Another Type Of Catholic School Violence & Abuse

[HARDCORE]

I just heard on the news where a new Archbishop has been appointed (Boston) to ?Get To The Bottom? of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church within that region!

Two of the areas, where priests (according to today?s news) had sexually targeted kids, were Florida and Massachusetts! Well, for the record, the town in the Bay State (Massachusetts) that had been one focus of this ?Religious Screwing? (literally) was Fall River!

This city made famous by the Lizzy Borden Axe Murders of the late 19th Century, once also boasted, according to older encyclopedias, the most illiterate population in the United States at one time! This fact was probably due to the myriad of mills, run-down tenements and seedy housing projects that the city housed! Add to this the massive alien population, many of whom, neither spoke nor read English (my grandparents included), and you begin to get the whole idea!

Getting back to the ?Fall River Churchly Sex Scandals?, let me tell you from my own experiences, that carnal activities were not the only priestly indulgences that this City should have dealt with! The savage beatings issued out by a few nuns to mere kids were un-Godly to say the least!

As a matter of fact, one nun (and I still remember her name) kept a rattan (thin stick used in beatings), as well as a strap with tails, to administer punishment at will to mere elementary school children!

Two separate incidents that I was privy to was-

1- An older nun on steroids (or so it seemed) once entered my classroom (5th grade) with a young girl. The girl (whom I did not even know) pointed at me and said that I had called her mother a name in the schoolyard? The nun asked no questions of me, promptly closed her fist and gave me a right hook across the jaw, immediately bringing tears to my eyes and bells to my ear!!

It was later learned that the young lady had confused me with another Portuguese kid! ?I guess to some people, we all look alike!?? LOL

2- The straw that broke the camel?s back, however, came while I was in 6th grade, same parochial school! I had been hit in the mouth with a bat (by accident) during a weekend baseball game, splitting open the inside of my mouth. The bloody wound required several stitches and I had the tendency after they were applied, of favoring the wound, by rub my tongue against the stitches!

Well, to make long story short, the nun who taught the class, thinking that I was chewing gum, walked up and blindsided me with a metal-tipped yardstick, barely missing my left eye! She split me right open, and when I began to cry from the pain and through the blood, she rapped me twice more across the arms and shoulders with the same stick!

That afternoon, when my parents came to pick me up, they immediately noticed the severe damage that almost took away my eyesight, as well as the dry bloodstains on my clothing! My mother immediately rushed me to the doctors for treatment, while my father (pissed to the gunnels) went looking for the nun and the priest who ran the show! Naturally, neither could be found (both in hiding no doubt), but I was immediately withdrawn from this "Catholic Torture Chamber" and put into public school by my dad! For the record, the Church, school, nor the nun, offered an appology, and my mother, working for minimim wage in a local mill, had to foot the entire doctor's bill!!

Hell, at the time I didn?t feel like I was anything special? I had seen at least one nun that I can recall, slugging it out with a tough sixth grader, and she won hands down! I had also seen kids lashed with a strap for wetting their pants in class, after the teacher (nun) refused to allow them to go to the bathroom!

?Who in the hell created these schools anyway, someone out of Oliver Twist??

If this town of ?Hills, Mills and Chills?, or even the Catholic Church itself, would like to dispute my charges (not the only brutalities inflicted at this institution of pain, I can assure you), I am at their disposal in spades! One warning, however, I am not that small, weak child that I use to be away back then (late 40s to early 50s), nor do I stand still anymore for beatings at the hands of religious or political hypocrites!

I, like most of you my age, now have loving grandkids of my own, and times have definitely changed! I know of no-one today who fears the religious establishment as much as they did in my elementary years, or who would sit still and allow their own kids (or anyone else?s kids) to be beaten bloody, or sexually abused, by men and women of the cloth, as was sometimes the practice amidst a few schools of the past!

These were not the Dark Ages, and if indeed - ?The Truth Will Set You Free?, then the few monsters who engaged in these brutalities had better come clean. ?Either that, or may their vicious souls burn forever in Hades, along with the corrupted souls of those (no matter how highly placed) who covered for them!!

Do I remember the names of the nuns who beat the living hell out of me and other kids, you bet your holier than thou asses I do! My short-term memory and health may be shot thanks to the Army and the VA, but the scars that these "Nuns and Priests of The Modern Inquisition" left upon my hide and my soul will be there until the day that I die!

VERITAS

[MarineAO]

HARDCORE

I too witnessed and received this abuse at the hands of nuns (we called then _itches in robes). One tried to push my head through a brick wall another tossed me and my desk across the class room b/c I was sleeping (due to medication I was taking at the time). These terrorist in robes were not sisters of mercy but of no mercy (some would make good Marines). Like you never was a reason asked for before punishment was doled out or an apology offered when done unjustly. I also will never forget their names but take pleasure in knowing that they got or will get Just What They Deserve.
In all fareness My children have and still do attend parochial schools and never have either of them been disciplined in this fashion. The schools now days know that this will not be tolerated.

