Hi, this is David Mould from Lehman for Religious Liberty.
The tape that you are about to listen to is an exceedingly graphic and gripping
tape.
It's a testimony of an ex-nun by the name of Sister Charlotte, whom disappeared
approximately two years after having given this testimony.
If you have young children with you, you may wish to screen this tape and
listen to it yourself before determining whether you want your child to hear the
material that is on it.
We're releasing this tape in Jamaica, not that we might engender any hatred
toward the Roman Catholic Church or the Roman Catholic people, but rather that you
might be educated, educated as to the other side of Roman Catholicism.
The Pope is coming sometime around October 12, 1992.
We'd like to flood Jamaica with copies of this tape that, when he comes,
some brave soul might be inspired to ask, Well, John Paul, what can you tell us
about Sister Charlotte?
To be forewarned is to be forearmed.
You probably received this tape without paying anything for it.
We wish to let you know that you have our permission to duplicate it as many,
many times as you wish.
But please do not charge.
Give the tapes away, spread them far and wide, that Jamaica might receive the
education of a lifetime.
Thank you.
First of all, I always like to tell folk I'm not giving this testimony because I
have any ill feeling in my heart toward the Roman Catholic people.
I couldn't be a Christian if I still had bitterness in my heart.
God delivered me from all bitterness and strife and delivered me out of all of that
one day and made himself real to me in the power of the Holy Spirit.
And so when I give this testimony, I'm giving it because after God saved me,
he delivered me out of the convent and out of bondage and darkness, the Lord laid the
burden upon my heart to give this testimony that others might know what
cloistered convents are.
And so as you listen carefully this afternoon, I trust I will not say one
thing that will leave any feeling in your heart whatsoever that I don't carry a
burden for the Roman Catholic people.
I don't like the things they do.
I don't agree with the things that they teach.
But I covet their soul for Jesus.
I'm interested in their souls.
I believe Jesus went to Calvary.
He died that you and I might know him.
And their souls are just as precious as your soul and my soul.
So I'm interested.
First of all, as we slip into this testimony, having been born in Roman
Catholicism, not knowing anything else, not knowing the Word of God because we
didn't have a Bible in our home.
We had never heard anything about this wonderful plan of salvation.
And so naturally I grew up in that Roman Catholic home as a child, knowing only the
Catechism, knowing only the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church.
And because I loved the Lord, and because I wanted to do something for him,
I wanted to give him my life, I didn't know of any other way for a Roman Catholic
girl to give her life to God other than entering a convent.
And through going to the confessional box where, naturally, I'm under the influence
of my father confessor, the Roman Catholic priest, his influence over my life,
one day I made up my mind, through his influence and one of my teachers in the
parochial school, that I wanted to be a little sister.
At that time I thought of being a sister of the open order.
But as I went on into this, up until the time I took my white veil, sixteen and a
half years of age, everything was beautiful.
I really didn't have any fear in my heart whatsoever, everything was taught to me
was seemingly along the line that I had been taught in the church before I entered
a convent.
And so one day after having been, after making up my mind to enter a
convent, I remember that particular day, two of the sisters came home with me from
school, they were my teachers, and when we arrived at my father's home
that afternoon, our father confessor was in the home likewise.
I often say when I was a little girl, children were seen and not heard.
You didn't talk when you were a child, at least you didn't in my family,
in my home, unless you were spoken to.
And I remember I listened to them carry on a conversation, and then I moved over
close enough to my father to ask him if I could say something.
That was a bit out of the ordinary, and he permitted me to talk, and I said,
Dad, I want to go into a convent.
And I'll tell you that priest took it up quickly.
It had already been influencing me.
My father broke down and began to cry, not because he's sad, but he's very happy.
My mother came over and took me in her arms, and she too wept tears, she was very
happy.
Those were not tears of sadness, because I think her little girl was giving
her life to the convent to pray for lost humanity.
And naturally my family were very thrilled about it, and I was too.
But anyway, I didn't go for about a year after that, and then the time come when I
got myself ready and my mother prepared things for me, and so I entered the
convent.
They took me, and we didn't have a place close enough to my father and mother's
home, so I think they took me around a thousand miles away from home,
where I entered a convent boarding school.
I liked about three months, being 13 years of age, just a little girl.
I look back on it now and think, my homesick, I was so homesick.
Why, my mother and daddy, they stayed three days with me, and when they left I
became so homesick naturally.
Why shouldn't I?
Just a baby away from home.
And when I was a little girl, you know, I had never spent a night away from my
mother, and I surely had never gone any place without my family, and naturally
there was a close tie in our family, and I was very lonely and very homesick.
But I'll never forget after dad and mother told me goodbye, and I knew they were
traveling a long distance away from me, and I had never realized in my heart,
I'll never see them again.
Naturally, I hadn't planned it like that, because I planned to be a sister of the
open order.
But if you listen carefully to this portion of the testimony, then you'll
understand just why I'm saying some of the things that I say.
Now, oftentimes we say the priest selects his material through the confessional box,
because at seven years of age, I went to confessional.
Seven years of age, I would always, when I come into the church, first I'd
sleep over at the feet of the crucifix, rather the Virgin Mary, and then over at
the feet of the crucifix, and I'd ask the Virgin Mary to help me make a good
confession.
Because I was a child and my heart was honest, and I knew the priest had taught
us to always make a good confession, keep nothing back, tell everything,
if I expected absolution from any sin that I might have committed.
So I would ask the Virgin Mary to help me make a good confession.
I would ask Jesus to help me make a good confession.
And you know, I'll assure you, when I, after I lived in the convent for a
short period of time, now I had to go on with my schooling, I'd just finished the
eighth grade, and they promised me to give me a high school education, some college
education, but I didn't get much college, I got mostly just high school training,
and they gave that to me all right, I took it under some terrible difficulties
and strains and all of that, it was rather difficult, but they gave it to me,
for which I appreciate very, very much.
But I'll assure you, after they put me through the crucial training that we must
go through to become just a little novitiate entering a convent, the training
is really, it's outstanding as far as a nun is concerned, and you know what it's
all about, after you've been in there for a little while.
