Rare Sister Charlotte Testimony - tortured nun

[Sister Alvear]

Working in the largest Catholic country in the world...I must say I believe every word of her book...yes, I too heard her many years ago. Brother Blume can give you information about her.

[Titus2woman]

Originally Posted by Jay

There are some things that we must consider before becoming to severe about her apparent lack of agresssion against the RCC.

I did not suggest that SHE needed to be 'aggressive' toward any person or organization, I suggested that it was her moral and legal duty to get her story to the proper authorities, not carry it around the country making a living off it's sensationalism.

Originally Posted by Jay

1) Cloisters were legal in most countries and off limits to all outsiders.

Rape, abortion against a womans will, murdering babies and nuns has NEVER been legal anywhere in North America and there has never been a time in the history of Canada or the U.S. that those charges would have not been investigated.

Originally Posted by Jay

2) The influence weilded by the RCC is enough to make most officials turn a blind eye to the abuses inside a facility such as this.

You are simply restating what you have said above with different words as if it ia new and separate argument.

Originally Posted by Jay

3) The RCC being a well known entity would be difficult to attack because of the level of respect given to religious institutions. This would render her accusations of none effect, especially as so few were inclined to speak out about these issues.

HUH? She claims to have escaped from a place where she was tortured, sexually abused, women and babies were murdered... these are not ISSUES... they are CRIMES. Huge capital crimes. The kind that carry the DEATH PENALTY in many places. She was solely responsible for leaving behind women who were NEVER GIVEN THE CHANCE TO SPEAK OUT ABOUT ANYTHING. That makes her a monster not a hero.

Originally Posted by Jay

4) She was raising awareness of these practices by giving her testimony.

Raising awareness was not a concept that even existed then... very new age. These women did not need awareness raised they needed to be rescued from a place where they were being held against their will and repeatedly raped and sometimes killed. HOW WOULD YOU FEEL ABOUT SOMEONE WHO LEFT YOU IN A SITUATION LIKE THAT?????

Originally Posted by Jay

5) If memory serves, her first convent was over seas making it difficult if not impossible for her to arrange the freedom of the women involved.

Nope, Canada. But if it was overseas...so what?

Originally Posted by Jay

6) The cultic atmosphere would make it very difficult for anyone to leave the cloister, and only a few did willingly.

PLUHEEZZEEE. Young girls who sign up to live a life dedicated to God, in which they will remain eternal virgins, who will spend all their days doing good and helping those less fortunate... or will dedicate themselves to a life of prayer for humanity, sacrificing all worldly things... DO NOT expect to become the sex slaves of a bunch of nasty gross old men who rape and torture them. Her story was that she had to escape. She was kept locked away. She got OUT and she left everyone else BEHIND and did not ever make any attempt to rescue them. She only wanted her story published AFTER her death when it would do no one any good and it is still so sketchy that law enforcement would have nothing to go on... No names, dates and times, exact locations. Just drivel.

Originally Posted by Jay

There are other things to consider as well. Including the fact that many of the cloisters in the U.S. and Mexico have now been opened, we have discovered that many of the descriptions of the cloistered life as she described were true.

Proof of this big broad statement please?

These convents have been named as close as Canada and Mexico. I still believe there has never, ever, ever in history been a time anywhere in North America that there was not a secular branch of government completely unaffected by any religious affiliation that would have acted, had she been seeking freedom and justice for those she claimed to have left behind.

It was SHE who kept secrecy surrounding her previous situation, I can have no respect for that at all and truly hope that the reason for that secrecy was that she did not want her claims to be found exaggerated or false. For me false claims would be the very best outcome of this story when compared to the other possibilities. If the worst thing Charlotte ever did was con a bunch of Pentecostals who wanted to buy what she was selling I would be a lot happier.

I read Charlotte's book many years ago and at the end of reading it I threw it in the garbage, something I have never done with a book before or since.
It is Charlotte's complete lack of Christian principles in her unwillingness to sacrifice what ever she would have had to lose by insisting that something be done to to stop abuse that upset me. It is not that I do not believe that abuse happens, even to nuns. It is that I see someone who claims to have real details that could put abusers in jail and does not share them. As big a sin as the abuse itself.

