Is this Normal for the Amish?
A Pennsylvania judge has sentenced a married couple to up to seven years in prison after they ‘gifted’ their oldest daughter to a cult-like figure who sexually assaulted the girl and her five sisters.
Daniel and Savilla Stoltzfus were sentenced Wednesday by Judge Jeffrey L. Finley to serve a minimum of three and a half years up to 7 years in prison on child endangerment charges.
Daniel, 44, pleaded no contest to the charges in April, but his 43-year-old wife had entered a guilty plea. The couple gave their children to 52-year-old Lee Donald Kaplan because he helped them out of financial trouble when they broke with their Amish faith.
Two of the Stoltzfus’s daughters attended their sentencing on Wednesday along with an older brother who led a delegation of 26 Amish adults and two infants into the courtroom, Philly.com reported.
Prior to their sentencing, one of the couple’s daughters reportedly asked Finley to consider the childrens’ love for their parents.
But the judge slammed the couple saying that he allowed his daughter to become ‘sex slaves’ and exposed them to trauma.
‘You continued letting your children crawl into the bed of that man when you knew what was going on,’ Finley told Savilla.
Daniel said, ‘I regret having to put my children through what they’ve been through this past year and wish to reunite with my children.’
Savilla told the judge that she felt ‘very very lost’ when they met Kaplan.
‘Forgive me for the fact that I put my children at risk,’ she said.
The girls’ mother has said she knew about the sexual activity between the man and her daughters but believed ‘it could be a good thing.’
Kaplan twice impregnated one of the girls. He has been convicted of several child rape charges in the case and will be sentenced to prison in September.
His victims range in age from 9 to 19. The youngest victim said she was 7 the first time Kaplan had sex with her.
Police found the family, including the couple’s nine daughters and two grandchildren, living with Kaplan when a neighbor’s tip led them to search his Philadelphia-area home in June 2016.
Neighbors have described the couple as caring and hard-working until a 14-month-old son was killed in a farm accident in 2001.
The couple later broke from their Amish church as they became closer with Kaplan, who appeared to have a cult-like influence over them, they said.
The break led to financial problems when an Amish bank revoked the family’s $300,000 business loan, they said.