So now I've entered the convent, and for just a few minutes, we want to
tell you just a little bit how we live, what we eat, how we sleep, that'll,
if I take you into the convent and tell you those things, you'll understand a
little bit more about my testimony.
First, as I entered the convent as a small child, I went on to school, but I was
being trained, but the day came, possibly I was fourteen and a half,
when the Mother Spirit began to tell me about the white veil.
And I didn't know too much about it, but taking the white veil, they told me
that I would become the spouse of the bride of Jesus Christ.
There would be a ceremony, and I would be dressed in a wedding garment.
And on this particular morning, they told me at nine o'clock, they would
dress me up in a wedding garment.
Now, you're wondering where that comes from, and how they get the wedding clothes
for the little nuns.
The Mother Spirit sits down and writes a letter to my father and tells him how much
money she wants.
And then, whatever she asks, my father sends it, and she, the little buying
sister, goes out and buys the material, and the wedding gown is made by the nuns
of the cloister.
I'm still open order now.
And of course, whatever she asks, now you say, did they spend all the money
for the wedding gown?
Well, of course, we don't know these things in the very beginning of our
testimony, but after we live in a convent for a little while, we'll learn to know.
They could ask my father for a hundred dollars, and he'd send it.
And they wouldn't use maybe a third of that for the wedding garment, but they
would keep the rest of it.
And my father would never know the difference, neither did I, until I lived
in the convent for a period of time, and I had to make some of the wedding
clothes, and then I knew the value of them and what they cost, and I knew of the
money that came in because I was one of the older nuns.
Well, all right, the time came, of course, when I walked down that aisle,
and I was dressed in a wedding garment.
Now, you know, in the convent, I used to walk the 14 stations of the
cross, the 14 steps that Jesus carried the cross to Calvary, but after I had made up
my mind to take the white veil, never again did I walk.
I wanted to be worthy.
I wanted to be holy enough to become the spouse of the bride of Jesus Christ.
And so I would get out on my knees and crawl the 14 stations.
It's quite a distance, but I crawled them.
Every Friday morning, I felt it would make me holy.
I felt it would draw me closer to God.
It would make me worthy of the step that I was going to take, and that's what I
wanted more than anything in the world.
I would like to impress on your hearts, every little girl that enters the convent
that I know anything about, that child has a desire to live for God.
That child has a desire to give her heart, mind, and soul to God.
Now many, many people make this remark, and we hear it from various types of folk,
who say only bad women go into convents.
That isn't true.
There are movie stars who go into convents, and they've lived out in the
world, no doubt they are sinners and all of that, but they go in when they're
women, they know what they're doing.
And they go in only because the Roman Catholic Church is going to receive not
only thousands, but yeah, it'll run up into the millions of dollars, and they
don't mind who they take in if they can get a lot of money out of that individual.
But the ordinary little girl that goes in as a child, she's just a child,
and she goes in there with a heart and mind and soul just as clean as any child
could be.
I say that because sometimes we hear a lot of things that are really not true.
Now, after we become the spouse of Jesus Christ, I want you to listen carefully to
this, and then you can follow me into the rest of the testimony.
We are now looked upon as married women.
We are looked upon as married women.
We are the spouse or the bride of Jesus Christ.
Now, the priest teaches every little girl that will take the white veil,
they'll become the bride of Christ.
He teaches her to believe that her family will be saved.
It doesn't make any difference how many banks they rob, how many stores they rob.
It doesn't make any difference how they drink and smoke and carouse and live out
in this sinful world and do all the things that sinners do.
It doesn't make a bit of difference.
Still, our family will be saved if we continue to live in the convent and give
our life to the convent or to the church.
We can rest assured that every member of our immediate family will be saved.
And you know there are many little children that are influenced and enticed
to go into convents because we realize it is a salvation for our families.
And sometimes, even Roman Catholic families, the children grow up and leave
the Roman Catholic Church and go out into the deepest of sin.
And so every little girl that enters a convent is hoping by her sacrificing so
much, home and loved ones, mother and daddy, everything that a child loves,
her family will be saved regardless of what sins they commit.
And of course we are children and our minds are immature and we don't know any
better.
And it's so easy to instill things like this into the hearts and minds of little
children.
And the priest is really good at it.
And of course we look upon our priest, our father confessor, I looked upon him as
God.
He is the only God I knew anything about.
And to me he was infallible.
I didn't think he could sin.
I didn't think that he would lie.
I didn't think that he ever made a mistake.
I looked upon him as the holiest of holy because I didn't know a God, but I did
know the Roman Catholic priest.
And to me, I looked to him for everything that I ask of any of God, so to speak.
I believed the priest could give it to me.
And so the day comes, oh in all of us.
Now, as we are going in, I want you to listen carefully.
After taking the white veil, things are beautiful.
I'm sixteen and a half years of age.
Everyone is good to me.
And I'm living in the convent and I haven't seen anything yet.
Because no little girl, we are not subject to a Roman Catholic priest until we are
twenty-one years of age.
And as we give you this next vow, then you'll understand that we don't know
about this.
This is kept from the little sisters until we've taken our black veil.
And then it's too late.
I don't carry the keys to those double doors.
And there's no way for me to come out.
The priest will tell all over the whole United States and other countries that
sisters, or nuns rather, can walk out of convents when they want to.
I spent twenty-two years there.
I did everything there was to do to get out.
I've carried tablespoons with me into the dungeons and tried to dig down into that
dirt because there's no floors in those places.
But I never yet found myself digging far enough to get out of a convent with a
tablespoon.
And that's about the only instrument.
Because when we're using the spade, and we do have to do hard, heavy work.
When we use a spade, we're being guarded, we're being watched by two older nuns,
and they're going to report on it.
And I'll assure you, you're not going to try to dig out with a spade, and you
wouldn't get very far anyway.
Because they've made those convents, or built those convents, so little nuns
cannot escape.
That was their purpose in building them, as they build them.
