Its not easy to grow up in an abusive or neglectful home, which can lead to trauma and emotional damage. But the report of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes in Ireland published last week after five years of work was worse . I remember we all did not want to leave the home in Brecon because the nuns there were so kind. Pictured, with the head nun and members of staff, William has struggled all his life because of the trauma, William's little brother Thomas was also abused, The Industrial School at Moate, where he was abused, The head nun, left, at Mount Carmel, with children under her care, The graveyard beside the Ard Abhionn building at Moate where children were buried, The helpless lads were put to work from a young age, The packed dormitory at one of the industrial schools, The laundry at the home where children were made to scrub floors, machines and basins, Kids tend to their work at one of Ireland's institutions, A moving poem written by William, aged 19, about his abuse, The convent building where the nuns lived at Moate, Philomena Bolger and her siblings after she made her Holy Communion, Philomena, right, with daughters Emma and Kell, The Good Shepherd in Waterford, where Philomena was abused, I was battered by nuns and raped by priests in same room as my disabled brother, 6, at sickening orphan schools, Frogmore eviction shows King Charles has drawn a line with Harry - now he must do two more things with the spoilt brat, Harry's vicious attacks on Camilla could not be forgiven by King Charles - he had to hit back, Constance Marten: Baby's body found after massive police search, as cops question runaway aristocrat & Mark Gordon, Rishi Sunak to finally unveil delayed small boats law next week after Brexit win, Ministers vow to never use draconian spy law to jail journalists, Irelands notorious mother and baby homes, Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO). We were innocent children taken from our mother for no reason, says Philomena. our nuns would cut a finger off if you were late for class, some kids only had thumbs, we had to learn a new word every day if you couldn't pronounce it the nun would set about you with a baseball bat, on the day we had to learn Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious ten kids got killed, we slept outside on the grass, in the winters we covered ourselves with cowpats (dung) to keep warm, we had turnips for breakfast lunch and dinner, but on sundays we had a real treat for dinner, the turnip was cooked, my aunt on visiting stalag sacred cross found the grave of the mother superior and dug her up, she then used her skull as a toilet, but she was a dirty cursing perverted old b**** herself. Rocketgirl33, I have seen programs about nuns and most of those show a wonderfull helpful loving nun who just loves the whole world. September 2019 It is anger, suffering and self isolation.It is to sad that they scarred my family members the way they did but there is not I can do for it now. The sexual assault was to be the first of many suffered by William at the hands of his supposed care-givers. The first stage of this cruelty was the men who walked away and left the women to be outcasts of society. I have cried so much wondering what happened to my loving brother. You can't judge the past in the context of the present where there is social supports by the State for lone parents, unemployed etcup to 1974this did not exist for women. I was sent to clean her office and if she decided I didn't clean it properly she would start banging my head against the wall. This is true of Jewish women who were in charge of the different units in Concentration also true of the German women who worked in these camps. Some of these reasons include the high expectations placed on them, the fact that theyre not allowed to express their feelings, and many of them come from abusive or neglectful families. Nuns have to obey their superiors, which can lead to a feeling of being trapped and powerless, and it can also lead to nuns being quite resentful towards those in positions of authority. August 2019 "One of the worst things that ever happened to me was being locked in a cupboard as a punishment. Yet, even now, I continue to read horrible things about the church and popes. I know that they are supposed to be married to god and suchbut when you are married to a guy that is never around, doesn't talk to you, sets up impossible rules, and never has sex with youwell you would be cranky too. Wicked City . Searching for. You could be hit for talking in church. He did that to each of us in turn.. My sister was born and adopted in the US and her birth mom reported being treated badly by the Nuns at the place where she went while pregnant. The investigators established the chambers were originally used to treat sewage. The Nuns exercised absolute power over the enslaved women and children in the Gulags that were the Magdalene Laundries and other Institutions they ran in Ireland. The Residential Institutions Redress Board, set up in 2002, received 16,500 applications for financial compensation - 15,500 of which were successful - and paid out an average of 62,000 (55,000) in sums ranging from 10,000 to 300,000. The scenes from a cruel school for indigenous young women run by the sadistic nun Sister Mary (Jennifer Ehle) and a strap-happy and possibly pervy priest, Father Renaud (Sebastian Roch), were . "There were two slices of bread and dripping for breakfast, a ladle of soup at dinner and two more slices of bread and dripping in the evening. They would use canes, sticks, the leather belts around their waists. Orphans, abandoned babies and children deemed uncontrollable or accused of petty crimes were all put in the hands of the nuns who, to the outside world, epitomised kindness and compassion. 