An Amish woman is accused of killing her 4-year-old son by throwing him into an Ohio lake as a test of her faith.

An Amish woman who told authorities she was testing her faith when she threw her 4-year-old son into an Ohio lake was charged Wednesday with two counts of aggravated murder in the boy’s death.

Authorities said Ruth R. Miller, 40, of Millersburg, Ohio, told investigators she believed she was acting at the direction of God when she allegedly killed her son Vincen at Atwood Lake early Saturday.

The lead investigator with the Tuscarawas County Sheriff’s Office, Capt. Adam Fisher, said Wednesday that Ruth Miller repeatedly said in interviews with police that she threw the boy off the dock and into the water to give him to God.

“It did not appear that the gravity of the situation had sunk in,” Fisher said.

The woman’s husband, Marcus J. Miller, 45, had apparently drowned while attempting to swim to an offshore sandbank hours earlier in another test of faith, Sheriff Orvis Campbell told reporters at a news conference Monday. Their other children, a 15-year-old girl and twin 18-year-old boys, were also directed to perform water-based trials of their belief but survived, Campbell said.

New Philadelphia Municipal Court online records indicate Ruth Miller was also charged with domestic violence and child endangerment regarding the older children. Authorities said Ruth Miller was receiving treatment at a secure mental health facility and had not been arrested by late Wednesday afternoon. A message seeking comment was left for her attorney, Scott Fromson.

    • pageflight@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      15 days ago

      Highly recommend Educated for a personal look into escaping religious cult/family life. (Which is to say, I agree.)

    • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
      212·
      15 days ago

      Well, could be symbiotic. They’re still ahead of the curve, so far. Based on the story, sounds like they have at least three children that are still alive, which even including the loss of the husband and younger son here, is overall still doing a better job of propagating one’s genes than the average in the country.

      kagis

      https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/usa/united-states/fertility-rate

      U.S. fertility rate for 2024 was 1.79, a 10.49% increase from 2023.

      So the overall average is about 1.8 kids per couple being born to a couple, and that family was at at least 4 to start with, as that’s how many children were mentioned in the story. So as long as at least two of the remaining at-least-3 kids survive, even in this particularly extreme family’s case, they’re still statistically above average in terms of religion’s impact on them.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amish

      The Amish are among the fastest-growing populations in the world, with an average of seven children per family in the 1970s and a total fertility rate of 5.3 in the 2010s. Due to this, their population doubles in size roughly every 20 years.