Dozens allege child sexual abuse in Maryland treatment program under newly filed lawsuits
In the separate lawsuits, atorneys detailed decades of alleged abuse of children by staff members of the Good Shepherd Services behavioral health treatment center, which had billed itself as a therapeutic, supportive environment for Maryland’s most vulnerable youth.
The program was founded in 1864 by the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, a Catholic religious order focused on helping women and girls. It began at a facility in Baltimore before moving to its most recent campus just outside the city.
Many of the plaintiffs — almost all of them women — reported being injected with sedatives that made it more difficult for them to resist the abuse. Others said their abusers, including nuns and priests employed by the center, bribed them with food and gifts or threatened them with violence and loss of privileges.
One of the plaintiffs said in that suit that she told a priest during confession about being abused by two women employees at the center, telling him she was afraid “God would be disgusted” with her. She said that instead of doing anything to help her, the priest sexually assaulted her and kept abusing her every two weeks for the rest of her stay, according to the suit.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/doze...-108057308
In the separate lawsuits, atorneys detailed decades of alleged abuse of children by staff members of the Good Shepherd Services behavioral health treatment center, which had billed itself as a therapeutic, supportive environment for Maryland’s most vulnerable youth.
The program was founded in 1864 by the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, a Catholic religious order focused on helping women and girls. It began at a facility in Baltimore before moving to its most recent campus just outside the city.
Many of the plaintiffs — almost all of them women — reported being injected with sedatives that made it more difficult for them to resist the abuse. Others said their abusers, including nuns and priests employed by the center, bribed them with food and gifts or threatened them with violence and loss of privileges.
One of the plaintiffs said in that suit that she told a priest during confession about being abused by two women employees at the center, telling him she was afraid “God would be disgusted” with her. She said that instead of doing anything to help her, the priest sexually assaulted her and kept abusing her every two weeks for the rest of her stay, according to the suit.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/doze...-108057308
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
