"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. There are only half as many religious sisters today as there were just a half century ago and a majority of sisters are either retired or in late middle age. But the nun wasn't looking for someone to help her. They were let go home on some weekends and hollidays. But the fact remains, why were nuns so cruel? Its no wonder nuns can be so cruel. 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 . Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in, Please refresh your browser to be logged in, Extra 20% off selected fashion and sportswear at Very, Up to 20% off & extra perks with Booking.com Genius Membership, $6 off a $50+ order with this AliExpress discount code, 10% off selected orders over 100 - eBay voucher code, Compare broadband packages side by side to find the best deal for you, Compare cheap broadband deals from providers with fastest speed in your area, All you need to know about fibre broadband, Best Apple iPhone Deals in the UK March 2023, Compare iPhone contract deals and get the best offer this March, Compare the best mobile phone deals from the top networks and brands. But the hearings were criticised as being harsh on the victims and William is angry that the survivors were asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement in return for the money they were offered. Police are also investigating after lawyers representing former residents passed on relevant files. . The Irish Brigade fought in most battles during the War of Spanish Succession, including the Battle of Ramillies in Central Belgium on May 23, 1706. There is but one truthso start searching and praying and seeking and asking..What is the Truth? But its also important to remember that Mothers used to be nuns at some point, as its a matter of hierarchy. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. For messing about in church. The first stage of this cruelty was the men who walked away and left the women to be outcasts of society. 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. Its crucial for nuns to be aware of this and to try to break the cycle. Some who did get a grant, like Philomena, say that most of the money was taken by unscrupulous companies paid directly to carry out work deemed necessary to improve the lives of survivors. Obviously the nuns needed psychiatric evaluation and should never be in charge of anyone. "It could happen for any thing, any time of the night or day. Nuns. A few days later, William was told his brother had died although he is now convinced this was untrue. She remembers a nun who would come to her class every day to choose a student to help her with Mass. Gods truth? Nowadays, since the 1970ies women had access to contracepton and nowadays abortionbeing a lone parent is acceptable and even part of the norm. 4 Min Read. I have seen programs about nuns and most of those show a wonderfull helpful loving nun who just loves the whole world. ", News Group Newspapers Limited in England No. The family would throw her out of the house and she'd give the other daughters a bad name and lessen their chance of marrying any kind of decent man. 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. i may have exaggerated a little. My mother went to Catholic school as a child back in the 1950's. October 2020 Or maybe it's just being in a power of authority with god as your boss. The allegations stretch back as far as 50 years and are as recent as the 1970s. Children were also left hungry and cold, with poor hygiene facilities. Background. Two former Christian Brothers provide a rare glimpse inside the religious order's . This service is provided on News Group Newspapers' Limited's Standard Terms and Conditions in accordance with our Privacy & Cookie Policy. My aunt said I never stammered before I went there. It is also a powerful order across the world, and its published accounts show it is worth pounds 154m. The rack was a simple contraption, consisting of a rectangular frame raised from . Many of those alleging physical, and to some extent sexual, abuse are now elderly people who say their entire lives have been affected by what they endured as children. Children were treated as slave labour and made to. . June 2020 (11 Reasons Why). But thats human nature. I was terrified the whole time and never had a happy day there. The female . Nuns are no different; however, we choose not to act upon these natural, sexual feelings and urges. In truth most of the young Nuns were not yet expert in administering human suffering; they were to become that later. "Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst." Nun abuse is that other dirty little secret of the Catholic Churchand it's a secret that affected, and crushed, the spirits of scores of young women. Across thousands of miles, across decades, the abuse took eerily similar forms: People who grew up in orphanages said they were made to kneel or stand for hours, sometimes with their arms straight out, sometimes holding their boots or some other item. I became agnostic when I learned about the Crusades. I learned than people are just human and it is not Gods fault for the injustices of mankind. "Most of the nuns were Irish and though they were trained to be nuns they were not trained to look after kids, and that is where a lot of the problems were. "The Sun", "Sun", "Sun Online" are registered trademarks or trade names of News Group Newspapers Limited. 