The secrets of sex abuse by Nun
lesbians and priests in convents
As session of the international symposium Toward Healing and Renewal winds up today, we shall look at the book written by Sister Jesme, a former nun from Kerala, which has blown the whistle on the alleged sexual abuse that nuns have to face in convents by their fellow nun lesbians.
The book entitled: Amen - Oru Kanyasthreeyude Atmakatha (Amen - an autobiography of a nun,) talks about the sexual harassment that she faced in the convent at the hands of both priests and nuns. Sister Jesme first came face-to-face with sexual abuse when she was a Novice.
At a retreat for novices, Sister Jesme noticed girls in her batch who were unsettled about going to the confession chamber. She found that the priest there asked each girl if he could kiss them. She gathered courage and went in. He repeated the question. When the sister opposed, he quoted from the Bible which spoke of divine kisses.
Sister Jesme has also alleged in the book how another time, a nun lesbian forced her to have sex with her. “I was sent to teach plus-two students in St Maria College. There, a new sister joined to teach Malayalam; she was a lesbian. When she tried to corner me, I had no way but to succumb to her wishes. She would come to my bed in the night and do lewd acts and I could not stop her.”
Sister Jesme is not alone. Charlotte Doclar whose story became known in 1985, when Nancy Manahan and Rosemary Curb published their interview with Charlotte in their book Lesbian Nuns: Breaking the Silence reveals a lot of what happens in the convents.
Just like men, nuns are women with the same desires as any other woman. This is what they will tell their junior sisters when they want to hook them into sexual affairs. In fact some of the aspirants or novices would be dismissed if they do not comply.
This book is a series of interviews with women who are or have been Catholic Nuns. These are the stories, told in their own words, of 50 lesbian nuns. Most have left the convents but there are several in the 50 who were still active nuns at the time. The book was published in 1985.
This book is a fabulous depiction of the Italian nun, Benedetta Carlini, whose drive for ambition in the Catholic Church drove her to get the help of her lesbian lover to create the illusion of stigmata.
This is the true story of a mother superior named Sister Benedetta Carlini and another nun from a small village near Florence in 17th century Italy who basically liked to rub bodies together in bed until they reached orgasm.
Like the case of Sister Jesme, it happened when she had gone to Bangalore for a refresher course. She was told to stay at the office of a priest respected for his strong moral side. But when she reached the station, he was waiting there and hugged her tight on arrival. Later in the day, he took her to Lalbagh (a garden) and showed her cupid-struck couples and tried to convince her about the need for physical love.
He also narrated stories of illicit relations between priests and nun to mher. Back in his room, he tried to fondle her and when she resisted, got up and asked angrily if she had seen a man. When she said no, he stripped himself, ejaculated and forced her to strip.”
Sister Jesme has also described the mental torture that novices are subjected to. She said that she was not allowed to go home when she heard of her father’s death, and was able to see her father’s body just before his funeral. She was told by the superior sisters that she was lucky to have been able to at least see her father’s body, unlike many senior sisters. The mental torture was unbearable.
In the book, Sister Jesme refers to the helplessness that nuns face when they are sexually abused in a convent. “When a woman is molested, sexually harassed, will she speak out? Only one out of a thousand will speak out. So think of nuns! They will never speak out. They fear that their nun-hood will be lost.” This trend has made many vocations to sisterhood to decline. For example, in 1965 there were 180,000 nuns in the U.S. but today there are just 73,000. Among nuns who remain the average age is 69 and many are in retirement. The situation for nuns is perhaps worse than that for Catholic priests, but because most people don’t have daily contact with nuns they never know it.
The story of Marie Collins, a victim of child sex abuse, can tell it all how painful it is when you are forced into sex. Ireland’s Marie Collins recounted the details of her abuse by a priest at an unprecedented Vatican summit on Tuesday, saying the Church hierarchy should be held accountable for destroying lives.