And there's no way for us to get out unless God makes a way.
But I believe God's making a way for numbers of little girls after they come
out of the convents.
All right, now when the time comes, I think I was 18 when the mother began
talking to me.
Now I planned to come out, see, after my white veil.
I wanted to be a little nursing sister in the Roman church.
But the Mother Superior, I suppose she was watching my life.
I suppose she realized I had much endurance, I had a strong body.
And I believe the woman was watching me, because one day she asked me to come into
her office, and she began to tell me, Charlotte, you have a strong body.
And she said, I believe you have the possibilities of making a good nun,
a cloistered nun.
I believe you're the type that would be willing to give up home, give up mother
and daddy, give up everything you love out in the world, and the world, so to speak,
and hide yourself away behind convent doors, because I believe you're the kind
who would hide back there and be willing to sacrifice and live in crucial poverty,
that you might pray for lost humanity.
She said, I believe you're the kind who'd be willing to suffer, because we are
taught to believe as nuns that as we suffer, our loved ones and your loved ones
that are already in a priest's purgatory will be delivered from purgatory sooner
because of our suffering.
She knew I was willing to suffer.
I didn't murmur.
I didn't complain.
She knew all of that, and she's watching my life.
And that's the reason she began to tell me about the black veil.
And then, of course, you know, I didn't know too much about a cloistered
nun.
I didn't know their life.
I didn't know how they lived.
I didn't know what they'd done.
But, you know, this woman proceeded to tell me.
Now, I hear a lot of people try to tell me in the various places that we travel and
go.
I hear a lot of Roman Catholics try to tell me, I've been in so many cloisters,
I know all about them.
But, you know, a Roman Catholic can lie to you, and they don't have to go to
confession and tell the priest about the lie that they told, because they're lying
to protect their faith.
They can tell any lie they want to, to protect their faith, and never go to
the confessional box and tell the priest about it.
They can do more than that.
They can steal up to $40, and they don't have to tell the priest about it.
They don't have to say one word about it in the confessional box.
They are taught that.
Every Roman Catholic knows it, and every Roman Catholic, you'd be
horrified to know how many of them steal up to that amount.
And many of them lie.
We've dealt with them.
I've dealt with hundreds and hundreds of them.
I've seen a good many of them fall into the altar and cry out to God to save them.
And you know, before they're saved, they look into my face and hold my hand
and lie to me.
But after God gets a hold of their heart, then they want to make right what they've
told me, because they realize they've lied about it.
But as long as they're Roman Catholic, they're permitted to lie.
And it's the saddest thing, and you can't expect them to know God, because God does
not condone sin.
I don't care who you are, but I don't believe God condones sin.
And I don't believe He's going to condone it in the Roman Catholic people,
even though they're being misled and they're being blinded and led in the ways
that's going to lead them into devil's hell.
I believe that with all of my heart, because I've lived in a convent and I know
something about how those people live and what they do.
Now the day comes.
She told me, Charlotte, you'll have to be willing to spill your blood.
As Jesus said, His upon Calvary.
She said you'll have to be willing to do penance, heavy penance.
She said you'll have to be willing to live in crucial poverty.
Now already I'm living in a bit of poverty, but I thought that was going to
make me holy and draw me closer to God.
And it would make me a better nun, and so I'm willing to live in that
poverty.
And then on this particular morning, she told me what I would be wearing.
She said you'll spend nine hours in a casket.
And she explained a number of things to me.
That's the most I knew about it.
And I didn't find that out until I'd taken my white veil.
And so on this particular morning, I'm 21 years of age.
But 60 days previous to my being 21 years of age, I'm going to sign some papers that
they placed in front of me.
And those papers are this.
I'm going to sign away every bit of inheritance that I might have received
from my family after their death.
Of course, I signed that over to the Roman Catholic Church.
And oftentimes I say the Roman Catholic priests are enticing girls.
Not only their background, and not only their strong bodies, their strong minds
and strong wills.
But he's enticing girls where mothers and fathers have much property.
And they are comforted to be fixed to the material things of this life.
Why?
Because when that child enters the convent, they're going to get a portion of
her money, of her father's money.
And I often say even salvation in the Roman Catholic Church is going to cost you
plenty of money, more than you know anything about.
And so they don't mind commercializing off of that child and the inheritance that
would have come to her.
And so on this particular morning, I told the Mother Spirit, give me a little
while to think it over.
She didn't make me do it.
No one did.
But I thought it over for a couple years.
And then one day I told her, I think I'm going to hide away behind the convent
doors because I believed I could give more time to God.
I could pray more, more.
I maybe would be in a position where I could inflict more pain upon my body.
Because we are taught to believe that God smiles down out of heaven as we do
penance, whatever the suffering might be.
And I didn't know any better because I often say, if you could only look into the
hearts of little nuns.
If you are a Christian, you would immediately cry out before God in behalf
of those little girls.
Because to me, we are heathens.
It doesn't make any difference the amount of education we may have.
We are still heathens.
We know nothing about this lovely Christ.
Nothing about the plan of salvation.
And we're living as hermits in the convent.
And so on this particular morning, I come walking down the Nile again.
And may I say, the morning before, I can't go into it too deep because I
never would be able to cover enough of it so you could understand it.
But this morning, I'm walking down that aisle, but I don't have a wedding garment
on.
I have a funeral shroud.
It's made of dark red velvet.
And it's way down to the floor.
And I'm walking down that aisle.
Now I know what I'm going to do.
The casket is all ready made by the nuns of the cloister.
Very rough boards, and it's sitting right out here.
And I know when I come down there that I'll step in that casket and lay my body
down.
And I'm going to spend nine hours in there.
And two little nuns will come and cover me up with a heavy black cloth we call a
heavy drape mortel.
And you know, it's so heavily incensed that I feel like I'll smother to death.
And I have to stay there.
Now I know when I come out of that casket, I'll never leave the convent again.
I know I'll never see my mother and father again.
I'll never go home again.
I'll always live behind convent doors.
And when I die, my body will be buried there.
