UNITED STATES
WBUR – CommonHealth
One day when we were in first grade and sitting on a rickety wooden bench under a large oak tree in her backyard, my best friend’s mother called her to come inside.
A few minutes later, I heard wailing like an animal being gutted. Squinting my eyes and looking perplexed, I turned to my friend’s younger sister who was sitting beside me. She whispered, “She’s just getting beat.” Beat? What’s that, I wondered. She explained. Depending on the severity of their perceived wrongdoings, they were administered one of three levels of physical punishment: a stick, a belt or a big slab of wood. Their parents had moved from Ireland to our small suburb in New Jersey.
The Catholic schools the parents had attended as children in Ireland were very strict and the nuns reportedly beat them until their knuckles bled. Here, as parents in New Jersey, they told their daughters to strip naked and mercilessly receive corporal punishment. (I learned this from her sister, and over the years, from my friend.)
This was not a onetime event. These were repeated, deliberate acts.
The occurrences did not seem to have predictable patterns, so my friend, I’ll call her Heather, couldn’t prepare herself for them. And the negative psychological effects for her were deep. Over time, Heather became highly anxious, constantly got in trouble at school, and started a pattern of severe substance misuse that led to even further problems, particularly violations at the hands of men and boys.
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