Comparing Charlotte to people like Alfred Weczler and Rudolf Vrba- who escaped Auschwitz and were in large part responsible for letting the world know what was going on in concentration camps- I find her completely lacking. These men were almost singlehandedly responsible for the Nuremberg trials. There is a world that cares about protecting innocents and when we convince ourselves that there is not we hit a kind of apathy that we better all fear.

In my opinion, instead of doing the right thing, this woman became a self appointed evangelist going from revival to revival, filling her own pockets by selling her story. As far as I am aware this became her primary source of income as I have never heard that she did any other meaningful work in her lifetime after leaving the convent. Selling her story appears to have been enough to sustain her, since one can assume that she would have escaped with narry a penny to her name and states that she was disowned by her family. Yet she managed to live a life of prestige, while presumably the others she spoke of were left behind with no justice and criminals walked free to harm others that she had never even met. How horrible.

[Falla39]

Sis. Charlotte stayed in our home twice in the early 60's, and gave her testimony in the church our late father founded and pastored. One thing that comes to mind, how a Methodist neighbor lady told her, "Charlotte, I am going to pray for you every day until God delivers you out of that place". When Charlotte did escape, at one point the neighbor lady told her that she had prayed every day for her! 23 years! Could God trust us to pray for someone until the answer came! The prayers of a righteous man/woman availeth much!

A few years ago I came in contact with an old, old booklet in a used book store. It is the story written by a Catholic lady who was also in a cloistered convent. The stories are
remarkabley similar.
Perhaps many children have been afraid to tell things that happened to them because they feared that those the closest to them will not believe them. So they continue to live in a prison of fear and shame.
What a shame!

Falla39

[crakjak]

Originally Posted by Titus2woman

I did not suggest that SHE needed to be 'aggressive' toward any person or organization, I suggested that it was her moral and legal duty to get her story to the proper authorities, not carry it around the country making a living off it's sensationalism.

Rape, abortion against a womans will, murdering babies and nuns has NEVER been legal anywhere in North America and there has never been a time in the history of Canada or the U.S. that those charges would have not been investigated.

You are simply restating what you have said above with different words as if it ia new and separate argument.

HUH? She claims to have escaped from a place where she was tortured, sexually abused, women and babies were murdered... these are not ISSUES... they are CRIMES. Huge capital crimes. The kind that carry the DEATH PENALTY in many places. She was solely responsible for leaving behind women who were NEVER GIVEN THE CHANCE TO SPEAK OUT ABOUT ANYTHING. That makes her a monster not a hero.

Raising awareness was not a concept that even existed then... very new age. These women did not need awareness raised they needed to be rescued from a place where they were being held against their will and repeatedly raped and sometimes killed. HOW WOULD YOU FEEL ABOUT SOMEONE WHO LEFT YOU IN A SITUATION LIKE THAT?????

Nope, Canada. But if it was overseas...so what?

PLUHEEZZEEE. Young girls who sign up to live a life dedicated to God, in which they will remain eternal virgins, who will spend all their days doing good and helping those less fortunate... or will dedicate themselves to a life of prayer for humanity, sacrificing all worldly things... DO NOT expect to become the sex slaves of a bunch of nasty gross old men who rape and torture them. Her story was that she had to escape. She was kept locked away. She got OUT and she left everyone else BEHIND and did not ever make any attempt to rescue them. She only wanted her story published AFTER her death when it would do no one any good and it is still so sketchy that law enforcement would have nothing to go on... No names, dates and times, exact locations. Just drivel.

Proof of this big broad statement please?

These convents have been named as close as Canada and Mexico. I still believe there has never, ever, ever in history been a time anywhere in North America that there was not a secular branch of government completely unaffected by any religious affiliation that would have acted, had she been seeking freedom and justice for those she claimed to have left behind.

