Amish Girls Abduction: Grateful Amish Community Builds Garage For Couple Who Rescued Girls
An abduction of two Amish girls ended this month when a couple rescued the two youngsters, and now the grateful Amish community in a small Upstate New York town plan to repay the good deed.
Jeffrey and Pamela Stinson heard a knock at their door earlier this month and found two girls, ages 7 and 12, standing there alone and afraid. The couple took in the girls, feeding them a watermelon from their garden, and ultimately driving the pair back to their home.
“We never gave it any thought about implications or dangers,” said Jeffrey Stinson. “We knew they had to get home.”
It turns out the two were the same Amish girls who were abducted days before, leading to a manhunt in the community on the Canadian border.
Now the Amish girls abduction has at least something of a happy ending, as the Amish community in St. Lawrence County has come together to repay the Stinsons. The couple had their garage burn down recently while they were on vacation to Maine, the result of a stray cat knocking over a battery jump-start box.
The Amish is now coming out to build the Stinson’s a new garage to replace the burned one, the Watertown Daily Times reported.
Police had already arrested two people in the Amish girls abduction, Nicole Vaisey, 25, and Stephen Howells Jr., 39, of nearby Hermon. Authorities said the couple used a dog to lure the girls away from a roadside stand they were tending to, bringing the pair back to their home where they were sexually abused.
A lawyer for Vaisey has tried to paint her as something of a victim in the case, saying she was involved in some kind of BDSM master/slave relationship and did not plan the abductions herself.
“I don’t think she had any control over what went on in the relationship,” said lawyer Bradford Riendeau. “That was the essential ground rule of it. He told her what to do.”
The pair have been charged with second-degree kidnapping and face up to 25 years in prison if convicted in the Amish girls kidnapping.