Marie Collins: “There must be acknowledgement and accountability for the harm and destruction that has been done to the life of victims and their families /Reuters
“Apologising for the actions of the abusive priests is not enough,” Collins told bishops and cardinals from around the world gathered at theVatican’s Gregorian University for the conference on child abuse.
“There must be acknowledgement and accountability for the harm and destruction that has been done to the life of victims and their families by the often deliberate cover up and mishandling of cases by their superiors.”
Collins said the abuse happened at the hands of a hospital chaplain when she was just 13. “Those fingers that would abuse my body the night before were the next morning holding and offering me the sacred host,” said the 64-year-old. Collins has suffered from depression for most of her life as a result.
The meeting brings together 100 representatives of national bishops’ conferences, the leaders of 33 religious orders and the Vatican’s top anti-abuse prosecutor Charles Scicluna, as well as lay experts on the issue.
Collins was the only abuse victim to have been invited and victims’ groups have dismissed the conference as “a public relations exercise”. ”I had just turned 13 and was at my most vulnerable, a sick child in hospital, when a priest sexually assaulted me,” Collins told the conference on Tuesday.
”When he began to sexually interfere with me, pretending at first, he was being playful, I was shocked and resisted, telling him to stop. He did not stop,” she said in front of the conference of bishops and cardinals.
“While assaulting me he would respond to my resistance by telling me ‘he was a priest’ ‘he could do no wrong’,” she said. “He took photographs of the most private parts of my body and told me I was stupid if I thought it was wrong. He had power over me. I did not know how to tell anyone. I just prayed he would not do it again, but he did.
Another sad story is that of a young girl growing up in Toledo, Ohio. Her parish priest began molesting her in the summer, between seventh and eighth grade, until she was a senior in high school.
Like most victims, she didn’t have any understanding of the fact that it wasn’t her fault. She didn’t realize that it had an impact on her life until she was 29, when she first came to some level of awareness that what had happened to her was abuse. This was in 1985.
It is very difficult to recover from the abuse because the psychological impact is horrendous and it affects the victim to the core of their being. It has repercussions throughout their life. Without a real concerted effort of healing, the victims really don’t get over it.
Some of the victims suggest that all child molesters should be removed from the priesthood. Church leaders who aided and abetted these criminals should also be removed from their positions and disciplined.
They think that the records should be opened to prosecutors and police, to investigate to see if there is any evidence of crime, and to financial accountants, to determine how much money is being spent on this issue and where it’s coming from.
On the front page of the Chicago Sun Times, there was a huge headline that the Archdiocese of Chicago paid $250,000 to a priest perpetrator to get him to agree to leave the priesthood, with an additional salary of $40,000 for the next five years. Instead of sending him to the prosecutors or to jail, they paid him to be quiet and leave the priesthood.
But this suggest seems to be very tough for some bishops to adhere to. That is why Ireland’s Catholic Bishops have accused a member of the Vatican’s investigation team of grossly misrepresenting the Irish Church’s ongoing outreach to survivors of clerical child sexual abuse.
The statement from the hierarchy rejected Tuesday’s comments by Baroness Sheila Hollins at an International Conference in Rome on the Sexual Abuse of children within the Catholic Church.
A highly-respected psychiatrist, Baroness Hollins is one of four people appointed by Pope Benedict to investigate abuse in the Archdiocese of Armagh where she has met dozens of survivors.
This is happening because a major part of the problem has been the desire of the bishops and church leaders to protect their image and to avoid scandal. In doing this, they don’t realize that they are creating a lot more scandal. It’s a major cover-up.
According to some victims they don’t think that celibacy is what causes priests to molest children in the first place. They do believe that celibacy creates an environment that allows abuse to spread because of the secrecy and the denial of sexuality.
