Order of US nuns being sued for molestation

THE sexual abuse crisis in America’s Roman Catholic Church has focused primarily on molestation by priests, but in Louisville, two dozen people are suing an order of nuns that staffed an orphanage decades ago.

The allegations include accusing nuns of molestation as well as charges against a now-dead priest. While experts agree the incidence of abuse by nuns has been much less frequent than assaults by male clergy, the phenomenon has gained attention recently.

The initial Kentucky lawsuit against the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth was brought by seven plaintiffs on July 15, just over a year after 243 people reached a $25.7 million abuse settlement with the Archdiocese of Louisville.

Some plaintiffs have accused the Rev Herman J Lammers of molesting or raping them. He was a long-time Catholic Charities director who served as the resident chaplain at St Thomas-St Vincent Orphanage, which the sisters ran from 1952 until it closed in 1983. Lammers died in 1986. However, there are also allegations against about a dozen nuns.

Almost all those plaintiffs, aged 38 to 72, are women who claim the sisters molested them and beat them with leather straps while they lived at the orphanage, sometimes making them stand naked in front of others or locking them in closets without food.

"As women, they should want to protect children," said 30-year-old Landa Mauriello-Vernon of Hamden, Connecticut, who has an unrelated lawsuit pending against a nun and the Catholic school she attended in New England.

Mauriello-Vernon is leading a national awareness campaign for the Survivors Network for Those Abused by Priests. The group demonstrated in Maryland earlier this month, asking the Leadership Conference of Women Religious to allow victims to speak at the group's national gathering later this month in Texas.

There have been several other examples of lawsuits targeting nuns. A Boston suit filed in May included claims by nine people that they were abused by more than a dozen nuns at a Catholic school for the deaf.

The Sisters of Charity of Nazareth is a 192-year-old order of 650 nuns that provides education, health care and social services in the US, India, Belize, Nepal and Botswana. Spokeswoman Barbara Qualls said the community has had as many as 1,600 nuns.

The order and its attorney have denied that they have any evidence of abuse or a cover-up at the orphanage which was owned by the archdiocese through Catholic Charities or at three schools mentioned in the suits.

"We want to cooperate in any way we can," Ms Qualls said. "We are also grieved at the memory of our own deceased sisters, who are indeed innocent until proven guilty."