Letters to the Editor, an Essay in The Atlantic
Survivors spread the word and The Atlantic takes a long view
The more I receive readers’ emails, or read reviews of the book, the more I watch the orphanage survivors’ story spread, the more motivated I am to engage further and encourage others to do so. Which is why I was so thrilled to read two opinion pieces about one of the most important topics in Ghosts of the Orphanage: What does justice for those abused by nuns look like now?
One piece in the VT Digger was written by Maura Labelle, former resident of St. Joseph’s Orphanage. Labelle wrote about the necessity of naming abusive nuns, and of including them on a public list of accused predators. It’s an appropriately fired up piece. The other was reader commentary in the Baltimore Sun. It’s very much on the same topic and along the same lines.
It was also really gratifying to read this deeply thoughtful Atlantic essay by journalist Kristen Martin, who is currently working on a book called American Orphan. Martin connects Ghosts of the Orphanage with We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America by Roxanna Asgarian. Asgarian’s book tells the story of Jennifer and Sarah Hart, two white women who fostered six Black children from two Texas families, and whose story ended in total tragedy in 2018. The idea of Martin’s piece is so good, enabling her to sketch a much bigger arc than either book can. Do read it. It’s well worth the time.
VT Digger Commentary by Maura Labelle
Now that Lent and Easter are over, Vermont Catholic Bishop Christopher Coyne needs to begin a new mission.
In August 2019, Coyne released an incomplete list of Vermont clergy credibly accused of child abuse.
Curiously, the Diocese of Burlington has never released a list of nuns who were credibly accused of abuse. As a survivor of St. Joseph’s Orphanage, I know that abusive nuns existed. Nuns participated in physical, sexual and emotional abuse of orphanage children. This is well documented, including in a report by former Vermont Attorney General TJ Donovan.
While in Burlington recently, Christine Kenneally, author of the just released book ”Ghosts of the Orphanage” and the 2018 Buzzfeed article on abuse at St. Joseph’s Orphanage, revealed that she had asked the local diocese why there was no list of credibly accused nuns. The diocese never responded.
Read more here.
Reader Commentary in the Baltimore Sun
Max Obuszewski writes in a recent letter to the editor, “Women should be ordained as priests” (April 11), that he is unaware of any scandals of U.S. nuns sexually abusing children. In 2018, BuzzFeed News’s Christine Kenneally did a deep probe into decades of physical and sexual abuse of orphans by the nuns of St. Joseph’s Orphanage of Burlington, Vermont. Horrific abuses of children have occurred in Catholic orphanages, across the world, in Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom. Nuns were heavily involved with merciless corporal punishments and, yes, sexual abuse. It is alleged children died at the hands of the nuns in Vermont and survivors tried to hold the Diocese of Vermont and the Sisters of Providence to account to no avail. The St. Joseph’s Orphanage in Vermont, closed down in the 1970s, and there were similar stories about nuns in other orphanages across the United States.
Read more here.
“An Institution That’s Been Broken for 200 Years” in The Atlantic
When I was a teenager in the early 2000s, my parents both died. Like many American children, I had been steeped in stories about orphans for years, but the books I had read and movies I had watched (Jane Eyre, Annie) failed to mirror my experience of parental loss. They also contributed to my mistaken understanding of orphanhood and the makeup of our child-welfare system—misconceptions that many Americans hold today.
Read more here.