Sisters of no mercy
Karen
In the pre- and post-war period, orphans were often sent to homes run by
religious orders, such as the Sisters of Nazareth. There they found a
disciplined regime which, they say, tipped over into violence. Now, decades
later, more than 500 former inmates are suing the nuns for damages. Beatrix
Campbell reports
Fred Aitken is 70 years old and still he is haunted by sounds - the racket
of children "banging their heads against the walls of the dormitories". The
walls were in a gothic mansion called Nazareth House, an orphanage in
Aberdeen where Aitken was dispatched when he was six. There, he says, nuns
regularly beat him and made him witness the violent degradation of other
children. Sleep was routinely interrupted by their constant checks for
children wetting their beds and the beating that followed. One bed-wetter
was held out of the window by her ankles as punishment. "You woke up to this
thrashing. Nuns with leather straps hanging from their waist beside their
rosary beads. The strap was socially acceptable. The excuse is that it was
normal in those days."
Aitken, who now lives near Chester, was taken to Nazareth House after his
mother died in the 1930s. He ran away constantly, and in his early teens one
of his older sisters, then living in one room, took him in and tried to take
care of him. He avoided school, sauntered around shops, cinemas, anywhere
warm, until he was picked up and sent to an approved school for
"delinquents". He joined the RAF and although other young men lay in their
beds weeping for their mothers, Aitken thrived: the military were "the first
people who treated me as a human being. I was clothed, fed, paid a weekly
wage. And they didn't beat me." Even then Aitken was shadowed by
unhappiness. In the 1960s, when he was in his 30s, he sought help. "I told a
doctor about the nuns. The man said he thought I was fantasising." It was
only 30 years later, when other Nazareth House survivors began to speak out
about their experiences, that his childhood and its bleak effects could no
longer be dismissed as his imaginings.
The Poor Sisters of Nazareth were founded in the mid-19th century in
Hammersmith, London, to take care of the young and the old. For more than a
hundred years, Nazareth Houses all over Britain were home to thousands of
children. They aren't children's homes any longer. These days the nuns look
after old people. And the Poor Sisters aren't poor (the order has £154m in
the bank) - they've been rebranded and they're simply Sisters.
Now the Sisters of Nazareth - the order also has houses in Australia, South
Africa, the United States and Ireland - are the subject of an international
campaign to call them to account for a regime of violence. In a symbolic
trial in Aberdeen in 2000, one nun, known in her childcare days as Sister
Alphonso, was convicted of cruel and unnatural treatment. And 40 nuns
belonging to the Poor Sisters of Nazareth and the Daughters of Charity of St
Vincent de Paul are named in a civil action by more than 500 people, mostly
middle-aged or elderly, who are claiming compensation from the orders. It is
to be a test case, in which 11 former inmates will appear in court, and is
expected to be heard in Scotland later this year.
Ranged against them are the Catholic hierarchy, the asylums' insurers, who
insist that there must be no admission of liability, and a sceptical hauteur
that flourishes across the political and legal establishment. It was voiced
at the highest level last year when the reforming Lord Chief Justice, Lord
Woolf, claimed that many convictions of people accused of abusing children
in institutional care were flawed and that the law was in need of review.
Archbishop Mario Conti, Scotland's most senior Catholic churchman, has
accused the former Nazareth House inmates of being seekers not of justice
but of "pots of gold".
Six years ago, Joseph Currie was wandering past Nazareth House in Aberdeen,
the place where he, too, spent his childhood. In the grounds, he noticed
that where once there were playing fields there was now a children's
nursery. Currie was horrified and took himself to the police to tell them
about his memories of the place he remembered as the "House of Hell".
Currie, now in his early 50s, lives in a Glasgow tenement. Everything in his
flat is neatly arranged - his shoes, his clothes, his videos, his crockery,
his correspondence. Every surface is wiped clean. This is not the work of an
obsessive, he says, just typical of an orphan. The military and emergency
services found those abandoned, bereaved children attractive recruits
because, though they lacked education, they knew how to iron their shirts,
polish their shoes and obey orders.
On the shelves around his Victorian tiled fireplace Currie displays old toy
fire engines - it was his boyhood ambition to be a firefighter. On the
mantelpiece there is a fading photograph of him in a grey bow tie with the
queen of the Eurovision Song Contest, Katie Boyle. They're at the annual
bash of the contest's fan club. Currie is one of the organisers. He is a
fast-talking, busy man, a retired postman, "a bit of a cheeky chap, straight
to the point", he says of himself. But though he is active in progressive
politics and his music club, says, "I'm also very lonely, I have to admit
that."
He was put in Nazareth House when he was two. According to his social
services records, his family was "destitute" and his mother admitted selling
a pair of shoes for food. Joseph had been left alone in verminous
conditions. But there was worse to come. He remembers Nazareth House as dour
and cruel. For years after he left in 1967, he tried to put the place out of
his mind. But that walk beside his old home provoked a rush of
recollections. "As a precaution, in case I died," he made a tape-recording
and put two pieces of paper in an envelope. The papers showed a copy of a
newspaper photograph of Aberdeen's Nazareth House. He had put a cross by one
of the windows in the eaves. On the other piece of paper he mapped all the
features of the room behind that window, its pipes, floorboards, walls,
doors, a cupboard. He sent the envelope to Cameron Fyfe, a Scottish
solicitor, with a note naming the boy with whom he had shared that room. His
map also showed a plywood panel, a false wall, and behind that panel, he
said, were some significant documents.
