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

by Misty Griffin

A belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness. —Sir William Neil

People speak sometimes about the ‘bestial’ cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, as no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel. —Fyodor Dostoyevsky

To be given dominion over another is a hard thing; to wrest dominion over another is a wrong thing; to give dominion of yourself to another is a wicked thing. —Toni Morrison, A Mercy

Leaders who do not act dialogically, but insist on imposing their decisions, do not organize the people—they manipulate them. They do not liberate, nor are they liberated: they oppress. —Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

I felt a great heaviness for everyone who had been hushed and humiliated in the name of religion.

I was reprimanded and told not to write poetry that inspired people to stray with their thoughts

Indifference is more truly the opposite of love than hate is, for we can both love and hate the same person at the same time, but we cannot both love and be indifferent to the same person at the same time. —Peter Kreeft, Prayer for Beginners

There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor political, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right. —Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope:The Essential Writings and Speeches

I did not know why people think the Amish are such innocent and kindly people; I guess it is because they are a religious community steeped in secrecy. They only allow the Englisch to see what they want them to see, thus appearing to be quaint and innocent people from a different place in time.

I shook my head at the thought... a simpler time... why did people say that? The 1500s and 1600s were a time when people died from plagues and were tortured for their beliefs. There were few human rights; the Crusaders were slaughtering thousands in the name of God. Sure, there was no technology, but that did not mean there were any fewer psychopaths, murderers, and rapists than there were now. It is likely that people were even more likely to get away with these crimes then than they are now. And who better to know how to get away with these crimes than people that had remained practically unchanged for the past three hundred and fifty years?

Each time a person stands for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, they send a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance. —Robert F. Kennedy

In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations. —Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956

believe that bad people get away with heinous crimes because there are too many good people who look the other way.