Irish nuns enslaved thousands until 1996

Irish nuns enslaved thousands until 1996

Talk about "get thee to a nunnery!"

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr> Girls who had become pregnant, even from rape, girls who were illegitimate, or orphaned, or just plain simple-minded, girls who were too pretty and therefore in "moral danger" all ran the risk of being locked up and put to work, without pay, in profit-making, convent laundries, to "wash away their sins."

They were completely cut off from their families, and many lost touch with them forever.

Stripped of their identities, the girls were given numbers instead of names. They were forbidden to speak, except to pray. If they broke any rule or tried to escape, the nuns beat them over the head with heavy iron keys, put them into solitary confinement or shipped them off to a mental hospital.[/quote]

abcnews.go.com/sections/w...30126.html

Re: Irish nuns enslaved thousands until 1996

This is true - I actually know someone who was just reunited with her daughter - But usually it was the parents that forced their daughters to give up the child, go into hiding or whatever or be shunned for life - they were more worried about what the neighbors thought than their own daughters.

I also know of another Irish girl who in the 1990's got pregnant and kept the child and has been disowned from the family for good -- I'm sure this also happens in many other cultures - in fact - in some countries the woman would just be stoned to death, or be killed by her brothers or other male family member, even happening today. Ah, men are so wonderful, arent they?

Re: Irish nuns enslaved thousands until 1996

What shocks me is that this went on til 1996!

Re: Irish nuns enslaved thousands until 1996

<span style="color:red;font-family:helvetica;font-size:small;">Enslaving nuns... pedophile priests... It's all so sickening and horrible. No offense, but I wonder what ELSE the church has been up to all these years.</span :evil: :evil: :evil:

Re: Irish nuns enslaved thousands until 1996

Fetal,
I had no idea.
I'm no fan of the catholic church, but this is obscene..to the late 1990s, as Hayang highlights.
Thanks for the reminder that it is not just some other culture, or time, that we can point to as blatatly institutionally criminally misogynistic.

Alison.

Re: Irish nuns enslaved thousands until 1996

I remember seeing a story on this on "Primetime" I think it was a year or so ago. Yeah, very understanding approach by the Church

For more cultural enslavement seek out the movie, "The Rabbit Run Fence." Shoot, I don't have the title right [EDIT: Thanks, Steve, "The Rabbit Proof Fence" is it.] It's an Australian film that stars Kenneth Branaugh. Not a biggie so you may have to wait for it to come out on DVD. More horrific things done to children in the name of white racial superiority. "The Pianist" is also a great film and I think really personalizes the Holocaust.

Sadly, it's hard for me to find anything shocking anymore. You just know it's all still out there.
Rgirl

PS On a lighter note, the movie "The Winslow Boy" will be on the Independent Film Channel Sunday and next week at various times. It's based on a play by Terence Rattigan (I think) and directed by David Mamet (I'm certain) and wonder of wonders, it doesn't have a single curse word in it. It's also based on a true incident that happened in Great Britain in the early 1900s. Very sweet story and very sexy--in a restrained British way--performance, I think, by Jeremy Northram, who recently played Dean Martin in the "Martin and Lewis" HBO movie and who was the piano-playing movie star in "Gosford Park." Wonderful "little" film about how important innocence is to innocent people.

Re: Irish nuns enslaved thousands until 1996

Rabbit Proof Fence, I think is the name of that movie Rgirl.
haven't seen it yet -- The Pianist was very good.

edit -- I don't know how this story could be shocking to me, when I see today 2003, women on the world news being stoned to death. they actually showed video footage - you couldn't even see the woman's face because it was covered in the burque. But you could see the rocks hitting her in the head and the animal mob of men pelting her.

a girl child ain't safe in a world full of mens.

the most disturbing is that most of these girls were likely sent away by their parents.

US girls in mental hospitals

This is not a shock. My son, while in college, worked for an agency called Howard Mental Health in Burlington Vermont(mid 1980's) as a respite worker in residential homes for the mentally retarded.

