Family Forum / Parenting / Adoption / September 2004

http://www.courier-journal.com/localnews/2004/09/12ky/A1-abuse0912-10204.html

Abuse suit involving old orphanage brings forth both critics and defenders  

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By Peter Smith
psmith@courier-journal.com
The Courier-Journal

The large brick orphanage was demolished 20 years ago, and a subdivision has
replaced the fields and hills where hundreds of children once lived, played and
sometimes ran away.

Although the St. Thomas-St. Vincent Orphanage faded into history along with
many other large children's homes that closed in the late 20th century,
memories of the orphanage in eastern Jefferson County have been revived by a
wave of litigation this summer. Those memories range from fond to nightmarish.

To date, 41 people have sued the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, alleging
sexual abuse between the 1930s and 1970s by a priest, 15 nuns and others.

Most of the allegations are linked to St. Thomas-St. Vincent, which the order
operated for the Catholic Charities agency of the Archdiocese of Louisville.
Other allegations are linked to the St. Thomas and St. Vincent orphanages
before they merged in 1952, or to schools where the nuns worked in the
Louisville area.

In interviews, some former residents — plaintiffs and others — talk about
incidents such as being locked in closets, force-fed until they gagged, thrown
down stairs or compelled to crawl for hours for offenses.

But others tell of stable and happy times at the orphanages, and they defend
the workers there who shaped their lives. They say they received a good
education and a decent start in life, better than what they could have received
from their own impoverished or broken families.

The suits focus on a vanished world of traditional orphanages, in which needy
or neglected children lived for long periods in dormitory-style housing.

Though the home changed over the decades, former residents and staff recalled
some common themes: long institutional corridors and broad rooms painted colors
such as gun-metal gray; numerous windows flooding the building with sunlight;
and a regular regimen of school, chores, play and meals.

They recall vegetable gardens and athletic fields, a broad lawn and annual
picnics that drew thousands to the campus.

During some years, children worked in the gardens or in the orphanage laundry;
others recalled having only light chores.

Some recalled that their stomachs were never full. Richard Boone, who now lives
in California and has mostly positive memories of the orphanage, remembers that
he and other boys would huddle around a dumbwaiter to pick up scraps of food
being returned from the nuns' dining area.

Former chaplain accused

In the lawsuits, 32 plaintiffs are accusing a former chaplain at the St.
Thomas-St. Vincent Orphanage, the late Monsignor Herman J. Lammers, of sexual
abuse. Fourteen of the plaintiffs also accuse 15 nuns of sexual or physical
abuse, and three others accuse two men identified as a volunteer and an
assistant. Some plaintiffs allege they were abused by more than one person.

Many of the plaintiffs allege Lammers raped or fondled girls at the orphanage,
and some said they complained to nuns who refused to help

Deborah Hager of Radcliff said she still has nightmares and gets "sick in my
stomach" when she recalls her time in the orphanage. Hager alleges in the
lawsuit that Lammers sexually molested her, and she said in an interview that
nuns hit her.

She hopes "that people will actually believe that this stuff does happen. I'll
be 47 on my next birthday and I've never said a word about this to anybody."
The abuse was "a whole lot worse than what you could ever put in the paper,"
she said.

Some of Lammers' co-workers and some former residents, such as Boone, said they
are shocked by the allegations and said they have nothing but positive memories
of the priest as an enthusiastic and athletic mentor.

"It's inconceivable for this to even happen," said Paul Haysley, who lived at
the St. Thomas Orphanage in the 1940s and for decades volunteered on the
Catholic Orphans Society board, which supported the program.

"These nuns have given their lives to the children, to poor people, to God, and
for them to be slandered doesn't seem to be right," he said.

Even some of the plaintiffs said they recall compassionate nuns and lay
workers.

The Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, based in Nelson County, has denied
accusations that the order covered up alleged abuse but have said the order is
ready to talk with anyone making allegations of abuse who prefers not to go
through the court system.

Sister Betty Vannucci, who worked as a teacher and supervisor at St. Thomas-St.
Vincent from 1957 to 1962, said in an interview that she was "shocked" to hear
of the allegations, particularly since former co-workers are named in suits.

"I've thought about it and gone over it and tried to remember everything I
could because it's so important," she said, but she said she could recall no
hints of either sexual or physical abuse.

"I never saw a paddle, I never saw a child paddled," she said, adding that most
of the discipline involved, for example, keeping a misbehaving child indoors
during playtime.

Harsh treatment reported

The lawsuits mainly focus on allegations of sexual rather than physical abuse.

Nevertheless, several former residents interviewed told of harsh punishments.

Karen Snyder said she believes Lammers is innocent and that there were some
"mighty good nuns there," but she said other nuns meted out physical
punishment. Snyder claims she was forced to crawl for hours on her knees until
they bled and became infected.

One plaintiff, identified in court documents as Gladys Cambron, said in an
interview she experienced a "pure hell" at the St. Vincent Orphanage, where she
lived in the 1930s and 1940s. In addition to alleging sexual abuse by Lammers,
she said in an interview that a nun tied her to a chair and beat her. She also
said she saw a nun throw her sister down stairs.

Margaret Taylor, who is not a plaintiff, lived at St. Vincent in the 1930s and
1940s. Taylor, the sister of Richard Boone, has only positive memories of
Lammers.

But the orphanage was otherwise "a terrible place, a lonesome place," she said
in an interview.

Taylor said it was not just the harsh conditions she remembers — the
ill-fitting shoes that deformed her toes, the wet laundry that froze to her arm
on wintry days. What she remembers most is being gripped with fear even to talk
because the nuns slapped her so often.

"I thought often they did the best they could, but I don't think some of those
things were necessary," Taylor recalled. "But we didn't dare speak up."

Still, she wonders how she and her brother would have survived without the
orphanage.

Their mother had died, and their father — a poor sharecropper — was unable
to support them in those Depression years. He placed her at St. Vincent and her
brother at St. Thomas.

Boone, a retired lawyer, recalls the daily routine of Mass, school and chores,
ranging from work in the orphanage laundry to tending crops and chickens.

In an interview, he recalled the wide-open athletic fields and swimming pool.

He said many restless boys tried to run away and were soon corralled by staff.

And he readily described stern physical punishments, but he dismissed such
hardships as part of the tougher times in which he grew up.

"I didn't know anything else and I thought this was the greatest place in the
world," he said.

Vannucci, the former staff member, said that in the context of its era, the
orphanage "was a wonderful ministry, and I think we helped a lot of children. I
think we have (former residents who are) successful in society today because of
the work that was done at St. Thomas-St. Vincent Orphanage."

But she said such large institutions could only do so much and that the child
welfare system has correctly shifted toward seeking to place children quickly
into adoptive or foster homes.

Though the nuns at the orphanage made the living quarters as homelike as
possible, "nobody could take 24 seventh- and eighth-grade girls ... and relate
to those girls the way they needed to be related to," she said.

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A good friend will come and bail you out of jail . . . but, a true friend will
be sitting next to you saying, "Damn . . . that was fun!"
-----Unknown