Despite 'Spiritual Halo,' Nuns Are Part of Something Darker

On Wednesdays, the support group meets over Zoom. Members talk about their lives, religious families, and old parochial schools. But mostly, they're there to talk about the sexual abuse they suffered at the hands of Catholic nuns—and it's a topic that deserves more attention, they say. The sexual abuse of children by Catholic sisters and nuns has been overshadowed by far more common reports of male clergy abuse. Women in religious orders have also been abuse victims, but they've been perpetrators, too. "We've heard so much about priests who abuse and so little about nuns who abuse that it's time to restore the balance," said the group's founder, Mary Dispenza, herself a former nun, in a speech to abuse survivors last year, per the AP.

• SNAP: Dispenza, who endured abuse from both a childhood priest and a nun in her former order, started the online support group five years ago with the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP. More victims had been contacting her in the wake of #MeToo as they reassessed past sexual abuse.

• Growing awareness: Dispenza has since seen more of it regarding abusive nuns at former Catholic orphanages and Native American boarding schools. "The general public would rather not consider the fact that religious women rape, molest, and torture children," she said. Women are seen as nurturers and caregivers, an assumption only heightened with the "spiritual halo" of religious women. "It's something most of us don't want to entertain or really believe," Dispenza added.
• Lack of tracking: Few dioceses or religious orders publicly list abusive nuns—a fact that group members want to change. The advocacy group Bishop Accountability lists 172 Catholic sisters who've been accused of sex abuse. "I feel that it's vastly underreported," said Marya Dantzer, a group member who settled her nun abuse case in Michigan in 1996. Dantzer noted that nuns, especially as teachers, arguably spend more time with young people than priests.
• One victim's story: Anne Gleeson was also nearly 40 and in therapy before she understood that she was sexually abused for years, starting at age 13, by a nun who was 24 years her senior. She received a settlement from the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet in 2004. "The nun brainwashed me into thinking we were head over heels in love," she said. "God's love, that's why no one else could know about it—it was so special."

More here. (More nuns stories.)