They told me that.
So I knew it even before I'd done it.
It's a great price to pay for them to find out that convents are not religious orders
as we were taught and as we were trained.
It's quite a disappointment to a young girl that's given her life to God and
willing to give up so much and sacrifice so much.
I'll assure you, it was a disappointment.
And so after I spent those...
Now you say, what did you do while you lay in that casket?
What do you think I did?
I spilled every tear in my body.
I remembered every lovely thing my mother done for me.
I remembered her voice.
I remembered the gathering around the table.
I remembered the times when she would pray with us.
I remember the things that she said to me.
I remember what a marvelous cook she was.
Everything as a little girl growing up in that home, I remembered it.
Laying in that casket, knowing I'll never hear her voice again.
I'll never see her face again.
I'll never put my feet under her table again.
Enjoy her good cooking.
I knew all that.
And so maybe for four hours, I spilled all the tears in my body.
Because it was so hard.
And I knew I'd get homesick.
I knew I'd want to see her someday.
But I gave it all up.
What for?
For the love of God, I thought.
I didn't know any better.
And I'll assure you, those were nine long hours.
And then I seemingly got a hold of myself and I thought, Leah Charlotte,
now you're going to make the best Carmelite nun.
Because everything I've ever done, even that I'm out of the convent,
I do give my best.
I try to give everything that I have in regardless what I might do.
And so I did in the convent.
I gave the best that I have.
And I wanted to be the best nun that I could possibly be.
And the Mother Superior knew that.
And don't worry, the priest knew all about it too.
Now I realize, after I walk out of that casket or come out of it, they're going to
take me like this.
Over here and right back here is a room.
We call it the Mother Superior's room.
Now I've never been in that particular room.
So I don't know what she has in there.
But you know when I walk in there this time, the Mother Superior sits me down in
a straight back, hard bottom chair.
And immediately then I'm going to take three vows of poverty, chastity,
and obedience.
And you know, as I take those vows, she opens a little place in the lobe of my
ear and takes out a portion of blood.
Because I must sign every vow in my own blood.
And after that happens, then I'm going to take the vow of poverty.
Now when I sign that vow, I sign it thus.
And I'm willing to live in crucial poverty, the balance of my life as long as
I live.
And what that poverty is like, of course we don't know.
And then my next vow, I'm going to a vow of chastity.
And you know this vow, of course you know what it means.
I'm taught to believe that I'm married to Jesus Christ, I am his bride.
I'll always remain a virgin, I'll never legally marry again in this world,
because I have become the spouse of the bride of Jesus Christ.
After the Bishop married me to Christ, he placed the ring on my finger,
and that meant I'm sealed to Christ.
I'm married to him and I accepted it because I didn't know any better.
And now here I am, taking a vow that I would always remain a virgin, because I'm
the bride of Christ.
And I want you to listen carefully.
And then of course my last vow, of obedience.
Now when we sign that vow, I'll assure you already I know what obedience means.
I'm living in a convent.
And there they demand absolute obedience.
You don't get by with anything, not even for two minutes.
I mean you don't get by with it, you have to realize what obedience means,
and they demand it, and you learn to know it, and you're much wiser the more quickly
you learn it and you obey it, and you give them absolute obedience.
All right, now, what does it mean to assign vows like this?
Let me tell you this, it means more than you folk will ever know, because most
people that I know anything about, they know very little about obedience.
Oh in a sense, yes, but you'll never know what a little nun knows about obedience,
I'll assure you that one thing, unless you live in the convent.
All right, that particular vow, when I signed it into my own blood,
it done something to me, because after I've signed those vows, do you realize
that I've signed away everything I have?
My human rights, I have become a mechanical human being now.
I can't sit down until they tell me to, I don't dare to get up until they tell me
to, I can't lie down until they tell me to, and neither do I dare to get up.
I cannot eat until they tell me to, and what I see I don't see, what I hear I
don't hear, what I feel I don't feel.
I've become a mechanical human being, but you're not aware of that, until you
have signed all these vows.
Then you realize, here I am, a mechanical human being, and of course I belong to
Rome now, I'll assure you that right now.
All right, we become, after this particular vows, we become forgotten women
of the convent, in just a short while you'll understand what I'm talking about.
Now immediately after I've taken those vows, then the Mother Superior is going to
give me, take away from me my name, and give me the name of a patron saint.
And she teaches me to believe that whatever happens to me in the convent,
I can pray to that patron saint, and she will intercede and get my prayers
through to God, because I'm not holy enough to stand in the presence of God.
It isn't a wonder that dear little nuns can never get close enough to God.
We have always been taught that we will never be holy enough to stand in His
presence, and we always have to go through somebody else in order to get a prayer
through to God.
And we believe it because we don't know any better.
And so now all identification of who Charlotte was is going to be put away.
It'll be taken away from me.
And if you knew me and would come to the convent and call for my family name,
they'd tell you there isn't such a person as that.
I don't exist, even though I'm right there, because I'm writing under another
name.
Now the Mother Superior is going to cut every bit of hair off of my head,
and when she cuts it with a scissor, she puts the clippers on it.
And I mean there's nothing left.
I just don't have one speck of hair left on my head.
And of course, if you could be a nun, you would understand the heavy headgear
that we have to wear.
We'd be so cumbersome to have hair and so cumbersome to take care of it,
we don't have any ways of taking care of it in the convent.
There are no combs in the convent, and so you can imagine how hard it would
be for us to take care of a head of hair.
It's not necessary that we have a comb after they finish with us.
All right, now, this is my black veil.
These are my perpetual vows, we'll call them.
I'm there, and I'm going to stay there.
Now, you know, up until this time, I received a letter once a month from my
family, and I wrote a letter out of the convent once a month to my family.
Even though when I'd write that letter, I had no doubt they marked out a lot of
it, because when I would receive a letter from my family, there was so much of it
blacked out until there was no sense to the letter.
And oh, I'd weep over those black marks.
I was wondering what my mother was trying to say to me.
