The Bergholz Community, also known as the Bergholz Clan or Bergholz Amish, was founded by Samuel Mullet Sr. in Bergholz, Ohio, in 1995 with the aim of creating a more conservative Amish settlement than the one Mullet was previously affiliated with. In 1997, Mullet was ordained as a minister for the new settlement. Four years later, he was declared a bishop, but his ordination process was unusual, with just one other bishop present, deviating from the traditional requirement of at least three.
In early 2006, Mullet excommunicated the community’s deacon, and soon thereafter, nine families — one-third of the Community’s population — departed. Mullet subsequently declared them excommunicated. This action was particularly impactful due to the practice of “strict shunning” within many conservative Amish affiliations, which typically requires an excommunicated individual to confess their sins to their former bishop to rejoin another strict shunning community. Later that year, a group of Amish bishops expressed concern over the harshness of the excommunications and decided that the traditional shunning rule would not apply.
Amish community expert Donald A. Kraybill noted many differences between the Bergholz Community and other Old Order Amish groups, including the termination of Sunday worship services, rejection of nonviolence and forgiveness, and the use of the Old Testament as a primary source of authority. The Bergholz Community also rejected fellowship with other Amish affiliations, tolerated sexual misconduct, and permitted ordained officials to speak on television.
On the night of September 6, 2011, five brothers knocked on the door of their estranged parents’ home, along with their sister and their wives. The five men pulled their father out of bed, held him down in a chair, and cut off his hair and beard with a razor. The women then cut off the men’s mother’s hair. The group departed after about 20 minutes, taking the hair as a trophy.
Four more similar attacks took place within the Bergholz Community over the next two months. The victims were primarily Amish relatives of Bergholz members who had either left the community or openly opposed it. An Amish bishop who was not part of the Community but who had spoken out against it was also attacked. The attacks involved assailants forcibly entering homes and cutting the beards of men and, in some instances, the hair of women. For the Amish, hair holds significant religious symbolism and the attacks were seen as a deep spiritual violation.
Samuel Mullet’s wife Martha Mullet claimed that the beard-cutting attacks were not hate crimes but were instead in response to the police having taken two of the Mullets’ granddaughters out of the Community in 2009 and given them to their father, who she said had a history of sexual abuse. Martha Mullet did acknowledge that her husband had sexual relations with other women within the Community, but called this “intimate marriage counseling” with a spiritual aim. One of the Mullets’ grandsons would later claim that Samuel Mullet had a child with another member of the Community.
In September 2012, Mullet and 15 other members of the Bergholz Community were convicted on federal hate crime and conspiracy charges in one of the first such cases applied to offenses within the same religious community. Although Mullet did not directly participate in the attacks, he was tried as the leader of the campaign. On February 8, 2013, Mullet was initially sentenced to 15 years in prison, with the 15 other individuals receiving sentences ranging from one year and one day to seven years. These convictions were overturned by the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in August 2014, leading to reduced sentences in March 2015.
Mullet continued to lead the Bergholz Community from prison. In March 2020, he was moved to a halfway house and then to his own home under house arrest due to health concerns regarding COVID. His sentence ended on January 18, 2021, and he is believed to still be residing in Bergholz, Ohio.
Key Sources:
BBC News. (2012, January 11). Amish men plead “not guilty” to haircutting attacks.
Caniglia, J. (2014, August 28). Federal appeals court overturns Amish beard-cutting convictions, citing erroneous jury instructions. The Cleveland Plain Dealer.
Eckholm, E. (2012, September 21). Amish Sect Leader and Followers Guilty of Hate Crimes. The New York Times.
Frey, S. (2015, March 5). Sam Mullet resentenced to nearly 11 years in prison for Amish beard-cutting attacks. The Associated Press.
Kraybill, D. B. (2014). Renegade Amish: Beard Cutting, Hate Crimes, and the Trial of the Bergholz Barbers. Johns Hopkins University Press.
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