Joseph Currie, the orphanage child, had something important to say, but
there was no one to tell it to. So he wrote to God. Now, 30 years on, he
wanted the police and his solicitor to find those hidden documents because,
he believed, they would confirm his recollections of his time at the
orphanage. Currie took Cameron Fyfe, other lawyers and Nazareth House
officials to the building, to the locked door of his former bedroom. When
finally a key was found, they went in: the room was almost as he had left
it, and behind a plywood panel there were his childhood documents, exactly
as he had predicted.
One of them, dated Sunday April 2, 1967, pledges: "I will keep these
promises seen here." The boy forswears spending his pocket money, bad
language and playing at fire engines, but the letter begins with "No Dirt At
All", the 'No' underlined many times. "The real meaning of 'dirt' was sexual
abuse," Currie says, "I felt dirty. It started when I was about eight. A man
who came in as a volunteer to help bath the kids started molesting me in the
bath and in the toilets."
Currie also told his priest about the "dirt" in confession, "but he was deaf
and he would say 'speak up'. I'd come out and all the other boys would be
laughing." He told a teacher about his embarrassment and she suggested that
he could go into any church. "So I went to St Mary's Cathedral in Aberdeen
and I said, 'There's this man comes to the home and plays with my private
parts.' The priest asked me his name and whether he was still doing it. He
said, 'Pray for him my son.' He knew the guy because he came to Nazareth
House. I thought maybe he'd do something about it. But it didn't stop the
man coming in." The priest to whom he made his confession, he says, was
Father Conti.
Archbishop Conti has strongly denied Currie's claims, indeed he denies that
he ever, "either in the context of confessional or outside the confessional,
received any complaint of any kind of abuse relating to the care of children
in Nazareth House". The archbishop also accused Currie of being unreliable.
Currie had likened some of his childhood documents to a diary, but the
archbishop insists, "only three sheets of paper were found, two containing
aspirations Joseph had listed for himself and the other listing the timing
of the Benny Hill show on TV".
Currie is one of the more than 500 bringing the action against the Sisters
of Nazareth and the other orders. His childhood memories of the orphanage
are filled with emotional and physical terror. He had lost his family, and
letters from his siblings and his mother were never given to him. For a
minor misdemeanour, children had to kneel down and face the wall of the main
corridor while nuns passed. "Some would smack you as they came by. You'd
hear their footsteps but you didn't know who they were. It was a form of
mental torture."
Another inmate, Helen Cusiter, returned to Nazareth House six or seven years
ago, to visit a woman who was working there. An unexpected encounter with
one of the nuns she'd known when she was at the orphanage - Sister
Alphonso - changed her life.
"I started screaming. She asked me to go upstairs and tell her how I was
getting on. She started to tell me how wonderful it was working with the old
people, but her hands were shaking. She asked, 'What do you remember about
your childhood?' I said, 'Every bit.' She said, 'I was young at the time and
I was just following orders.' She never said, 'I'm sorry.' "
Cusiter fled home from that meeting with the nun. "I had a panic attack - I
thought I was having a heart attack. Then there were all these flashbacks."
Her days and nights were haunted. Her own fond family life with her husband
and children was swamped by her fears: "What if I was in a crash with my
husband and Sister Alphonso got my children? What if I ended up in Nazareth
House as an old person?" She became imprisoned in the safety of her own
home. She was overwhelmed by shame - ashamed of leaving other children
behind, of failing to protect them from harm.
Eventually, four years after her encounter with Sister Alphonso, she went to
a solicitor. "He sat, feet on the table, and said there were several
options. 'Is it money you're after?' I said no." Instead she decided to go
to the police. "I was passed to the child abuse unit at the age of 39." That
was in 1996. Grampian police advised her to get a lawyer and began to
interview other residents, crosschecking dates and names to verify the
growing archive of allegations against the order.
Cusiter became one of the former inmates whose evidence initiated the
unprecedented criminal prosecution in Scotland in autumn 2000, when Sister
Alphonso, appearing as Marie Docherty, was convicted of four charges of
cruel and unnatural treatment. Sheriff Colin Harris ordered that several
other charges be rejected and said that he would only admonish, rather than
imprison, her because of her age and her health.
Cusiter recalls a particular incident when Sister Alphonso came for her
while she was playing on swings. "She took me off by the hair, twisted me
round and threw me against the church wall," she says. "She broke all my
front teeth, my face was a mashed mess, the other kids were all screaming."
Helen Howie, a 77-year-old woman who had been raised in the orphanage and
later worked there as a helper, still remembers the blood on Cusiter's face.
"Sister Alphonso didn't use leather straps, she used her fists, she had some
strength." When the child was taken to the dentist, he asked, "What's all
this bruising?" She fell, he was told.
