking church rule, she could have been shunned for telling me that.

So, I was very sad about this because, you know, I could see that the shunning obviously didn’t work. And I mean, it really weighed heavy on me because, you know, I had been a victim of sexual abuse almost my entire life. And then, I had this thought in my head like, you know, I’m sitting in church and one of these guys comes to confess. I know he’s gonna do it again and I just had this feeling that I am sort of a participant, you know, I’m an accessory to a crime. That’s what I felt like.

You know, and then I imagined myself being 50 years old, you know, hearing all of these cases and not having done anything about them, you know, for me, it made me feel really guilty by being Amish. Being Amish sort of made me feel guilty because I felt I was an accessory to crime. I really felt that. And then, so I didn’t know it at that time, but in my community, the bishop was actually molesting his children. The bishop’s wife was molesting his children. I didn’t know it until that time, at that time. And there was also another guy in my community molesting his children. So, right at that time when I was in this community, there was known child molesters and the church knew and they weren’t doing anything about it. So, about three years after coming to live with the Amish, I ended up moving in with the bishop and his wife, they had seven children and I moved in with them to be their maid.

The family that I was assigned to had a lot of marital problems and the wife was very pretty severely emotionally abused by her husband. Very, very bad. I mean, he made her feel terrible all the time. So, and in return she took it out on me, she made me feel terrible all the time. So, eventually, I could not take it anymore. And the bishop’s wife invited me to live with them to be their maid because she had seizures a lot, so she really needed help with their seven children. They were ages 12 to baby. So, I moved in with them. Right before…So they lived like one field away from us and I just got really upset one morning, and I told the family I was living with that I was leaving and I was moving in with the bishop because I could no longer, you know, be a part of this marital fight that they were always dragging me into.

So, I said, I’m leaving. I picked up my dresses out of the closet and I was literally walking across the field with them, you know, I didn’t have very many belongings. I just had my dresses and you know, a few other clothes and a hope chest. So, I was just going to carry everything over to the bishop’s house. And when I was leaving with my arm full of dresses out of the house that I was living in at that time, my Amish father, the one that was assigned to me, he stopped me at the door and he said, “You can’t move in with the bishop.” He said, “He’s a very bad man. You can’t move in with him.” And I was just looking at this guy and you know, in my mind, he wasn’t a great guy because of how he treated his wife. So, in my mind, I was thinking, “Well, so are you.” You know, what’s the difference? And I later learned that he was trying to tell me that the bishop was a child molester, but he couldn’t because of the rule that after somebody’s forgiven you can’t talk about their sin again. So, that was his only…

Interviewer: Right.

Misty: He thought it was his only way to warn me and I mean, it didn’t stop me. So, I moved in there.

Interviewer: And in fact, you were abused.

Misty: Yes. The very first week he started abusing me.

Interviewer: Misty, I feel like forgiveness is a theme that lurks just underneath the surface of your book. And you just told us that when Amish abusers confessed, they are excommunicated for a short while and then they are forgiven. Today, what does forgiveness mean to you?

Misty: Well, I don’t think forced forgiveness is really forgiveness. I believe forgiveness is something that has to come from your heart. It has to be true and it has to be when you’re ready. You know, excommunicating somebody for six weeks and then saying, “Okay, everybody, you forgive him.” And them saying, “Yes, I forgive him.” Does not mean they’ve really forgiven him. In most cases, I think that it actually stokes resentment because, you know, like in this case, among the Amish, he’s found out for a crime, he’s excommunicated for six weeks, but nobody comes to the victim and ask the victim, “Are you okay?” You know, “I’m here to talk, if you need to talk. Do you need a hug?” I mean, nobody does anything. It’s all about the perpetrator. Okay. You committed a sin of the flesh, we’re going to excommunicate you. And most times the victims are sitting right there in church and they’re watching this happen.

And you know, they have this feeling, but what, you know, “What about me? Nobody cares about me.” And I mean, it just…and especially in the case of like the bishop, he was excommunicated and then his daughters had to sit there on the bench and hear him preach for the next, you know, three years while I was there. I mean, he got up, he’s the one that went and chastised other people for, you know, having their dress too short, wearing the wrong color. I mean, it stokes a lot of resentment.

So, forgiveness for me, I think forgiveness is actually for the person that’s doing the forgiving, you know, it’s saying to the, you know, telling the person that’s harmed you, “I’m no longer going to let you control me by…”

Interviewer: It’s freeing.

Misty: “…harboring this hate for you or this grudge or resentment,” whatever it is. And you can’t tell somebody just to forgive. It doesn’t work that way, I don’t think.