50. Children were also left hungry and cold, with poor hygiene facilities. Something was telling me that something bad was going to happen.. 1 1.Why do Catholic nuns have a reputation for being cruel and abusive ; 2 2.Why were Irish Nuns so Cruel? By using physical violence, the Nuns exercised power not only over the slave women and children, but also over their fellow Nuns.Physical domination was indeed the proof of what they were capable of and, for some Nuns, it expressed a real thirst for power. Four days later, they were taken to the industrial school at Mount Carmel in Moate, Co. Westmeath, run by the Catholic nuns of the Sisters of Mercy. The Nuns were the power and to them the inmates were slaves, criminals and whores. Gmail He used to spread our legs and sit us on his lap and then he would put his hands underneath. Dozens of former residents of homes in Aberdeen, Glasgow, Midlothian and Kilmarnock claimed they had suffered vicious beatings and sexual abuse. "I had three sons with my second husband. The scathing report, by Professor Bruce Grundy of Queensland University, told of how one girl, Helen Carter, had her legs burnt with a red-hot poker, to exorcise the Devil, while another child almost lost her legs which became infected after a nun pulled out her ingrowing toenails with pliers. Yet the harsh conditions of the Tuam home meant the infant. One of the old ladies had died." They were left there all night with the corpse and to this day, Mary says she has. This is part three of my series debunking the "Irish slaves" meme. Within them, however, nobody could escape the interlaced structure of these complex power relations. There was nothing unusual about it. Thank you again for your insight. Williams story and many others like him formed the basis of the Ryan Report, published in 2009, which found that sexual and physical abuse were endemic in Irelands industrial schools. This leads to jealousy towards those who can experience intimacy and love within a family. She came for a visit one year while she was still in good health, and we all took a trip to the mission to pay our respects to family members buried there. "Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst." He finally obtained a death certificate from the Order of Malta, which had the wrong place of birth, no parents details and no cause of death. No matter what any "spiritual leader" might say. Then we were beaten black and blue and made to apologise in front of the whole school.. Why Are Chihuahuas So Aggressive? After being forced to leave the school at 16, Philomena fell pregnant and went into one of Irelands notorious mother and baby homes, where her baby girl was taken away and given up for adoption against her will. I hear stories about the nuns from non family members too and not many people have "Found memories" of their days with the nuns. We were beaten with big sticks - the bigger the better. Some 216,000 children - mostly boys - have been sexually abused by clergy in the French Catholic Church since 1950, a damning new inquiry has found. In those days the people were encouraged to bring their children to the mission to be schooled by the church and they children all lived there. June 2020 Inside were the bodies of scores of unknown women: the undocumented, uncared-about inmates of one of Ireland's notorious Magdalene laundries. They were not battleaxes or crones. In some cases the Nuns even used their long heavy-duty wooden rosary beads to beat the slave women or the children. December 2019 "A high proportion also self-harm or take their own lives - and they are 15,000 times more likely to end up incarcerated.". Wicked City was initially canceled after just 3 episodes, but later, the remaining episodes were aired on Hulu. Sister Fidelma, an Irish nun at St. Brigid's Abbey is possibly the most interestingand smartestnun ever to be found on the pages of a clerical mystery. Ireland's attitude to the Catholic Church has made it possible for people to "literally demonise" nuns and completely obscure the good work they have done over the years. "I approached a lawyer because I learned that it was being said that if there were problems in any Nazareth House homes it was only in Scotland. September 2021 Many Nuns pretended not to see or hear what was going on around them, but instead were passive, taking refuge in their work and silent prayers. "But girls were beaten every day. The group has heard from 35 people in the last several days who claim they were physically and sexually abused by nuns, said Dispenza, a former nun who claims she was abused as a young girl. It can also lead to nuns lashing out at others due to their discomfort. "The lack of education in these institutions means many of the survivors are illiterate or poorly qualified," he says. Iam writting a family book about our family from as far back as I can go. Jean Guerrier, like her sister, Vera Willshire, recalls the regime at the Nazareth House in Middlesbrough as unrelentingly brutal and frightening. My aunt said I never stammered before I went there. No matter what any "spiritual leader" might say. Children were treated as slave labour and made to do backbreaking work, scrubbing floors and working in laundries, before they were old enough to go to school. But there is good news in all of this. The female . . Its not easy to live up to such high standards. The innocent novice Nuns, with their good intentions, had no idea of what awaited them in the hellholes known as the Magdalene Laundries with their captive and illegally-held female slaves and their children who, although they had committed no crime, toiled there. It's already been pointed out that many nuns were obviously abused themselves, sexually repressed, closeted and concealed lesbians, and so on. If they see other nuns being cruel, they may think its okay to act the same way. Once I was beaten black and blue, so