Facing The Past

CHRISTCHURCH 1997.

I was told by one of the woman that she knew two of the five girls, who molested me, when I was a little girl, at St. Joseph's. She also knew about the three older ladies who sexual abused me in the nursery. I was shocked and said. 

"So you all knew about it." I then walked away from everyone. I felt so degraded. I was hurt and I was lost. It made me feel weak and sick.

How can I face people when I feel so bad inside? It still hurts me so very much. I feel the pain, the hate, the fear and I hear the words.

WHY! WHY! MY GOD WHY! The words were so Cruel, Cold, and Harsh.

                  AUCKLAND 1997.

After the 60minutes program in 1997, we were given a 0800 number to ring and talk to Sister Teresa. I rang her and talked to her for a while, then she phoned me up four to five times after that. She then invited me to stay with her and the rest of the Sister in Auckland, for the weekend.

My next door neighbour took me down on a Friday afternoon. Sister Teresa then took me for a drive over looking Manakau City. We sat in her car talking about St. Joseph's and Nazareth House. How my childhood had affected me then and how it was affecting me now. I was very upset and cried a lot. I told her that I do not blame the Sisters of today. It was not Sister Teresa who did the terrible things to me. In the same weekend Sister Teresa read my poems, book and the letters, that I had written to the nuns who had abused me. And also to my kind friend Mother Francis, which I took with me. The sisters were very sympathetic towards me.

Sister Teresa read the book out loud and then she told me,

"Yes, the cruelty did happen to us."

I felt relief, as soon as she said that. It was as if a big burden that I had carried around with me all these years, had lifted off me. That, at long last someone in the Roman Catholic Church said.

"Yes it did happen to me."

She also told me that she was about the same age as me and then she said that two little girls growing up at the same time and living such different lives. I knew straight away what she was going to say next. Her in a loving family home and me at St. Joseph's Orphanage and Nazareth House, being cruelly treated the way I was. I told Sister Teresa that I can not go to church any more and that I will not have anything to do with the Roman Catholic Church, because of the fear I have for it, or any other religion. I also told her that if I do go to church I start to cry and that it all comes back to me. I am that little girl again and it won't go away.

COUNSELLOR.

At the time I told one of the nuns at St. Joseph's, Sister Peter, in 1964 about what happened to me. She did nothing about it. She brushed it off and didn't want to know. All she did was tell my husband that I was a "Deep" person and had to be treated carefully. This made me feel worse and confmned my

fears that I was a bad person.

I was talking to my neighbour Ron Hackett,

who was in the police force, and I told him what happened to me.

He made all out effort to fmd my immediate family, which he did.

After I told Ron about some of the abuse in the orphanage, he was great.

He told me I was just a child and I wasn't in the wrong.

I thought the nuns would not have hit me if I wasn't bad. I certainly didn't realise that there was any fault with the nuns and the church.

I still believed they had done nothing wrong at that stage.

Also after I told Ron what happened, I felt at that time I was like that little child again, going through the punishment and abuse again and again. I told Ron and eventually Sue about what happened to me because I was trying to get help for myself. My life was a mess. Nothing was ever right. At the time it looked as if I might lose my family home to a mortgagee sale. I seemed to be doomed.

I went to the Miriam Centre (Sue Howden) to see if she could help me cope with the stress and help me to save our home from the mortgagee sale. Sue was the ftrst person to try to convince me I was not in the wrong. She spent much of my time with her telling me I was not in the wrong, it was not my fault, I was not bad. My son was killed in a car crash in late 1993 and I still have not recovered from that.

I saw Colleen at the Miriam Centre in 1997. Colleen too, I found, tried to tell me I was not to blame. She told me that I was a child and that I had done no wrong. I still find it hard to this day and asked myself,

THEN WHY?

REUNION.

On 29 November 1997, there was a St. Joseph's Orphanage reunion. I saw a girl Janice Spark who was at the orphanage with me. We went to St. Joseph's Orphanage on a Sunday afternoon in Christchurch. Originally we had planned to meet there and see if the place was still the same. While we were there she told me we should sue for the treatment we were given by the nuns and she asked me if I would join her.

I then got talking and the other woman told me that they knew of the abuse to me, that had accrued. I was so disgusted, I just walked away at first. I waited until I returned to Whangarei and I went to see my lawyer, Stuart Henderson. I wanted to see if what Janice had said was correct. I didn't know what to do about a legal claim until I had come to see Stuart.

It was my conversation with Janice Sparks in 1997

at the reunion that made me realize I had being abused

by the nuns and that I could do something about it. I then realized that my current problems with self esteem and my ability to interact with my children, were a direct link to how the nuns had treated me.

I left school at the age of 12 years old to work in the kitchen. It was not until I was much older, did I start to get paid 2/6 a month. I did not have much schooling and I could not read or write very well.

I never knew what a family life was like until I was 24 years old after I married my husband Brian and had our first child, Robert - [Robbie] 16 May 1966. I was physically, mentally, verbally abused and molested. I lived my childhood life in fear all of the time. This abuse went on until I was 24 years old. In October of 1966. I left Christchurch and came up to Whangarei to live. We have lived in the same house since then, which is the only home I have ever lived in. - 41years. 1966 to 2007.