We Saw Nuns Kill Children: The Ghosts of St. Joseph's Catholic Orphanage

[WhiskeyGrinder]

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/christinekenneally/orphanage-death-catholic-abuse-nuns-st-josephs?bftwnews&utm_term=4ldqpgc#4ldqpgc

It was a late summer afternoon, Sally Dale recalled, when the boy was thrown through the fourth-floor window.

“He kind of hit, and— ” she placed both hands palm-down before her. Her right hand slapped down on the left, rebounded up a little, then landed again.

For just a moment, the room was still. “Bounced?” one of the many lawyers present asked. “Well, I guess you’d call it — it was a bounce,” she replied. “And then he laid still.”

Sally, who was speaking under oath, tried to explain it. She started again. “The first thing I saw was looking up, hearing the crash of the window, and then him going down, but my eyes were still glued—.” She pointed up at where the broken window would have been and then she pointed at her own face and drew circles around it. “That habit thing, whatever it is, that they wear, stuck out like a sore thumb.”

This is a very long, disturbing read. Lots of content warnings for abuse and sexual abuse of children. It's not shocking -- the Catholic Church has been corrupt since day one. Everyone in the church knows an abuser or a victim. Reform is not enough. Burn it down and start over.

[zipplewrath]

1. Well, not day one

The church got corrupted when they became the defacto governmental authority during the "middle ages". They have a huge tradition built up that extends from that period and they've never really "fixed" it.

[eShirl]

3. wasn't it Roman Emperor Constantine who made it the official religion of the empire?

[zipplewrath]

5. Yup, sorta

Which was in the early 300's AD. It wasn't so much making it the "official" religion as it was recognizing/tolerating it and ultimately upon his death bed being baptized. The modern catholic church probably traces itself to Paul/Saul and his separation from Judaism in the first century AD. It's real power though doesn't come probably until much later around the 11th century or so, after the Great Schism. It's also when the current Vatican structure really took form.

[niyad]

2. and we have the Magdalene laundries in Ireland.

[OnDoutside]

7. My mother in law used to live in a house backing on to one of them in Cork and it always struck her

that when they were outside working, it was always in silence.

A cousin of mine was put into an Industrial School with his 2 brothers (his 2 sisters went to a convent 30 miles away), by their step mother, when their father died after 2 weeks of marriage. She packed them off and sold the house. She went on to use that money to set her son up as a builder. Ironically, he built our family home and my sister in law worked for him. My cousin and his brothers left the country as soon as they could. He still won't talk about what happened in the Industrial school to this day.

[niyad]

11. thank you for sharing part of your family history with us. what a dreadful person she was.

[OnDoutside]

12. Yes a real gold digger, heartless....

[smirkymonkey]

4. This is so horrible - I couldn't finish reading it.

What is it that makes these nuns and priests so horribly cruel to children. They are just sadistic and sick! It amazes me that the Catholic church is still going strong after all the abuse suffered by so many.

Why do we never hear this stuff about other denominations? What is it about Catholics that makes so many of them prone to commit such abuse against children?

[flamin lib]

6. I'm have to research this to find independent verification.

Sadly I'm sure I'll find it but things this horrific defy initial acceptance as true.

Everything about me as a father, a grandfather and a human being wants to reject the possibility that a group of people as large as the staff of this orphanage, much less the entire Catholic church could keep ranks without a single individual speaking out.

Yet we have history . . .

[WhiskeyGrinder]

8. The reporting on this is meticulous and took years. YEARS. The reporter is an award-winning

journalist whose work has appeared in the New Yorker, NYT, and other well-vetted publications.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

9. Kicking because this thread has been un-removed.

[panader0]

10. Another kick for that reason.

Did you ever get an explanation?