Contact: Mary Dispenza
Phone: 425-941-6001
Email: [email protected]
Contact: Marya Dantzer
Phone: 617-448-6039 (Voicemails only)
Email: [email protected]
Contact for Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Slovenia
Franka Miloloža
Contact for Peru:
María La Rosa Matuk
+51 941 695 920
[email protected] (María checks this account daily)
A virtual support group for those abused by nuns/women religious (Survivors of Abuse by Nuns/Women Religious) is led by Marya Dantzer and meets every Wednesday from 8-9:30 PM Eastern Time. These meetings are for those abused by nuns/women religious who are over the age of majority. Contact Marya for the login information.
Contact: Marya Dantzer
Phone: 617-448-6039 (Voicemails only)
Email: [email protected]
A second virtual support group for those abused by nuns (Nun-2) is led by Mary Dispenza and meets every other Monday from 5-6:30 PM Pacific Time. These meetings are for those abused by nuns/women religious who are over the age of majority. Please call or e-mail Mary if you are interested in participating.
Contact: Mary Dispenza
Phone: 425-941-6001
Email: [email protected]
SNAP National Office
Contact: Melanie Sakoda, SNAP Survivor Support Director
Phone: 925-708-6175
Email: [email protected]
Melanie is located in the San Francisco Bay Area
Contact: Shaun Dougherty, SNAP Interim Executive Director
Phone: 814-341-8386
Email: [email protected]
Shaun is located in Western Pennsylvania
Introduction
By Mary Dispenza
NUNS, NUNS, NUNS. I used to be one. I loved the nuns. It was a long time after I left my religious community that I remembered the day a superior took my 18-year-old face between her hands and kissed me all over. It was years before I finally named this incident as abuse, not just a “creepy” story. A small invasion, some may think – just kisses. Yet it left a lasting impact of confusion with me. In that moment spirituality and abuse came face to face trapped between the superior’s hands as her power loomed over me.
Unlike being abused by a priest who is “GOD,” men and women sexually violated by nuns must contend with the belief that women, especially nuns, would never, ever hurt a child. We hear expressions like “Women don’t do that,” “Women are caring and maternal”. While mostly this is true some women, rape, physically abuse, and irreparably ridicule and shame children, mostly because of their power - often as teachers, Mothers, and nuns. Nuns have the added benefit of the “halo” effect because of their Godly stature and reputation of kindness and love.
Men abused as boys by nuns carry deep shame, believing they were weak, a sissy, not boy or ‘man’ enough to stand up to Sister when week after week she either punched him, kissed him, bullied him, put him over her lap and beat him, or had sex with him. Young girls abused and used by nuns have the additional burden of unravelling the belief that they were in love with the nun, and that she was in love with them. As adults, women survivors often must face the fact that it wasn’t love, not even an affair – it was sexual abuse. They know what a ‘broken heart’ feels like and the betrayal that goes with it. Girls abused by nuns often speak of the psychological and spiritual damage done to them, stolen childhood and adolescent years of friendships, dates, dances, and often God.
Women Religious orders are very closed systems, more so than the priesthood. Religious communities often function like an incestuous family protecting each other at all costs from being exposed as sexual predators among them. Their culture is built on secrecy, power, and protecting the sisterhood. It has been nearly impossible to break through this wall of secrecy. Survivors abused by nuns are ignored by most religious orders and the Catholic Church. Justice is mostly an illusion. The Leadership Conference of Religious Woman (LCRW) has yet to show any desire to work with survivors in healing themselves, the past, present, and in shaping a safer future for children and adolescents. SNAP is working to change that. The timeline below shows the actions SNAP has taken to date.
