STEUBENVILLE, Ohio - An elderly Amish man was attacked by his son, who a sheriff said cut the man’s hair and beard in the latest incident in a breakaway Amish community. The victim told the sheriff he was scared and upset but would not press charges.
“I’m frustrated with it. I’m upset with it. And, here again, the man doesn’t want to file charges because of his belief,’’ Jefferson County Sheriff Fred Abdalla said yesterday.
Abdalla warned the son in advance that he did not want trouble and parked nearby during the father-son reunion, the first in several years.
The sheriff said the man was attacked Wednesday while visiting his son in the breakaway Amish community that is home to five suspects charged in an earlier beard-cutting attack. Authorities in three other counties are investigating similar alleged attacks.
Such hair-cutting attacks are offensive to the Amish because they believe the Bible instructs women to let their hair grow long and men to grow beards and stop shaving once they marry.
The man went to his son’s home and the two talked. The man said his son then attacked him, with the help of the son’s children, Abdalla said.