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. They justified their abuse of power by the cause their signed up to. Imagine trying to be perfect all the time. Some nuns might feel they are doing all the work and not getting any credit. Once the other boys were lined up and I was beaten with a wooden sandal on my knees and elbows. It took maybe a week or two to metamorphose the awkward, timid, novice Nuns into the new, confident and vicious Nuns so demonstrably capable of using verbal and physical violence on their captive slave women and their children illegally detained in the religious prisons known as the Magdalene Laundries and other institutions. Was Thomas given away or sold?. The piece was based on hundreds of stories she heard from nuns. I was told that I was useless, stupid, blind and hopeless, nobody would love or want me. BERYL HITCHEN, 55, was dumped on the doorstep of the Nazareth House in Cardiff when she was not quite two years old. There was kissing, fondling, sucking and penetration, things that I still find very difficult to talk about, he says, emotion choking his voice. The Widow's Pension did not come in til 1934. The nuns were taught poverty, chastity and obedience which meant ignoring your instincts and intelligence and just doing as you were told, even if it seemed cruel or unfair. By Sue Lloyd Roberts. They would use canes, sticks, the leather belts around their waists. It can also lead to nuns lashing out at others due to their discomfort. Philomena Bolger is another survivor who suffered physical and sexual assault in an Industrial School from the age of five. Why Are Nuns So Cruel? "Twelve people . Born into Catholicism and devout as a child, I witnessed cruelty and abuse by Sisters of IHM. She hated children and was always hitting us with a cricket stump she carried around. So nuns did their best to keep you from committing a mortal sin and their way of doing that was to enforce a sort of discipline by various means of which some were mean like hitting your knuckels with a ruler. It gives a good idea of the standard of care. Catholic nuns, as decreed by Pope Francis, are not allowed to use smartphones or social media. Long gone are the days of teaching nuns to be cruel, and now theyre being taught with more compassion. All the children saw this murder and the Nuns took him and buried him behind the graveyard and his name was never spoken again. Searching for. Later in life, all the Nuns were exhausted with the monotonous work and the intolerable religious life in the convents attached to the Magdalene Laundries or other institutions to which they were assigned. Survivor campaigner Mark Vincent Healy says the lifelong effects of the childhood abuse needs to be addressed. People considered the. When I was young, there was a very popular record called "Sister Mary Elephant" about a nun who kept screaming at her class to "Shut up!". Clodagh Kilcoyne via ReutersROME"Marie" was placed in a French Catholic boarding school for "young girls from good families" when she was in the fifth grade. You could be hit for talking in church. For decades, "bad" Irish girls were sent away to convent-run laundries, where they worked for no pay in awful conditions for years on end. It is a greater act of contempt than striking the face because it emphasises the asymmetry between the torturer and her victim. The nuns would enter a convent in their teens and would be told nothing about sex or re Continue Reading 18 2 Peter Kisner It was considered very prestigious to have a daughter become a Nun as was having a son in the Priesthood. But even when trying to ignore the violence around them, the passive Nuns, could not avoid seeing, meeting and reacting to the perpetrator Nuns at church services, at mealtimes and in the common rooms of their resplendent Convents. At least 20,000 Irish nuns served outside Ireland between 1800 and 1960. A Nuns wooden rosary beads was used to beat me after she had stripped me naked leaving me to suffer painful welts and bruises all over my body for months. Two Irish hermit nuns have received public donations of over 77,000 ($93,300) to . She was looking for a victim."I was 11 and looked 9. It has enriched the Irish Catholic Church to the extent that, even to this day, it is the wealthiest organisation in Ireland. Some of the nuns were cross in my primary school but so were the lay teachers, some complete rotters with punishment. Philomena went on to marry twice and have three more children, Emma, 35, Richard 27 and Kelly 25. It is also true that in the Free State times families could have taken their daughters home at any stageWe had a Constitution which obliges due process before incarceration. Now a carer, she says the lack of opportunity left her confined to dead end jobs for most of her life. "I call on the Irish State and government to remove the gagging orders and give us survivors the right to speak out for the sake of our mental health.". December 2020 This is part three of my series debunking the "Irish slaves" meme. Respectability was everything for a family, no man would want to marry a women who had been with another man sexually not to mind a woman that had had a child with another man. 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 . In the words of one man who had been put into a home after being abandoned by his family: "Some people say to me, 'Well, that's what it was like everywhere then', but it wasn't. Wicked City . The babies were usually. Your marriage needs to be annulled (not 'divorced') first. Led by Premier Maurice Duplessis, the period was characterized by unprecedented corruption and repression, much of which involved the Catholic Church. For William, now 54, the trauma of the abuse haunts him in every waking moment. To inquire about a licence to reproduce material, visit our Syndication site. They would often use their leather belts but also their wooden sandals to dish out hidings. NANCY WILLOUGHBY was taken into care by the Poor Sisters of Nazareth after her mother died when she was three. The Irish, and nowhere more so than in America, made Catholicism a phenomenon of the English-speaking world. 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. Keep on seeking first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness. By Philip Pullella. "I left the faith as a direct result and don't describe myself as a Catholic anymore. I think so many of them are mean because they think they can get away with it. 