UPDATED::We Saw Nuns Kill Children: The Ghosts of St. Joseph’s Catholic Orphanage

UPDATE:: Vermont’s Governor Supports Orphanage Victims’ “Pursuit Of Justice” After A BuzzFeed News Investigation

In response to a multiyear BuzzFeed News investigation, Vermont Gov. Phil Scott said Monday that he would support the efforts of victims who suffered abuse as children at a Catholic orphanage in the state to pursue justice through the courts.

“The allegations against St. Joseph’s Orphanage are as extremely disturbing, horrific and deeply troubling today, as they were decades ago,” Scott said in an emailed statement to BuzzFeed News.

The allegations include once-parentless children in the care of the Catholic orphanage being beaten, sexually abused, mutilated, and observing the deaths of other children at the hands of their protectors.

See also:: People Are Sharing Their Stories Of Catholic Orphanages In Response To A BuzzFeed News Investigation

I am still digesting this,,, I got nothing!

I watched the deposition — all 19 hours of grainy, scratchy videotape — more than two decades later. By that time sexual abuse scandals had ripped through the Catholic Church, shattering the silence that had for so long protected its secrets. It was easier for accusers in general to come forward, and easier for people to believe their stories, even if the stories sounded too awful to be true. Even if they had happened decades ago, when the accusers were only children. Even if the people they were accusing were pillars of the community.

But for all these revelations — including this month’s Pennsylvania grand jury report on how the church hid the crimes of hundreds of priests — a darker history, the one to which Sally’s story belongs, remains all but unknown. It is the history of unrelenting physical and psychological abuse of captive children. Across thousands of miles, across decades, the abuse took eerily similar forms: People who grew up in orphanages said they were made to kneel or stand for hours, sometimes with their arms straight out, sometimes holding their boots or some other item. They were forced to eat their own vomit. They were dangled upside down out windows, over wells, or in laundry chutes. Children were locked in cabinets, in closets, in attics, sometimes for days, sometimes so long they were forgotten. They were told their relatives didn’t want them, or they were permanently separated from their siblings. They were sexually abused. They were mutilated.

Darkest of all, it is a history of children who entered orphanages but did not leave them alive.

We Saw Nuns Kill Children: The Ghosts of St. Joseph’s Catholic Orphanage