Amish children knew their killer(lollipops,stories of the "outside world")

[rainbow4321]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2393640_1,...


THERE were no children to greet Charles Roberts the last time he collected milk from the Fisher family farm near the Pennsylvania town of Paradise. It was in the early hours of last Monday and the excited young Amish girls who often ran out to greet his arrival were inside asleep.

As a tanker driver for a Lancaster County dairy, Roberts was well known to farmers as one of the few “Englishers” — the Amish term for outsiders — who were allowed to pay regular visits to the community’s old-fashioned farms.

On his daytime rounds he was routinely besieged by inquisitive children who clamoured for lollipops and stories about an outside world that was rarely mentioned by their stern and protective parents

“The milkman was our contact with the outside world,” said Ruth Garrett, who grew up in an Amish family before being expelled when she fell in love with an outsider. “He and the (animal) feed man were the people who would come to the farm and the kids would chase them around and you could sit down and ask them what the world outside was like. We were shielded from everything as Amish kids . . . what we knew we learned from the milkman.”

[TomInTib]

1. Oh God, this just compounds the tragedy of this awful thing.

I almost wish that I had not read this.

Those poor children.
Someone that they knew.
Killed them.
Killed their friends.

Sleep, if it comes at all to me tonight, will come with much difficulty.

Those poor children.

[rainbow4321]

3. Sadder yet...the families may not even have any pics of the children

From what I just read in People mag about the tragedy, certain branches of Amish don't believe in taking pictures of individuals as it "brings attention to one's self". They allow pics of farm animals but not of anyone "in the community".
If this is true about these victims' families, they may not even have pics of the girls to look at for comfort as non-Amish/rest of us would have after a loved one's death. Explains why no pics of the girls have been in the news as we have seen with victims of other school shootings.
The pics of the surviving kids and adults/community that we have seen in magazines and newspapers over the past week are most likely the first time any of them have had their pictures taken..the People mag cover has a touching (close up) picture of 2 Amish women walking thru a field, returning from comforting victims' families.

[mcscajun]

2. There will be no answers...

When police revealed Roberts’s relatives were “absolutely sure” they had not been molested by him, Miller, the police commander, said his team would “try to determine what other motive there may have been”.

But other experts said there was little likelihood police would mount an aggressive effort to interview Amish parents about whether their daughters knew Roberts and how he may have behaved towards them.

The murderer is dead and there is no criminal case to prepare. Pennsylvania is immensely protective of the Amish — not least because of the tourism revenues they generate — and is unlikely to countenance further intrusion into a grieving community. It rained heavily in Nickel Mines on Friday. Outside the home of one of the murdered girls, a dozen black buggies were drawn up, signalling that the Amish community was looking after its own. “There is rarely a real inquiry into the motivation of the worst mass shooters,” said Kristin Rand of the Violence Policy Center, which lobbies for gun control. “It is not really a law enforcement function and I doubt we are going to see a proper psychological evaluation.” She paused. “That may be why these things keep happening.”