A study done by Father Andrew Greeley at the University of Chicago estimated a minimum of 100,000 victims in the U.S. His study was not that scientific, but he explained the basis of that 100,000 figure, saying that it is a conservative estimate. He thinks that there are many more than that.
lesbians and priests in convents
By Fr Joachim Omollo
As session of the international symposium Toward Healing and Renewal winds up today, we shall look at the book written by Sister Jesme, a former nun from Kerala, which has blown the whistle on the alleged sexual abuse that nuns have to face in convents by their fellow nun lesbians.
The book entitled: Amen - Oru Kanyasthreeyude Atmakatha (Amen - an autobiography of a nun,) talks about the sexual harassment that she faced in the convent at the hands of both priests and nuns. Sister Jesme first came face-to-face with sexual abuse when she was a Novice.
At a retreat for novices, Sister Jesme noticed girls in her batch who were unsettled about going to the confession chamber. She found that the priest there asked each girl if he could kiss them. She gathered courage and went in. He repeated the question. When the sister opposed, he quoted from the Bible which spoke of divine kisses.
Sister Jesme has also alleged in the book how another time, a nun lesbian forced her to have sex with her. “I was sent to teach plus-two students in St Maria College. There, a new sister joined to teach Malayalam; she was a lesbian. When she tried to corner me, I had no way but to succumb to her wishes. She would come to my bed in the night and do lewd acts and I could not stop her.”
Sister Jesme is not alone. Charlotte Doclar whose story became known in 1985, when Nancy Manahan and Rosemary Curb published their interview with Charlotte in their book Lesbian Nuns: Breaking the Silence reveals a lot of what happens in the convents.
Just like men, nuns are women with the same desires as any other woman. This is what they will tell their junior sisters when they want to hook them into sexual affairs. In fact some of the aspirants or novices would be dismissed if they do not comply.
This book is a series of interviews with women who are or have been Catholic Nuns. These are the stories, told in their own words, of 50 lesbian nuns. Most have left the convents but there are several in the 50 who were still active nuns at the time. The book was published in 1985.
This book is a fabulous depiction of the Italian nun, Benedetta Carlini, whose drive for ambition in the Catholic Church drove her to get the help of her lesbian lover to create the illusion of stigmata.
This is the true story of a mother superior named Sister Benedetta Carlini and another nun from a small village near Florence in 17th century Italy who basically liked to rub bodies together in bed until they reached orgasm.
Like the case of Sister Jesme, it happened when she had gone to Bangalore for a refresher course. She was told to stay at the office of a priest respected for his strong moral side. But when she reached the station, he was waiting there and hugged her tight on arrival. Later in the day, he took her to Lalbagh (a garden) and showed her cupid-struck couples and tried to convince her about the need for physical love.
He also narrated stories of illicit relations between priests and nun to mher. Back in his room, he tried to fondle her and when she resisted, got up and asked angrily if she had seen a man. When she said no, he stripped himself, ejaculated and forced her to strip.”
Sister Jesme has also described the mental torture that novices are subjected to. She said that she was not allowed to go home when she heard of her father’s death, and was able to see her father’s body just before his funeral. She was told by the superior sisters that she was lucky to have been able to at least see her father’s body, unlike many senior sisters. The mental torture was unbearable.
In the book, Sister Jesme refers to the helplessness that nuns face when they are sexually abused in a convent. “When a woman is molested, sexually harassed, will she speak out? Only one out of a thousand will speak out. So think of nuns! They will never speak out. They fear that their nun-hood will be lost.” This trend has made many vocations to sisterhood to decline. For example, in 1965 there were 180,000 nuns in the U.S. but today there are just 73,000. Among nuns who remain the average age is 69 and many are in retirement. The situation for nuns is perhaps worse than that for Catholic priests, but because most people don’t have daily contact with nuns they never know it.
The story of Marie Collins, a victim of child sex abuse, can tell it all how painful it is when you are forced into sex. Ireland’s Marie Collins recounted the details of her abuse by a priest at an unprecedented Vatican summit on Tuesday, saying the Church hierarchy should be held accountable for destroying lives.
