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	Latest Charges against the Mohlers May Be the Last in Lafayette County By Donald Bradley The Kansas City Star November 20, 2009 http://www.kansascity.com/115/story/1581798.html For the young sisters in the Mohler family, summers were the worst because that’s when they had to go to their grandfather’s farm. That’s what the sisters, now grown women, have told authorities who on Thursday filed 11 more charges in a child sex abuse case that has shocked the country. In court documents to support the latest charges, the sisters told of bestiality, mock weddings, sex in a church and being made to have sexual contact with each other while their father, grandfather and uncles watched and laughed. Thursday’s charges, which raise the total to 42, could be the last in the Lafayette County case that has seen a 77-year-old Independence grandfather and his four middle-age sons arrested and locked up in the jail in Lexington, Mo. The men are alleged to have committed rape, sodomy and other assaults against children in the extended family for years. Acting on evidence that some of the assaults were photographed, investigators searched the home of the grandfather, Burrell Mohler Sr., and found incest pornography, videotapes and recording equipment. They also recovered 65 videotapes from an uncle’s home in Columbia. Lafayette County Prosecutor Kellie Ritchie said she did not know what was on the tapes. Those charged include the senior Mohler, 77, of Independence, and his sons, Burrell Mohler Jr., 53, of Independence; Jared Mohler, 48, of Columbia; David Mohler, 52, of Lamoni, Iowa; and Roland Mohler, 47, of Bates City. A brother of Burrell Mohler Sr., Darrel Mohler, is being held in Florida. The alleged abuse occurred from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, when the sisters ranged in age from 5 to mid-teens. The case broke when one went to police in August. Her siblings have since supported her version of events. They told investigators they remembered being taken from location to location for photographs on beds with naked men and in provocative poses. In 1988, several of the sisters ran away to flee the abuse, but they later returned home. As punishment, their father, Burrell Mohler Jr., allegedly made them watch him sodomize another sibling. According a search warrant affidavit for Jared Mohler’s house in Columbia, the victims told their mother about the abuse. The woman, however, took the complaints to the head of the family’s church rather than law enforcement. Authorities now say the mother is cooperating with the investigation. Earlier stories about this case indicated the Mohler family had extensive ties with the Community of Christ. However, the mother — Jeanette Mohler, at the time the wife of Burrell Mohler Jr. — left in 1982 with him to join another church, a church official told The Kansas City Star on Thursday.
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