'Bunch of Hypocrites': Man Describes Dramatic Escape From Amish Life

The day Milo Miller's life changed forever started normally. He woke up one morning in Ohio, completed his chores and ate breakfast alongside his six brothers and five sisters.

What they didn't know was that it would be his last day with the Amish, he told Newsweek.

"I was going to leave everything behind that I had ever known, and I remember milking the cows that night knowing this was the last time I would milk cows by hand," he said. "I was so excited, actually."

That night in 2000, he escaped through his younger brother's bedroom window, leaving behind a community he knew as a "bunch of hypocrites."

"So many people do not understand who the Amish really are. There are many misconceptions about the Amish," Miller said.

The Amish lifestyle may be relatively unknown to many, but more than 360,000 Amish currently live in North America. The Amish reject many aspects of modern life, preferring to take on humility and conformity as strict Christian values. While others are raised on TVs and driven to and from school by car, the Amish avoid these technologies, believing them to be linked to outside temptation and sin.

Miller, who lived in an Amish community for 23 years, decided to start a TikTok account, @FloridaBoy920, after realizing the limited knowledge Americans have about the community and the struggles many Amish face when trying to get out.

Miller still remembers everything that happened on his final day.

"I knew that was going to be my last breakfast with my family," Miller said in a recent video. "I knew that they were going to disown me."

He took the horses out to the field and mowed down some hay before lunch.

After his last supper, Miller had plotted to leave at 10 p.m. But his father had uncharacteristically stayed late at the neighbor's, putting a wrench into Miller's plans.

"I kind of talked my mom into sending everybody to bed because I'm tired," Miller said. "Why don't we just go to bed and don't wait on our dad to come home."

Typically, the entire family waited for the everyone to be home and pray together. But that night, Miller's family went to bed before their father returned home.

Miller quickly threw all of his belongings in a suitcase, walked to his brother's room and told him the news: he was leaving the Amish forever, and he wanted help.

His brother agreed, and Miller climbed out the window with his suitcase, looking up at his brother whom he wasn't sure he would ever see again.

"I said when you turn 18, please leave the Amish and join me," Miller said. "Those were my last words to my brother."

After that, Miller's father returned home, and Miller waited until he entered the house. At that point, Miller said he "ran down the road as fast as he could."

Miller had stayed at another ex-Amish friend's home, but he was soon kicked out due to their worries they'd get in trouble as Miller was under 18.

After getting on a Greyhound bus to Sarasota, Florida, Miller met with his cousin and stayed at his home. His cousin was one of a few other Amish people who had departed the same community, and he was Miller's main contact to the outside world.

Miller had previously tracked down his cousin's address and written him an anonymous letter saying he was planning to leave as well but didn't want him to know who he was.

On his first night in Sarasota, Miller saw a lizard for the first time, away from the confines of his Amish community.

'Scared half to death'

The move away from the community was frightening for Miller.

"I was scared half to death," Miller said. "I didn't sleep very good that night."

The next day, however, gave Miller hope for the future. His cousin had already set up a job for him doing odds and ends. He wasn't yet 18, so he was forced to work under the table.

When Miller's cousin returned to Ohio for vacation, Miller decided to join him. He made contact with another formerly Amish friend, who offered him a new job in Grove City, Ohio.

Within just a month, Miller had his own apartment.

While Miller had left most of his life behind, he secretly stayed in contact with his brother. He met him at a certain time down the road to give him a radio. But when his brother went home, he was busted by their parents for having the radio, which he was instructed to smash.

Shortly after, Miller received a phone call.

"He said, 'Brother, I want you to pick me up. I want to leave the Amish' because he said the Amish are a bunch of hypocrites," Miller said.

Leaving in secret

There are many reasons to leave at night, in secret, rather than tell your family that you're leaving the Amish community, he said.

Compared to his brother, his escape from the Amish was relatively simple and peaceful, Miller said.

His brother was "being manipulated to stay Amish," Miller said.

"They were telling him he was going to Hell if he leaves the Amish," Miller said. "But he was courageous enough to leave the Amish even though they were telling him that. Most people will not leave the Amish, and they will be talked out of it."

Miller recommends others seeking a way out of the Amish community do so at night.

"You don't need all those things planted in your head before you leave, that bad image of your family," he said.

For Miller, the decision to leave the Amish came after years of being raised in a strict family with expectations to milk the cows and plow the fields.

"By the time I was 12 years old, I was plowing the fields by myself with a team of horses," he said. "It was something that was very common in my Amish community for young kids driving big teams of horses."

In Amish communities, you attend school until eighth grade. At that point, Miller stopped his classes and instead took on the farming responsibilities, from plowing the fields to planting corn and oats and harvesting the crops.