Interviewer: Yeah. It’s actually a freeing, an act of becoming free as the person who is forgiving. So, Misty, the theme of this podcast season is that suffering sometimes allows us to grow into our true selves, which without that pain, sometimes we may not have done this. My own story in the book, soon to be released is also one of abuse and rejection and ultimately reconciliation. Mine was within a Mennonite community. I would never wish this kind of suffering on any child, but in retrospect, it really did teach me things about myself I probably wouldn’t otherwise have learned. So, my question to you is this, did your suffering as a child influence how you understand yourself today? And if so, how?

Misty: Well, I mean, the only thing I can remember is suffering. So, I don’t know what I was like before it, because it started when I was four. So, you know, as far back as I can remember you know, my stepdad started molesting me when I was four. You know, my mom and my stepdad were extremely abusive, so I don’t remember really a life before that. You know, just tiny snippets of being with my dad that were nice. But I think, I would definitely not be the person I am today if I had not gone through that. I think my wanting to help others, and reaching out and trying to help others, and writing the book, and all of these things, of course, is because of what I went through. And because of that, you know, I’ve been involved in some real-life child abuse cases that I’ve helped bring to justice behind the scenes by people reaching out to me, asking me for help. And I’ve been able to get them in contact with people, point them in the right direction, that kind of thing.

And, my decision to leave the Amish was actually because of what I had been through. You know, I had been through sexual abuse, now I was sexually abused by the bishop and I believed at that time that he was molesting his daughters, which came out to be true. And I told myself when I was a child, I wished, I hoped and dreamed someday somebody would rescue me but nobody did. And I told myself I could not be that person. I could not be the person that does not rescue these children that just stands by and lets this happen. And that’s why I left.

Interviewer: Which was a very positive outcome of your suffering. Yeah. As you know, Misty, the Amish have been romanticized a lot over time. Having been raised a Mennonite, I’ve found that often people confuse the two. How are the Amish different from the Mennonites in your view?

Misty: So, I think in order to really understand that people need…One thing that people in modern age, they have no idea about the history of the Amish and the Mennonites. And the Amish had been romanticized because people literally do not know anything about them. That’s the reason. When you don’t know about something, you make up your own presumptions, your own thoughts. And because the Amish are so closed, these abuse cases, they don’t come out. They’re not talked about. So, people assume…like you hear people say, “There’s no crime among the Amish.” On planet earth that does not exist. There is no group of people I don’t believe that there is no crime amongst them.

So, the main difference between the Mennonites and the Amish is that when the Mennonites and the Amish started, Jacob Ammann pulled away from the Mennonite church and Jacob Ammann was not known to be a nice guy. He isolated his followers. He excommunicated so many people among the Mennonites. I mean, he caused a lot of heartaches. And somehow he drilled into his followers, the Amish, that they literally had to stay Amish forever or they would go to hell. I mean, he drilled it into them so much. If you look at it, this started in the 1600s and today, in 2019, we have the Amish that are so strict. How, I mean, how did that happen?

Interviewer: Yeah. And in fact, that just for our listeners, this happened, they pulled away from the Mennonites because they were concerned that the church was conforming too much to the world. Yeah, very much like you just said. So, you write that Brian, your stepfather, would lecture you on why the Mennonites were going to hell because they wore flowers on their dresses. Was that the main reason they were going to hell?

Misty: Well, so he did that. So, Brian did this because we had a Mennonite community that was 60 miles away from us. If you went into town, this next town was 60 miles away and they had a Mennonite community. And this Mennonite community kept trying to connect with us, kept inviting, you know, me and my sister to come to their youth group, you know, volleyball, that kind of stuff. And my stepdad, he kept telling me and my sister how evil they were because he didn’t want us to connect with them. He kept pushing them away. I mean, like once a year we had to go to some of their functions just so they would because, you know, so they would stop bothering us and that kind of thing. I think my stepdad was really afraid that eventually, the Mennonites were going to say, “Something’s really wrong here. You know, we need to do something about this for these girls.” So, I think that was just to scare us away from them pretty much.

Interviewer: Yeah. You shared with us a few moments ago, Misty that you, you did try once to escape the mountain and that your stepdad and mom came after you. But you also have written that you’ve, in looking back, you asked yourself numerous times why you didn’t try more often to escape when you had chances, like when your parents were, I believe they were in Florida, getting your grandmother. Can you share with our listeners why you didn’t escape or try more often to escape when you had the chance to do so?

