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Allegations
of Abuse in Institutions |
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A Wellington courtroom
has rung with the screams of a woman who says she was brutalised and sexually
abused while in the care of nuns. Yesterday's High Court
session had been going only a few minutes before the woman, 45 and now living
in Australia, began screaming at a lawyer. The woman, whose name
was suppressed, was asked why Catholic Social Services files did not record
where she was placed during school holidays, and she screamed at lawyer Greg
Thomas to ask Catholic Social Services. Justice Frater left and
when court resumed the woman apologised. "I am sorry for being a naughty
girl, I am trying to be a good girl." The woman said she was
raped during one holiday away from school, by a man who is now dead. "(He's) dead,
leave him alone, he did what he did to me. He is dead, leave him alone, leave
me alone." She began shouting
again when asked what year she said her grandfather raped her during one of
her Sunday visits to his flat. "You know I have
problems with that. Stop it," she yelled. The woman is suing the
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Wellington, Catholic Social Services, The
Sisters of Mercy (Wellington) Trust Board, and St Joseph's Orphanage Trust
Board, for $550,000. She was at St Joseph's,
Upper Hutt, from 1968 to 1973, spent some months with a foster family and
then went to St Mary's as a boarder. The defendants deny her
allegations and say there are legal reasons why her claim cannot succeed. The woman and her six
siblings were put into care after their parents separated. She became
particularly upset when asked how she felt about her mother. Until she had spoken to
a psychiatrist she said she blamed her mother for everything that happened. "She is my mum, I
hate her . . . guts for putting me in that hellhole, but she is not to blame
for what happened in there." The woman said she had
always expected to be reunited with her family. "I didn't know I was
going to be at that hellhole for that many years." She became angry again
when Mr Thomas asked for details about an incident in which she said a priest
made her give him oral sex. "Do you think I
was going to look at the . . . time, don't be so . . . stupid. "I had just been
sexually assaulted by a . . . priest, a man who was supposed to be looking
after me . . . You dickhead." She said she dry
retched and vomited in the garden after the incident. The nuns had
reprimanded her for being upset. She agreed she may have
had an adolescent crush on one of the men whose family she stayed with when
she was 12 or 13. She had masturbated him
several times, and he had never asked her to stop, she said. She denied
making up the masturbation story. The case is continuing.
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