Life After the Orphanage

Catholic orphanage inquiry concludes with steps toward healing — but no church help

“One of our greatest accomplishments is that we are now visible to all of you, and we are now believed as to what was done to us,” they concluded in a statement. “Through this process we have become advocates for the children of yesterday, today and tomorrow; to never let the abuses we endured happen again.”

Catholic orphanage’s ex-residents ask church to fund therapy

Some of the residents of a long-closed Vermont orphanage want the Catholic Church to pay for therapy as they continue to recover from what they described as abuse at the hands of the nuns and priests who were supposed to care for them.
The youngest members of the group that calls itself The Voices of St. Joseph’s Orphanage are in their late 50s. The oldest are pushing 80.

HISTORY: https://spsact.org/our-parish/our-history/

*PROSPECT HILL

Another important occupant of the district in the 1870s was the St. Francis Roman Catholic Orphanage (c. 1870, later demolished), a grandiose Second Empire building occupying grounds stretching from Prospect Street to Whitney Avenue just north of Highland Street. Edgehill Road, which was not cut through the estate until 1900, still retains the gateposts and stone wall of the orphanage. North of the orphanage, the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station erected its first two buildings in the late 19th century (previous buildings on the site, adapted from a former residential estate, are now demolished). MORE: http://nhpt.org/prospect-hill

Priest who led New Haven orphanage cleared of sex abuse charge

https://www.nhregister.com/connecticut/article/Priest-who-led-New-Haven-orphanage-cleared-of-sex-11341406.php

IN CASE YOU NEED RECORDS: (if you were adopted out)

https://www.ccaoh.org › how-we-help › adoption-records

Adoption Records – Catholic Charities Archdiocese of Hartford

Catholic Charities requires that each request is made in a notarized letter with one form of identification attached. Before submitting this letter, contact our Adoption Coordinator Ivelisse Acevedo at 860-297-7802 or iacevedo@ccaoh.org to discuss your individual requirements and circumstances.

Orphanages are not what they used to be. They aren’t even called orphanages anymore

In 1910 some 110,000 orphans lived in 1,200 orphan asylums throughout the United States. At the end of 1990, according to data from the American Public Welfare Association, there were approximately 406,000 children in out-of-home placements. About three quarters of these children were in adoptive and foster homes. About 16 percent, or 65,000, were emotionally disturbed children in need of therapy, most of whom lived in the group homes and residential treatment centers that are the institutional descendants of the orphanage. (The remainder, less than 10 percent, were cared for by a variety of temporary and emergency services.) What little research is available indicates that most of this smaller subset of “homeless” children have been physically or sexually abused, often by the adults charged with their care. At Boys Town, now a residential treatment center–and no longer just for boys–virtually all the girls and nearly half the boys have been sexually abused. The director, Father Val J. Peter, tells of a teenager who asked him on the day she arrived, “Who do I have to sleep with to get along here?”

READ: https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/96apr/orphan/weisorp.htm