I am a survivor of severe multiple kinds of child abuse in two catholic church orphanages from October 1941 to March 1966… 25years of abuse. They Promised Heaven, But Led Me To Hell. I lived in two catholic church orphanages, which every one called, a place of God. My childhood was full of hate, from all adults around me.
The two orphanages were very cold, both day and worse at night. I wore a sugar sack, it was called the clothes of the unwanted children and to be always told, that I should be grateful to them, for taking me in. they took me away from my mother, she held on to me for two and a half months, she would not let them take me, but the catholic church won. My mother was to suffer the rest of her life, because they pulled me out of her arms, by St. Vincent De Paul.
I have suffered all of my life because of the abuse and sexual abuse, which was done to me by nuns, women workers, the older girls and a priest, YES women, girls and nuns do sexually abuse children, boys and girls, the same as men do.
Suicide Attempt
When I was 12years old, I tried to commit suicide by jumping out of our dormitory window, which was on the 2nd floor of Nazareth House, I did not want to live anymore, the police did not help me so what was the use of my life at Nazareth House. No one wanted me and I was no body’s child. I could not open the windows wide enough, because I could not get the piece of wood out, which was nailed, above the bottom of window, so I could not open it.
Did the nuns already know, that the girls had tried to take their lives? How many girls before me, had tried to be with the angels, so as their pain and torment would end.
Yes the countless years of re-abuse from the catholic church, is what has pulled us down and the climb up is so hard, because our faith, not for God, but our faith in the catholic church is gone forever.
All we ever wanted was acknowledgment and a profound Sorry, from their hearts and, NOT FROM THEIR LAWYERS, with no strings attached. But all we got from the catholic church was, that we are liars and never once was there acknowledgment from the nazareth house order of nuns nor did they admit guilt of their actions, to us.
YES WE DID ABUSE YOU AND SEXUALLY ABUSE YOU INNOCENT CHILDREN, WHILE IN OUR CARE.
It was all we wanted to hear, but No. Like so many of us we will go to our graves, taking our pain and torment with us. No, that is not true, because our children, our friends and our grand children carry our pain with us and it hurts us so bad when we see them so upset, because of no fault of ours, they suffer along with us.
What we now leave behind us, is what we went through as children, the abuse and sexual abuse of the catholic church, who will not Jesus like and by taking us by our hands and to acknowledge to the sexual abuse and abuse, she did to her innocent children.
We have to stand as one, and do some thing. The pope has to listen to his people, a letter should be sent to all churches around the world, no matter what religion it may be, and for the people to say, that we will not stand for any more re-abuse, of the innocent children of yesterday, who are scared for the rest of their lives, because of the few minutes of self satisfaction, for these priest, monks, brothers, nuns and their workers in the way they had, with these children.
I for one have had enough of the pope’s empty words and it is about time we tell him so. I wish that I knew his email and he would soon feel my pain, if be, right between his blind eyes and deaf ears.
I am trying to to get our feelings and pain across to people and it hurts every times I see any thing about sexual abuse and it is for me, sexual abuse of any child, boys and girls in any religion and in their homes, hurts me so much.
It is so evil for any one to do this to innocent children. The greatest sin of all sins, is sexual abuse by clergy
Some times I wonder, why people can not see the signs, we send out to adults. We do you know and my way was not talking to any one, hiding when ever I could. Not doing anything in school and cutting myself with razor blades. And doing every thing for every one, so as I would be notice. But a blind eye and a deaf ears I was calling out to, just the same for the children of today.
We truly try to let you see our pain, but people do not know, why we act the way we do. They call us naughty children and that we should be punished and that closes us up even more and we then, learn to hide behind our pain and the only thing then is, that we cry over nothing at all and want to die, so as our pain is no more and we want to be safe.
Why do they not see our tears?
The children need us to listen to their cries for help and we must look between their different ways, of their fear, in how they are trying to get us, to see their ways, in which they are calling out for help from us. We need to really listen, to their silent cries, which we see in the ways, that they go through their actions, each day and night. They are there and because people do not know them, is why, they do not know what to look for.
Ask a child how they are, are they hurting inside, do they need help of any kind? Please listen to their silent cries for help, they need you to hear them, look at the signs they send to you, by doing and saying things, in ways a lonely child, can only do. look the child in their face and look at their sad eyes, their tears are real, and they are hurting so bad. they do not know how to tell you, they fear ever one, they trust no one, it is up to all grown up men and women to help the abused children, they are our future, and we must treasure them, protect them as our own. Our children or today, are the worlds leaders of tomorrow. Show them and teach them to love, so our world will be a better place, for them to live in, today and tomorrow.
