Nazareth House Cont.

CELLAR.

Sister Blandina would push us down into the cellar and lock us in from the outside, which seemed like two days. We could not get out. We had nothing to eat or drink while we were down there.

Go to the top of the page to my story.

The cellar was down stairs by the toilets, opposite the playroom. It was cold, dark and it leaked. We had no blanket to keep us warm. All we could do was curl up in a ball and wrap our arms around our legs. The cellar was infested with rats and we had to go to the toilet on the floor.

POLICE.

I found out were the police station was, so I went there and showed them my back. They gave me some hot cocoa and took me back to Nazareth House. They did this every time I went to them for help. They did nothing for me. I was just another girl with no one to turn to. I was always running away to the police station, whenever I could. It did me no good, as I was put across the bed again.   "How old do I have to be, for this to stop?"

PIANO.

I would sit at the piano and watch Frances play. the music was so beautiful. I wished that I could play too. I would ask Frances all bout the notes and keyboard.

THAT WAS IT.

I got caught by Sister Blandina, she thrashed me that night over the bed. The girls did not know how lucky they were.

"Why wasn't I taught like the other girls?"

"I am no different from them."

When I went to Christchurch in November 1997, I asked Frances about that day and she told me that she was beaten that night. I hadn't known that.

DANCING.

The girls were taught Irish dancing twice a week. I was 12 years old and working in the kitchen, at the time that they would do their dancing. I loved to see them dance, they would practice at school. So I would go behind and copy them.

I soon knew how and one day I showed their dancing teacher.

She took me out and I won 3rd place I was so please with myself, I had just taken it up for two months. It was the start that I needed. I could do something at long last and get so much joy from it.

                             THE IRISH IN ME.

The nuns were very strict and most of them were Irish, which rubbed off on us. I always thought that I was Irish.

Sure, we all have a bit of Irish in our hearts, if not in our blood.

I learned aboutthe Irish history, more than the New Zealand. I knew all of the Irish songs and I felt more Irish, than the Irish themselves. St. Patrick's feast day was celebrated each year, just like Christmas. With high Mass early in the morning, then the rest of the day off school, working in the kitchen.

SPORTS.

I loved all sports. Tennis, I had a stick for a racquet. I didn't mind about that. I could play tennis just as good, if not better than the other girls, who had tennis racquets.

                           OLIVER TWIST.

I remember seeing Oliver Twist and cried for him, then said that. "He was lucky. his life was better than mine was. His cruelty stopped when he was 12 years old. Mine had just got worse."



                                       WASH HOUSE.

In the wash house there are big long high heaters which clothes are dried in on rainy days. because of the warmth, which comes from them, there are a lot of cockroaches. They are everywhere. They must be about three to four inches long. The wash day is on Monday and the ironing, which is not finished, is left till Tuesday. I always got my spelling wrong and I knew that I would be getting the side of the ruler, on my knuckles. When Sister Blandina came back.

I could not take any more of this, so I run to the wash house to hide. I pulled out the big heaters and climbed in them, to push them back. I had to put my feet on the ground and then push them in. I would sit on the pipes which ran along inside, they were still hot and the cockroaches were climbing everywhere. They were so horrible and UGH !

I was so scared of them. I can see them now looking at me as if to spring at me at any moment. They never bit me, It was as if they knew what I was there for. Even though I was frighten of them, I could not move.

I did not want to go back to school, because Sister Blandina is going to hit me again. I can not take any more of this pain. "Oh God! Help me, It goes on and on. I don't know what else to do. There was no-one I can go to for help. I can't stand it any more." Eventually I went back to school to face Sister Blandina and I could see the hate in her eyes that she had for me.

                                   WASH DAY.

On Mondays, I washed the old men's long johns by hand.

I would miss days at school by working in the wash house and the kitchen. My knuckles were raw and bleeding from rubbing the long johns on the scrubbing board. They were filthy dirty and disgusting.

We turned the wringers by hand, which were fitted on to the wooden tubs. We also made bars of laundry soap in big coppers.

                            SISTER BLANDINA.

Sister Blandina beat me up all the time and I still do not know why. She had a thing of coming straight at me and I dare not move in case she would do it again, If I did she would beat me for longer. I was so petrified of her and Sister Simeon.

