"Sixteen people were sentenced to prison today for hate crimes arising out of a series of religiously-motivated assaults on practitioners of the Amish religion, announced Thomas E. Perez, the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division
As a result of religious disputes with other members of the Ohio Amish community, the defendants planned and carried out a series of assaults on their perceived religious enemies. The assaults involved the use of hired drivers, either by the defendants or the alleged victims, because practitioners of the Amish religion do not operate motor vehicles. The assaults all entailed using scissors and battery-powered clippers to forcibly cut or shave the beard hair of the male victims and the head hair of the female victims, according to trial testimony. |