The men and women I have written about, in my letter to the Pope, are also in my book. As well as a affidavit from a lady, who saw a priest and a nun having sex, she was 9 years of age and she use to clear this nun’s bedroom out every day. My book is about the medi evil, sadistic nuns and priest who abused and sexual abused innocent children, in Christchurch New Zealand….
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Dear AnnYour Letter to the Pope is very, very moving. It brought a very emotional reaction in me. I don’t believe I have seen a letter yet that captured the horror of what you and others have gone through.
Would you mind if I edited the letter a little bit and then shared it with some of the websites here that get very wide readership. I am also in constant contact with the media and would like to share it with them as well. If you agree I could write up a little biographical sketch to include with it. One of the web pages I want to send it to have a wide readership in the Vatican because they think they will find out what we are up to. That way your letter would be seen by some of the people there… and they really need to hear directly from people like you.
God bless you. You are a true hero and whether you know it or not you are an inspiration for me and I know for others. Tom Doyle
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An Open Letter to pope Benedict, From a Survivor in New Zealand.
6 April 2010
Tom Doyle brought this letter to my attention. Here is what Tom wrote in his covering note....
Attached is a letter from Ann Thompson, addressed to the pope. Ann lives in New Zealand. As an infant she was placed in Nazareth House Orphanage in Christchurch, New Zealand. During her time at the orphanage she was physically and sexually abused by the nuns and the priests. After 2002 she gathered the courage to reveal her abuse and since has become a courageous advocate for victims and a warrior for justice. Last year her story was published in New Zealand. Her book, Say Sorry, is one of the most vivid and disturbing accounts I have yet to read. In January she wrote a letter to Pope Benedict. This letter reveals the anguish of Ann and the other victims with whom she shared the horror of her youth.
She has given me permission to edit her letter for format and to find ways to have it published in the U.S. Consequently I am sending it to you in hopes that you can add it to your respective web pages.
Thanks.
Tom
Warning: The graphic descriptions of physical and sexual abuse may be triggering to victims of abuse.
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January 2010To Pope Benedict,
I want you to know about the sexually abused men and women down south in New Zealand. Most of us were taken from our mothers’ arms after they gave birth to us. I was taken from my mother at two and half months old to live a life of physical abuse and sexual abuse by the Catholic Church workers, nuns and a priest, and I will tell you what it is like to live in hell for 24 years with them and also about the other men and women with me.
We were given numbers, not our names and if our names were used it was done so with hate for us and for our mothers. To set a child against her parents is against God’s wishes, but we did have the best teachers, the Catholic Church herself. She took every ounce of love and faith from our Hearts and Souls and we were left but a shadow of a person who had no mind. Without Love a child’s soul does not grow and the Catholic Church made sure that we were never to know love or have a family.
Physical abuse and sexual abuse tears at the very core of your being, leaving you empty as your words of apology are to us today. We have never had any one stand beside us as we were growing up, never a smile, a kiss on the cheek, a thank you or a plaster for the sores and cuts on our bodies. We never had someone to take our hand, and ask how we were feeling. We never had a sick day because all we did was work from dawn to dark, without time off or a day off, to rest. School for me was a big NO, as work was all that was set out for me from the age of five years until I left 24years later.
We cannot go into a Catholic church any more, because to see the priest at the altar is to feel the pain of what he did to you. I was not a virgin when I got married and this so cut me up because I wanted to be pure of soul for my husband. Because of what the priest did to me I believed I had sinned against God and my husband. That killed my spirit and I went into this dark hole which I cannot seem to get out of, thinking that God is displeased with me.
I have written a book about my childhood abuse and the ongoing abuse which I and the others are still going through. Since then I have had countless men and women phone me and email me to tell me their stories and if I can give them a little help and the most important thing is to believe them.
The stories coming out now sound worse because people are now listening to us and know that we are telling the truth as God knows we are. We will stand before God and He will take us to His heart and bless us, not like the blessing I thought that the priest was going to bestow upon me the day he took me into the bedroom and sexually abused me. That day remained with me for the rest of my life and was the day I started to fear priests and the Catholic Church. You see until then it was the workers and the nuns I feared, and then the priest took away the last little bit hope I had that there was someone I could go to but that was never to be. I was raped by the priest, by the Catholic Church and by God and I was left in this world to always be what they told me I was, the devil’s child.