Don't worry, you'll never get to know what she wanted to say to you, because they
have blacked it out.
And so it would break your heart many, many times, and you're lonely anyway,
because you have no friends in the convent.
I'll assure you, even though there was 180 on my particular wing, not one of those
nuns were my friend, and neither was I a friend to them, because we are not allowed
to be friends in the convent.
We are all policemen or detectives watching each other.
That's so we'll tell.
And the little nun that finds something to tell on the other nuns, she stands in good
favor with the Mother Superior.
And then the mother teaches that nun to believe.
When she stands in good favor with the Mother Superior, she's standing in good
favor with God.
And so that little nun, of course, will want that, and she'll tell a lot of
things maybe that are not even true on the other little nuns.
All right, now after all of this has transpired and all of this has happened,
everything I have is gone.
I've sold my soul for a mess of theological pottage, because not only are
we destroyed in our bodies, many of us in our minds, and many of us, if we die in
the convent, we've lost our soul.
And so it's a serious thing, and I surely covet your prayers for all little nuns
behind clustered convent doors.
They'll never hear this gospel.
They'll never know the Christ that you folk know today.
They'll never pray to Him as you people pray to Him.
They'll never feel His blessings as you people feel them.
And so put them on your heart and pray for them.
They surely need much prayer.
All right, now as I walk into that room and all of this is transpiring,
now bless your hearts, I don't know what's going to be in the next room.
After this has transpired and I've taken the vows that I will always remain a
virgin, I'll never legally marry in this world because I'm the spouse of Christ,
and then after this, the Mother Superior leads me out into another room,
or rather she opens the door, and I'm to be sent into that room.
And when I walk out in that room, I see something I have never seen before.
I see a Roman Catholic priest dressed in a holy habit, and he walks over to me and
locks his arm in my arm, which he had never done in the first part of my convent
life.
I never had a priest to insult me in any way.
I never had one of them to be even unkind to me in the first part of my convent
experience.
But here he is now, and of course I didn't understand what it was all about.
And I didn't know what in the world the man really expected of me.
And you know, I pulled from him because I felt highly insulted.
And I pulled from him and I said, shame on you.
And it made him very angry for a minute and he said, immediately, the Mother
Superior must have heard my voice because she came out immediately.
And she said, oh, and they called me by my church name.
She said, after you've been in the convent a little while, you won't feel this way.
The rest of us felt the same way you do.
And you know, the priest's body is sanctified.
And therefore, it is not a sin for us to give the priest our bodies.
In other words, they teach every little nun this.
As the Holy Ghost placed the germ in Mary's womb, and Jesus Christ was born,
so the priest is the Holy Ghost, and therefore it isn't a sin for us to
bury his children.
And let me tell you, that's what they come to the convent for.
No other purpose in all of this world do priests come into the convent but to rob
those precious little girls of their virtue.
And I'll assure you, we'll be telling you a little later in the testimony just what
they really do after they come in under those particular deals.
But may I say, now every bridge has been burned out from under me.
There's no way back.
I can't get out of the convent even though I pled.
Oh, how I pled with that priest.
Sin for my Father.
I want to go home.
I don't want to go any farther.
And let me tell you, that's when you stand alone, and you don't know who to turn to,
and you're a victim of circumstances, and you live in the convent because there
is no other way to get out of the convent.
And I'll assure you, I stayed in the convent until God made a way for me to
come out.
And so after all of this, my mail will stop.
I'll never receive another bit of mail from my family.
Never another letter.
I belong to the Pope.
I belong to Rome.
And then after all of this, the Mother Superior, after taking these particular
vows, and the priest has invited me to go to the bridal chamber, you say,
did you go?
No, definitely not.
I didn't enter the convent to be a bad woman.
It would have been much easier to have stayed out of the convent to be a bad
woman.
You wouldn't go into the convent and live in the poverty we live in, and to suffer
as we suffer to be a bad woman.
No girl would do that.
And it would have been much easier to have stayed out of the convent if I wanted to
be a bad woman.
But I went there to give my life and heart to God, and that was the only purpose I
had in going there.
And here this priest is, and of course I didn't go to the bridal chamber with him.
I had a strong body then.
One of us would have been wounded because I would have fought until the last drop of
blood.
And you know, it made them very, very angry, I'll assure you.
But I didn't go to the bridal chamber with him.
But now I'm going to have to go to penance the next morning, and of course this will
be a heavier penance because of what I've done already.
And when the Mother Superior says we're going to do penance the next morning,
I'm going to be initiated as a Carmelite nun.
And I remember when she walked me down into that particular place.
It was a dark room.
I remember I lived above on the first floor until my black veil.
After the black veil they take me one story under the ground.
And I lived from there on until God delivered me under the ground.
I didn't live in the top part of the buildings at all.
But you know, as we walked into this room, it's dark, and it's very cold.
And when we walked in, we came from back there somewhere.
We come walking toward the front, and I walked along beside the Mother
Superior.
And when I got near the front, I saw those little candles burning.
Anywhere in the convent you'll find the seven candles burning.
And when I came a little closer, I saw the candles, but I couldn't see
anything else.
And I wondered, what's she going to do to me?
That's the thing in our hearts, and we can't get away from it because we
have fear.
And when I come a little closer, I saw something lying on a board there.
And you know, when I came real close, then I realized, here's a little nun lying
on that board.
I call it a cooling board because it was there.
And just as long as her body, and there she was.
And when I could see where the candles flickered down on her face, I realized
that child is dead.
And oh, I wanted so much to say, how did she die?
Why is she here?
How long do you keep her here?
But you remember, I signed away every human right.
And so I can't say one word, but I stood looking.
Then the Mother Superior said, you stand vigil over this dead body for
one hour.
And at the end of the hour, a little bell is tapped and another nun will come to
relieve me.
And may I say, I was advised every so many minutes, I have to walk out in the front
of that little body and sprinkle holy water and ashes over the body and say,
peace be unto you.
And I did exactly what they told me to do.
Oh, it was a terrible feeling.
I'm not afraid of the dead.
