Vermont law enforcement officials were in Burlington on Monday to announce the formation of a task force to investigate allegations of abuse, including murder, at the former St. Joseph’s Orphanage in Burlington.
An August 27th Buzzfeed article examines abuse at orphanages across the country and focuses on St. Joseph’s. Author Christine Kenneally notes “….the former residents’ lawsuits had briefly forced the dark history into public view.” “We Saw Nuns Kill Children: The Ghosts of St. Joseph’s Catholic Orphanage” details witness accounts of a young boy being thrown out a fourth floor window, beatings, children being locked in closets, and sexual and other abuses.
At the Burlington Police station Monday, Mayor Miro Weinberger announced a task force is being formed to investigate the abuse allegations. “We believe that injustice occurred just down the street and we are committed to do what we can now to make a reckoning of that. Where there still can be criminal charges brought we will pursue that. And where that can’t be achieved we will seek some other form of justice to do right by the survivors of St. Joseph’s.”
Vermont Attorney General T.J. Donovan says the task force will be comprised of his office, the Vermont State Police, the Chittenden County state’s attorney’s office and the Burlington Police Department. “The initial charge of the task force is to look at and to investigate the allegations of murder that may have occurred at St. Joseph’s Orphanage here on North Avenue. While there may be challenges given the current state of our laws we want to hear from the victims. We want to give voice to the victims. We want to stand up for the victims.”
In the midst of the press conference a woman admonished the officials not to assume that victims have suffered in silence. “The victims have not suffered in silence. They have suffered by not being listened to nor believed.”
That woman is 73-year-old Louise Piche — a former resident of St. Joseph’s. She was about 5 years old when she and her siblings were sent there while her mother recovered from an illness. She says she was lucky because she wasn’t a “real” orphan. “It was highly regulated. You know for example there’s no talking at meals but if you happen to spill anything down on the floor or whatever, say if it was your fork or your knife, you had to leave it there and then just eat as best you could. Or if you did something like when I tried to sneak up to see my brother if you got caught, which I did a couple of times, then they would put you in this closet and then you had to stay in there. They’d lock the door. We were saved by still having parents. But you could see like nuns thrashing on people you know hitting people pretty severely or dragging them off.”
Despite officials expressing shock at learning about the alleged abuse at St. Joseph’s, the Burlington Free Press had reported extensively on it in the 1990’s and the Buzzfeed article quoted reporter Sam Hemmingway, who wrote about court proceedings from 1993 to about 1997 when civil cases were thrown out. Now retired, Hemmingway stood in the back of the room as the task force was announced. “It’s surprising to hear that T.J. Donovan and others who were growing up in Vermont at the time claim they didn’t know about this because it was front page news in the state’s largest newspaper. I wrote a lot of stories, not just one, I wrote a lot of stories about this with when lawsuits were filed, when they were settled. I did some investigative pieces on it. It’s bizarre because we’re now talking 25 years after I wrote these stories and I’m just sort of like surprised that this story has a new life because it really seemed like it was down for the count back when the cases got dismissed and just to see it come back around and have it be a criminal investigation I would never have predicted this.”
Bishop Christopher Coyne, who has been the Roman Catholic Bishop of Burlington for about four years, issued a statement saying he welcomes and will cooperate with the task force.
The Burlington Police Department is asking anyone with knowledge of crimes at the St. Joseph’s Orphanage to report the information.