"At a very young age, I would always look across the road at our English neighbors and see that they were doing things much easier, and I could never understand why we couldn't do things the way they did," Miller said. "I would ask my dad serious questions of why it's okay that they do it their way, but we can't do it that way."

Miller's father gave him a simple but unsatisfactory answer: that was how they were raised, and it was just something that they didn't do.

"My questions were never answered, and I was always told to stop asking all the questions," Miller said.

Miller also recalls when his father spanked him for something he didn't do at age 12. The resentment built after he saw the bruises on his legs, and that's when he decided he would leave the Amish when he turned 18.

'My dad wanted to make me look ... ugly'

Miller's frustrations included rules about personal appearance and hygiene.

"As a young Amish boy, I always wanted to have hygiene," Miller said. "I wanted to look good for the girls, but I always thought that my dad wanted to make me look as ugly as possible, and that is not the way I wanted to look."

Three months before he turned 18, Miller left, knowing he might never see his friends and family again.

"He has asked me to stay away to never come and see him again," Miller said of his father. "He has also asked me to not come to his funeral, to please respect his wishes."

At the time Miller escaped, he had $40 and no idea where he would end up.

Culture shock on the outside

Once living away from the Amish community, there were many culture shocks in store for Miller. Suddenly, things that were always forbidden to him were now available any time he wanted. He could play golf, watch TV and drive in a car.

But there were plenty of unexpected surprises.

Miller's greatest culture shock came when he was asked for a Social Security number to get a job.

"I had no idea I needed a Social so I could get a job," he said.

Amish communities do not have Social Security numbers, just birth certificates and a tax ID number, because they're exempt based on religion, Miller explained.

"The reason the Amish don't want a Social is because of the mark of the beast, and they believe having any number attached to them would be a sin in my old order Amish community," he said.

Miller was working at a customer's house on September 11, 2001, when the World Trade Center was attacked.

"I was like, 'What are the World Trade Centers? I have no idea what that is,'" Miller said. "In the Amish, we didn't get out and about. We didn't even know what existed outside of those 50 miles."

Leaving is relatively rare within the close-knit communities the Amish have created mostly in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana. Because the larger world is kept relatively hidden, many remain scared to leave behind their friends and family and the whole world they've known in favor of the great unknown.

But others have fought through the fear and ventured into the outside world.

Many escape restrictions

Tim Connon, the founder of ParamountQuote Insurance Advisors, also left the Amish more than five years ago. His memories of his childhood are not all bad. He recalls his life as quiet and peaceful. But there were invariably downsides to a life away from the larger world.

"It was also difficult growing up with constant work on the farm, and rejecting modern tools made life even harder," Connon told Newsweek. "Many are trying to escape the lifestyle because they do not like the restrictions from rejecting modern tools to rejecting really any modern form of technology."

For Connon, being stripped of any TV, electricity and power tools made it difficult, and he longed for the ability to experience these tech inventions.

"The greatest culture shock for me was seeing how me and women dressed in blue jeans and T-shirts," Connon said. "Women do not have to cover their head like the Amish do, which I was always taught is a shame for a woman to not have her head covered."

Growing Amish communities

The North American Amish population has grown by roughly 200,000 since 2000, from 177,910 to 373,620 in 2022, according to the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College.

Doubling about every 20 years, the rise in population has been natural as more Amish people have large families and grow their communities. But increasing numbers of outsiders are joining, as well.

"I believe the Amish population continues to grow due to the fact that there is not much known about them," Connon said. "The simple pioneer lifestyle is attractive to minimalists and homesteaders, so of course they would want to join and raise organic food."

And the vast majority of Amish children grow up and continue to raise families within those communities, with a retention rate of roughly 90 percent, according to the Young Center.

If current population trends continue, the Amish community will be larger than the current population of the United States in about 200 years.

The Amish have an average of six to seven children in each family, according to Amish America, and the majority avoid any birth control or contraceptives.

While the Amish don't prioritize converting others into their communities, some people have been able to join the traditional and simple lifestyle. But there are various reasons it's uncommon.

"Amish conversion is extremely uncommon, which makes sense: who actually wants to give up modern convenience for more than a week or so?" Kelsey Osgood wrote for the Atlas Obscura website.

Still, as minimalism continues to gain supporters and many look for ways to cut out the harmful effects of technology and constant social media stimulation on their lives, Amish living presents an extreme option.

"For those who have made the leap, the lived experience of conversion deviates greatly from the fantasies moving across web pages every day; it's harder, crueler, slower than the hopeful could imagine. It's also not a static state—for most converts, the emergence of a perfect Amish self never truly occurs."