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Activists Allege Abuse by Nuns and Push for Right to Sue

“Nuns abuse children, too.”

Those were the allegations that members of Road to Recovery wrote on poster boards in red stenciling and draped across their bodies.

As they stood on the front steps of Judson Memorial Church, they also handed out flyers bearing the same message to people leaving that facility. The protesters chose that church on Washington Square South for its proximity to Notre Dame School, 13 blocks away. At that school, Road to Recovery member Cecilia Springer, then known as Sister Mary Grace, alleges she was sexually abused as a high school sophomore in 1946.

“Nuns abuse children, too. And I’m one of those victims.” said Springer, 84, a retired nun.

The protest at Judson was the second conducted by Road to Recovery, which has spent the last six years urging New York state lawmakers to pass the proposed Child Victims Act. The legislation, which would eliminate the statute of limitations on prosecuting those accused of sexual abuse, has passed in the New York State Assembly but not in the Senate. Current law requires anyone who alleges they were abused before the age 18 to sue before his or her 23rd birthday.

Springer contends that Catholic leaders’ contributions to political campaigns is at least part of the reason the statute of limitations on child abuse crimes has not been lifted. “There are paid lobbyists up in Albany,” Springer said.

For its part, Catholic officials have said their church is being unfairly targeted. The New York Daily News quoted Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, as saying, the proposed legislation “singles out the church and it would be—and I use this word purposefully—devastating for the life of the church.” Dolan made the statement before a March 2013 state legislative hearing on the Child Victims Act in Albany, the Daily News reported.

“I’m not looking to bring down the church,” Springer said, alluding to Dolan’s reported quote. “I’m only looking for an apology and financial remuneration.”

Road to Recovery, is part of a network of like-themed organizations headed by Marci Hamilton, chair of public law at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. The network wants all 50 states to have laws with protections similar to those proposed in New York’s Child Victims Act legislation. In addition to New York, nine other states have pending legislation that, if passed, would eliminate or extend statute of limitations laws in cases of alleged child sexual abuse.

Without such a law, those whose allegations are proven true can neither have that abuse publically acknowledged nor financially compensated, Hamilton said.

“Statute of limitations reform gives access to justice otherwise denied,” Hamilton wrote in an email to The Spectrum. ” … [R]eform is the only tried and true means of identifying hidden predators.”

A few days after the July protest, Robert Hoatson, 61, told The Spectrum that he didn’t inform anyone about his alleged abuse until he was 50, 27 years past the deadline to file a lawsuit.

Hoatson argues that the nature of sexual abuse makes it difficult for child victims to talk about what happened, let alone to reveal what often is a long-held secret.

“By virtue of the act itself, children are placed in silence,” Hoatson said. “They think they must have done something wrong if someone abused them.”

Cases involving sexual abuse by nuns historically have been underreported compared to those concerning priests, according to Jeff Anderson, a St. Paul, Minn. attorney specializing in cases of clerical sexual abuse. Anderson made that assertion in a 1994 study by the William & Mary Journal of Women and the Law, published by the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va.

Because nuns are women and women are presumed to be nothing other than nurturers, Springer said, abusive nuns have gone largely unpunished.

“Nuns [were] with children where they stay and sleep,” Springer said. “This puts children in a position of submission. That’s why it’s harder for victims of abuse to come out.”