It's like they wanted to punish us' - Woman (59) devastated after adoption agency connects her with the wrong family

A woman said she was left "heartbroken" after discovering her adoption agency had connected her with the wrong family following a life-long search for her birth mother.

Geraldine McCarthy (59) connected with the immediate family of the woman the Irish adoption agency believed was her natural mother, only for DNA tests to prove they weren't related.

 

http://www.independent.ie/life/family/family-features/its-like-they-wanted-to-punish-us-woman-59-devastated-after-adoption-agency-connects-her-with-the-wrong-family-35683195.html 

VICTORIA WHITE: Modern habit of blaming nuns is completely counter to the facts

They were evil and they got found out... and us babies were treated and told so many times by the nuns... that we were the devil's children... and worst still being thrashed within an inch of our lives every day and night... they would not let us forget... that we had the sins of our mother's on our souls... as well as our own... and they thrashed us to get them out... we were innocent of the crimes... which we were beaten up for... and we paid dearly for being born out of wedlock... us babies and children had no one we could go to for help... it was like we were criminals... and we had done no wrong... we were the nuns and priest prisoners... and they did what they liked with us...  Ann

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http://www.irishexaminer.com/viewpoints/columnists/victoria-white/modern-habit-of-blaming-nuns-is-completely-counter-to-the-facts-449261.html 

Convent Horror Stories

In 1846 in the city of Pittsburgh, a handful of the Sisters of Mercy announced that they were going to open a hospital, the first in the city, to care for the poor. A local newspaper, the Presbyterian Advocate, greeted the announcement by telling its readers that it believed the Sisters of Mercy were engaged in prostitution.
Religious orders of sisters have been a traditional target of the seamier side of Catholic urban legends—those falsifications of history that have become part of the cultural DNA of America. The animus against nuns persists today. It can be seen in such diverse places as the theater production Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You and in unremitting attacks on Bl. Mother Teresa of Calcutta by the likes of comedians Penn and Teller and iconoclastic author Christopher Hitchens.

https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/convent-horror-stories

‘It felt more like living in a prison than a children’s home’

Frances Reilly has written a compelling memoir detailing her treatment at the hands of the Poor Sisters of Nazareth in Belfast. Jane Hardy reports.
It is rare that you meet somebody that you know is a truly brave person. But Frances Reilly, a middle aged woman in a smart black leather jacket, whom I met in a corner of Jury’s Inn, Belfast, is extremely courageous. Not only has the Omagh-born woman written a memoir Suffer the Little Children, detailing her abusive convent upbringing, she has also pursued her tormentors in court, a process which took nearly 10 years, and achieved a successful outcome.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/life/books/it-felt-more-like-living-in-a-prison-than-a-childrens-home-28470133.html 

WHY NO NATIONAL MOVEMENT REGARDING NUN ABUSES???

Nun Abuse: My Story Maybe if I step forward and tell my story others will come forward and nun abuse will start to get the kind of national attention that priest abuse has.  All the recent media attention given to the priest abuse issue has brought back a flood of repressed horrible memories like flashbacks from a movie.
I was sent to the same strict catholic academy (Mt. Gallitzen in Baden, PA) that my father ran away from home so he wouldn't have to go there. Why my dad put me in a place he feared to attend I will never know or forgive him for.

http://snapsurvivorsnetwork.yuku.com/topic/3175/WHY-NO-NATIONAL-MOVEMENT-REGARDING-NUN-ABUSES#.WQq1XqIlGUk 

Discovery of mass child graves in Ireland exposes Church's history of abuse

The discovery of mass child graves in Tuam, Ireland last month has reportedly exposed the Catholic Church's long history of abuse targeting unmarried mothers who marred society's conservative image.
Amateur historian Catherine Corless' discovery of the 796 children who died in the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam from 1925 to 1961 stemmed from her childhood memories of some of the skinny kids from the same Catholic establishment, a number of whom attended the same school she did but were distant from the others. She told Reuters that she was struck that none of those dead children had records in local cemeteries, so she spent many years trying to find out what happened to the kids born out of wedlock who lived in those places.

http://www.christiandaily.com/article/discovery-of-mass-child-graves-in-ireland-exposes-churchs-history-of-abuse/60198.htm 

WAGES AND PENSIONS FREE HEALTH OVER DUE TO CHILDREN AND WOMEN

We want the Religious to pay the proper wages for the work Children had to do in these Institutions when we were supposed to be in their Care.
Manufacturing Farming and all Services operated by the Religious Orders were done without wages being paid, and pensions, yet the Clergy looked after themselves and their own welfare who paid the wages and pensions to themselves, who have great benefits in retirement homes and great care.

https://my.uplift.ie/petitions/wages-and-pensions-over-due?source=facebook-share-button&time=1491476759 

Fintan O’Toole: Church control of hospitals maintains myth of charity

In 1990, my second son was born in the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin. Of the women in the ward with my wife, one was 42 and had just had her seventh child. She was desperate to be sterilised. Another woman was younger – somewhere in her mid-30s – and obviously poor.
She had just given birth to her fifth child. She, too, did not want any more children. She wanted, as she put it, “to have my tubes burnt”. The curtains were drawn around her bed but everyone in the ward could hear the conversation with the doctor to whom she put this request.

http://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-church-control-of-hospitals-maintains-myth-of-charity-1.3059489 

Abuse survivors group will rally at Central Catholic

LAWRENCE -- An international group that supports sexual abuse survivors plans to rally in front of Central Catholic High School next week after an administrator was accused of drugging and raping a student in 2006.
Andrew Nikonchuk, 36, of Lowell was fired Tuesday for violating "the school's policies pertaining to appropriate social boundaries between students and faculty."

http://www.eagletribune.com/news/abuse-survivors-group-will-rally-at-central-catholic/article_7d4e0406-2c47-11e7-8223-8b22466db78e.html 

'There is no place for any religious organisation in 21st century care' - Irish midwives

A representative for Irish midwives said they want relocation but they do not want any religious order to have a say in modern hospitals.

Ally Murphy, of the Irish Midwives Association told Breakfast Newstalk that they want what is best for Irish women. She was speaking as the controversy over the decision to give ownership of the new €300m National Maternity Hospital to the Sisters of Charity rumbled on.

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/health/there-is-no-place-for-any-religious-organisation-in-21st-century-care-irish-midwives-35655260.html 

No country for young women: Honour crimes and infanticide in Ireland

When I was in first year in secondary school in 1997, a girl in the year above me was pregnant. She was 14. The only people who I ever heard say anything negative about her were a group of older girls who wore their tiny feet “pro-life” pins on their uniforms with pride. They slagged her behind her back, and said she would be a bad mother. They positioned themselves as the morally superior ones who cared for the baby, but not the unmarried mother. They are the remnants of an Ireland, a quasi-clerical fascist state, that we’d like to believe is in the past, but still lingers on.

https://feministire.com/2014/06/03/no-country-for-young-women-honour-crimes-and-infanticide-in-ireland/ 

Block Sisters of Charity as 'sole owners' of National Maternity Hospital

Sign and share this petition to prevent the Sisters of Charity becoming 'sole owners' of the hospital. Show the state we will not allow the abuse of our babies, children, and women to be swept under the rug. Demand a formal apology from Sisters of Charity and demand they pay their share of the redress scheme.

https://my.uplift.ie/petitions/block-sisters-of-chairty-as-sole-owners-of-national-maternity-hospital?bucket&source=facebook-share-button&time=1492539365