The assaults on women in Molotschna are the crisis behind the women’s deliberations over safety, faith, and departure. Their consequences reach beyond the attacks themselves: Ona Friesen is pregnant, the women fear the accused men could return, and the community’s response threatens to take control of the children from their mothers. The event forces the women to weigh their religious commitments against a danger that remaining in the colony may perpetuate.

Background and Disclosure

The attacks are discussed in the women’s meetings through August Epp’s translated and written record. The women speak Plautdietsch, a language they know but cannot write, so August translates their discussion into English as he takes the minutes. Ona Friesen had asked him to preserve the meetings as a document; she proposes that the women’s arguments be kept on large sheets of paper in the hayloft even though they cannot read them. The record therefore preserves both the women’s debate and the practical limits on who can write, translate, and leave a lasting account of it.

The colony’s elders refer to the attackers with a euphemism, obscuring the nature of the violence even as its effects shape the women’s lives. Ona’s pregnancy is a direct consequence of an assault. Some colonists hurriedly try to arrange her marriage to Julius Penner, but Ona resists, saying he deserves better and that marrying her would taint him because she is not a virgin. The elders characterize her as beyond redemption and incapable of reasoning because of Narfa, turning the effects of violence into a stigma attached to its victim.

Consequences for Women and Children

Ona’s pregnancy brings another threat: the unborn child is expected to be taken from her and raised by another colony family, possibly even the family of one of the attackers. The proposed arrangement compounds the loss of safety with a loss of maternal choice. In the women’s discussion, the assaults are not an isolated past event but a force shaping decisions about where mothers and children can live, and who will determine their future.

The women also consider the danger of the accused men’s return. Salome Friesen asks why boys aged thirteen and fourteen cannot leave with the women, especially if the accused men are released on bail and come back to a colony where women and girls have departed. The question extends the debate beyond the immediate victims: the women fear that boys in this age group could become targets too. August answers that adolescents can pose risks, but are still children who can be taught with direction, patience, and love. His position holds the possibility of change beside the women’s urgent concern for protection.

The violence also enters the meeting through the use of Belladonna Veterinary Spray. The colony has little medicine available beyond ether and the veterinary spray used to anesthetize animals; the attackers used that same spray against women and girls. Its presence as a scarce medical resource makes the object a continuing reminder of the attacks, even in a discussion about caring for an ailing person.

Faith, Authority, and the Decision to Leave

Agata Friesen argues that staying would expose the women to further violence and place them in a conflict that contradicts Mennonite pacifism. In her view, remaining risks making the colony a battlefield and drawing the women into violence themselves or against them. Leaving, by contrast, could let them uphold pacifism, love, and forgiveness without making forgiveness a coerced response to danger. She also argues that their choice would teach their children to hold those values even when their fathers’ expectations point elsewhere.

The dispute is also about who has the authority to interpret scripture. Salome Friesen points out that the women cannot read the Bible and rely on men, including their husbands, to tell them what it commands. She challenges the assumption that leaving necessarily disobeys the Bible when the women have had no independent access to its text. Their deliberation is thus not simply a rejection of religious belief: they argue over how to practice faith, and whether the colony’s male authorities have the right to define submission and obedience for them.

Agata describes the women’s resolve to influence and protect their sons as both maternal instinct and considered judgment, joining their intellect and faith to their care for their children. That resolve is tested by practical divisions: boys under thirteen may accompany the women, while boys already baptized at fifteen are with the men, leaving the thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds in a disputed category. The assaults make such distinctions consequential, forcing the women to ask whose safety the departure will protect and who may be left exposed.

Record, Memory, and Aftermath

The women’s record is meant to outlast the meeting even though its authors cannot read it themselves. August’s notebooks and minutes become a material trace of their testimony; as he leaves, he runs back for them and asks Salome Friesen to give them to Ona. Salome questions what Ona can do with papers she cannot read, but the exchange underscores the distinction between immediate access to the record and its preservation for others. The women’s spoken account, August’s translation, and the written minutes together make the violence and their response documentable.

The aftermath does not resolve into an uncomplicated departure. Greta Loewen expresses gratitude to Autje Loewen and Neitje Friesen for saving her horses, while objecting to what she sees as a compromise of their virtue. Mariche Loewen rebukes that judgment and discloses that, after Klaas Loewen discovered the horses were missing, he struck her and slapped Autje when she intervened. This is a distinct episode of violence within the colony, not one of the attacks by the accused men, but its disclosure makes clear why claims about virtue or safety cannot be separated from women’s constrained lives at home.

At the close of August’s account, Ona takes his hand, places it on her pregnant belly, and tells him she has prayed for him and sees him as a reminder of goodness, hope, and life after violence. Her words give the pregnancy another meaning without undoing its origin: it remains a consequence of assault, yet in this moment it is also connected to care and the possibility of life beyond the violence. The attacks thus continue to shape the women’s decisions and relationships even as they try to imagine a future not governed by the men who harmed them.