My great aunt was Sr. Maura O’Donahue, who was a medical missionary of Mary working in 23 different countries in her lifetime. She gave a report where she revealed that the priests in those countries were sexually abusing the nuns because they considered them safe in the era of HIV and AIDS. She wrote about a priest…

Oh, I’ve got one for you.

My mom and uncle went to Catholic school in the 50s. My uncle had an unfortunate situation with an abusive nun that involved a ruler.

One year when he was in grade school he would come home each day and throw up. My grandma would ask him why but he wouldn’t tell her. She ended up finding out from the mother of one of…

Yeah “the learning channel” my ass.

Well, Jessa, when you belong to a religion that pathologizes all forms of sex and teaches you that the female body is inherently sinful, you have guys who can’t tell the difference between healthy sexual expression and unhealthy sexual expression. And when you’re taught this stuff by a guy who molested and harassed…

If you want to get even more pissed off at the Catholic church, note that priests have successfully negotiated to have social security withholding paid on their behalf for YEARS. Even the nasty ones who get kicked out for child molestation get to keep their Social Security when they retire.

So maybe the ones in your area don’t. But the ones where I’m from, do. At least the older generations. Trust me, I know the state of my mother’s and my grandparents’ finances. So saying that commenter was lying because “Catholics don’t tithe,” was incorrect.

I grew up in Ireland in the 1980s and 1990s, and as a consequence it always surprises me when people think of nuns as anything other than abusive tyrants.

My one aunt is a former nun, who left the convent and became a Jew. I have another aunt who is still a nun, and she absolutely hates it. She is a free spirit, and only joined to escape a bad, abusive home situation, just like her sister did. The other nuns are terrible to her- they force her to eat in silence, they…

You don’t even deserve a response, but for other women in my shoes who may be reading this - I had PTSD for a decade because of my assaults (and non-sexual abuse that I, again, didn’t recognize as such at the time). It was a fucking awful decade, particularly since I couldn’t actually seek TREATMENT for PSTD because…

Thank you for posting this. It prompted me to reach out to someone who is hurting. I didn’t have the courage.

Absofuckinlutely. After my sexual assault, most of my friends: gas lighted me and told me I was making a big deal over nothing; acknowledged that it sucked but why hadn’t I forgiven him yet?; or just didn’t know what to do to help me and awkwardly avoided talking about it. It was an incredibly lonely and damaging time.

Speaking for myself as a survivor, that’s definitely at least part of it. I spent a lot of time thinking that I somehow brought the things that were done to me on myself, and thus that if I just changed everything about myself and stopped being so worthless, I could keep people from doing those things to me again in…

Nope. No criminal charges were brought forth because he wouldn’t take a polygraph and he lawyered up, so it went civil. A juvenile judge made what is called an, “abuse finding,” which is basically the same thing as saying she believes he’s guilty. But yeah, he doesn’t even have to go on a sex offender registry. Also,…

It doesn’t appear to be a community problem in this case, since the girl’s mother reacted very quickly. I’m impressed with her, and I hope she continued to show the girl support. Just awful.

God, that was beautiful and so moving. That she put such focus on how those assaults take something from us that can’t be replaced- that we are deeply impacted in our lives by these sexual assaults- made me cry.

This fucking broke my (already fucked up) heart. Viola is a hero, and so is her sister.