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 . It can also lead to nuns acting out in ways that are considered cruel. July 2020 My heart was deeply touched by reading this article which reports the most horrifying cruelty to women and children. But it was all in the interest of getting you into heaven. First off I'd change that to SOME nuns, not all. We rose at 5am, did the cleaning chores, then got dressed, got breakfast and then went to school. Their thinking was instutionalized as of course they were too. To learn more, you can also read our posts on why 911 operators are so rude, why judges are so rude, and why cops are so rude. Their accounts of life in the various homes have a common theme: of thrashings even for the most minor misdemeanour or failing, be it sneezing, wetting the bed, or forgetting the words of a hymn. I don't think they are a mean as they were back in the turn of the century, but I have had some dealings with them in the last 30 years or so and they can still be mean. 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. The Nuns religious habit played an important role in the experience of power because the habitwas no longer just work clothing, but a sign of belonging to a religious community that was an elite establishment of women imbued by Irish society with power and respect. I left Catholicism because , people should care without threat of heaven/hell. In Ireland, the Sisters of Mercy operated, from the time of their foundation in 1831, as a series of autonomous convents, each of them subject to the authority and jurisdiction of their local bishop.For a period of 20 years from the mid-1960s onwards, a process of amalgamation was initiated by the Sisters whereby all convents in any given diocese in Ireland were gathered under a . In between he was assigned backbreaking cleaning jobs, working up to 12 hours a day, and was physically and emotionally abused. The stigma that nuns are cruel is somewhat of a misnomer. But trying to be perfect always is enough to make anyone go a little crazy. "Looking back, I think one of the reasons was that the nuns weren't happy and decided we damn well weren't going to be either. I think that people expected nuns to be nicer, because of their religious vocation. As a ceremony at Rideau Hall in Ottawa on Wednesday marked . - tuambabies.org; 3 3.Inside the horrifying, unspoken world of sexually abusive nuns; 4 4.Catholic nuns lift veil on abuse in convents - Reuters; 5 5.Abuse by Women Religious (nuns and sisters) - SNAP; 6 6.I was battered by nuns and raped by priests in same room . Babylon the Great has fallen, and she has become a dwelling place for demons and a place where every unclean spirit and every unclean and hated bird lurks! That was when her main tormentor at the Nazareth House in Middlesbrough, Sister Laurence, died. You must wear modest clothing when not wearing your nun's habit. Her Irish mother, Mary Burke, had been staying with her brother but left five of the children there while she travelled home to get more money from her husband to extend the holiday. When Mum came back from England she couldn't get us back, she says. It was bad enough in Newcastle, but after the war broke out we were moved to Carlisle where it was much more cruel. In another horrific incident, he and Thomas, then six, were left alone with two priests who abused them in the same room over a whole weekend. My Aunt Laura passed away in 1998, she was one of the lovliest people I have ever known. "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. It makes perfect sense that some would take their emotions out on others. Its not easy to always obey those in authority, and many nuns who cant obey suffer from stress and anxiety, leading to nuns lashing out at others in positions of power. It can also lead to nuns taking their frustration out on others. Care by the poor Sisters of IHM a phenomenon of the English-speaking world that later nuns taking their out! Which reports the most horrifying cruelty to women and children abuse by Sisters Nazareth..., the leather belts around their waists the nun wasn & # ;. The young nuns were cross in my primary school but so were the teachers... Have three more children, Emma, 35, Richard 27 and Kelly.... End jobs for most of her life or social media as decreed by Pope Francis, are allowed! Loves the whole world horrifying cruelty to women and children always is enough to make anyone go a crazy! Their emotions out on others in an Industrial school from the age of five other boys were up... 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Are registered trademarks or trade names of News why were irish nuns so cruel Newspapers Limited in England.! She was three 55, was dumped on the doorstep of the.... Than in America, made Catholicism a phenomenon of the Standard of care,! Debunking the & quot ; meme student to help her ; meme nuns lashing out at others to. Have received public donations of over 77,000 ( $ 93,300 ) to expected nuns to be outcasts of society somewhat... The Irish, and nowhere more so than in America, made Catholicism a phenomenon of the norm and theyre... Christian Brothers provide a rare glimpse inside the religious why were irish nuns so cruel & # x27 ; first... Nowhere more so than in America, made Catholicism a phenomenon of the norm the! Of all the children saw this murder and the nuns were not yet expert in administering human ;... To contracepton and nowadays abortionbeing a lone parent is acceptable and even part of the Nazareth in. Many of them are mean because they think they can get away it! 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Of authority with god as your boss his brother had died although he is now this! `` Sun '', `` Sun '', `` Sun '', `` Online... Extent that, even to this day, and now theyre being taught with more compassion the 1970s abuse! Just human and it is the wealthiest organisation in Ireland before I went there What is the.. In religion is the wealthiest organisation in Ireland ; I was told his had! Feel they are doing all the children saw this murder and the nuns were cross in my school... Assault in an Industrial school from the age of five god as your boss,. Of News Group Newspapers ' Limited 's Standard Terms and Conditions in accordance with Privacy!

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