Misty: So, this is something that…so, I have a lot of people contacting me that want to help child abuse victims and they’re like, “How do I get the child to talk to me?” You know, “How do I get them to confess?” And this is a very important part, you know, if you are out there and you suspect child abuse you have to know that…So, from my experience, as a child ever since I can remember when I was four years old, my mom and my stepdad, they played this game with me and my sister. We were not allowed to talk to each other. We were not allowed to talk period without raising our hands. So, they would leave us in the back of the truck. They would like go into the store and then me and my sister like, “Oh, they’re gone.”

And then we would like start talking and then five minutes later we see them looking in the window of the truck. So, they weren’t really gone. They were sneaking up on us to see if we are talking. They did this my entire life until I escaped. We would think they would be gone and maybe we would sit down and start reading or you know, start talking to each other and all of a sudden they were standing behind us. So, I mean, they did this maybe once a month, once every two months. You know, most of the time they were gone, but they would just do this to let us know that we never knew if they were really gone or not. And I remember when they were gone to Florida, me and my sister were like, we would start talking like, “Are we sure they’re really in Florida? Are they in Florida? Do we know they’re in Florida?” And we didn’t. We’d never knew if they were watching us or if they were really gone. So, that’s one reason that we didn’t escape.

Another reason we didn’t escape is because we honestly believed we had to dress Amish. I remember me and my sister discussing, you know, running away and we’re like, we have to take lots of dresses with us. So, we have clothes because we can’t wear worldly clothes and I mean, we were wondering how do we live with worldly people? Where are we going to live? I mean, we can’t be worldly. That’s what we…and it was just this whole brainwashing we had going on. And another reason, we didn’t tell…so, when we came in contact with people a couple times, I almost had the urge to tell somebody that we needed help.

My stepdad’s sister came to visit a few times and so many times I was just on the verge of asking her, please help us take us with you. But I didn’t because I stopped myself right before I started to do that because I was afraid. So, I tell her I need help, I have no guarantee that she’s going to take us out of the situation immediately. She’s probably gonna go confront my stepdad, they’re going to get in a fight, he’s going to chase them off, and we’re still gonna be there in that house. And we could disappear. I mean, after that. So, the thing is, when you’re trying to connect with a child that you think is, you know, a child abuse victim, you have to think of it like a domestic violence situation. Just like with a domestic violence victim, if they’re not sure they can get out of that situation, they’re not gonna talk.

Interviewer: Yeah. You’re probably aware of the work of psychologist Martin Seligman, who wrote about learned helplessness. And learned helplessness is the behavior of people who have experienced repeated negative stimuli and that are completely out of their control. And so, they in a way become conditioned to feeling helpless in the face of suffering. So, your inability to escape is actually very normal for people experiencing repeated abuse that’s beyond their control. So, Misty, what factors would you say were most influential in allowing you to move beyond learned helplessness to taking control of your life?

Misty: You know, I really don’t know. I mean, so many people have asked me that question, “Why were you the person to leave? Why were you the person to always stand up for everybody?” I mean, honestly, I don’t know. Guessing I was born that way. Ever since I was a small child, I was very different from everyone around me. I mean, my mom, my stepdad, my sister, the Amish. I loved animals and animal abuse just made me burst into tears. And that’s something I witnessed a lot from my mom, my stepdad, my sister, you know, the Amish. So, I was just a little bit different. I guess I was softer hearted, you would say. From a small age, you know, my mom and my stepdad made fun of me for over and over and over. You know, I got in trouble for it actually. But it’s just something that I couldn’t get over, you know, I couldn’t stop doing it.

So, I just always had this want to not see anybody suffer, you know, that’s something I just could not stand. And I think when I left the Amish, there was just this something inside me. I told myself somehow, someway I’m going to make a difference and I’m going to put a stop to this. And I think that’s what helped me get over it, is that I was looking for a way to fix it. You know, I wasn’t just going to sit and then feel sorry for myself. And I knew that wasn’t gonna do any good because, you know, there was another girl out there just like me going through the same thing. And if I could raise awareness somehow you know, that made me feel good, you know, made me feel like I’m making a difference. So, I think that’s probably one of the main factors that helped me get over it.

Interviewer: Misty, you were baptized into the Amish church when you already knew or at least suspected that church leaders were molesting defenseless children. So, I’m sure our listeners will want to know, were you a true believer when you were baptized?

Misty: So, yeah. That was a hard week. The week before my baptism, I was just…I remember, I was so anxious, I was just sweating a lot. And the morning before my baptism, we were running around the house because I could not find my head covering, you know, for baptism among the Amish, you get a new black head-covering. I couldn’t find it and I didn’t know where I put it. And I was getting yelled at by my Amish mom. My Amish dad was like, “We have to go.” It was just a…it was a nightmare day. It was a horrible day. I finally found it. I don’t know, I had a little bit of a problem with sleepwalking at that time. I would get up and take books off the shelves and put them in bed with me. And it looks like that I’d got up the night before I’d taken the head covering and I’d put it behind my dresser, so weird, but I have no memory of it. But anyways, we found it. And when you know, when it came my turn to get baptized, I remember I was just shaking and I was crying. And people thought, you know, these are tears of joy, but they were tears of fear.

