"Am I therefore become your enemy,because I TELL YOU THE TRUTH...?"
(Galatians 4:16)

Abdalla: The Amish Threatened His Life

STEUBENVILLE -A police raid on an Amish community was criticized and defended Thursday as talks about the custody of two children continued.Jefferson County Sheriff Fred Abdalla maintains he was simply upholding the law and protecting himself and his staff when he led the raid last week, but community members and a local attorney representing the children’s mother claim the situation should have been handled differently.Abdalla and deputies in the county’s special response team went to the one-room schoolhouse near Bergholz on Sept. 14 to serve custody papers from juvenile court on Wilma Troyer. The papers ordered custody of two children of Wilma and Aiden Troyer to be given to Aiden Troyer. Wilma Troyer would not accept the papers and fled to a farmhouse before the incident ended with the children being turned over to the sheriff for the custody exchange.A hearing that had been scheduled for 9 a.m. Thursday in juvenile court in the county justice center was delayed while the Troyers and their attorneys tried to work out issues in the custody fight. As of noon, the hearing had not begun and negotiations were expected to continue into the afternoon. A few dozen members of the Amish community gathered in the justice center lobby awaiting developments from the closed courtroom.Outside those proceedings, lawyers for Wilma Troyer and Aiden Troyer aired opinions on the handling of the incident by Abdalla and his deputies.Attorney Bryan Felmet, representing Wilma Troyer, said, “There were a hundred other ways to handle this.” He said Abdalla could have contacted him and the papers and custody could have been handled more discreetly.Felmet issued a news release Tuesday stating the Amish community members were frightened by the presence of the SWAT team and its armed officers and truck. He said children have been having trouble sleeping and adults are jumpy when vehicles come down the road.“The sheriff and I have been talking today. We do not agree on a lot of things about the way this was handled by his office,” Felmet said during a break in negotiations.Attorney John Mascio, representing Aiden Troyer, who has taken the two children to be with family in an Amish community in Pennsylvania, said Abdalla’s response was proper given circumstances prior to the raid. The children are aged 21 months and 9 months, Abdalla said.“There were threats by her family against the sheriff’s life,” Mascio said. “There were 2 a.m. phone calls to the sheriff by her brother that are the subject of a case to be heard in Toronto county court in October.”Mascio and Felmet said if the case went before Magistrate Frank Noble on Thursday, the issue to be argued would have been whether Juvenile Judge Sam Kerr acted properly in issuing the custody order.“Courts do not sign orders telling law enforcement to pick up children unless a good reason is given for that to happen,” Mascio said. “The sheriff was simply enforcing the law.”Abdalla told reporters in the justice center lobby he is responsible for the safety of his men, carrying out the order and the safety of people in the community. He also said he had reason not to call Felmet.“Family of his client threatened to kill me, and I told him. (They) called me two more times threatening to kill me,” Abdalla said. “I had no reason to go to him after that.“He issued a two-page press release describing what happened,” Abdalla said of Felmet. “He wasn’t there. It is all based on hearsay.”In his release, Felmet indicated the schoolhouse where Wilma Troyer was teaching had been surrounded by armed officers. Abdalla has said only two members of the special response team got out of the truck at the schoolhouse. The team did surround the farmhouse where Wilma Troyer ran after refusing to accept the custody order. Abdalla said he did threaten to arrest anyone who interfered with him taking custody of the children under the court order.“I did not intend to scare anybody,” Abdalla told reporters.Abdalla said the children in the Amish community had been told the sheriff would shoot them or inject them with needles.“Anyone who knows me knows I will never hurt any child, whether they’re Amish or English,” Abdalla said. Mascio bristled as reporters asked questions about the handling of the case.“This is a child custody case,” he said. “I will not try it in the news media. I am not going to do it.”Wilma Troyer is the daughter of Samuel Mullet, the bishop of the Amish community that formed about 12 years ago in the rural County Road 53 area near Bergholz. Abdalla said he has received letters from around the country with some claiming the community is run like a cult. Several citizens of the area who aren’t Amish community members disputed that statement, saying the community follows typical Amish values, including privacy from interference by the outside world. Those citizens, who were waiting with the Amish group that gathered in the justice center lobby while negotiations continued, declined to be identified.Mullet declined to talk to reporters when asked if he had comment on the case or its handling.
PS:OF ALL the groups of people in the country they go to pick the AMISH as violent....!!!!!There are lots of God haters in the country....Amish are private,and when a SWAT Team goes to their places with guns and all that it's obvious that the children and everybody is gonna be scared.....
ABDALLA wouldn't say the same about a "muslim community" I bet you....Well his last name says it all.....!!!!!

As in the days of Noah...