Note To Elaine

A Memory of Pantasaph.

Goodaye Elaine, and greetings from the old country. There's a book about the order called "We agreed to be different" which has been posted on the web, and mentions your old school on P36. This story about the nuns has been written in a positive vein, of course, as the truth would be TOO shameful to reveal! But the former orphans at St Clare's and St Joseph's have spoken out. And I believe them.

I think you were lucky, and that the orphans in Pantasaph were not. And I think it was the uneducated nuns who acted as housemothers who were the main problem within the order, rather than the teachers. Like you, I attended a private boarding school, and I never had a problem with a teacher within the order. Indeed, the nun who taught me at the infants' school in Dartford was the sweetest teacher I would ever know. But the two nuns who were in charge of the boarders - Sisters Immaculate and Teresa - were horrible women. And they scarred me for life.

My happiest school days were in Brisbane - I couldn't believe that a school could be such a happy place. But there were no nuns. Yet even in those days, in the 1960s, there were whispers about the cruelty in the Catholic institutions all over Queensland. Now, of course, the whole world knows that countless children were damaged by Roman Catholic monks and nuns. It knows, too, that the victims will be heard.