How can I grow up to be a woman when the little child in me is always in the forefront, forever ready to take on anyone or anything she sees about child abuse? Did you know that it is like this for us all? We are forever locked up in our childhood with our little child who was physically abused and sexually abused because she does not know who to believe for she fears every one and she does not want to be hurt again. That little child was once asked by an official of the Catholic Church if it felt nice to be sexual abused. That child, me, cried and cried and called out in pain. I was a child and it was the grownups that did this to me. I am still that child and I still carry those terrible scars around with me. That child cannot grow, and nor can I. We are forever bound up by the physical abuse and sexual abuse of our childhood and by the way we are still treated by the Catholic Church.
A man of 69 years of age is still looking for his real father who was a priest. His mother was a 15 year old orphan. One day she was called away by a nun from the playroom where she was surrounded by other girls. She was sent to the priest. When she returned to the room she was so upset and told the other girls that she had been raped by the priest. Nine months later she had a son named Peter who, according to the nuns and the hospital where she was taken, was born at Nazareth House. The nuns and the priests covered it all up and it seems that Peter was born nowhere. His story is twisted so much that he can never know where he really was born.
His mother was then sent to Mount Madgala laundries where her name was changed and where she stayed to work for her keep for 5 years. During that time she was not allowed to see her son. He was adopted by a family named White. Peter’s mother was robbed of her son. She never had the chance to tell him who his father was, the priest who had raped her.
In the 1930s there were four sisters who went to Nazareth House Orphanage and who were not allowed to talk to each other. They were in the same orphanage but all they could do was look at each other as they ate at different tables and lived apart. They longed to have each others’ hand to hold. They may as well have been put in separate orphanages, far apart from each other.
Two of these young girls were sexually abused in the confessional by the same priest but they did not tell anyone until 2002. One of them wrote her story of abuse so that her children would know why she was so distant towards them as they were growing up. She also told in her book the story about young Peter’s mother, not knowing that one day she would actually meet him (in 2003) and be able to tell him about his mother who gave birth to him at Nazareth House and was then sent to the hospital. She told Peter about his mother being raped by a priest.
There is another lady who was just four and a half years of age at the time Peter’s mother was raped by the priest. She remembers so vividly the day this 15year old girl was called away by the nuns and when she came back, how she was crying outside the locked door. She remembers how upset she was when she came back how that girl’s words stayed with her for the rest of her life: “I have just being raped by a priest!”
She tells how she never knew what the word “rape” meant. But the anguish and pain this young girl was going through and the word “raped” was to stay with her to this day. She cries as she tells me about it. She also told another story that shocked me to the core. It is about the two girls who were pushed down a staircase. An ambulance was called and we were sent into the classrooms and not allowed to look out the windows. We saw these two girls taken away and we never saw them again.
There are stories about the way the nuns abused us which we now know was sexual abuse. They would strip off our clothes and put over the beds naked and then thrash us in the private parts of our bodies. We could not talk about this about to any one for fear that we would not be believed. We could not talk about it because we feared if we did we would be put over the beds and it would happen again the next night. As I lay over the bed tied like Jesus on His Cross I tried to think only of Jesus while the belts came down across my back and then my front as I screamed and called out for help. Today we are still calling out for help and we are still we are not being heard by anyone who will show us some mercy. Back then we were at the mercy of the nuns and the priests who used our bodies for their few minutes of sexual pleasure and left us with the scars of our childhood which are still with us today.
Pope Benedict, during the war you were in the army. If you had heard the screams of the men, the women and the little children as they were taken to their deaths would you have walked away then as you and the Catholic Church still walk away from us now? Where is Jesus in your life today where we, the lost children of the Catholic Church, are concerned? We were left to the wolves in the dark who were your priests and nuns who physically and sexually abused us. They were supposed to serve God and look after His children. They didn’t then and they don’t now.
If only you had taken heed of our cries in the 1980s these crimes of the Catholic Church would not have gone un-noticed. But you took the easy way out, or so you thought. You did not realize that we, the abused boys and girls of yesterday, had the strength from God and Jesus to survive through these many years. You turned your backs on us but we all told you that we will not go away. We are still here and not just a few but many like the sands upon the shores.
We call on you now to find that Peace with Jesus and listen with your heart to our stories which we know that Jesus Himself has heard. We believe he feels our pain and is weeping with us. Has the Catholic Church not caused enough py more, like we did when we were children. We want you ain for those of us who are the lost children of your “holy mother church?” Not until we fall down like flies and take our stories to our graves will the Catholic Church take a really good look at what she has done to our souls, our minds and our bodies.
Please, Please, I beg you to set us free from our pain and become like Jesus and go out around the world to see just what we are still going through. We do not want to call on deaf ears any more, like we did when we were children. We want you to see our pain and hear our voice, so that we can have some peace and b y doing this you, and the Catholic Church will also be free.
THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE.
Ann Thompson
New Zealand.