Timeline
- 2002 - LCWR refuses to participate in USCCB’s “Policy for the Protection of Children”
- April 5, 2002 - LCWR issues statement on clerical abuse
- August 24, 2002 - LCWR National Board issues statement on sexual abuse
- June 12, 2004 - Nun survivors meet for the first time in Denver at SNAP Conference
- July 13, 2004 - Hand-delivered to LCWR and USCCB from nun survivors regarding Plan of Hope, Respect, and Open Healing. Also requested nun survivors be allowed to speak at LCWR-CMSM Joint Assembly in Ft. Worth. To date, we received no answer from USCCB.
- August 5, 2004 - Letter to LCWR from SNAP expressing dismay over their decision not to let us speak
- August 9, 2004 - E-mail to National Review Board to intervene on our behalf
- August 13, 2004 - LCWR Press Release: Response of LCWR President Sister Constance Phelps, SCL saying we can’t speak in Ft. Worth
- August 19 to 22, 2004 - Joint LCWR – CMSM Assembly in Ft. Worth, TX. Nun survivors attempt to attend event but are refused.
- October 3, 2004 - Meeting with LCWR Leadership in Chicago
- November 22, 2004 - LCWR letter to SNAP refusing to work with SNAP members who are survivors of sexual abuse committed by nuns and sisters
- August 2, 2005 - Not allowed to speak at LCWR National Conference in Anaheim, CA; we are present – we delivered letter
- August 17, 2006 - Not allowed to speak at LCWR National Conference in Atlanta, GA; we are present – we delivered letter
- August 24, 2007 - LCWR contacts us to meet to talk but LCWR does not provide an agenda after numerous requests; Not allowed to speak at LCWR National Conference in Kansas City
- September 19, 2007 - LCWR responds to SNAP, denying all five requests
- August, 2008 - LCWR rebuffs us via letter; SNAP holds night-time vigil
- October 9, 2008 - SNAP meets with Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious in St. Louis; requests are denied
- February 23, 2009 - SNAP asks to speak at the LCWR conference in New Orleans
- March 26, 2009 - LCWR denies all of SNAP's requests
- August 11, 2009 - Not allowed to speak at LCWR Conference in New Orleans; we deliver letter
- August 14, 2010 - Not allowed to speak at LCWR Conference in Dallas; we are present
- August 16, 2011 - LCWR National Conference in Garden Grove, California
- August 7, 2012 - LCWR National Conference in St Louis; SNAP members deliver letter and hold vigil
- August 8, 2012 – Letter sent to Bishops
- August 2018 – Designed a Power Point Presentation giving statistics/data about nuns in the United States as abusers (2019) Will be updated for 2023. (Dan McNiven and Mary Dispenza)
- April 3, 2019 -- SNAP forms first support group for those abused by nuns
- August 16, 2019 – First time ever and the last time since that any leader of the LCWR spoke openly and honestly about their role in abusing and harming children.
- February 21-24, 2019 – SNAP in Rome during the Papal summit on the Abuse of Minors. the first press conference on Nuns Abusers was held followed by a MARCH to the main headquarters – the UISG (International Union of Superiors General). A letter was delivered outlining concerns and demands of survivors abused by nuns. The letter was never acknowledged. SNAP representatives were Mary Dispenza, Tim Lennon, Esther Hatfield Miller, and Carol Midboe.
- February 23, 2019 – During the Papal Summit SNAP joined with ECA (Ending Clergy Abuse) in the Global “March for Zero” Tolerance through the streets of Rome.
- August 14, 2019 – Mary O’day, Mary Dispenza, Tim Lennon, and a small group from SNAP protested outside The Fairmont Hotel in Scottsdale, Arizona in 115-degree heat. Snap was denied access to the Hotel property. SNAP’s demands of LCRW were to speak at conference, have religious orders mount an aggressive outreach drive to find and help others violated by nuns, Post names on its websites of credibly accused child molesting nuns, urge Attorney Generals investigating clergy sex crimes and cover ups to include nuns and their victims in these probes, and to beg anyone who may have seen, suspected or suffered wrongdoing to come forward, start healing, protect others and call law enforcement. (David Clohessy). TV and media coverage of this event was excellent.
