Nuns accused of raping deaf children
Nine former students of the Boston School for the Deaf filed a lawsuit today alleging they were raped and beaten by nuns at the now-defunct school.
The plaintiffs accused at least 13 nuns in the lawsuit, along with a priest and a male athletic instructor at the school and a former top official in the Boston Roman Catholic Archdiocese, according to their lawyer, Mitchell Garabedian.
The alleged victims, three women and six men, were between the ages of seven and 16 when, they claim, they were sexually and physically abused between 1944 and 1977.
The Boston School for the Deaf, in Randolph, was run by an independent, nonprofit corporation until it closed more than a decade ago.
“They are all speech-impaired and hearing-impaired,” said Garabedian, who represents a total of 31 former students at the school and expects to file more lawsuits. “Instead of receiving an education they received beatings and sexually abusive actions.”
Garabedian said the abuse included fondling, rape, and rape with foreign objects.
At least one student’s head was submerged face-first in a toilet until she passed out and others were locked in closets for hours as a form of punishment. The alleged victims are now 41 to 67 years old.
The nuns named in the lawsuit are from the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Boston.
The case is the first to allege widespread abuse by nuns in the Boston area since the Roman Catholic clergy sex abuse scandal began in Boston in early 2002.
The 100-page complaint filed in Suffolk Superior Court cited 13 nuns by name and said other plaintiffs, including at least one other nun, were unidentified.
