Breaking Amish: Family Did NOT Shun The Cast; Is TLC Buying People’s Silence?
September 26, 2012 by Hollywoodite
Breaking Amish isn’t even on its fourth episode and it has already been exposed as a complete sham.
Many reality shows are contrived, produced, edited, staged, maybe literally scripted to varying degrees. However, it would appear the entire premise for this show is fraudulent.
TLC’s original synopsis for this show claimed the cast were leaving for the “first time.” However, called out for that lie after it was discovered some had lived outside of their faiths as far back as 14-years-ago, TLC revised its synopsis to remove the “first time” claims. But that doesn’t really change anything. It’s still a show on which the only verifiable facts are the cast’s names and religious backgrounds. Aside from that, the cast’s whole purported back-stories are fake.
Two cast members have a kid together while pretending to only know each other from church on the show, one of the cast got married in 2009 but never mentions her wedding day on the show, another is a divorced father-of-three who left the Amish over a decade ago (he also pretends he cannot drive when he’s owned several cars before), and another cast member was busted for public intoxication but pretends not to drink (much) on the show. There’s a listlicle of fraud that’s alarmingly long, and TLC isn’t admitting much.
There are more allegations that the Amish homes in the first episode were empty houses staged for production. And claims that at least one person purporting to be family and one “girlfriend” on the show are really actors.
This is supported, in part, by cast member Jeremiah Raber’s ex-wife Naomi Stutzman who spoke with CBS 21.
Stutzman refutes the suggestion that anyone in the cast would be shunned, at all. Moreover, when she and Raber left the community: “Whenever [Jeremiah and I] needed money for rent he’d go crying to his mom and she would pay our rent. I was Amish and left. I was not shunned. It’s different in different communities. The Amish community is upset with him because the stuff is not true in real life… He was never shunned. He was spoiled rotten.”
Stutzman also says Raber’s driving lessons on this week’s episode were staged because he already knows how to drive: “Jeremiah’s mom and dad bought him two cars to help him out when he left the Amish,” she explains.
Those are statements from Stutzman to CBS 21, who never got an on-camera interview.
The station claims the ex-wife went radio silent after being offered alleged hush money by TLC. CBS 21 alleges: ”When TLC found out CBS 21 was trying to set up an on-camera interview with her, she said TLC offered her ‘whatever she wanted’ to stay quiet. Now she won’t return calls or emails.”
TLC has issued an unconvincing denial that they’re bribing naysayers of the show: “This accusation is absurd. TLC has never and will never offer or provide any payment for something like this.”