Historical abuse: Children’s home ‘robbed our dad of his life’
Our family moved to Belfast just seventy years ago this month. It soon became a custom for the family on a Sabbath afternoon to walk from our home in Rugby Avenue, up the Ormeau Road toward its junction with the Saintfield Road. There was a graveyard there where some relatives on my father’s side were buried, and the grave often visited.
On our way up the Ormeau Road, just before its junction with the Ravenhill Road, there was an imposing and ‘brooding’ high stone wall surrounding that which few had ever seen, certainly not the pedestrians walking past!
I can recall vividly my mother indicating to us that it was a part of the Roman Catholic institution and the reports regarding it were very frightening!
That she should know that, indicated that such knowledge was common!
Before anyone says that my mother was merely displaying her Protestant bigotry and prejudice, and seeking to pass it on to me, please read the BBC report I have linked above!
Whatever rumours my mother had heard were VERY TRUE!
The BBC report tells of the misery and suffering a young Roman Catholic boy, John McGuinness, was put through by nuns in the Nazareth Lodge on the Ravenhill Road. It was a part of that Roman Catholic establishment on the adjacent Ormeau Road, surrounded by that ‘brooding high stone wall’ aforementioned. This abuse took place when the boy was seven years old until he was nine, from 1967-69. Mr McGuinness died in 2020, aged 59.
His abuse would have would have taken place over a decade AFTER my mother’s warnings to me!
Mr John McGuinness said “a number of nuns assaulted him and alleged a handyman who worked at the home subjected him to regular sexual assaults in the toilets.” The BBC report states that when they contacted, the Sisters of Nazareth said it had no comment!
Roman Catholicism has a most wicked and depraved reputation arising, from amongst other things, the abuse of children in homes run by it.
Consider these headlines!
Nazareth Lodge resident who says he was abused by nun gets payout
This abuse involved a boy in the years 1989 to 1996, a long time after my mother’s truthful report of the reputation that Rome children’s homes had! (more…)
The DUP leadership will use every base trick and deceit to fool the Unionist people regarding the true character of any arrangement they come to with the Westminster Government, but it is but the ripening of the fruit of the betrayal that was planted back in the 1960s and of which Dr Paisley repeatedly warned. Sadly and tragically, he also became a party to the betrayal in 2007, when he led the DUP into the power-sharing Executive in union with former IRA commander, the now dead, Martin McGuinness!