Cusiter was eight when her mother disappeared and she and her five brothers
and sisters were taken from Glasgow to Aberdeen's Nazareth House. There were
separate quarters for boys and girls, and the siblings were allowed no
communication, though they would see each other across a crowded church on
Sundays and on the school bus. After leaving Nazareth House, the six were
never again in the same room together. Helen's younger brother grew up a
distressed, drifting young man. "Most of the time he was like a recluse.
Finally, he took his own life. He told me he'd been sexually abused by a
priest. He'd never told anyone. It was so tragic."
Of her time at the orphanage, Cusiter remembers the raucous insults that
came from the mouths of the supposedly pious sisters: "They'd say, 'No
wonder your mother left you... whore... freak... Glasgow trash... I'd have
left you... you're just Glasgow tinks.' "
Like other inmates, Cusiter vividly recalls night-time. "They'd come round
the beds and make sure you were in the right position - flat on your back
with arms crossed out of the covers (otherwise you'd be touching yourself).
If you were lying on your side, you'd be yanked back. They'd lift the covers
to see if your bed was wet. If it was, then you'd be yanked out, called all
filthy names."
Some former residents say they were sexually abused - Cusiter remembers a
driver who "would touch up the boys and the girls" and, she says, a child
would often be used to keep watch while one of the handymen pursued his
sexual relationship with a nun - but most of the cases against the Sisters
of Nazareth concern physical violence. Mealtimes, predictably, were the
occasion of routine power struggles between nuns and children. Cusiter says
she was force-fed: "She'd be pulling your head back, then she'd hold your
nose so you couldn't breathe, until your mouth opened, and she'd shove food
in. Then you'd choke and the food would end up on your plate again and she
would force-feed you your own vomit. That started from the moment I went in
there."
Other inmates have similar memories. A retired telephonist living in an
elegant Glasgow apartment block for senior citizens recalls that "several of
the children were force-fed. One of them was my sister. She was three or
four years old. I saw it."
She had been sent with her sisters to Glasgow's Nazareth House from their
home in the Highlands after their mother was diagnosed with tuberculosis, a
disease that was still "like a death knell in the 1950s". She was eight. Her
first night was marked by her younger sister's screams as she was taken off
to a separate dormitory. She, too, remembers the nuns' nocturnal
inspections.
"Wetting the bed was a nightmare - they'd strip the covers off and the child
would be made to stand with the wet sheets for hours, to set an example.
They stood there like ghosts, covered in the wet sheets. My sister didn't
wet the bed at home, but one night she was crying and came to us and said
she'd wet the bed. So we swapped our sheets for her, rinsed the wet one out
and went to dry it on the radiator. But it was off. So we sat on the sheet
to dry it - we were only children. My sister got caned on the hands and the
back for that. The nun would roll her sleeves up, so she got a real good
whack. I felt she took relish out of that."
Punishment was perpetually lurking: "You never knew when or what. There is
still never a day when my sister does not fear being punished for something.
We were just miserable people, that was all."
Enduring companionship between friends and siblings seemed to be
discouraged. Sometimes companions simply disappeared. The retired
telephonist has never forgotten the summer of 1955 when the children of
Cardonald Nazareth House in Glasgow went to Aberdeen on an exchange. This
was their holiday. "We were taken to the beach, it was so grey and wild and
windy, we were frozen." The girls were told to change into their swimsuits
while the nuns huddled together in a beach hut. "My sister and her friend
Betsy Owens were playing with a beach ball. It blew into the sea and they
went into retrieve it, a stupid plastic ball - of course, they wouldn't have
dared do otherwise. Betsy was drowned. We saw her being brought out of the
water."
Her younger sister has never forgotten that day: she could scarcely swim,
but managed to grasp a long log. "I held on tight but the waves kept dashing
me against the wood and my leg was badly gashed. Eventually I was rescued by
a small boat, but it was terrifying." Her big sister saw her being lifted
out of the water, "all cut and bleeding. One of the nuns said: 'You watch
you don't get blood on your dress or you'll catch it.' My sister and I have
tried unsuccessfully to follow this up. There was no record of Betsy after
that incident, nothing. No prayers. No mass. Nothing."
The Edinburgh lawyer representing Nazareth House, Dr Pamela Abernathy,
insists, "No one still alive who was intimately connected with Nazareth
House at the time has any recollection of such an incident, nor are there
any records of the death of any child during that period."
When the retired telephonist recently began to make inquiries about Betsy
Owens, the order responded by denying any knowledge that she herself had
ever been there that summer. They said there were no records of her
presence. It seems that, she, like Betsy Owens, might never have existed.
But in her collection of personal records, there is the evidence: a telegram
adorned with top hats and lucky horseshoes, addressed to her at Aberdeen's
Nazareth House on August 3, 1955, saying, "Happy Birthday Darling, from
Mummy." She was there.