It's the life, people, we have to be very cautious about.
And I wasn't afraid of that little dead nun, but oh, my heart ached for her.
And you know, after the bell tapped and I realized my hour is gone, the nun who
comes to relieve us comes back here somewhere.
And she, of course, we walk on our tiptoes.
No noise is made in the convent.
And when they don't speak, they just touch you.
And of course, my being down there with that little dead nun and I was full of
fear, when that girl laid a hand on my shoulder, I let out a scream, a horrible
scream, from fear, just fear.
And you know, I didn't mean to do it.
I didn't break that rule on purpose, but I was scared.
And immediately, of course, I had to come before the Mother Superior.
And that's when I first learned, you know, one of the first times,
about a dungeon.
They didn't tell me there were dungeons in the convent.
And she put me in such a dirty, dark place with no floor in it for three
days and nights, and I didn't get any food and any water.
And I'll assure you, I didn't scream anymore.
I tried so hard not to break the rules of screaming, because there is a dungeon and
I know they'll put you in it.
And let me tell you right now, it's not a nice place to be.
After you've been in one of those places, you'll know what it feels like.
All right now, I say this before I go any farther, that potpourri is a masterpiece
of Satan.
I said it's a masterpiece of Satan, with its lying wonders and its traditions
and its deception.
It's a terrible thing when you know about it.
And so, as I come down into this room and she took me, let me look at this little
girl, and that particular, if we call it a penis, is over.
Now, the very next morning, she said again to me, Charlotte, you're going to do
penis.
Not the next morning, it was three days after, because I spent three days and
nights in the dungeon.
The next, third, fourth, fifth morning, whichever it was, she said, you're going
to do penis.
She took me down into another room, not the same room.
And when we come walking down this time, I could see that big piece of wood,
but I didn't know what it was.
And when I came a little closer, there was a cross.
It was made of heavy timber.
I might say it was maybe eight or ten feet high.
Very heavy.
And that cross was sitting on an incline like that.
And she had me walk over here at the base of the cross, and she said, now strip your
clothes off.
And I took my clothes off.
And then she made me, down to my waistline, then she made me drape my body
over the foot of that cross, and she pulled my hands underneath and bound them
to my feet.
And then, you know, that's where I'm going to spill my blood.
And she had not told me how, and neither could I ask how I would spill it.
And she gave two little nuns that came with her a flagellation whip.
I might call it a bamboo pole.
It's about this long.
It's about that big around.
And it has six straps on it, about this long.
And on the end of either of those straps, there's a cross piece of sharp metal.
And those little nuns, either was given one of these whips, and they stood on
either side of the cross.
Now, at the same time, those girls began whipping my body.
And I mean when that metal hit my body, it would break the hide, of course.
It would cut into the flesh, and I spill blood.
And it was running down to the floor.
That's my flagellation whip, uh, whipping.
That is where I spill my blood, as Jesus said.
He is upon Calvary.
And, of course, I'm human.
It wounded.
It hurt.
It was very painful.
After the whipping is over, they don't bathe my body.
They put my clothing back up on my body, and I have to go the rest of the day.
When the night comes, and I stand in front of my cell there, I, after we have to
stand there too undressed with our backs to each other, then when I went in,
oh, I couldn't sleep that night.
I just wasn't a bit sleepy because I couldn't take off all my clothes.
They had dried in those wounds, and it was terrible.
I didn't take them off for several nights.
And I'll assure you, when I came before, my food, I didn't want my cup of black
coffee.
In the morning, we get a cup of black coffee.
They serve it with a tin cup, and we can have no milk or no sugar of any type in
it.
And we have one slice of bread.
That's made for the nuns of the cloister.
They weigh it.
It weighs four ounces.
That's all I get for breakfast.
And then, of course, in the evening, I get a bowl of soup, and that's fresh
vegetables cooked together.
There's no seasoning in the soup whatsoever.
And a half a slice of bread, and three times a week, they give me a half a glass
of skim milk.
That consists of my food 365 days in the year.
And I began losing weight very rapidly, I'll assure you, because I didn't have
enough food to eat.
I don't know the day that I went to bed without a hungry stomach.
Sometimes it would be so hungry, I couldn't sleep.
The pain was gnawing.
You can't hardly stand it.
And, you know, you're only going to get that one slice of bread the next morning.
That doesn't fill you up.
And, of course, we have to work hard all day long.
And I'll assure you, those little nuns, as I covet your prayers for them,
they need your prayers in more ways than one, because you'll go to bed with a full
stomach tonight.
And you're very comfortable right now.
But I'll assure you, there's not one of them that's comfortable.
They're hungry, and they're sick, and they're wounded, and they're hurt,
and they're heart sick, and home sick, and discouraged, and worst of all,
seemingly, they have no hope.
No hope.
You and I are looking forward to the day when we're going to see Jesus.
They have no hope whatsoever, and I surely hope you don't forget to pray for them.
All right, that was terrible, I'll assure you.
And then in a few mornings after this, the Mother Spirit's taking me back for
another initiation.
And when I go into the appendix chamber this morning, we come from a place up
here, and we're going to walk back along the... like that, through to the back.
And, you know, it was quite a ways back there, and I went through Pasha.
Part of it's a tunnel.
And then I come out into a room, and I'll walk through that room,
and when I get way back there, I see those candles burning.
And I see something else.
There's ropes hanging down from the ceiling, and oh, I'm so scared.
I wonder what the ropes are for, and what's she going to do after these two
penances you began to have a lot of fear in your heart.
And so I can't say anything, and I walk back there, and you know, I saw the ropes,
then real plain, what they're doing hanging down from that ceiling.
Then she tells me, you go over there against the wall, about that close from
the wall, and I have to stand sideways like this.
Then she asked me to put up both of my thumbs, and I did.
And then she pulled one rope down, and there's a metal band fastened
securely, and she fastens that around the joint of my thumb.
Then the other one comes down, and it fastens around this thumb.
And there I'm standing like this, facing the wall.
