Why Did an Ex-Amish Family Sell Their 14-Year-Old Daughter?
Last Thursday, officers from the Lower Southampton Police Department in Bucks County, Penn., were called to do a welfare check on a home on Old Street Road in the working-class township of Feasterville, less than 20 miles north of Philadelphia. Child services had received a tip from a neighbor who said she was concerned about the health and safety of the children she’d seen on the property.
The owner of that property, 51-year-old Lee Kaplan, had told neighbors he was childless – but lately they’d had reason to question that. Most of the time, the property was quiet, the yard unkempt and the weeds growing high and wild. The house’s windows were boarded up, shutting out the sun and any prying eyes. But every so often they’d see the girls. They all wore blue dresses and had fearful expressions, and there were at least seven or eight of them. People in town could tell something was wrong. The employees of the local hot dog shop, where he would sometimes take a few for a snack, got to calling them his “wives.” Early last week, a neighbor decided to act on her instincts after she realized an infant had joined the mysterious group of girls living next door.
Sure enough, police discovered twelve girls living inside the home, all between the ages of six months and 18 years. As they conducted their search, they “kept finding the children,” as one officer put it, hiding in various places throughout the house, including in a chicken coop and a basement filled with school materials, musical instruments, and an expansive train collection.
According to the criminal complaint, Kaplan informed the officers that he had sired the two youngest girls – ages six months and three years – with the eldest girl, 18, who he considered his wife. They quickly found the parents, Daniel and Savilla Stoltzfus, who admitted to giving her to Kaplan four years ago as a thank you for helping them out of some financial trouble.
But beyond essentially selling a 14-year-old girl to a man more than 30 years her senior, investigators have been trying to figure out why they gave him the other 9 children – whom they say are also theirs. Mounting evidence shows that Kaplan had some sort of cult-like grip on the entire Stoltzfus family. Bucks County District Attorney David Heckler has said said the Stoltzfuses have been “brainwashed,” noting that the 12 girls have had nothing but nice things to say about Kaplan. Even a 19-year-old Stoltzfus son told PennLive that he “stood behind” his parents and believed Kaplan to be a good man.
And according to the latest reports, it looks like Kaplan did his best to take care of the children. He seems to have home-schooled them, and kept up the house. “For as many people that were in that house, it wasn’t terrible,” one investigator told Philly.com, adding that the 18 year old also considers Kaplan to be her husband. “She loved him and still does,” he said.