Interviewer: Maybe confusion. Yeah.

Misty: Fear, confusion and you know, I wouldn’t say I was a true believer, but I did believe that if I ever left the Amish, I would go to hell. And that’s the only reason I did it. I don’t know how I mean, now it seems very like strange. How could you be that brainwash? But I was. I believed what the Amish church was doing was wrong, I sincerely believe that. I knew that my voice would mean nothing, if I said anything, nobody would listen. I mean, it wouldn’t do me any good to say a word about it. So, I believed I had to join the Amish in order to go to heaven and that’s why I was baptized.

Interviewer: Yeah. Yeah. Part of the brainwashing that you talked about earlier. So, you have gone back to visit your childhood home on the mountain and you write in your book, “No matter how bad home was, it was still home and home is something that will always be a part of you. Something that helps define your life.” So, I guess despite the awfulness of home, it’s a part of us we carry with us forever, isn’t it?

Misty: Yes. Yes. You know, I find myself, of course, cooking things I cooked when I was a kid. And those are the things that I like, you know, I grew up, my mom was from the south, so she, she liked southern foods. So, I still find myself, you know, cooking that and going to it when I’m stressed, when I’m tired, you know, that’s what I want to eat. You know, I remember that time that I went back, you know, I remembered walking through the gate, you know, I remember the flowers on the spring, all of my animal friends, you know, some fun times that me and my sister did have when, you know, they were gone and we didn’t get caught, you know, talking to each other. You know, those things.

Interviewer: So, do you have any connections today with any of your family?

Misty: Only my sister. I have no connections whatsoever with my mom and stepdad. My sister, I hear from her a couple of times a year. She’s married, she’s Amish, she has three children. But you know, they’re just basic letters she sends out to everybody pretty much.

Interviewer: Misty, if there were one last thing you’d like our listeners to hear, what would it be?

Misty: So, probably the most important thing for listeners out there is if you suspect child abuse don’t look the other way. Don’t, you know, don’t think somebody else is going to report it. Don’t just brush it off, you know, it’s probably nothing, because it could be a case like mine. I found out after I wrote the book, you know, just like a year and a half ago people from the town, the tiny town that was below the mountain that I grew up on, they actually read the book. There’s probably seven people from that town that somehow got ahold of my book. And they read it and they recognize the story and they emailed to me. And two of them were Mennonites. And I found out that the people in the town were all talking about us actually. Everybody knew that me and my sister were being abused up there.

They knew something was very wrong. One of the Mennonite lady, she went to her church minister when I was 16 and she told the minister they need to call CPS because her husband had actually witnessed my stepdad beating me behind the house. We didn’t know he had seen it. So, they said we need to call CPS and the Mennonite minister said, “No, don’t get involved in this.” So, it’s not that people didn’t know that I was being abused as a kid, a lot of them told me, they said, “We just didn’t know what to do about it.” And I would encourage anybody who suspects child abuse to call the National Child Abuse hotline and don’t just call and talk to the person, you need to…if you really suspect child abuse, you need to follow-up on the case and keep following up on it until something is done until somebody is sent out, until you know the child is safe.

Because I mean, it could very well be a case like mine. There was the case here in California, 20 miles from where I live now about the Turpin family, I think it was 12 children. They were chaining in their house. They were living in a cul-de-sac and you know, nothing was done until one of the children escaped and called the police. And after the, you know, after the case came out in the news, neighbors said, “Oh, we knew something was off. We knew something was wrong.” Lots of neighbors from where they’d even lived before said this. And you know, but it just kept happening because nobody did anything. You know you don’t want to be the person that didn’t do something.

Interviewer: Yeah. Thank you for giving us all that challenge and unfortunately, we’re out of time. Misty, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me.

Misty: Thank you for having me.

Interviewer: I’ve been speaking with Misty Griffin, Author of “Tears of the Silenced: An Amish True Crime Memoir of Childhood Sexual Abuse, Brutal Betrayal, and Ultimate Survival.” Details about how to contact Misty and where to purchase the book and by the way, possibly a movie, there’s a possibility out there can be found on the show notes. And thank you, our listeners for joining us today.

Please consider sharing this interview if you know someone interested in learning more about making this world a safer place for the vulnerable and defenseless. We are together on this journey.