- February 19 -22, 2020 – Four SNAP representatives were sent once again to the Bishop’s summit in Rome: Tim Lennon, Sean Dougherty, Brenda Brunelle, Kevin Bourgeois, and Mary Dispenza. Their message to the Bishops and Pope Frances was “WE ARE NOT GOING AWAY.”
- On the second day of the 2020 summit another press conference was held on Abuse by Nuns/Religious women. Another march took place. This time the goal was to speak to Sister Pat head of LCRW at that time. The good news is that Mary Dispenza and Tim Lennon sat around the small table with Sister Pat. Concerns were share by Tim and Mary on behalf of survivors. Upon returning to US, Mary Dispenza wrote a follow up letter to Sister Pat. Several months later Mary received a very short thank you of no substance.
- February 25, 2021 – An article in the National Catholic reporter features four survivor’s stories, and a conversation with Mary Dispenza and Sister Carol Zinn of LCWR. In the article Carol Zinn said that Mary Dispenza was asked to speak to LCWR, and she declined. That was not the truth.
- April 24, 2021 – Breaking Free, Personal SNAP Stories by Those Abused by Nuns was aired.
- December 21, 2021 – Mary Dispenza, SNAP, speaker at Voices of Faith International 2021 Conference on Abuse of Power Inside the Church. (see Document 7)
- February, 2022 – Started second Support Group for Those Abused by Nuns
- July 22-24, 2022 – SNAP Denver 22 Conference. A breakout session called “What About Nuns? Was presented by Mary Dispenza and 2 survivors of Nun abuse, Gabrielle Longhi and Marya Danzer.
Documents:
Document 1: Letter sent to bishops (Aug. 8, 2012)
Dear Archbishop Sartain Bishop Blair, Bishop Paprocki
We write you with great sadness and reluctance. Each of you, like most of your colleagues, has done a poor job of dealing with child sex abuse and cover up. Still, each of you have a chance to prod US nuns to do a better job in this regard. For the sake of prevention, healing, openness and justice, we hope you seize this opportunity.
We have little faith in "internal" church "investigations" and reports on clergy sex crimes and cover ups. We have even less faith when they're conducted by bishops or “outside” firms hand-picked and hired by bishops.
Still, something is often better than nothing. That’s the case today with abuse and cover up by nuns. Right now, there's very little known about child sex crimes and cover ups by nuns. No one's apparently trying to learn more. And as best we can tell, no one inside or outside of the nuns’ community is trying to prod them to do a better job of protecting the vulnerable and healing the wounded.
So with considerable reluctance and distrust, we're asking you to expand your “oversight” of the LCWR into what the organization – and America’s religious orders of women- are doing and are not doing regarding child sex crimes and cover ups by nuns.
Why does this matter? Because we believe that
- many abusive nuns have never been exposed or disciplined.
- many who have seen, suspected or hidden their crimes have similarly never been exposed or disciplined
- many who were abused by nuns have coped by essentially denying and mischaracterized the crimes they suffered, and minimizing the impact of those crimes, so they suffer in confusion, denial, isolation, shame and self-blame.
We suspect that fewer nuns molest than priests. (Research suggests that more men are sexual predators.) At the same time, however, that’s just speculation. And regardless of the rates or percentages of abuse, two other facts are important. First, there are more nuns than priests. (55,944 nuns in the US versus 41,406 priests) Second, many more nuns had more access to more kids, largely because they worked and work in schools.
Ultimately, however, the numbers or percentages are not especially relevant. If there are 400 or 4,000 or 40,000 adults who were victimized by nuns in this country, every single one of them deserves help. And if there are 4 or 40 or 400 children who may be victimized in the future by nuns in this country, they need protection.
Again, we take this step with great sadness and reluctance. Everyone knows most nuns don’t commit or conceal child sex crimes. Everyone knows that most nuns do wonderful, selfless work, often to help society’s marginalized.