It was SHE who kept secrecy surrounding her previous situation, I can have no respect for that at all and truly hope that the reason for that secrecy was that she did not want her claims to be found exaggerated or false. For me false claims would be the very best outcome of this story when compared to the other possibilities. If the worst thing Charlotte ever did was con a bunch of Pentecostals who wanted to buy what she was selling I would be a lot happier.

I read Charlotte's book many years ago and at the end of reading it I threw it in the garbage, something I have never done with a book before or since.
It is Charlotte's complete lack of Christian principles in her unwillingness to sacrifice what ever she would have had to lose by insisting that something be done to to stop abuse that upset me. It is not that I do not believe that abuse happens, even to nuns. It is that I see someone who claims to have real details that could put abusers in jail and does not share them. As big a sin as the abuse itself.

Comparing Charlotte to people like Alfred Weczler and Rudolf Vrba- who escaped Auschwitz and were in large part responsible for letting the world know what was going on in concentration camps- I find her completely lacking. These men were almost singlehandedly responsible for the Nuremberg trials. There is a world that cares about protecting innocents and when we convince ourselves that there is not we hit a kind of apathy that we better all fear.

In my opinion, instead of doing the right thing, this woman became a self appointed evangelist going from revival to revival, filling her own pockets by selling her story. As far as I am aware this became her primary source of income as I have never heard that she did any other meaningful work in her lifetime after leaving the convent. Selling her story appears to have been enough to sustain her, since one can assume that she would have escaped with narry a penny to her name and states that she was disowned by her family. Yet she managed to live a life of prestige, while presumably the others she spoke of were left behind with no justice and criminals walked free to harm others that she had never even met. How horrible.

You have no idea what she did concerning the others "left behind" this was an abandoned woman, that was left physically, emotionally and financially completely broken.

And you fault her for not throwing herself to the wolves, against the most powerful and corrupt religious entity in the world.

Your assumptions are only outweighed by your ignorance. This was her story, and she had every right to tell it, and there was plenty of evidence of its validity.

She bravely told her story in city after city where the RCC had loyal defenders, without any protection save her trust in the living God. And the idea that she enriched herself is complete nonsense.

The corruption of the RCC has been exposed by her story and the stories of the homosexuality and pedophilia of the priesthood, and hopefully some reforms have come about because of such exposure. Or do you not believe those stories either?

[TGBTG]

Originally Posted by Titus2woman

I absolutely can not fathom how someone who got free of the horrors in Charlotte's book could possibly, if they had any sliver of conscience at all, have left other women behind to be repeatedly raped, tortured and killed and infants to be murdered. The fact that she never revealed enough details to help anyone else and never sought to get her story out to the authorities seems in my opinion beyond cowardly and truly monstrous if the experiences she relates are true. Who would deny that it is the legal and moral obligation of every human being with knowledge or something so henious to do their utmost to bring perpetrators to justice and save innocent victims.

The simple answer would be that she would have been in danger, but she did not feel in enough danger to not carry this tale into Pentecostal churches all over the country, so in my opinion that is absolutely no excuse. All the baloney about not wanting to upset her already estranged, still catholic family is just so much petty drivel when we are talking about saving the lives of women and infants... What in the world were those who paraded her from church to church thinking? If I ever heard such a story I would insist that we move heaven and earth to rescue those left behind and bring the criminals to justice.

I am not going to make any attempt to judge if or how many of her stories are true, only God knows the answer to that. But because she used her story for personal gain rather than to truly be a help to others, in my view she becomes less a person for each story that that is true, not each one that isn't.

And I feel truly terrible for my low opinion of someone who may have suffered so much.

ReallY???

[houston]

Funny that this thread was bumped. I repent of the comments that I made. I have my own stories that I could tell, and have told. Family and friends think I'm nuts or lying. SMH.

[Sister Alvear]

As I said I believe every word she wrote...I happen to work and live in the largest Catholic country in the world...Never think ROME is your friend....

[Titus2woman]

Originally Posted by crakjak

You have no idea what she did concerning the others "left behind" this was an abandoned woman, that was left physically, emotionally and financially completely broken.

And you fault her for not throwing herself to the wolves, against the most powerful and corrupt religious entity in the world.