I could not get away from her and the worse was night times when she had me and I knew she was going to drag me across that bed again. From 6pm. tea time every night I would start to get nervous and keep out of sight of the nuns,

I HAD NO WHERE TO GO WERE IT WAS SAFE FOR ME AND NO NUN STOOD UP FOR ME, I HAD NO ONE WHO WAS KIND TO ME. So you see there was no way out for me both during the day and at night, I could hear the swish of the cane as it went over my head coming down onto my back or were ever she could get me.

I was this little girl trying always to please everyone so I would not be thrash, even when I was 19years old up to the age of 24years I could not stop what was happening to me and I did not know how. I did not know why I was treated with so much hate and violence it was as though I was an ugly monster, an unwanted animal, an unwanted child they had to get rid of me,

I was a nuisance to every one who had anything to do with me.

NO ONE EVER LIKED ME I HAD NO ONE TO TAKE MY HAND. NO ONE SAID YOU DID GOOD, ANN.

I was just left to cry and some times I did not know why. Like the time when I was working at St. Josephs I cried and cried for days on ends, Sister Peter asked my what was wrong and I didn't know, all that had happened to me as a child was going through my head.

While I was doing all the work I was alright, it was in the little brake I had I would cry. I must had being having a brake down and I didn't know it. IfI had only know way back then I would have done something about it.

I have never experience the hate from my childhood, that the nuns had for me since I left Christchurch in 1966 and the fear is still with me, it will never leave me. It is bedded, too deep within me for me to forget what my first 24 years of hell with the catholic church nuns of Nazareth House was like.

This is how I feel, to forget about the abuse the Nazareth House nuns did to me and to just live one day at a time. No I did not tell anyone where I came from, I told them that I was brought up in a convent because in there you were given good schooling and even though the nuns were still cruel to you, you did have your family to go home to after school.

Freedom is what I want and need.

OH! FOR MY FREEDOM FROM THIS PAIN AND TORMENT I AM IN.

These nuns do not care what pain I went though, nor do they want to know. I don't want to bow my head to anyone, anymore, let alone to the nuns/priest but still I have this fear for them and I want it to leave me.

I WANT MY FREEDOM

TIMARU.

I had a week in Timaru and while I was there for some reason a priest came to see me. I was so happy. It was not to be. The priest took me into the bedroom and stripped me. then put me over his lap then he did things to me, which I know today were not decent. The people outside in the other room did not help me. They did not come in.

When I went back to the convent, which I started to call it now. It sounded better than orphanage and no one would talk to you, if they knew that you came from an orphanage. The priest had told the nuns that I was seeing boys down there. I don't know how that could have being. I was so ftightened of boys and would not look at them.

Sister Blandina put me over the bed and thrashed me with her cord and her belt again. "What age do I have to be, before they stop this hurt and pain?"

The only time that I would ever speak, to a priest at Nazareth House, was in the confessional or at school, when they came to see us. The priests came to say mass each day and heard our confessions each week. The priest took the girls who made their First Holy Communion and would take the girls for their catechism, conftrmation and children of Mary.

To me, the priest and nuns were like Saints. I had the highest respect for them. When they did these things to me, that respected turned to fear.

Which is still with me today.

I feel weak, ready to crumble when I see or talk to them. Just like a mouse in a fteld, trying to hide from a bird circling around over head.

When I was 15, I was sent by the nuns at Nazareth House to spend a week in Timaru with a family I think were called Taylor. During the week the family were visited by a Priest.

The Priest took me to the bedroom and made me remove some of my clothes. He then made me set astride his lap where he fondled me sexually with his ftngers penetrated my vagina. He put something else up me.

Because of this and what the nuns, the ladies and older girls did to me, is why I have no friends. I don't want to be laugh at, pushed aside, or abuse. No one can harm me, while I am by myself.

It hurts me so much. Why! Why! Why! I can't go on anymore. They had destroyed my life and it is still the same, whenever I think about it. It is as though it is happening over and over again.

KITCHEN.

I had to cook up some cabbages today, you should have seen them, they were covered all over with cater pillar eggs. I had to wash them and cook them for the children. I threw them out and gave them to the hens. I couldn't cook them, because I could not get the cater pillar eggs off them.