And then, you know, she comes over here to the end, and there's a... whatever you
want to call it.
And she starts winding, and I start moving, and she's taking me right up in
the air.
And you know, when she gets me so just my toes are on the floor, just on my tiptoes,
she fastens it.
And there I hang, and all the weight of my body is on my thumbs and on my toes.
Not a word is said.
No one speaks a word.
And she walks out of that room and locks the door.
If you know what it means to hear a key locking a door, and know that I'm strung
up there like that, you'll never know unless you're a nun.
And when that woman walked out, I didn't know how long I'll stay there.
How long that woman will leave me there.
And you know, they didn't come to give me food.
They brought me no water.
And I thought, is this it?
Am I going to die back here just like this?
And within a few hours, you can imagine, I'm still a human being.
My muscles began to scream out with the pain.
I was suffering.
And that woman let me hang, and nobody come near.
And what good would it do for me to cry?
You can spill every tear in your body.
Nobody will hear you.
There's no one there to care how many tears you spill.
And so I just hung there.
And finally, I began to seemingly, I felt like I couldn't stand it.
I'll surely die if they don't come and get me quickly.
And I felt as if I was beginning to swell.
I don't know how long went by.
And she opened the door one morning, and she had something for me to eat.
And the water was in a pan.
And it was potatoes, and those potatoes were not good to eat.
They were in a pan.
And there's a shelf over there on the wall that she can adjust to the height of the
nun.
And you know, she pulls it up.
Now, I'm not against the wall.
I'm about this far from it.
But to get that food, she puts it there and says, this is your food.
And she walks out.
Now, how am I going to get it?
She didn't let my hands down, but I, I, this is what you'll learn.
And you'll struggle to get it.
I'm hungry.
I mean, I'm so thirsty, I feel like I'm going mad.
And to get it, I discovered that this hand goes high, and this one will come down a
little bit.
And that will keep right on going higher as I lean.
I have to reach higher with this one.
This one will automatically let down.
And to get that water and that food, I mean, I had to get it like the dogs and
cats.
And I lapped as much of it as I could because I'm so thirsty.
And get those potatoes, I tried as hard as I could because I'm hungry.
I mean, I'm hungry.
And I got as much of it as I could, naturally.
But I was hungry.
That's the way she fed me for a while, and then she released the bonds on my
hands and on my feet.
And I tell you, then I shouldn't have said on my feet.
She didn't release the bonds.
She let me hang there for nine days and nine nights.
I'm getting almost got it mixed up with one of the other penances that I want to
give to you.
I hung nine days and nine nights in this position.
And may I say, at the time come when I was swollen here, I naturally, I could see
myself puffing out here.
I felt like my eyes were coming out of my head.
I felt like my arms were part, I could see them right there.
They were two or three size, their normal size.
I felt like I was that way all over my body.
And I was like a boil, I was in real suffering.
And then on the ninth day, she comes in and she releases the bonds from my hands
and my body and lets me down on the floor.
Now I go down, I can't walk.
I'll assure you I didn't walk.
I didn't walk for a long time.
But you know what?
There's two little nuns that carry me out.
One gets under my feet and the other under my shoulders.
And they carry me in the infirmary and lay me on a slab of wood.
And there they cut the clothing for my body.
And let me tell you right now, nobody but God will ever know I'm covered
with vermin and filth.
Why, I'm hanging there in my own human filth.
There are no toilet facilities.
Right behind me is a stool.
They have running water in it and the lid is down and they have sharp nails driven
through that lid.
If I break my ropes and fall on that, I would suffer terribly.
And this is the life of a little nun behind clustered doors.
After they've already deceived us, disillusioned us, and got us back there.
But then, this is the life that we're living.
And these are the things that we're going to have to do.
And I'll assure you, it isn't anything funny.
And then I remember as I lived on in that place.
Oh, let me tell you, in the morning, we have to get up out of our beds at 4.30
in the morning.
The Mother Superior talks about taps of bail and that means five minutes to dress.
And may I say to you folk, it's not five and a half minutes.
You better get that clothing on in five minutes.
And I failed one time and I had to be punished severely, but I never failed
again in all the years in the convent.
And you know when we are finished dressing, then we're going to start
marching.
And we march by the Mother Superior.
And that Mother Superior is going to appoint us to an office duty every
morning.
I might be scrubbing, it might be ironing, it might be washing, it might be doing
some hard work.
But I have to work one hour.
Then we'll go in and gather around the table and we'll find sitting in front of
us our tin cup full of coffee and our slice of bread.
And then of course we have hard work to do.
We have, I think there was 12 tubs in the convent that I lived in.
And we wash on the old-fashioned washboard.
We have the old sat-iron that you heat on the stove.
And you know it wouldn't be so bad if we just had our own clothing in the convent.
But the priests bring great bundles of clothing and put them in there because it
can get them done for nothing.
And we have to do that clothing on top of it.
We work very, very hard.
And they're not able to work because they don't have enough food to keep body,
mind, and soul together.
And those little girls are living under these particular circumstances.
Well, I say we're women without a country.
And I mean just exactly what I say, women without a country.
Now we belong to the Pope.
Anything they want to inflict upon my body, they can do it.
And all the howling I do, if I should howl, it wouldn't make any difference
because nobody's going to hear me.
And they have no idea that I'll ever leave the convent.
The plan is I'll die there and be buried there.
Now you say, Charlotte, can you go into the convent?
Any one of you folk can go into an open order convent, or I mean a closed convent,
into the speak room.
And there is an outside chapel that you can walk into of any that I know anything
about.
But you know, don't you just go in there and wander around to have some place to
go.
Because you might meet something you're not expecting.
If you go in there, you go prepared to take food to some little girl that's in
there.
And be sure that you know who you're taking it to.
And when you go, as you walk up toward the front of the building like this,
you'll see a bell.
And you'll know what to do because it'll tell you.
And you press a button there and there'll be a gate swing out.
It has about three shelves on it.
And of course you've brought something for someone that you know in the convent.
It might be the mother coming to visit her daughter.
