arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

August 27 2002.

Nuns at a Brisbane orphanage allegedly raped children and forced them to eat faeces, rotting food and their own vomit.

A woman in her late 50s has come forward to tell of her experiences at the hands of nuns at Nazareth House in Wynnum on Brisbane's eastside during the 1940s and 1950s.

Lizzie Walsh, as she was known as a child at the orphanage, has told this week's The Bulletin magazine she was subjected to violence for seven years.

During her time at Nazareth House, Ms Walsh claims she was raped by a nun with a flagstick "to get the devil out" while the other nuns turned a blind eye to her being raped by two different priests.

Ms Walsh also recalls being forced to eat a nun's faeces, rotting fish and vomit and to drink her own urine.

While Ms Walsh's allegations have yet to be tested in a court of law, 17 other women have levelled claims against the Poor Sisters of Nazareth in the Supreme Court of Queensland, The Bulletin said.

The Catholic Church and the Poor Sisters of Nazareth have never admitted liability.

However, The Bulletin said an out-of-court settlement was reached with some victims with compensation up to $75,000 being paid out, depending on the level of physical and sexual abuse.

They also received a written apology.

Sister Clare Breen, regional superior of the Sisters of Nazareth, said she had met a number of claimants.

"We have just said to them that we are sorry that they've got unhappy memories of the past," she said.

Most of the people involved in the care of the children were no longer alive, Sister Breen said.

Ms Walsh, whose allegations were corroborated in statement of claims by other victims, told The Bulletin the compensation money meant "jack".

Bobbie flinched as she recalled how two nuns sexually interfered with girls at a Catholic orphanage.

"They would strip them and rub Vicks into their private parts, telling them they had to do that to get their puberty hair to grow," Bobbie said.

"They would push broomsticks and flag sticks into them, saying that they were trying to get the devil out of them."

The former resident at Nazareth House in the Brisbane Bay side suburb of Wynnum is one of 17 women suing the church's Brisbane Archdiocese and the Sisters of Nazareth order.

A former male student has also lodged a claim in the Queensland Supreme Court.

The claims cover the early 1940s to the early 1970s. Nazareth House has been a retirement village since the mid-1980s.

Most of the complainants have been offered cash to settle out of court. Bobbie said she had not decided whether to accept the $65,000 she was offered. "What I really want is for them to admit that it happened and that it was wrong, but they won't," she said. "That's what we really need for our spirits to heal."

Bobbie said a guinea pig had been put down one girl's pants. The girl was forced to leave it there while it bit and scratched her genitalia for several minutes.

She said that on one occasion she had been hung by her wrists while naked for several hours. In addition, she and other girls were held in a small dark cell for two or more days without food or toilet facilities.

In a statement of claim, another woman said she had suffered systematic beatings and assaults of various kinds by nuns.

The woman claimed she had her face rubbed in a urine-soaked sheet until her nose bled, had been made to kiss dead bodies, and been fed food infested with bugs.

Another woman said she had been left alone in the company of a priest, who had sexually assaulted her.

The woman said she was regularly told that the devil would "turn into a dog and tear my throat out". She said that once when she had been forced to eat food, which was so bad that she vomited, she was forced to eat her vomit.

Another woman claimed she had been forced to eat the faeces of one of the nuns who were sexually assaulting girls.

The Chancellor of the Brisbane Archdiocese, James Spence, said responsibility for the children rested with the Sisters of Nazareth. "The archdiocese had no involvement in the day-to-day running of the orphanage," Father Spence said. "The archdiocese acknowledges with deep regret the distress felt by former residents of Nazareth House."

The Sisters of Nazareth's regional supervisor, Clare Breen, said emotional and financial support was being offered to the complainants, but this did not mean the order accepted that their claims were true.

"We're very sad that some of these girls still have these unhappy memories," Sister Breen told ABC radio.

"We have financed a number of girls to have counselling. We feel that is what the girls have asked us to do and that is what we have done."

... Those nuns really were far out.
As a kid I was in bording school. The nuns gave us food that we hardly could eat. Maybe that's one of the reasons behind my (mild) eating disorders..
On many occasion my brother and I, who really were not spoiled kids as we lived alone with our interesting but often too weird mother, smuggled the "food" in napkins or plastic bags out of the refectory to dump it in the culvert in the (prison like) playground. Then we had no food (our mother had paid for) or we just survived on bread we had secretly removed some of the black burned crust. One was obliged to eat *everything*.

After a promotion day we accidentally ended up too long in the nuns quarters... A huge plate was rolled through the corridor on a diner wagon. My mother still remembers my brother and I stared perplexed to something we hadn't seen ever in this concentrationcamplike environment: decent food.

We slept in a dormitory. The nun in charge (most of the time 'sister Albertine' or 'sister Leopoldine') slept at the far end behind a curtain. It was spooky to see her shadow when she was dressing in the morning. Then the lights went on; the curtain flinged aside and while snapped her fingers she marched between the two rows of bed. Never I've met anyone snapping its fingers as loud as those nuns did.

We had to jump out of bed; sit on the cold wooden floor near the end of the bed and start some prayer. A very piety it didn't give. Religious terror never does.

In the second class (7 years old) my knuckles where beaten until they bled with a ruler for no reason at all. Maybe because my other wasn't married? Once I had to sit on my knees on a ruler and even once had to keep a chair in the air while doing that ! - I really was a very timid boy at that time.

Never knew why I got punishments or remarks; Right: it shall have been due to my developing neurotical-psychosis... Later in life I neither new why I should go to the army; Darn I DO know why I refuse(d) any compulsory 'service' imposed on me and on anyone else ! -

'don't know what happened much to my brother. He stayed much longer as I did in Catholic schools. Even in a college where later on an author wrote a book about the activities of Opus Dei - the darkest mafia organization of the Roman Church - .. if not worst has come forward out of those pervert and through the ages well trained oppressors their minds....

No use to tell more stories. Just all bad memories about nuns, priests and such. Some might be ok but many are plain sick.

Making poor people pay for doctor visits that have never taken place. - Forcing kids to eat crap and if they can't empty their plate in one way or the other put it for days in front of them until it's empty. - Forbidding kids to write *anything* personal to their parents: just a dictated letter lying how wonderful it all was.
- I found my way around that... -

With a long stick destroying swallow nests; even when the birds are still breading. - Charging for everything, even fictions. etc. etc. Their terror should stop. They've had over 2000 years to find truth and peace. Can't they see their there is something dreadfully wrong if not with their theology then certainly with their blood-soaked hierarchic church ? They'd better.

If it's hard to find "the best words" to tell some of those Catholics what they are doing just throwing it out is left.

May they use their own brains and, keep their "good deeds", as they call it, to themselves. And then, inshallah, Allah might them.

IH