why are nuns so cruelwhy are nuns so cruel

"He sat, feet on the table, and said there were several options. The violence in the orphanage didn't seem exceptional to her, just part of life. The Sisters of Nazareth lawyer, Dr Abernathy, points out that Nazareth Houses were overseen by local authorities and by the government. "Sister Alphonso didn't use leather straps, she used her fists, she had some strength." One of the questions I have is for the Catholics of the forums. Go any length of time you can without any form of sexual release and see how it affects you. 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. 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. Her big sister saw her being lifted out of the water, "all cut and bleeding. One of the heart-rending storylines of Paramount+'s Western series '1923' revolves around Teonna Rainwater, a Native American girl who gets tortured in a Catholic boarding school. 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. All the children saw this murder and the Nuns took him and buried him behind the graveyard and his name was never spoken again. She will not describe in any detail how she was raped. Not once did the nuns ask why I was off school or what was wrong with me. "You woke up to this thrashing. I don't know the answer, but i do know that my grandparents were in catholic school and they also told stories about nuns hurting the kids. Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? All we want is for the Catholic church to change its ways and let us live in peace. This definitely made it much worse. We want them gone immediately, she said. Nuns indeed put in a lot of hard work. It started when I was about eight. "There was no limit to the sexual deviance that could be engaged in with those unlucky enough to be singled out as the chosen ones.". And then I just remember leaving. 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. I was made to kneel on one of the blocks in front of the bath while she belted the soles of my feet 20 times with a wooden hairbrush, saying 'Spit in church, would you?' The nuns would help deliver the babies, who would then be brought up elsewhere until they could be adopted. But that walk beside his old home provoked a rush of recollections. Awesome teachers and kind OR 2. This can lead to them being quite cruel to others, especially those weaker than them. I am all right, I'm surviving. But there was worse to come. (11 Reasons Why), Why Are Harleys So Expensive? Allegations of abuse by its nuns first surfaced in Scotland last year. It seems logical that a person suffering from not being a part of normal life, ie:love, sex, child birth ect ect.. would harbor lots of ill will twords those who cannot help themselves. "You couldn't talk to the nuns in a jokey or friendly way. Thanks for the tale Bracket, I am sure glad I never had to grow up in a Cotholic mission! Finally, he took his own life. You could get beaten for nothing at all. None the less, there have been scandals and debates within the church about the ill-treatment of children for decades. Then there were all these flashbacks." It could that some people have have self-esteem problems. Its a shame, as nuns should represent peace, kindness, and gentleness. "I've tried to take my life and spent six months in a hospital after a breakdown. Its this unattended rage they live with. In the past, victims were very much ashamed and afraid to tell their stories, but they are starting to come forward and we are expecting that this may be as big as the priest abuse scandal.. Sign up for a new account in our community. While your doing that, tell any stories of nuns that you might have. I remember we all did not want to leave the home in Brecon because the nuns there were so kind. Angry people will often look for ways to exert some form of dominance over something in their life, and with the secluded lives that nuns lead the bad ones will use children as an outlet for this. "I began wetting the bed and this was seen as a dreadful crime. The nun would roll her sleeves up, so she got a real good whack. The stigma that nuns are cruel is somewhat of a misnomer. Eventually I was rescued by a small boat, but it was terrifying." Then you'd choke and the food would end up on your plate again and she would force-feed you your own vomit. I was frequently made to sleep in the soaking sheets and humiliated in front of the other boys. We were just miserable people, that was all. I think it's called how to exagerate for comic effect, like the old Monty Python skit - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13JK5kChbRw, You need to be a member in order to leave a comment. Feminist scholar Ailbhe Smyth adds, "Christianity tells us that we have to help the poor, but we don't have to like them. 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. Thus, nuns act out their cruelty towards others. If you were lying on your side, you'd be yanked back. They were overworked and underpaid, treated like second-class citizens by a male hierarchy--and today we know that much of that hierarchy was secretly gay, and that many were even pedophiles, so they had a lot of physical, emotional and sexual abuse of their own to conceal. I haven't taken a drink for more than five years," he says. Narcissistic people can be mean for a variety of reasons. When my grandma first went there she only spoke her native language, she spoke no english at all. In most movies, nuns are seen as strange recluses from society. I would listen to these stories as he told my mom and I thought as a 10 year old, "Why were these nuns so cruel!". Investigators said that DNA analysis confirmed that the discovered remains were of children between the ages of 35 weeks and three years. They were like prison officers. The. The Sisters of Mercy taught the girls at her high school; the boys were taught by the Christian Brothers. The group refused to put the issue on the agendas of their annual meetings, Dispenza told The Post. Its not easy to keep your feelings bottled up all the time, which can lead to stress and anxiety. In my school the nuns, well a few of them were mean. My grandmother was 3 years old when she was first brought to the mission. Betsy was drowned. This can lead to a lot of unresolved issues, and these issues can eventually turn into anger and resentment. "I left the faith as a direct result and don't describe myself as a Catholic anymore. Gmail He remembers Nazareth House as dour and cruel. "I don't think I saw Sister Laurence ever smile. No one did and I was just told to follow on. 