BURLINGTON (VT)
The Burlington Free Press
August 27, 2018
By Sam Hemingway
EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was first published on May 17, 1998. The Burlington Free Press is republishing stories about sexual abuse that took place at the St. Joseph’s Orphanage in Burlington in the 1950s and 1960s.
For the first time, nuns and priests have confirmed some children at the now-closed St. Joseph’s Orphanage in Burlington were sexually and physically abused.
Their acknowledgments, made in sworn depositions, involve isolated incidents and are much less sweeping than the allegations of systematic abuse made by dozens of former residents of the home.
Nonetheless, the statements by four nuns and two priests who worked at the orphanage weaken claims by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington that abuse charges cannot be corroborated.
More than 100 former St. Joseph’s residents have charged in recent years that they and others were beaten and molested, tormented and humiliated. Twenty-four have suits pending against the diocese and related organizations.
They found some support in court depositions filed last week. Monsignor Edward Foster, for example, worked at the orphanage as a seminarian in the late 1940s. The now-retired priest recalled a young boy, Roger Barber, who was brought to him by two nuns in 1947 or 1948. The boy’s buttocks had been burned so badly by an orphanage janitor that he could not sit down.
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