This woman, like Currie and Cusiter, has joined the civil action against the
Sisters of Nazareth because they believe it is the only way of calling the
order to account. She and her sisters were in Nazareth House for just 18
months - they left when their father, who regularly made the long trek
across the country to see his daughters, suddenly arrived in his work
clothes to take them away. To this day, she doesn't know what had so alarmed
him - all visits were patrolled by nuns who remained in the room, like
sentries. The children didn't speak about what had happened, "none of us
did, believe it or not". But it left the family with inconsolable sadness.
"We had wonderful parents. Right to her death, Mum kept saying, 'If only I
hadn't got ill.' She thought it was her fault. It broke her heart." Her
father took the child to the local priest "to explain what he'd discovered
and how angry he was for his children, but the priest never took it up".
Her own efforts to challenge the hierarchy of the church have been
distressing and her association with the public campaign against the Sisters
enraged other members of her congregation. "I was spat on. After we pray, we
shake hands, but one woman refused and said I was bringing the church down.
I said, 'No, this is about crimes against children.' "
She is outraged by suggestions that her motivation is securing compensation.
"I didn't want money. We have tried every way to get the church to accept
what happened, but they've done nothing. Nothing. These are major things,
the experience was a severe danger to people's lives." She points out that
"15 members of my group have taken their own lives. I am all right, I'm
surviving. I don't need financial help. Money would never take away what
happened - God's representatives on earth behaving in such an appalling
manner." She had worried about what had happened for years. "I need answers,
not just about Betsy but about the whole damned thing. I telephoned Cardinal
Winning, and asked him to do something about all the things that were coming
to light about Nazareth House. He said very little, I would have liked him
just to say sorry. He wasn't prepared to accept that it was the truth. I
felt terrible all over again."
Kathleen Batey, a 47-year-old cleaner living near Newcastle United Football
Club's mighty stadium, is not one of the campaigners seeking legal redress.
She has never consulted lawyers, nor sought compensation from the church. "I
don't want their money," she says. "I just want it out of my mind." And,
like all of those involved in the civil action, she wants to have her story
heard.
Kathleen Batey's back is lined with a ladder of scars - they are the relics
of her life at Nazareth House in Tyneside, received, she says, when nuns
took off the belts buckled round their habits and beat her. She was sent to
the orphanage, with her brother, when she was five - her grandmother had
just died, her mother had left, and her father felt he could not take care
of the children. She remembers Nazareth the house as "spooky, horrible".
She, too, remembers children being force-fed, and also being required to
work. "There was a big polished floor, it was really polished. They'd cut up
woollen jumpers and we had to put them on our feet and we had to skate on
the floor and make sure the shine came up. If you did it wrong, you got a
clip." Or worse. "The nuns would take off the belt and just hit you with it.
It was just the routine."
The punishments accelerated, she says, after she and her brother began
running away. In vain, they'd find their father, but before long the police
would turn up to take them back. Their father didn't stop them: "I thought
there was nobody. Dad didn't want us, nobody loved us, no one took care of
us." The violence in the orphanage didn't seem exceptional to her, just part
of life.
What often makes detection of childhood abuse difficult for the police is
that it's an adult's word against a child's, and there often isn't any
surviving physical evidence (a sign, say the sceptics, that abuse didn't
happen or that it didn't cause any harm). This may be qualified in cases of
alleged institutional abuse because there is sometimes a chain of
corroboration. Cameron Fyfe says there's no great problem of proof in this
case: individuals who have not seen each other for years, who may scarcely
remember each other, are corroborating each other's narratives. They are
recalling what were, after all, very public regimes of pain and punishment.
The survivors have to get past the argument that the religious orders merely
delivered the discipline that was standardised, sanctioned and universal in
those days. The Sisters of Nazareth lawyer, Dr Abernathy, points out that
Nazareth Houses were overseen by local authorities and by the government.
There were frequent visits by "children's officers, town councillors,
inspectors, including doctors and psychologists from the home and health
department".
None the less, there have been scandals and debates within the church about
the ill-treatment of children for decades. Eoin O'Sullivan, the Irish
historian of Catholic orphanages and schools, cites a very public challenge
to the church by Father Flanagan, the priest whose humane childcare was the
model for Spencer Tracy in the film, Men Of Boys Town. This embarrassed both
church and state in the 1940s. "Violence was an intrinsic part of the
culture of these institutions," O'Sullivan says; they were committed to the
"destruction of will". He has unearthed state archives revealing many
complaints about cruelty and inspectors' concerns about "dangerous and
undesirable punishment". Violent discipline, he says, was not uncontested.
Father Tindall, the church's child protection coordinator in the north-east
of England, ventured: "Too much of the organised culture of the church was
very disciplined and rule-bound, and gave an opportunity for people under
pressure to use the language of discipline to be punitive."
What was it, though, that caused such cruelty by women? Sister Margaret
McCurtain, a glinting Dominican scholar and one of Ireland's best-known
Catholic reformers, suggests the "sexual oppression of nuns could emerge
later in the form of cruelty". She also comments that the very notion of
charity was "a virtue that never brought with it affectivity." Feminist
scholar Ailbhe Smyth adds, "Christianity tells us that we have to help the
poor, but we don't have to like them. It is a Christian duty, for your
greater glory, not theirs. There is, in this context, an absence of any
recognition that tenderness should be the norm in relations between adults
and children."
