There are still some elements of Amish culture that appeal to Emma. Behind her house, there’s a small garden where she grows tomatoes, green beans, lettuce, eggplant, zucchini, cucumbers, and cabbage. She would love to live closer to her family so she could see her nieces and nephews grow up. But that’s not an option. The visits she’s paid to her family have so far been tense. When she returned home to visit six months after she left, her parents made it clear they saw a change in her. “You look like the world and you live like the world,” her father said, according to Emma’s memoir.307 When she returned another time, for her brother’s wedding, none of her former friends spoke to her. She felt awkward and left early.

When I arrived at her house, Emma led me into her darkened living room. The first time I met her, years before, she seemed nervous, but now she looked sad. She told me she’s had to work on her communication skills, on how to say things so that people hear her and understand her. Not just the words, but the meaning behind them.

She initially moved our interview because she had to go help her younger brother leave the Amish. It came as a surprise, as she didn’t expect any of her siblings to follow in her footsteps. She wanted to help him get his learner’s permit and buy some modern clothes that fit. She didn’t want it to be as terrifying for him as it was for her. She wanted to protect him, she said, from “bad people.”

Bad like the man who had raped her soon after her escape. And like another man who had assaulted her just a few months prior to our conversation.

Here’s how she described the more recent incident. She had been considering making a career change. She got connected with a man who said he might have a job for her, and he invited her to a business meeting in another city she asked me not to name.

They were out with a group, but the man kept trying to get her alone. After the group left, one by one, to return to their hotel rooms, the man told Emma to stay and drink with him. Before long, she says, he grabbed her hand, put it against his crotch, and said, “Do you want this?”

She decidedly did not want it, but he insisted on walking her back to her hotel. He insisted on stopping by her hotel room to use the restroom. There, she says, he threatened that if she didn’t stop saying “no,” he would force himself on her.