But we see little or no evidence that nuns – either in or through the LCWR or their individual orders – are in any way, shape or form “trailblazers” in making the church or our society safer from clergy child predators or making substantial contributions to the healing of those who suffer because of clergy child predators.
It’s a painful truth to acknowledge. It’s unusual and unsettling for us to seek your help in dealing with it. But our concern – for the vulnerable and the wounded – and our inability to get the LCWR to be more pro-active, leave us with few other options.
Click HERE to download a .zip archive of correspondence between SNAP and the LCWR, SNAP and LCWR press releases, and other coverage of the groups (4.76 mb
Document 2: Face facts, says LCWR president: Sisters have been part of Catholic Church sexual abuse scandal by Dan Stockman (August 6, 2019)
Document 3: Leadership groups condemn abuse by nuns but leave solutions to local congregations by Dawn Araujo-Hawkins. (Feb 25, 2021)
Document 4: Letter International Union of Superiors General (UISG) March 3, 2020
Dear Sister Pat and members of the Board,
Thank you for welcoming Tim Lennon and myself to the table to meet with you. We were very grateful to have time to share our concerns and listen to yours. This is the first time anyone from SNAP has been invited to sit and talk face to face with someone from the leadership team of UISG or LCRW. It was a welcomed moment especially for me.
For the past two years, I have had the honor and challenge of listening to survivors of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse by nuns in various orders. Some survivors are nuns within religious communities who were abused by nuns still living in community — others were abused as children, teens, and vulnerable adults. There is something new resounding in the stories I hear. Besides pain, anger, and loss, I hear a deep, burning desire and longing for justice from each survivor — justice for what was lost and taken from them by nuns they trusted. As I see it, this is where you, as religious women, come into the story.
Clearly, we can’t undo the past. We can face it. Work to understand it, so as to end it. Most importantly, we can transform the past by right and just actions now.
What follows are 3 areas of immediate concern to survivors that hopefully lead to a continued conversation between us:
Survivors who were or are nuns and experienced sexual, emotional, or psychological abuse within their communities want their perpetrators gone, reports filed and their names and reason for leaving the community posted. They also want the secrecy about it all to stop. They want their religious communities to engage in candid and open conversation about the problem.
Adult survivors of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse by nuns as children, teens, vulnerable adults who have registered a valid complaint want religious superiors to listen to their stories seriously, believe them and work with them for resolution and justice. They want right action when it is warranted such as filing a report with local authorities and removing the perpetrator from children or other potential victims. Some want and desperately need financial recompense for their pain and suffering. Some want reconciliation and an apology. All want to be believed. All want religious communities to acknowledge that they failed to protect them.
Survivors find some hope in Pope Frances, moto propio, which took effect last June 2019 and instituted for the first time a mechanism for reporting and investigating allegations of sexual abuse and offers protections to whistle-blowers yet falls short of any set consequences or reporting of crimes to law enforcement. The pope expanded his view of abuse to include children, people with mental disabilities, seminarians, nuns and women in religious orders, children in orphanages, indigenous people—all of whom have been victimized by leaders in Church and religious orders. The law also demanded that alleged victims must receive, support services and all they need for their healing journey. Survivors would like to know that the UISG and LCRW have in place policies and procedures for handling allegations of abuse, including reporting them to local law enforcement agencies.
I hope these ideas on our minds as survivors of nun abuse give us some starting points for discussion. It’s our desire that we continue to dialogue with the shared goal of finding ways to protect children from all types of abuse, especially by those they trust, and to give survivors of the past the justice they do desire and deserve. I have always held these lines from scripture as essential to my life, “And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8.)
Thanks, Sister Pat, and members of the Board for this opportunity to work together.
Respectfully, Mary Dispenza,
SNAP Leader for those Abused by Nuns.