[HARDCORE]

AMEN MY FRIEND! Maybe our pain accomplished something after all!?

VERITAS

[revwardoc]

You're from Fall River, eh? I'm from Hudson and also a Portagee, all of my grandparents were from the Azores. I went to parochial schools for 12 years and was taught by The Sisters of Notre Dame D'Namur or, as we lovingly called them, The Little Sisters of the Marquis de Sade. I still carry the physical and emotional scars they dealt out on a regular basis. I remember penmanship class (we had wooden desks with inkwells), I didn't do well in that one and still have lousy handwriting. One day I was writing particulary poorly and that black-robed b*tch made me hold out my hand and she grabbed her "war club" (a three sided, 18" ruler) and went to hit me. I made the mistake of pulling away just as she swung causing her to loose her balance resulting in the class laughing at her. Now enraged she held my hand and started to beat it with that ruler until the blood flowed. I then had to give her my handkerchief which she wrapped around my knuckles and told me to finish the lesson and not to get any blood on the paper! And that's only one incident of many.

To make things worse for me, my father's uncle was a priest (he has a park in Lowell named after him) and my mother's sister is still a nun (55 years). Whenever she visited my school she was given the lowdown on my behavior and grades and even slapped me once for giving another nun a dirty look after she wacked me for not looking up when she spoke to me. And they wonder why I left the Catholic church!

When one of cousins, who also attended the school, was in the 1st grade he got detention for some odd reason and missed his bus. He asked the nun to call his mother for a ride since it was snowing to beat all but the penguin refused and made him leave. Of course the only way he knew how to get home was the bus route so he started walking. When he didn't get home his mother asked one of my uncles to go look for him and, as he was driving down the road, he saw a peculiar snow-covered mound. Thankfully he stopped and it was my cousin who had dropped out of exhaustion. He wound up in the hospital with pneumonia. My uncle, his dad, went nuts and threatened to sue but he just pulled him out and put him in public school.

Was it a good education? Scholastically, yes, but we could've gotten the same education without all the unnecessary discipline and corporal punishment.

[HARDCORE]

Deja Vu -

Although I am sorry to hear about your pain, I felt like I was reliving the past, my past!

I remember that walking to school in the snow and the beatings (literally) handed out by the nuns. And for the record, on my stepfather's side (although I'm Portuguese, he was Canadian French), there was also a nun and a priest, as well as a priest on my maternal grandmother's side!

Getting to the point of this post, there is no reason in Hell, why a kid, "ANY KID" (and I wasn't all that bad back then) should have to go through Hades at the hands of a teacher, especially a Catholic school nun! Apparently, this sort of thing is not all that rare, and like those "Quick Zippered Priests", the issue of beatings at the hands of the cloth will never be addressed I fear! "At least not on this side of the River Stixx!?" All that it has garnered in the past has been cover-up (all the way to the Vatican) and a slap upon the wrist!? After all (unfortunately), the church is "Big Business" too! (Sad but true!)

Should it be dealt with, you bet your life it should, as there are many ways to destroy a person, even within the (so-called) "Saintly Blackboard Jungle!?" And this type of Church Abuse is just as (perminatly) damaging to some kids as was (I am sure) the sexual B.S. handed out by those who served alongside the "Brides of Christ!?"

I only hope that more people begin to bring out their experiences, and by doing so, send the indelible message that no one is above (or beneath) the law, not even those who abuse beneath the robes of the church or the robes of state!

It must, however, be remembered that Fall River (aka- Troy on The Taunton River) is a peculiar bastion unto itself (LOL)!!

VERITAS

[SEATJERKER]

...or should I say, Laying in waste...

...Not only were the "sisters" vicious, the "BROTHERS" that taught at the High School level were even worse...

...being "dressed" in black with a collar supposedly gave them the "rights"(something wrong with that word being used here) to dispence their wrath on students just about anyway they saw "fit"(fit is what they were having, but vented on the innocent)...

...one brother used to carry one of those mini bats they give away at baseball games, and he wouldn't even "bat" an eye when popping some one,(not me, but), I was slapped twice by the head honcho for (opps) setting a desk on fire with my zippo when it was over filled one day, and our "dean of disipline" had a "frat" paddle with holes in it (less wind resistence), and his motto was 'REACH FOR THE FLOOR", WE ENDED UP STEALING IT, AND CUT THAT SOB INTO A MILLION PIECES...

...The Catholic church has long hidden behind their colors, and never showed the "true" ones, everyone of them that has raised a "switch" to a child, or molested one should burn in hell, but not until the masses here on earth have had their revenge, so sorry to be callused, there is not enough pain to dish out back to them for the torture they inflicted upon the children...

...there is only two men in black I trust, Dale Earnhardt, and Johnny Cash............................

...Edit...

...I will say that it wasn't a sister, or brother that I dispise the most, but he was/is a teacher, and now is the superintendent of schools in my area, and I vow to this day to punch him square in the mouth if I ever see him face to face again...

