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The leader of a breakaway Amish sect in Ohio was sentenced to 15 year in prison today for orchestrating the cutting of hair and beards of Amish men and women, a form of religious degradation viewed as punishment, the reported.

Samuel Mullet Sr. was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Cleveland, along with 15 of his followers, including six women. Others were given lesser sentences ranging from one year and a day to seven years. All of them were convicted of hate crimes last fall, the first such convictions in Ohio under the federal Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crime Prevention Act, which was enacted in 2009.

The stemmed from a series of five attacks between Sept. 6 and Nov. 9, 2011. According to the FBI, the attackers took photographs during the assaults, and buried the disposable camera they used at the base of a tree on Mullet鈥檚 property.

As the Times reported, the Amish view their long beards and flowing women鈥檚 hair as symbols of 鈥渞eligious devotion and cultural identity.鈥� Prosecutors, who had asked for life sentences, argued that the assaults were hate crimes due to the religious nature of the attacks.

While Mullet, 67, did not appear to participate in any of the attacks, the trial did much to expose the workings of an Amish sect under his authoritarian rule as the group鈥檚 leader. According to prosecutors, he frequently punished his followers by confining them to 鈥渟leep for days at a time鈥� in chicken coops and 鈥渉ad been counseling the married women in [the sect] and taking them into his home so that he may cleanse them of the devil with acts of sexual intimacy.鈥�

Mullet, who spoke in court before the sentencing hearing, said he was falsely being blamed as a cult leader 鈥撯�� a charge he denies 鈥撯�� but asked that he be given the punishment for all the defendants.

鈥淚f somebody needs to be punished, I鈥檒l take the punishment for everybody,鈥� Mullet said according to in Cleveland. 鈥淟et these mothers and fathers go home to their families, raise their children.鈥