Marie Collins: “There must be acknowledgement and accountability for the harm and destruction that has been done to the life of victims and their families /Reuters
“Apologising for the actions of the abusive priests is not enough,” Collins told bishops and cardinals from around the world gathered at theVatican’s Gregorian University for the conference on child abuse.
“There must be acknowledgement and accountability for the harm and destruction that has been done to the life of victims and their families by the often deliberate cover up and mishandling of cases by their superiors.”
Collins said the abuse happened at the hands of a hospital chaplain when she was just 13. “Those fingers that would abuse my body the night before were the next morning holding and offering me the sacred host,” said the 64-year-old. Collins has suffered from depression for most of her life as a result.
The meeting brings together 100 representatives of national bishops’ conferences, the leaders of 33 religious orders and the Vatican’s top anti-abuse prosecutor Charles Scicluna, as well as lay experts on the issue.
Collins was the only abuse victim to have been invited and victims’ groups have dismissed the conference as “a public relations exercise”. ”I had just turned 13 and was at my most vulnerable, a sick child in hospital, when a priest sexually assaulted me,” Collins told the conference on Tuesday.
”When he began to sexually interfere with me, pretending at first, he was being playful, I was shocked and resisted, telling him to stop. He did not stop,” she said in front of the conference of bishops and cardinals.
“While assaulting me he would respond to my resistance by telling me ‘he was a priest’ ‘he could do no wrong’,” she said. “He took photographs of the most private parts of my body and told me I was stupid if I thought it was wrong. He had power over me. I did not know how to tell anyone. I just prayed he would not do it again, but he did.
Another sad story is that of a young girl growing up in Toledo, Ohio. Her parish priest began molesting her in the summer, between seventh and eighth grade, until she was a senior in high school.
Like most victims, she didn’t have any understanding of the fact that it wasn’t her fault. She didn’t realize that it had an impact on her life until she was 29, when she first came to some level of awareness that what had happened to her was abuse. This was in 1985.
It is very difficult to recover from the abuse because the psychological impact is horrendous and it affects the victim to the core of their being. It has repercussions throughout their life. Without a real concerted effort of healing, the victims really don’t get over it.
Some of the victims suggest that all child molesters should be removed from the priesthood. Church leaders who aided and abetted these criminals should also be removed from their positions and disciplined.
They think that the records should be opened to prosecutors and police, to investigate to see if there is any evidence of crime, and to financial accountants, to determine how much money is being spent on this issue and where it’s coming from.
On the front page of the Chicago Sun Times, there was a huge headline that the Archdiocese of Chicago paid $250,000 to a priest perpetrator to get him to agree to leave the priesthood, with an additional salary of $40,000 for the next five years. Instead of sending him to the prosecutors or to jail, they paid him to be quiet and leave the priesthood.
But this suggest seems to be very tough for some bishops to adhere to. That is why Ireland’s Catholic Bishops have accused a member of the Vatican’s investigation team of grossly misrepresenting the Irish Church’s ongoing outreach to survivors of clerical child sexual abuse.
The statement from the hierarchy rejected Tuesday’s comments by Baroness Sheila Hollins at an International Conference in Rome on the Sexual Abuse of children within the Catholic Church.
A highly-respected psychiatrist, Baroness Hollins is one of four people appointed by Pope Benedict to investigate abuse in the Archdiocese of Armagh where she has met dozens of survivors.
This is happening because a major part of the problem has been the desire of the bishops and church leaders to protect their image and to avoid scandal. In doing this, they don’t realize that they are creating a lot more scandal. It’s a major cover-up.
According to some victims they don’t think that celibacy is what causes priests to molest children in the first place. They do believe that celibacy creates an environment that allows abuse to spread because of the secrecy and the denial of sexuality.
A study done by Father Andrew Greeley at the University of Chicago estimated a minimum of 100,000 victims in the U.S. His study was not that scientific, but he explained the basis of that 100,000 figure, saying that it is a conservative estimate. He thinks that there are many more than that.