badly I had to stay in the infirmary for five weeks, and when I came out I was given a bag of sweets and told to tell no one about what happened. October 2021 Sometimes when I'm feeling down I'll go in and cuddle them and lie down and remember how we were treated, and cry. I spent a lot of time scrubbing floors or cleaning shoes. Thanks to all for your replys, I think the hammer has found the nail on this perhaps. Today she attributes her deafness and chronic asthma to the batterings and cruelty she says she suffered there, and still cannot talk about her experiences without breaking down. i may have exaggerated a little. The nuns would enter a convent in their teens and would be told nothing about sex or re Continue Reading 18 2 Peter Kisner Not a life of such abuse, torture, pain and hell. The only subject of conversation was who was for it next. I went to a strict local school and the belt was used frequently, but nothing like on the same scale that the nuns used to beat us. He would feed him at breakfast, dinner and lunch then undress him and bath him before putting him to bed. Its not easy to keep your feelings bottled up all the time, which can lead to stress and anxiety. "Twelve people . Part of being human is being a sexual person humans are attracted to other people, have romantic feelings and sexual urges. I believe it was that they treated indigenous people like savages that werent even worthy of owning their own land ..ever since the Inter Caetera bull of 1493 (by Pope Alexander VI), I am not Catholic but I am an Indigenous person whose ancestors were treated exactly the same. My time with these Nuns was horrendous. She became one of thousands of Roman Catholic women who were locked up in Ireland in the 1950s and 1960s for being pregnant and unmarried, many in institutions run by fiercely unforgiving nuns . Total hypocrisy with no explanation. and Our Lady of Good Counsel in Yorkville, where the Sisters of Charity were), the Irish Christian Brothers that I had for high school could be a lot worse, being bigger and stronger, and having the same "philosophy" of punishment (seen by my Irish-born . Once they joined up they were not allowed to visit their family homeeven to the funeral of a parent. (7 Reasons Why), Why Are Harleys So Expensive? July 2021 i think they just really need to get laid, Damn nuns I don't think I have ever met a nun but damn them anyway errrrr. Yes, these sisters know there were cruel women among them and they live that sense of betrayal very painfully. While your doing that, tell any stories of nuns that you might have. A recent redress fund, set up by the government to provide financial help for the victims, received 16,500 applications, but William is now fighting to scrap the gagging orders required to receive any money. When Mum came back from England she couldn't get us back, she says. 4-And I heard another voice out of Heaven say: "Get out of her, my people, if you do not want to share with her in her sins, and if you do not want to receive part of her plagues." To see all content on The Sun, please use the Site Map. The proud wearing of the religious habit was a profound experience for the middle-class women, and the uniformity contributed to forging an esprit de corps, a feeling of pride and mutual loyalty even though it did not exclude hierarchies of rank and did not preclude friction within the group. My grandmother was 3 years old when she was first brought to the mission. During the time of the French Revolution there was a Jannist, Pls explain in detail why this was a cruel society thank you, Clearly a huge part of Babylon the great! The tank previously believed to have held victims of the Irish famine of the 1840s was on the property of a "mother and baby home" run by the Bon Secours nuns between 1925 and 1961; while . I wonder what makes them so mean? Their livesand later their deathshad been shrouded. During the Age of Exploration, two basic factors influenced the Europeans in their efforts. I thought bugger that, I'm saying my piece.". Beatings and acts of extreme cruelty were commonplace, they say, and together with the spartan existence in the home, gave them lives of utter misery. Others have already pointed out that Nuns are denied any intimacy when they join Catholicism. And of course the whole story fits wonderfully into the larger stories of Irish nuns as heartless and cruel, which many undoubtedly were. She was looking for a victim."I was 11 and looked 9. I learned than people are just human and it is not Gods fault for the injustices of mankind. "Holidays were spent at other Nazareth House homes. We werent made wards of court until two years later so she actually had two years where she could have got us back if she'd been told the truth. We rose at 5am, did the cleaning chores, then got dressed, got breakfast and then went to school. A passive Nun permitted and regulated the actions of the violent ones. Some of the Irish Nuns who ran the Magdalene Laundries had notorious reputations and were known for their extreme violence, even in many cases as we know today, beating the inmates to death. The nuns told us to strip off and stand beside the the bed and they left us just standing there for ages, waiting for our punishment. In the 1901 and 1911 Census in there were about 100 inmates in the Magdalen Loundry in Galway..about 8 or 9 nuns. This kind of behavior applies to nuns, as well. "I left when I was 13 with a terrible stammer that I am sure must have been because of living in fear of the nuns. Its a shame that its like this. Nuns used to be cruel; that much is true. FOR Vera Willshire, who is now 75, the year 1939 was one of the happiest of her life. Priests. June 2019 The slave trade they operated included the illegal selling of the children of the enslaved women. 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