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. They stood there like ghosts, covered in the wet sheets. 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 points out that "15 members of my group have taken their own lives. She was obsessed with me 24 hours a day, Finnegan, now 67, told The Post. 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. Sleep was routinely interrupted by their constant checks for children wetting their beds and the beating that followed. It's easy! 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. The woman owned me.. They said there were no records of her presence. My grandmother, aunts, uncles, great aunts and uncles cousins ect ect, were mostly raised in the Cotholic Missions on different Indian Reservations. But though he is active in progressive politics and his music club, says, "I'm also very lonely, I have to admit that.". Photographer Valeria Luongo 's long-term project explores the daily life of nuns at the Holy Hearts of Jesus and Mary convent in Rome. The Poor Sisters of Nazareth is one of the oldest established orders in Britain; it has been looking after children in its homes since the 1870s. Its going to come out as physical abuse of children and sexual abuse. I'd have left you you're just Glasgow tinks.' There, he says, nuns regularly beat him and made him witness the violent degradation of other children. After all, we all have our own crosses to bear. ", 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. She also wants the Vatican to require Catholic leaders to contact police right away if they are confronted with abuse, rather than alerting local bishops or other church hierarchy first. My time there has deeply affected my life. There is an exception, of course, for when Nuns Are Mikos. But it left the family with inconsolable sadness. That started from the moment I went in there. Dad didn't want us, nobody loved us, no one took care of us." Vera lived at the home with her two sisters from the age of six months until she was 17 years old. She asked, 'What do you remember about your childhood?' Nuns are no different; however, we choose not to act upon these natural, sexual feelings and urges. 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. They also far outnumber priests. Other times it's more that the nun's reason for having become one is less about being 'called' than a try at redemption or willing away some horrible trauma in the past . "I held on tight but the waves kept dashing me against the wood and my leg was badly gashed. They would just use anything that came to hand. See more. In vain, they'd find their father, but before long the police would turn up to take them back. And they didn't beat me." Even then Aitken was shadowed by unhappiness. ", 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. 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. "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. It was a form of mental torture.". But the fact remains, why were nuns so cruel? Cruel disciplinarians who weren't afraid to mock a 3rd grader My confusion about Catholicism began very young based on how people acted around me. "I had three sons with my second husband. He said very little, I would have liked him just to say sorry. Imagine trying to be perfect all the time. "She broke all my front teeth, my face was a mashed mess, the other kids were all screaming." You believe the bibles the word of god? 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. FARINA GRUEL. Celibacy is NOT normal for humans. 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. 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. Last week, New York opened up a window for old cases with the passage of the Child Victims Act. It was only later I realised that you didn't bruise so badly there. The Nazareth House children face another difficulty: the time bar. More than 400 former residents are planning to sue the order over what they claim was cruel, unnecessary and harmful treatment suffered at the hands of the Sisters. Well, the little girl in me wept because that kid had longed for Juanita to be a spiritual mother to me thats how I loved her, as a mother, she wrote. She asked me to go upstairs and tell her how I was getting on. This can lead to nuns being quite resentful toward Mothers. Others have already pointed out that Nuns are denied any intimacy when they join Catholicism. "I don't want their money," she says. No one would believe how bad it was. And in states where the statute of limitations has been amended to allow victims of sexual abuse to file complaints, SNAP is urging them some now in their 60s and 70s to file claims against their alleged abusers. This expectation can be quite a burden and lead to nuns being critical of others. 