CC: SNAP Executive Director, Zach Hiner
SNAP President, Tim Lennon
Showing 230 comments
Nun abuse in UK
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_petition
Wikipedia
Because petitions are easy to set up, the site can attract frivolous causes, or jokes … These are growing in popularity and ability to achieve political impact.
I have received/signed many re: Human Rights’ violations and other related causes.
Yeah, there is a page for contacts that’s linked from the bottom menu on their site. But it’s not like they are unaware of the problem or unaware of SNAP’s efforts. The have climbed on a pedestal and have the support of most of the laity to stay way up there, looking down on the bishops, rather than learning from the bishops’ evil deeds.
values bases on money and power.
I will never get back what they have destroyed in my life. They certainly have more than enough money to take responsibility for the sexual crimes they have committed and the education that they did not give us.
If anyone is interested in going to the US Department of Education with these issues, please help me form a group.
Thank you for your time,
Marcene Magadance Diocese of Lacrosse Eau Claire, WIS
WHY does the Wisconsin Department of Education Never hold this institution morally and Financially Responsible. The Catholic experience and powerful support it receives from citizens with wealth builds absolutes not minor rules.
They owe me 12 years of excellent education – not theirs. I did nothing to them. And this church encouraged a lot sexual abuse in families and neighborhoods. All but 2 priests were chasing girls and boys to rape and sexualize them in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. And all of the nuns I knew were running the schools and covering up for the guys – their priest – brothers. These nuns were submitting false education documents to Departments of Education all over the country. I really do believe that these women are incest survivors and that they were very ill and lost their way. But the fact remains – they were put in charge of keeping students safe and not commit sexual crimes against them. The true purpose of being a student in a school is to become well educated.
It is time for the Catholic Church to repair the damage they did to me.
If anyone else has been hurt at St. Patrick’s grade school and Regis grade school in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, I would to give you support and receive from you. Thank you for your attention and time.
Marcene Magadance
The thing to keep in mind regarding that community is that it was not universally governed by a central authority. The community was founded with the hope of being very small communities serving independently in their local parishes, in old Celtic spiritual models. However, Roman bishops forced them into a more hierarchical model of a superior general (motherhouse) over many convents—like most orders. Here in the USA, the Mercies chose one of two directions. Half went with what was called “the union” which amounted to provinces including many areas and convents. Half went with a more localized structure—i.e. by dioceses alone (sticking as much as possible with their foundress’ original desire for local autonomy). The latter were then very independent, and so their spirit reflected more of the local attitude regarding religious life (which also included how educated the sisters were, which CAN translate into less abuse). One group might consist of sisters who had little education—right up to their superiors, while another group (in a different diocese) had members who might have come primarily from educated Catholic families where religion was daily life AND sincere, and not just an empty cultural inheritance. THAT translates into how the individual sisters were spiritually formed, what behavioral expectations were, and whether they were truly spiritual or simply living in a safe haven away from the world. Each group was independent/diocesan in the latter half of Mercies, and that offered both good and bad possibilities depending upon the emphasis in their formation and religious life.
I was educated by Sisters of Mercy in the Brooklyn Diocese. They were part of those non-union Mercies (it sounds funny, but has nothing to do with “unions” as commonly understood). I had them for 12 years, during which I was sexually molested by one of them for a period of 4 years. I, myself, entered the Sisters of Mercy at the age of 20. Why? Well, it was something in my heart long before the abuse began, and I can honestly say that although I was abused by that one sister, I did not understand the dynamic of sexual abuse, the boundary issues, and all that is involved. I also never ever came across another sister like her among all those I knew and lived with. Did others exist? Maybe. Probably here and there. But I’d only met really good and spiritual sisters and if I met those who were dealing with mental disorders like depression, they were treated very kindly by the others. I got to know many good ones. (Sadly that kept me from addressing the abuse I’d suffered, but that’s another topic.)