The orphanage survivors' civil case must show that their complaints refer
not just to rogue nuns but to a regime for which the order itself was
responsible. Cameron Fyfe insists that similar stories have surfaced against
the Sisters of Nazareth in Australia and Ireland, where their practices,
such as the response to bed-wetting and the force-feeding, "were very
similar and esoteric". Fyfe argues that the cultures of orphanages and
schools tend to be specific and different - he also represents clients who
were in the hands of the de la Salle monks in Britain, against whom there
are more allegations of sexual abuse than there are against the Nazareth
House nuns.
The Nazareth House children face another difficulty: the time bar. "After a
real struggle, we have persuaded the legal aid board to support 11 test
cases," says Fyfe. All of these concern allegations of ill-treatment after
1964. The current limit on cases before that date is being challenged in the
courts, and members of the Scottish parliament are mooting a change in the
law. If that fails, Fyfe intends to take the challenge to the European Court
of Human Rights.
Cases are being compiled in England, too, though there seems to be some
reluctance to prosecute physical abuse. Sex with children is a crime, but
"reasonable chastisement is still a lawful reason for inflicting pain on
children," explains David Spicer, a barrister and former chair of the
British Association for the Study and Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect.
Dr Abernathy denies the allegations of cruelty and abuse, and argues that
for 130 years the Sisters of Nazareth "devoted their entire lives to the
care of orphans, abandoned children, children from broken homes and in many
cases children referred from the courts. Many of these unfortunate children
suffered consequential emotional disturbance, and some of them no other
institutions would accept."
Francis Docherty is 58 and runs a helpline, Historical Survivors of In-Care
Abuse, whose cases include people as old as 95 who are still suffering,
still searching for their lost brothers and sisters, still trying to sort
things out. He was brought up in Smyllum Park orphanage in Lanark, run by
the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul. "The horrifying thing was
that being hurt by implements was bad enough, but to see a holy person, a
righteous person with - I don't want to exaggerate - a face full of hate, an
angelic, holy face turning into a face of horror, a woman crunching her
teeth in hate, going berserk, screaming while you are pleading for mercy,
the wee leather boots just booting into you. Bruises go away, but the horror
stays in your mind."
Docherty, too, has joined the action against the Daughters of Charity and
the Sisters of Nazareth. "This isn't revenge against the Catholic church, we
just want them to come out of denial. They've always ruled by fear. It's
their power mania. These people told you that you were the scum of the
earth. Maybe you started to believe it."
Docherty worked for most of his life as a driver, and for as many years he
has been "in and out of Alcoholics Anonymous. I haven't taken a drink for
more than five years," he says. He is never surprised by attempts to
discredit people like himself. "We've had a lifetime of being accused of
being liars and cheats, searching for a pot of gold." Archbishop Conti has
not only accused the victims of seeking pots of gold, he has told them that,
"on your part, there is a need to forgive". That's not up to the Archbishop,
says Docherty. "It's up to us whether we want to forgive. Give us an
apology. All we want is for the Catholic church to change its ways and let
us live in peace."
€R.L. Measures
<karen_jarvis@(S)hotmail.com> wrote:
** 'Twas an interesting piece.
-- About 15-years ago, I met a bright-eyed neighbor girl named Elizabeth
when I was hading out mandarin ora. She was Korean and she was six at the
time. Elizabeth had been abandoned at birth in South Korea and had been
adopted at the age of a few months by a neighbor family. When Elizabeth
arrived in California, her adoptive family erected an 8' by 16'
balloon-festooned billboard in their front yard proclaiming "Welcome Home
Baby Elizabeth". The adoptive family was Roman Catholic, and the mother
was of the strict variety and reportedly somewhat short-fused. . When
Elizabeth was c. 4-years old, the traditional RC instruction (inculcation)
began. Elizabeth resisted being inculcated. Elizabeth's step-mother
eventually became unhappy with her. She sent Elizabeth away to a RC
nun-run RC boarding school. The next time I saw Elizabeth was about
ten-years later. She had come by looking for a lost cat. The bright-eyes
were gone. Now I think I understand why.
Thanks, Karen.
post-scriptum: One of your critics on this group refers to you as "the
pig". Do you perhaps have a nose that can be described as somewhat
porcine ? ? thanks
--
Rich, 805 386 3734, www.vcnet.com/measures
remove ^ from e-mail address
Karen
"€R.L. Measures" <^2...@vc.net> wrote in message
news:^2-1404030...@207.178.185.100...
> In article <6Syma.21596$fH5.16...@news-text.cableinet.net>, "Karen"
> <karen_jarvis@(S)hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> ** 'Twas an interesting piece.