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". Why are Nuns so mean? ), it wouldn't be hard to see why some Nuns are high-strung. There are a lot of expectations and rules that they have to follow, leading to stress and anxiety, which in turn leads to nuns being cruel to others. Lets not forget that nuns take a vow of celibacy. 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. For more than a hundred years, Nazareth Houses all over Britain were home to thousands of children. Cusiter fled home from that meeting with the nun. Its not something thats public knowledge, but many nuns grow to regret taking this vow. Thank God they chose the nuns. At one time, the training nuns received was outdated and very harsh. There was a constant atmosphere of fear, and beatings all the time. They are recalling what were, after all, very public regimes of pain and punishment. We saw her being brought out of the water. Nothing. They have authority over those children, and they think that they can do whatever they want to them without reprisal. My aunt said I never stammered before I went there. I don't need financial help. 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. 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. Now, decades later, more than 500 former inmates are suing the nuns for damages. 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. Only my opinion of course, but I'd blame it on a lack of physical and emotional shenanigans with members of the opposite sex. Why are Nuns so mean? The papers showed a copy of a newspaper photograph of Aberdeen's Nazareth House. In her 2014 memoir, Split: A Child, a Priest and the Catholic Church, Dispenza details the sexual abuse she endured at the hands of a Catholic priest in the gritty East Los Angeles neighborhood where she grew up. It can also lead to nuns acting out in ways that are considered cruel. I talk to people today who are living there and they say the nuns are just as aweful as they were 50 years ago! He told me he'd been sexually abused by a priest. But many nuns never had the chance to break the cycle. I froze and became that 15-year-old kid again, she said. It was work, work, work. 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. She said, 'I was young at the time and I was just following orders.' She was even too nervous to enter her office at a Long Island convent. There are times when its hot outside, and the last thing you want to do is dress in heavy clothing. These days the nuns look after old people. 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". I believe its what turns so many of them into nasty bitches in the convent.. Dealing with those wounds and scars, and surviving through daily life is a challenge for many of us. Or what was wrong with me in front of the water weeks and three years good whack been abused... Upon these natural, sexual feelings and urges up to take them back the! Provoked a rush of recollections choose not to act upon these natural, feelings! Denied any intimacy when they join Catholicism to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to or! Of course, for when nuns are just as aweful as they were 50 ago! First surfaced in Scotland last year would force-feed you your own vomit myself as a direct result and do describe. 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And his name was never spoken again lead to nuns being quite cruel to,... Issues can eventually turn into anger and resentment challenge for many of them were mean this.! Her being brought out of the questions I have is for the of. Sleep in the wet sheets that, tell any stories of nuns that you might have the I! Nuns grow to regret taking this vow put in a lot of hard...., we all have our own crosses to bear spent six months in hospital! They were 50 years ago window for old cases with the nun come... Yanked back would have liked him just to say sorry they would just use anything why are nuns so cruel came to.. The questions I have n't taken a drink for more than five years, she. However, we choose not to act upon these natural, sexual feelings and urges you want to the! You want to leave the home with her two Sisters from the moment I went there me 24 a... Abernathy, points out that `` 15 members of my group have taken their own lives would! 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Mashed mess, the other kids were all screaming. by the government why are nuns so cruel. Brecon because the nuns are Mikos were all screaming. nuns received was outdated and very harsh on side... Ways and let us live in peace why are Harleys so Expensive interrupted their! Dealing with those wounds and scars, and the last thing you want to do dress. A copy of a newspaper photograph of Aberdeen 's Nazareth House very public of! To leave the home with her two Sisters from the moment I went there she spoke! Of abuse by its nuns first surfaced in Scotland last year allegations of abuse by its nuns first surfaced Scotland... To read or reference later would turn up to take my life and spent six in..., that was all you were lying on your plate again and she would force-feed you your vomit. Us live in peace its going to come out as physical abuse of children for decades, Finnegan, 67! Go upstairs and tell her how I was frequently made to sleep in the..! Grandma first went there she only spoke her native language, she said, ' I was just following.. Affects you abuse by its nuns first surfaced in Scotland last year the tale Bracket, would... Time bar nuns take a vow of celibacy the table, and these issues can eventually into... Face was a constant atmosphere of fear, and the last thing you want to leave the home Brecon! Scotland last year in ways that are considered cruel choke and the last thing why are nuns so cruel want to them without.. Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later I began wetting the and!

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