Cruelty by Nuns

[user1457017537]

AIBU to wonder when and if all the perpetrators of child abuse and cruelty in the Catholic Church will be prosecuted and sentenced. I have just read of a nun who has been denying her crime since 2000 finally admitting her guilt. Another 400 allegations have been made. What are they waiting for. The Order is St Alphonse

How dare they indeed.

AIBU to wonder when and if all the perpetrators of child abuse and cruelty in the Catholic Church will be prosecuted and sentenced.

Don't they have to be tried and found guilty first?

@Aprilshouldhavebeenmyname my grandmother had the same. They also tied her left hand behind her back to force her to use her right hand. Left her with a stammer her whole life.

@confusedbeetle... there is no excuse, maybe there are reasons behind some of it but no... there is no excuse... we have choice, free will and we do all know right from wrong. I know your post was ages ago but I did want to challenge your 'pebble in the pond'. The discussions around the repeal of 8th make me so angry. Where was the compassion and love for both when mothers were locked up and babies were left to die. No human can be forgiven for the evil that was perpetrated. ForgivenessIsDivine, I am merely human and find it very difficult to forgive the way the Catholic Church has minimised, denied and hidden such inhuman treatment of the vulnerable.

It's a continuation of the Victorian ideal that hard work will redeem you. Workhouses in England were run by stallwarts of the Church of England - good Christian people splitting up husbands and wives, putting them in prison uniforms and enslaving them in hard labour for the crime of poverty, illness or old age - then declaring the children 'orphans'.

In the 20th century children of the poor or unmarried were shipped off to Australia as 'orphans' with the complicity of the UK government. For many of these children their lives were as unloved mini unpaid servants.

Shameful all round. The destruction of the family records of the women and the adoption records of the children was to aid the cover up. However, the parents often sent their daughters to these laundries to avoid the shame associated with unmarried pregnant women and the government was very much involved it it all.

Sadly many people used to expect more from 'godly' people, politicians and celebrities - I think there are few, if any, institutions people trust anymore.

I worked in a Christian charity for a few years. Whoever said that evil people hide in senior positions in religious organisations was spot on. I never would’ve believed some of what went on without experiencing it first hand. Awful, twisted evil people

I think most joined on the grounds of a lifetime job, in Ireland.

In family's of boys years ago some would join the Garda and others the church. Not a vocation but a pension on a power trip.

Unforgivable Bastards.

I know there are a huge number of good people as well but the abusers really should be called to account of their actions and the pain and damage they inflicted. I just feel they are waiting for abusers and their victims to no longer be around.

I went to an all girls secondary school run by nuns in the 90's, I am 40.
Never witnessed anything like that thank god but the girls were terrified on the whole of the nuns as they were very strict.We had other teachers too who weren't nuns.

Being a nun does not excuse her from prison, that is extremely lenient.

That judge is ridiculous. This is a topic I find very interesting though. I have a family member who is a nun and I went to a catholic school so I've met quite a few nuns in my life. Most of them have seemed lovely.
It strikes me though, there must be something about being a nun or the lifestyle of a nun that caused these women to act in such awful ways. I'm sure some of them had/have psychological issues but it's too much of a coincidence that so many in the same organisation would act to terribly. Not just in Ireland, I'm sure it went on in catholic organisations overseas as well, though maybe not to the same extent. Was it just a power trip thing? I can't really wrap my head around it.

In defence of nuns, I went to a convent in the 1980s and the nuns were terrific. No one got particularly good exam results but being kind and generous was banged on about endlessly and as a result, it was on the whole a very happy and kind environment. I say this as someone who is not remotely religious.

I appreciate that others have had different experiences, some of them horrific. I guess I'm just trying to point out that not all nuns are bad.

I believe there is some evidence that a good number of nuns had been abused either by family or in their communities growing up. They joined an organisation in order to get away from their horrible lives. Damaged people.

But most child abuse occurs simply because there’s opportunity. Patriarchy and misogyny allowed the church to do whatever it wished with women and children.

Thanks for that ItWentDown it would makw sense that some were abused. I know all about the patriarchy and misogyny in Ireland and the total control the church used to have but It still baffles me that some could be so cruel. I'm sure it's easy for me to say this as an uninvolved bystander but how could so many be so devoid of conscience to behave that way. Probably the same as asking how could the holocaust happen. Human nature is a strange thing.

Sister Alphonso was 58 in 2000 she is now 77 this has been going on for 18 years already. She was found guilty at trial by jury in 2000. I can’t link but details are online. Abuse happened in a Nazareth Home

I wonder if being part of an order, wearing a habit (I realise not all nuns do), having no belongings and often changing her name etc. all contribute to the terrible behaviour of some of these women. They lose their sense of self, they aren't a person any more and they lose their humanity. IYSWIM.

Same goes for Christian Brothers, who a lot of my male family members were taught by - absolutely evil behaviour experienced frol some of them. Really sadistic.

My dmum despises nuns. We walked past a retirement home for nuns recently and my dmum literally hissed at it

I knew someone who suffered horrific abuse by Christian Brothers. He suffered terribly and died young due to alcoholism.

Was Mother Teresa evil? I never heard that before?

Yes, there were some awful nuns - I imagine some of them were very frustrated.... living in a group of women and not having their own families.

My aunt is a nun (mid 70's) and she says she only went into it because there wasn't any money to send her to Third Level...

Mother Teresa was an Albanian who spread the love in India by ensuring that if you were very poor and Ill then you wouldn’t die on the street. You would die without pain relief though because to suffer is to be closer to god. The bitch.

Yeah, I do wonder if some nuns in their 70s/80s now only joined the convent because their family expected them to or because they saw it as an option to avoid marriage and children/further their education. Sad really, but no excuse for the behaviour of those guilty.
Some of my family members suffered at the hands of the Christian Brothers too - one left with a permanent brain injury.

I don’t care why they became nuns. Nothing excuses their vile behaviour. I live in an area where there are actually quite a lot of nuns and they live in beautiful houses in good areas. They don’t seem to do any work in deprived areas. I’ve met one or two decent nuns but far, far more who are twats.

My only experience of Nun’s was in Nun run care homes the elderly (one of my grandmother’s worked in them). They all seemed like lovely, mostly fairly elderly, ladies. But I was a little girl and who knows if they were actually lovely or had shameful pasts.

Haven’t seen any nun’s around Cardiff for about 10 years now. I’m sure there must be a few though.

Do you kbow their day to day schedules LARLARLAND? I'm not excusing the behaviour of some nuns, just interested in the root cause, if there is one.

Most of them seem to fuck around a lot when they aren’t praying. Never seen one volunteering at the local food bank or helping anywhere where people desperately need help for that matter.

Oh but Cheryblossom one did take time out of her busy schedule to visit my 20 year old dmum who had just had her first baby to tell her that what she was doing (being married to my dad) was a sin. That’s because he’s Catholic and she isn’t. No wonder my dmum fucking hates nuns.