Leader of Religious Sect Ties Daughter to Bed for Ten Years

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26677, 24 January 1948, Page 7

Leader of Religious Sect Ties Daughter to Bed for Ten Years

Rec. 9 p.m. NEW YORK, Jan. 22. Seventy-five-year-old Bishop Samuel Hochstettler, of the Amish Church, admitted when arrested at Goshen (Indiana) to-day on an assault and battery charge that he had kept his 41-year-old daughter, Lucy, tied and chained in a squalid room for the last ten years because he thought she was insane. Neighbours said that Lucy had attempted in her teens to leave the Amish Church, which is a strict sect rejecting all modern conveniences and public institutions, declining to shave or cut the hair, and wearing hooks and eyes for clothes fasteners because buttons were deemed to be decorative. The sheriff said that when he went to the Bishop’s home, Hochstettler, who is the father of four daughters and two sons, led him to an unventilated and unlit room where he found Lucy chained to a bed. Bishop Hochstettler said she had been tied there for seven years and chained for the last three. Her wrists were grooved with the chains, her hair matted, and she stared vacantly. Neighbours said that Bishop Hochstettler confined her to her room when she wished to leave the church and then began the tying and chaining.