> -- About 15-years ago, I met a bright-eyed neighbor girl named Elizabeth
> when I was hading out mandarin ora. She was Korean and she was six at the
> time. Elizabeth had been abandoned at birth in South Korea and had been
> adopted at the age of a few months by a neighbor family. When Elizabeth
> arrived in California, her adoptive family erected an 8' by 16'
> balloon-festooned billboard in their front yard proclaiming "Welcome Home
> Baby Elizabeth". The adoptive family was Roman Catholic, and the mother
> was of the strict variety and reportedly somewhat short-fused. . When
> Elizabeth was c. 4-years old, the traditional RC instruction (inculcation)
> began. Elizabeth resisted being inculcated. Elizabeth's step-mother
> eventually became unhappy with her. She sent Elizabeth away to a RC
> nun-run RC boarding school. The next time I saw Elizabeth was about
> ten-years later. She had come by looking for a lost cat. The bright-eyes
> were gone. Now I think I understand why.
>
> Thanks, Karen.
> post-scriptum: One of your critics on this group refers to you as "the
> pig". Do you perhaps have a nose that can be described as somewhat
> porcine ? ? thanks
Nope, my nose is fine, and I weigh one third of pantsy's blubber.
Mcc6050
>In the pre- and post-war period, orphans were often sent to homes run by
>religious orders, such as the Sisters of Nazareth. There they found a
>disciplined regime which, they say, tipped over into violence. Now, decades
>later, more than 500 former inmates are suing the nuns for damages. <snip for
brevity>
A truly horrific account, and perhaps not that unusual.
In the city where I grew up was an orphanage run by some order. It was an
accepted truth among us, both adults and children, that the children there were
beaten severely, worked rather hard. There was also an implication, nothing
overtly stated, that the orphans were lesser beings deserving harshness.
Mac
€R.L. Measures
<karen_jarvis@(S)hotmail.com> wrote:
> "€R.L. Measures" <^2...@vc.net> wrote in message
> news:^2-1404030...@207.178.185.100...
> > In article <6Syma.21596$fH5.16...@news-text.cableinet.net>, "Karen"
> > <karen_jarvis@(S)hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > ** 'Twas an interesting piece.
> > -- About 15-years ago, I met a bright-eyed neighbor girl named Elizabeth
> > when I was handing out mandarin oranges. She was Korean and she was
six at the
> > time. Elizabeth had been abandoned at birth in South Korea and had been
> > adopted at the age of a few months by a neighbor family. When Elizabeth
> > arrived in California, her adoptive family erected an 8' by 16'
> > balloon-festooned billboard in their front yard proclaiming "Welcome Home
> > Baby Elizabeth". The adoptive family was Roman Catholic, and the mother
> > was of the strict variety and reportedly somewhat short-fused. . When
> > Elizabeth was c. 4-years old, the traditional RC instruction (inculcation)
> > began. Elizabeth resisted being inculcated. Elizabeth's step-mother
> > eventually became unhappy with her. She sent Elizabeth away to a RC
> > nun-run RC boarding school. The next time I saw Elizabeth was about
> > ten-years later. She had come by looking for a lost cat. The bright-eyes
> > were gone. Now I think I understand why.
> >
> > Thanks, Karen.
> > post-scriptum: One of your critics on this group refers to you as "the
> > pig". Do you perhaps have a nose that can be described as somewhat
> > porcine ? ? thanks
>
> Nope, my nose is fine, and I weigh one third of pantsy's blubber.
€ ? ? ?
€R.L. Measures
(Mcc6050) wrote:
€ Since the one true apostlic church teaches that suffering is one of the
paths to salvation, the nuns who abuse children could really and truly be
doing them a really big favor.
Karen
"€R.L. Measures" <^2...@vc.net> wrote.................
> "Karen" wrote:
> > "€R.L. Measures" <^2...@vc.net> wrote..........
You asked about my weight in another thread, Rich.
Patrick
>Sisters of no mercy
>In the pre- and post-war period, orphans were often sent to homes run by
>religious orders, such as the Sisters of Nazareth.
+ So many stories - perpetrated by people who knew people, who saw
people, who once knew someone who attended an orphanage.
+ Why not get the truth from people who ACTUALLY lived there.
+ My wife and I both attended St Thomas Orphanage in First grade. We
both hated it - and we both left for other schools in second grade.
She went to the Ursaline Academy for girls, and I went to St Gerard's.
+ St Thomas was horrible. It sucked. Why? Because there were no
parents that would hold you, love you, read to you, play with you. It
was dark and dingy because it was an OLD building built 120 years ago
with small windows, small rooms. It was built before unions changed
the face of the New York Garment district. Nuns do not act like
parents. Nuns pray a lot. Kids play. Of course there would be some
disagreement as to what would win out. St Thomas Orphanage taught
kids to work hard, pray, be quiet, study, be quiet, pray, and accept
things as they were. They had no television, play stations,
computers.
+ Compare that with what kids see today.
€R.L. Measures
<karen_jarvis@(S)hotmail.com> wrote:
€ what is a "pantsy"?
Karen
"€R.L. Measures" <^2...@vc.net> wrote.........
pantsy revolting burper, aka as barker the belligerent bully.
€R.L. Measures
<karen_jarvis@(S)hotmail.com> wrote:
€ then should it not be capitalized?
Karen
Normally yes, but I'm following pantsy and earl weber's "example"!
€R.L. Measures
<karen_jarvis@(S)hotmail.com> wrote:
> "€R.L. Measures" <^2...@vc.net> wrote..........