Sister Simon took me to her room again and I was beaten until I could not walk away. It hurt me but I was happy that the children did not get the rotten cater pillar egg cabbages. I was just a child myself when I had to do this.

In the kitchen there were big copper gas cookers, which were lit underneath, they were two feet round in diameter and four feet in height.

We cooked the milk pudding in them. To clean them I had to fill them up with water and lit the gas, until the water boiled, then I would empty the water out by jug into a bucket, which I would put down the sink.

I would then scrape the milk off the sides, which came off in flakes.

To clean the bottom of the gas copper, I had to stand on a stool and I was

very lucky to have never had fallen into it. As my feet were never flat on the stool. The coppers were boiling hot and I could not see what I was doing, because of all the steam. I was always frightened of falling into the coppers.

There were also big steam ovens which we cooked steamed pudding, potatoes, vegetables and lots more. When I had to get the big dishes out of the steam ovens, which had big holes in the sides and bottom of them. I would get steam burns on my hands and arms. I could not go to Sister Simeon, to tell her that I had burnt my arms, because she would just hit me, then send me back to work. The steamers were high off the ground and I had to stand on a stool to reach up to open the oven door.

I cut the cored beef and roast beef up by a big electric meat cutters, which had a big round blade. I hated using the big electric meat cutter, because I had cut my ring finger left hand on it. One of the girls who worked in the kitchen with me, had cut her two fmgers off. I still remember looking for her fmgers in amongst the meat. We found them but it was too late to save them for her.

15th BIRTHDAY.

On my 15th birthday, two ladies came to see me. they gave me my first birthday cake, a pair of shoes and a beautiful jersey.

When they left I asked Sister Blandina who they were.

She told me that one of them was my fairy godmother.

That night Sister Blandina cut the cake up and I was told to give everyone a piece. When it came to my turn to have a piece there was none left, I could not ask anyone for a taste for fear that Sister Blandina would hit me.

In 1993, when I first found out I had a family and my brother John sent me a photo of our mother and her sister, Shirley Ann whom I am named after. I recognize them both as the two ladies who came to see me at Nazareth House. I was so upset, to think that the nuns knew about my mother and did not tell methat I had a family. The nuns told me that I was an orphan and that my mother was dead.

KITCHEN.

This happened to me at any time of the day and every day, three to five times a day. Sister Simeon had a bad temper. She would slap an old lady called Gladys, across the face, for no reason at all. 1 would see her do it. Sister Simeon was so cruel to Gladys and me.

1 was in my teens now and could see that she meant everything she did to me.

The nun in the kitchen hates me, she locks me in her room and hits me with a hand broom. Every time she comes back from church.

When Sister Simeon would start to hit me. 1 would run around the table and 1 would scream out loud. My voice was good.

"Where is everybody?" "I know that they can hear me"

1 have no more straight left. 1 fall to the floor. Sister Simeon is still hitting me with the hand broom. 1 wake up in bed later.

"Why has nothing being done about it?"

Sister Michael Ursula came up to see me, she said that she was sorry for what had happened to me. But she could not help me. I can not believe that I have lived through this.

"How could they do this to me?"

I worked my teenage years in fear, as 1 did my childhood. Sister Simeon would hit me with what ever she had in her hands, every day. I would get under the table and she would get a broom to hit me with, so in the end I would get on my hands and knees, put my head on the floor and wrap my arms around my head, to protect it. I would scream out loud, but no one helped me. She would hit me all the more and harder

I would get up at five in the morning, work until half past two, and have a half-hour off Then started work again at 3 PM. Finish work at 7 PM or later that night, some days when it was the day before a feast day. I worked until 9 PM to 10 PM that night.

When I was much older I got 2/6, to five shillings a month.

I saved up the money and brought myself a beautiful red bike. with red tartan mudguards over the front and back wheels. The bike got stolen from N.Z. rails

In October 1966, when I left Christchurch to come to Whangarei, to start a new life with my four and a half month old son Robert. [ROBBIE] And my husband Brian. N.Z. rails never did give me another bike. It was the very first thing that I had ever brought for myself.