By: Katelin Hoffman

Katelin Hoffman — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 07:48:56 +0000

Thank you. I was one of the St. Joseph Orphanage group. I left the orphanage in 1972. You are so correct, people have a hard time hearing that women, especially nuns, are capable of sexually abusing children. It was like a prison, including having a number and being called by it. I was number #14. I still identify with that part of me who was number 14. People don’t want to know that orphanages could be so cold and cruel. I believe it is especially hard for Catholics who grow up calling priests “Father” and nuns “Sister.” That these men and women are God’s representatives on earth. Oliver Twist is supposed to be just a story. Since then came “Boys Town” where children were loved and cared for. If the general public were to choose, I imagine they would like to think of their community orphanage as being similar to Boy’s Town. Especially one run by a church with supposedly loving nuns. Oliver twist is mild compared to life at St, Joseph’s Orphanage. I was one of the fortunate ones. I was quiet and could do all my work both well and fast. I was rarely hit. Some kids were beaten everyday. My grandmother was at this orphanage in 1913 when at the age of ten, her twin sister died there. My older best friend was there for a few years before me. Neither prepared me for what to expect. At the time, I didn’t even know I was doomed to Hell for not being Catholic. Funny thing was, those few times I was out of the orphanage for something and saw either one of them, I never said what it was like either. I just realized this. While I am wondering why they didn’t tell me, I never told them the truth either. My friend died of an overdose just before her eighteenth
birthday. I just finished college. My independent study was about orphanages and St. Joseph’s Orphanage. My writing professor who was an editor, wanted me write a book but he died before I completed my college work. He loved my presentation about my life at St. Joseph’s saying it makes people laugh and then brings them to tears. I couldn’t see this as getting hit and other abuses had always been normal to me. The humor I see. Yet, I began to secretly cut myself to survive the orphange until I finally decided to kill myself and was hospitalized. Unfortunately, I then became “not foster home material” and had to spend my teenage years in a home for unwed mothers that was trying to become a group home also as it wasn’t so stigmatic to be unmarried and pregnant and abortion became legal. It is the fact that children are so vulnerable and innocent which makes it so hard to believe that they could be such subjects of abuse and the same is true for those who abuse them, they are innocent and vulnerable and easy to abuse. St. Joseph’s Orphanage in Burlington Vermont was pretty much a brothel for Catholic clergy and nuns and it’s employees. I thought it had to be fairly well known that if you wanted sex with a boy of girl and you were in the neighborhood, if a priest or whatever, that you could just ask for one and you got one. What better use of an orphan? I appreciate you bringing these stories out so people can begin to hear the truth Katie

Comments on: Tom Doyle Editorial Opinion

By: Katelin Hoffman