> > "Karen" wrote:
> > > "€R.L. Measures" <^2...@vc.net> wrote.........
> > > > "Karen" wrote:
> > > > >...
> > > > € what is a "pantsy"?
> > >
> > > pantsy revolting burper, aka as barker the belligerent bully.
> >
> > € then should it not be capitalized?
>
> Normally yes, but I'm following pantsy and earl weber's "example"!
€ I try to follow standard English and not to play the Ad Hominem Card.
Karen
> "Karen" wrote:
> > "€R.L. Measures" <^2...@vc.net> wrote..........
> > > "Karen" wrote:
> > > > "€R.L. Measures" <^2...@vc.net> wrote.........
> > > > > "Karen" wrote:
> > > > > >...
> > > > > € what is a "pantsy"?
> > > >
> > > > pantsy revolting burper, aka as barker the belligerent bully.
> > >
> > > € then should it not be capitalized?
> >
> > Normally yes, but I'm following pantsy and earl weber's "example"!
>
> € I try to follow standard English and not to play the Ad Hominem Card.
Bully for you, Rich.
dvs519
wrote:
>"Karen" <karen_jarvis@(S)hotmail.com> wrote:
>>Sisters of no mercy
>>In the pre- and post-war period, orphans were often sent to homes run by
>>religious orders, such as the Sisters of Nazareth.
>
>+ So many stories - perpetrated by people who knew people, who saw
>people, who once knew someone who attended an orphanage.
>
>+ Why not get the truth from people who ACTUALLY lived there.
>+ My wife and I both attended St Thomas Orphanage in First grade. We
>both hated it - and we both left for other schools in second grade.
>She went to the Ursaline Academy for girls, and I went to St Gerard's.
>
HOw did you get from New York to Montana?
>+ St Thomas was horrible. It sucked. Why? Because there were no
>parents that would hold you, love you, read to you, play with you. It
>was dark and dingy because it was an OLD building built 120 years ago
>with small windows, small rooms. It was built before unions changed
>the face of the New York Garment district. Nuns do not act like
>parents. Nuns pray a lot. Kids play. Of course there would be some
>disagreement as to what would win out. St Thomas Orphanage taught
>kids to work hard, pray, be quiet, study, be quiet, pray, and accept
>things as they were. They had no television, play stations,
>computers.
There weren't any play stations nor computers in the early 1950's when
you would have been attending there.
>+ Compare that with what kids see today.
==========================================
Dave by the Beach
Southern California
€R.L. Measures
<karen_jarvis@(S)hotmail.com> wrote:
€ As I see it, one should realize that whenever an opponent plays the Ad
Hominem Card, that opponent is nearing the end of their anchor chain.
Another indicator of running out of chain is killfiling a person whose
only offense is asking pertinent questions. I see death threats as a
tacit admission that one has lost one's temper as well as the debate, as
well as lost the anchor chain overboard. Sadly, I have not had a death
threat in c. 5-years. Perhaps I am loosing my touch? Alas.
-- It is my opinion, that you own the title for the
most-effective/most-affrontive critic of god's one true Church on this
Newsgroup. Congrats,.Karen J.
Karen
"dvs519" <dvs...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:ussp9vc2e77tirapc...@4ax.com...
>"Karen" <karen_jarvis@(S)hotmail.com> wrote:
>>Sisters of no mercy
>>In the pre- and post-war period, orphans were often sent to homes run by
>>religious orders, such as the Sisters of Nazareth.
>
>+ So many stories - perpetrated by people who knew people, who saw
>people, who once knew someone who attended an orphanage.
>
>+ Why not get the truth from people who ACTUALLY lived there.
>+ My wife and I both attended St Thomas Orphanage in First grade. We
>both hated it - and we both left for other schools in second grade.
>She went to the Ursaline Academy for girls, and I went to St Gerard's.
>
HOw did you get from New York to Montana?
+ Orphans *live* in an orphanage; they don't just attend school.
+ Orphans do not have the luxury of moving to another school. They are
"stuck" in the orphanage until they reach a certain age (16 in the UK and
Australia).
+ Most of the orphanages where abuse took place do *not* accept day pupils
from the community.
Patrick
>HOw did you get from New York to Montana?
+ I didn't.
+ I was born in Great Falls, Montana.
+ Columbus Hospital, Sept 11th.
+ I lived in Great Falls until 1969. Then I lived in Illinois,
Montana, South East Asia (several bases), Illinois, Germany, Spain,
Turkey, Ohio, N Carolina, Saudi for a few months, Singapore and Ohio.
+ Did I mention New York?
+ Nope, I didn't.
>>+ St Thomas was horrible. It sucked. Why? Because there were no
>>parents that would hold you, love you, read to you, play with you. It
>>was dark and dingy because it was an OLD building built 120 years ago
>>with small windows, small rooms. It was built before unions changed
>>the face of the New York Garment district. Nuns do not act like
>>parents. Nuns pray a lot. Kids play. Of course there would be some
>>disagreement as to what would win out. St Thomas Orphanage taught
>>kids to work hard, pray, be quiet, study, be quiet, pray, and accept
>>things as they were. They had no television, play stations,
>>computers.