...He was the man the "taught" me to hate, why, as a starry eyed 5th grader watching the overhead projector trying to figure out the math problem, he "thought" I was "daydreaming", or something, and proceded to turn his "class ring into the palm of his hand", and while approaching me from the rear, proceded to smack me on top the head with a resounding snap of the wrist with his "ring of power", well 35 odd years later, I still cringe with the thought of that day, nothing ever hurt so much as being hit that day by that bastard, my head, and my heart will never forgive him,...

...arrest me if they will, but I will attain some long deserved satisfaction thats long overdue.............

[HARDCORE]

"Notice the similarities popping up here!" And yet, the only problem being semi-addressed by the church, the state and society, is church-spawned sex abuse, vicious though it is!

If enough people in lofty places read this site, a few of them too probably abused in the church, then maybe (just maybe) another stone will be turned over! It's about time, ain't it?!

VERITAS

[revwardoc]

Personally, I think the Vatican has regressed as far as the way it deals with reality. When JP II was elected I thought that now with a non-Italian pope the Church would try to at least get out of the Middle Ages. Talk about a rude awakening! It really bothers me that the Boston arch-diocese is trying to poor-mouth its way out of paying the just debt it owes to those children who were abused by a traditional authority figure and that the Vatican offers absolutely no financial aid. Maybe if they sold some their artwork or chalices, they could do the right thing. The College of Cardinals exist under their gold gilded domes and "pray" for divine guidance. They should get off their knees and roll up their sleeves. Instead, JP II just recently announced that the ban on marriage for priests will stand; altar boys, beware!

Even when I was in parochial grammar school with its daily catechism and religion class, I would question the Catholic church idealisms. For example; the infallibility of the Pope. Who are they trying to kid?! He's human and humans make mistakes. One only need study the history of the Church to see that. And confession; fuggedaboutit!! I almost clocked a priest because he told some of my friends what I told him in confession. That was the last time I went and I was only 15. That same priest had an affair with one of my cousins (its a mental picture that still makes me shudder and at least she was a woman). They went up to Montreal for a weekend and, when they came back, she had to stay in bed for a week to rest. The rumor was that she had an abortion. A double standard born in hell.

What it comes down to, in my opinon, is that we need to secede from Rome and form an AMERICAN Catholic Church, one that understands our culture and at least get into the 20th century!

[colmurph]

When I was in eighth grade there was a kid in my class who suffered from Narcolepsy. He nodded off in class one day and "Mother" Magellan, our teacher for the period, went over to him, lifted his head by the hair and slammed his face down on the desk top breaking his nose and front teeth. There was blood everywhere! The kid's parents gave him a beating when he got home too! The school, as I recall, never issued any sort of apology to the kids parents or the rest of the kids in the class who witnessed the abuse. I told my parents what happened and that I wouldn't stay in that school any longer. My father who was a devout catholic fought it, but my mother who was Russian Orthodox pulled me out and sent me to public school. When I was old enough to join the army I left the Catholic Church and have never gone back and never will. The Catholic Church will probably not continue to exist in the U.S. in it's present form. The only candidates for the Priesthood seem to be gays and there really aren't that many of them who want that kind of life style. Until they allow Priests to marry like the Episcopate does, or the Eastern Orthodox Church, they will continue to mark a decline in membership. The church is living in the 12th century.

[Andy]

An addition to the litany of evils done by nuns in the 50s - 60s. My wife did the Catholic school thing, grades 1 thru 8. They told her it was a sin to wear a sleeveless blouse or a skirt that showed the knees, weird but not outrageous. The nuns also told her class in 7th grade that kissing can get a girl pregnant. Sort of an odd twist on sex education. But still not all that bad.
My wife is French Canadian and is or was a person with a rather dark hue. Her name is Annette. When the nuns felt she wasn?t doing as well as she could, they called her ?Nigger Netty?. The name stuck till 9th grade when she suddenly had boobs. Funny, the things that change our perceptions.
When she was in 8th grade her mother had a heart attack and was in the hospital. A few days later, the day her mom was supposed to come home, Annette?s mom died. Her first day back to school she gave an excuse for missing class - the excuse was her mother died. A nun stood her up in front of the class and told everyone that Annette?s mom had died because the girl had not asked the class to pray for her mother. She still has flash backs about that day.

Hey, to you Portagee guys, I?ve read the court transcript of the Lizzy Andrew Borden murder trial. Part of the ?reasonable doubt? for finding her not guilty was, there was a Portagee who was lurking in the neighborhood that day. Come on fess up, which one of your families did it?

One last thing on the Catholic church. Around 1AM one Tuesday night we had a car accident involving a van and a parked car. The operator had a woman sitting on his lap and they were doing it. Apparently driving and having sex was too much for the guy and he didn?t notice the parked car. The front end of the van was pushed in to a point so that the steering wheel pinned the woman to the man and the ?jaws of life? were needed. The woman did suffer some fairly serious back injuries. Oh, did I mention the driver was a priest? He was transferred to New York before the next Sunday and only returned to pled guilty to operating to endanger. It was so odd, the motor vehicle accident never found it's way into the local newspaper.

Stay healthy,
Andy