One of his clients was a woman of about 60 who had been incarcerated in a mental hospital with the connivance of her parents about 1940 because she was sexually active. This was considered insane at that time. She was dylexic, but at the time had no real mental defect. During the 40's and 50's, they attempted to cure her defect using electroshock. This did indeed damage her brain. At some time while in the mental hospital, she became pregnant, and the baby was taken away. There is some evidence that she was raped in the hospital. She used to cry about her lost baby. By the 1970's when mental hospitals were closed, she had no where to go and in some respects she functioned like a high functioning mentally retarded person, so the authorities placed her in a residential home.

This was not an isolated case. It was a usual way of dealing with either noncompliant or sexually active girls by their familes in this country. 1940 was a little late for it, but it was very very common in the 19th century.

It is not only the church

It is not only foreign countries

The things done in this country to women in the past were equally horrifying. And the past was not that long ago.

Nothing desperate happened to me, compared to those poor women, but:
Heck, in 1968, I was fired by the U.S. government from my job. I was married and had become pregnant. What shocking behavior. It's a long way from that to the Family Medical and Leave Act of today. This was an improvement. In the early 1950's you could get fired just for being married in some companies/jobs.

And some other things I witnessed:
I was not allowed to take drafting in high school because it was part of the shop curriculum and girls were not allowed to take shop. There were no organized sports in my high school for girls, other than cheerleading. Girls in college were routinely exhorted by their professors to flunk their tests; if they didn't, some boy would flunk and be sent to Vietnam. Married girls in my high school were expelled and not allowed to graduate. (this did not involve being pregnant. This was viewed as a way to discourage early marriage) Girls could not go to Harvard, Yale or many other of the top colleges in the country. There are many other examples...

This is the past that segments of our current society think
was wonderful and that we should go back to it.
Needless to say, I do not agree.

dpp

Everybody in mental hospitals

Good thing we're slightly more advanced now when it comes to sex, or are we?

365gay.com/NewsContent/01...ersion.htm

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Speaking Tuesday night at St Mary's Cathedral Rudegeair claimed that children with dysfunctional father relationships, poor body image and those who fail on the sporting field because of poor co-ordination are most at risk of turning to homosexuality later in life.[/quote]

And yes, parents do send their potentially gay kids away to conversion therapy and mental hospitals, even now, even in developed countries.

For those of you still unclear about the role religion plays in sexual repression, let me post another fresh news article:

abcnews.go.com/wire/World...6_656.html

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Pope John Paul II warned Sunday against "inauthentic" versions of the family, stressing that a union between a man and woman was the only true one in God's eyes.

...

The Vatican has long voiced opposition to what it calls the threats against the family, including divorce, contraception, abortion and gay marriages. Earlier this month, the Vatican issued a set of guidelines for Catholic politicians reminding them to heed Church teaching on such issues when they make public policy.[/quote]

All this from a guy whose job requires that he never get married, how ironic.

Re: Everybody in mental hospitals

I agree Doris, this is really neither only a religious or foreign problem, but a women's rights' problem worldwide. Women have been treated like less than animals for far too long. Things are changing but far too slowly.

Re: Everybody in mental hospitals

I am in charge of the International affairs dept. of our local Woman's Club for the next two years and had to choose a project for our club to support. We are supporting "The Sarah Project" which provides information and assistance to girls in Africa who may be forced into early marriages or to undergo female genital mutilation (which by the way also occurs here in the USA in varying degrees). In some cultures there very young girls are married off by their families in order to avoid the chance of pregnancy before marriage. Also, there some areas where it is believed that men who are infected with HIV will be "cured" if they have sex with a virgin.

Piel

HIV in South Africa

Piel,
It is also widely believed in South Africa that the advertisements that exhort you to use a condom to avoid HIV infection is propaganda by whites aimed at limiting the size of the black population.

dpp

Re: Everybody in mental hospitals

Fetal,

If lack of coordination and poor body image causes being gay, where the heck did we get drop-dead gorgeous and highly coordinated gay skaters and ballet dancers? Did they all have lousy father relationships?

What a crock of BS. What a charlatan. I can't believe Dr. Rottenfinger or whatever his name is can look himself in the eye in the shaving mirror in the morning.

dpp