Your assumptions are only outweighed by your ignorance. This was her story, and she had every right to tell it, and there was plenty of evidence of its validity.

She bravely told her story in city after city where the RCC had loyal defenders, without any protection save her trust in the living God. And the idea that she enriched herself is complete nonsense.

The corruption of the RCC has been exposed by her story and the stories of the homosexuality and pedophilia of the priesthood, and hopefully some reforms have come about because of such exposure. Or do you not believe those stories either?

Yes I believe them. And I am not saying I do not believe her story. I am saying that I also believe that she had personal motive for not doing all she could have to help others who with all her years in convent should have been her friends. Only she knows what that motive was, I simply speculated a couple of possibilities. Just how then, since you are so well informed, did she make her living?

She is dead and I can not hurt her feelings. It was her desire that her book only be realeased and up for discussion AFTER HER DEATH, not mine. As a matter of fact, since by her own accounting her own family diswoned her and she had no children there is not anyone to hurt by expressing an honest opinon, except you apparently... Which makes me wonder why YOU would be so attached to the idea of this being truth that you would be willing to publically berate me, a living person.

And what of all these Pentecostal preachers who heard her story? Not one made sure that she had filed a formal complaint with legal authorities before they put her behind their pulpits? Isn't that typical of desireing the sensational more than truth or justice?

I did not think that this would be a popular opinion... and hesitated to post it, but I will not be numbered with the cowardly. It is my honest opinion, as I assume your's is to you. You don't have to like it. As a victim of assault I made sure my attacker went to prison where he could not hurt others. It was neither comfortable or safe to do so. I speak from experience, not ignorance.

[crakjak]

Originally Posted by Titus2woman

Yes I believe them. And I am not saying I do not believe her story. I am saying that I also believe that she had personal motive for not doing all she could have to help others who with all her years in convent should have been her friends. Only she knows what that motive was, I simply speculated a couple of possibilities.

She is dead and I can not hurt her feelings. It was her desire that her book only be realeased and up for discussion AFTER HER DEATH, not mine. Dead people can not be thrown to the wolves. As a matter of fact, since by her own accounting her own family diswoned her and she had no children there is not anyone to hurt by expressing an honest opinon, except you apparently... Which makes me wonder why YOU would be so attached to the idea of this being truth that you would be willing to publically berate me, a living person.

And what of all these Pentecostal preachers who heard her story? Not one would have made sure that she had filed a formal complaint with legal authorities before they put her behind their pulpits?

I did not think that this would be a popular opinion... and hesitated to post it, but I will not be numbered with the cowardly. It is my honest opinion, as I assume your's is to you. You don't have to like it. As a victim of assault I made sure my attacker went to prison. It was neither comfortable or safe to do so. I speak from experience, not ignorance.

This story, of Charlotte is a very old story, its beginning is now nearing 100 years ago, so to say that no action was done is where I applied ignorance, it was not an attack on your intelligence. She did not want to associate any of her living family to her story, to prevent any abuse of them to get to her, that was the reason for her not revealing details in a book while she lived. I can't imagine the pain that she suffered both physically and emotionally, but I have no doubt that she presented her story in truth. There was numerous attempts by the RCC to silence her, and they threatened all members of her family with eternal torment in hell, for that reason her father returned her to the convent after she had come back to the US, can you imagine how broken she was??? Fortunately, she escape the second time and never trusted her family again.

I am sorry for your pain, and very glad the perpetrator was imprisoned, but your position was much stronger than Charlotte's, she was broken over many, many years. She stayed with some of my family, she was no fraud.

[Titus2woman]

Originally Posted by crakjak

This story, of Charlotte is a very old story, its beginning is now nearing 100 years ago, so to say that no action was done is where I applied ignorance, it was not an attack on your intelligence.

I am sorry for your pain, and very glad the perpetrator was imprisoned, but your position was much stronger than Charlotte's, she was broken over many, many years. She stayed with some of my family, she was no fraud.

Than just on your word I am more likely to find her believeable. Her book was very surreal and not very convincing, sorry.