>
>There weren't any play stations nor computers in the early 1950's when
>you would have been attending there.
+ That is right, dave.
+ This is why it is unfair and stupid to talk bad about orphanages 50
years ago.
Patrick
>HOw did you get from New York to Montana?
>
>+ Orphans *live* in an orphanage; they don't just attend school.
>
>+ Orphans do not have the luxury of moving to another school. They are
>"stuck" in the orphanage until they reach a certain age (16 in the UK and
>Australia).
+ Perhaps you could come up with a different name for those children
whose kin live 50-100 miles from the big city. Sometimes those kids
have one parent. Sometimes they have two. Sometimes they have a
mother who lives with an uncle on a farm. Sometimes they have
grandparents only who live up in the mountains.
+ What do you call a little girl and her sister who live in the
orphanage nine months of the year, and are carted off to the farm
during the Summer? What do you call the kid who lives in this same
orphanage for 7 years? What then if she moves into someone's home and
lives with a different family during her four years of high school?
+ What do you call a kid who lives in an orphanage for 2 years while
his mother is in a hospital?
+ Gee, karen...
+ Just goes to show....
+ WHo knows MORE about an orphanage.
+ You - the liar pig -- or me.
>
>+ Most of the orphanages where abuse took place do *not* accept day pupils
>from the community.
+ How special for you to notice.
Karen
"Patrick" <bark...@erinet.com> wittered.........
> >HOw did you get from New York to Montana?
> >
> >+ Orphans *live* in an orphanage; they don't just attend school.
> >
> >+ Orphans do not have the luxury of moving to another school. They are
> >"stuck" in the orphanage until they reach a certain age (16 in the UK and
> >Australia).
>
> + Perhaps you could come up with a different name for those children
> whose kin live 50-100 miles from the big city.
+ Boarders.
<snipped the rest of pantsy's stupidity>
Karen
Patrick
+ What answer would you like?
+ * Boarders* is a good answer.
+ Since there is a plus sign in front of the answer, I thought maybe I
answered it myself. Incidently, orphans AND boarders both live in
orphanages. They sleep next to each other, eat next to each other,
bathe, study, work and play with each other. Boarders have the same
knowledge of what happens inside an orphanage as do orphans. It is
very difficult to tell the difference between how borders and orphans
are treated. Kids attending the school at the orphanage certainly
don't know the difference.
+ You were arguing that orphans were abused. I merely asked you to
make sure you knew what you were talking about.
+ you tend to speak with a forked tongue.
+ you tend to lie, karen.
+ No answer, pig?
Karen
"Patrick" <bark...@erinet.com> wittered............
> Karen" <karen_jarvis@(S)hotmail.com> wrote:
> >"Karen" <karen_jarvis@(S)hotmail.com> wrote.........
> >> "Patrick" <bark...@erinet.com> wittered.........
> >> > Karen" <karen_jarvis@(S)hotmail.com> wrote:
> >> >>"dvs519" <dvs...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
> >>
> >> > >HOw did you get from New York to Montana?
> >> > >
> >> > >+ Orphans *live* in an orphanage; they don't just attend school.
> >> > >
> >> > >+ Orphans do not have the luxury of moving to another school. They
are
> >> > >"stuck" in the orphanage until they reach a certain age (16 in the
UK
> >and >Australia).
> >> >
> >> > + Perhaps you could come up with a different name for those children
> >> > whose kin live 50-100 miles from the big city.
> >>
> >> + Boarders.
> >
>
> + * Boarders* is a good answer.
Glad you finally see sense. A *boarder* attends a *boarding* school.
An *orphan* does not just attend school: they *live* in an orphanage.
Patrick
>> + * Boarders* is a good answer.
>
>Glad you finally see sense. A *boarder* attends a *boarding* school.
>An *orphan* does not just attend school: they *live* in an orphanage.
+ St Thomas' Orphanage is not considered a boarding school.
+ It's name is St Thomas' Orphanage.
+ Orphans, Boarders, AND regular students attended school there
together. You might be hard pressed to tell then apart in class.
And, I defy you to tell the boarders and orphans apart while in bed.
Karen
"Patrick" <bark...@erinet.com> wittered.............
> Karen" <karen_jarvis@(S)hotmail.com> wrote:
> > "Patrick" <bark...@erinet.com> wittered............
> >> + * Boarders* is a good answer.
> >
> >+ Glad you finally see sense. A *boarder* attends a *boarding* school.
> >+ An *orphan* does not just attend school: they *live* in an orphanage.
>+ I defy you to tell the boarders and orphans apart while in bed.
+ Tsk pantsy, I leave that sort of thing to you.
Paul Duca
Patrick wrote:
In other words, prepared for the eternal dreariness of Catholic
Heaven....
Paul
Paul Duca
Patrick wrote:
> dvs519 <dvs...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> >HOw did you get from New York to Montana?
>
> + I didn't.
> + I was born in Great Falls, Montana.
> + Columbus Hospital, Sept 11th.
Looks like your birthdays are f****d for the rest of your life
and the next one, as well.
Paul