This commentary is by Maura Labelle, a resident of Colchester. Now that Lent and Easter are over, Vermont Catholic Bishop Christopher Coyne needs to begin a new mission. In August 2019, Coyne released an incomplete list of Vermont clergy credibly accused of child abuse. Curiously, the Diocese of Burlington has never released a list of nuns who were credibly accused of abuse. As a survivor of St. Joseph’s Orphanage, I know that abusive nuns existed. Nuns participated in physical, sexual and emotional abuse of orphanage children. This is well documented, including in a report by former Vermont Attorney General TJ
“In some ways, the story was too big to be told before,” journalist Christine Kenneally writes of her decade of research into claims of misconduct and murder at Burlington’s now-closed St. Joseph’s Orphanage. “Increased scrutiny only makes it bigger.”