What I’m saying is that the Brooklyn Mercies had a very real spiritual life and the priorities of formation were very spiritual. What was lacking (this is 40 years ago) was any attention to the reality that each woman was/is a sexual creature, and so there was no education of the young sisters regarding how to deal with sexuality when those needs arose, as they must in humans. Truly mature spiritual women turned to prayer and work and probably to spiritual directors for the strength to be chaste, while immature ones may not have even recognized the need to get help, or were too guilt-ridden by their very humanity to seek help. Those are the dangerous ones! There was no understanding among sisters of pedophilia or ephebophilia. NONE. But who among us understood those distinctions until we were educated by this horrible reality in our lives? All this was seen as sexual sin, and so it depended upon the honesty of each sister to deal with her sexuality in a mature way, or an immature way, then she lived accordingly, as a healthy loving sister, or a secretive sick abusive woman—abusing physically in classrooms, or sexually wherever she could get away with it.
Sisters of Mercy, until recently, were very independent with distinct groups with their own populations of diverse members. Now, here in the US, they have all united to be the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, and very few independent groups left. That’s good and bad, but far more practical as far as supervision, and the formation of new members is concerned (IF they decide to get real and address sexuality and the issues that arise.)
Today, to address past abuses one needs to contact the local group where the wrong occurred, and I think—to hold them accountable—it would be advisable to confront the “home office” of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas. Frankly, as one who has done so, and is still in contact, I would not expect much.
The Irish situation was very different than ours here in the States. The British State and later the Irish State were in bed with the Church and their running of the industrial schools and workhouses. As a result the Irish State supported the investigations over the past several years. The people of Ireland had enough of Catholic bullying too, which made them more receptive to confrontation of abusive clergy and religious than we find here in America, sadly. The Irish situation has more in common with our Native Tribes and the abuse they suffered in their industrial schools that with the sexual abuse in local schools and parishes. Here is the website for the national group: http://www.sistersofmercy.org/ and here is the site for those in Northeastern USA: http://www.mercyne.org/index.php
I’d love to see all those with cases against the Mercies pull together to address them as a body.
-go to educating to end abuse .com and find the interview of peggy warren and story about gilbert-bonneau— he was murdered-in 1953 and they got a site for him justice for gilbert— but i think when they exhumed his body it was so bad off they could not fully prove it but the death cer-was forged- —You don’t hear about nuns murdering children because the children died and neither they nor their families talked. Rarely, a child escapes with his life or a murder is witnessed. At three and a half years old I was living at the St. Agnes home for children in Sparkill, New York. It was run by Dominican nuns. One of them smothered me with a pillow and thinking I was dead, called an ambulance. I wasn’t dead but in a coma that lasted almost a year and I am permanently brain damaged. Gilbert Bonneau was also smothered with a pillow like I was — by a nun at St. Colman’s home in Watervliet, New York. He was in a coma and died – but there was a witness who saw the nun straddle Gilbert and smother him. This eye witness who was physically abused by the nuns is still alive. He relives this evil and it has ruined his life. Gilbert’s family has tried for years to get justice for Gilbert but haven’t succeeded because of a church that knows no mercy. We will never know how many children were smothered by nuns or if they are still killing children in isolated places like church-run homes and Third World countries. If you know of children who died while being “cared” for by nuns or clergy please speak out – publicizing what they did is the only way to stop them. I have written about SNAP and their role in helping me and so many others. The statutes may run out but if enough of us talk about what happened there will be justice. I am writing about the evil deeds of nuns and clergy on my blog: catholicchurchabusebynunsandpriests.blogspot.com.
-email me at [email protected]——i can find out thing for you—skeltons of small children were found inside walls and under floorboards—THIS WAS A CATHOLIC NUN CONVENT—EXPOSE?? MURDER TOO?? iTHINK SO.-‘they use your words against you’ but never said-we told you so—they are so kind and good to me—-