Survivors of institutions run by Catholic diocese recall litany of sexual abuse as bankruptcy process keeps documents hidden
This is the final installment of a three-part series exploring how the archdiocese of New Orleans’s bankruptcy stands apart from other cases of its kind. The first installment ran on Wednesday 29 November 2023, and the second installment ran on Friday 1 December.
Call her Sheila.
She doesn’t want her name used because of court testimony she has given as a state social worker which helped put men who abused their families in jail. She’s retired now, but still a rescuer by nature.
On a recent afternoon she went back to Madonna Manor, the Catholic orphanage in a Spanish colonial revival building, now shuttered, several miles across the Mississippi River from New Orleans. “A reverent place,” she sighed, “but it’s also a crime scene.”