And you know, when that bell is tapped, the Mother Superior is back here behind a
big black rail.
Now that's a big iron gate there, and there's heavy folds of black material
clear across there.
And you can't go back there.
You'll never see the Mother Superior, but she'll answer you through the black
rail.
And you might say, I brought some homemade candy for my daughter.
And you might ask the Mother Superior to let you speak to her.
You can't see her, but you could speak to her.
You know, the mother will call that lovely little girl and call her out on the other
side of the rail.
Of course you can't see her.
And you know what?
The mother will speak to her and say, honey, are you happy here?
And that little nun will say, Mother, I'm very happy.
You say, why did she say that?
Well, bless your heart, don't you know the Mother Superior is standing there?
And if we didn't say that after our mother is gone, then only God knows what the
Mother Superior will do to the little nun.
And so we must lie to our mother.
And then the mother will say, do you have plenty to eat?
And that little nun will answer and say, we have plenty to eat.
But I'll tell you, that mother will go home.
She'll prepare a lovely meal for the rest of the family.
But if she could look in and see our table and see what her little girl is eating.
If she could look into her little girl's eyes after she's been there through four
years.
Maybe Jesus in there is the crucifix.
And then we have a prayer board.
And by the way, I'll assure you folk that you'll never want to kneel on our prayer
board.
We kneel on it every day if we are able to walk under our own power.
It is a board about this height from the ground.
And there are two leading up like this one.
And this one is about that wide.
I'm going to drop my knees down on it.
And there are sharp wires coming up through that board.
And then this one up here I prostrate my arms on.
There's going to be sharp wires.
After all, I told you we were going to suffer.
We were going to do penance.
And this is a part of my suffering.
And as I kneel on that prayer board, I'm praying for lost humanity.
And I'm believing as I suffer that my grandmother will be released from a
priest's purgatory sooner because of my suffering.
And I'll kneel there longer sometimes.
Oh, it's terrible, but we don't know any better.
So we do that because that's all that little nun does know.
And we believe it.
And there we are.
And we are locked in our cells.
Every night the key is turned in those doors.
We can't get up and come out of there.
And then more than that, 7 minutes of 12.
We go to bed at 9.30.
The lights are out.
7 minutes of 12.
There's two little nuns appointed to unlock every door.
Every little nun again gets on her feet, dresses in full dress, goes into the inner
chapel.
And there we again pray one hour for lost humanity.
We don't get very much sleep, that's why.
And we don't have enough food and we work hard and we suffer much.
That's why our bodies are so broken.
That's why we seemingly don't have enough strength to carry on after we live there.
But I'd like to say this to you before I go any farther.
Now I did those very things.
We are taught to believe that as we spill our own blood...
Now we must do this.
As I whip my body, if I torment it or torture it in any way that I spill blood,
I'm taught to believe that I'll have 100 less days to spend in purgatory.
Now you know we have no hope.
Those little nuns don't look forward to anything.
You may think they do, but we don't.
Why?
After you live in a convent 10 years, I began to realize the Virgin Mary is just
a piece of metal.
She's a statue.
I began to realize Saint Peter is just a statue.
I began to realize that the statue of Jesus is just a piece of metal.
In other words, we've come to the place to believe that our God is a dead God.
And I'll assure you, after you live in a convent long enough, not at first,
oh no, but after we've suffered enough, after we've seemingly fallen down at the
feet of those statues and spilled our tears on them, and have begged them to
intercede and get a prayer through to God, and years go by without any indication
whatsoever.
A parent won't even know when they're dead.
So who's going to pray us out of purgatory?
Or rather, buy us out of purgatory?
No, we realize after we're in there for a period of time that there is no purgatory.
And I, of course you know there isn't and I know there isn't.
And there is no purgatory.
The only purgatory the Roman Catholic people have is a priest's pocket.
And they're filling his pockets with coins in order to pray for the dead.
And may I say there are thousands and thousands of Roman Catholics.
In the month of November, may I say to you, in United States, two years ago in
the month of November, the Roman Catholic priest praying masses for the dead of the
Roman Catholic people in this country, in one month collected 22 million dollars
for masses said for dead Roman Catholics.
That's just a little idea, a sample of what's going on in this country.
And still there are thousands of mothers that'll work their fingers to the bone to
go over there and give the priest another 5 dollars to say a mass for a loved one
that's in a purgatory.
Because that mother believes there is a purgatory.
In the convent they have a painting of purgatory.
And there's nothing in the room but just that painting.
And you know, every Friday, we have to walk around that painting.
And when we walk around it, I wish you could look at the little nun's faces.
What do I see?
The painting, as you would walk around it, looks like it's a big deep hole out there.
And there are people down in there.
And the flames of fire is laughing around the bodies of those people.
And their hands are outstretched like this.
And the mother will say to the little nun, you better go and put another penance on
your body.
Those people are begging to get out of that fire.
And because we're heathens, we don't know any better.
I might go someplace in the convent and maybe I'll burn my body real bad.
Maybe I'll torture it some way and spill some more blood.
Because as I suffer, I believe they're going to get out of that place where a
priest puts them.
And there are millions of people, so to speak, in purgatory that your priest
has put there.
And when he knows it is the biggest fraud there is in the world, he knows there's
not a bit of truth to it.
And bless your heart, I often say you take purgatory and mass away from the Roman
Catholic Church.
You'll rob her of nine-tenths of her living.
She'll starve to death if you would take it away from her.
She commercializes not only off of the living, but off of the dead.
And on and on it goes.
All right.
It doesn't bother our Mother Superior to take one of those dear little girls.
And may I say, you know, when the priests come into the convent, they come as our
father confessors.
Once a month we go to confession.
And we don't want to go, don't you worry.
I many of the time have got in the very back row.
I didn't want to go in there.
I know who's out there.
One of them, I may not know the particular man, but I know he's a priest.
And I know those priests.
I certainly have seen them enough.
I've lived there long enough.
I certainly have had contact with every one of them.
And I'll assure you this one thing, I don't trust one single one of those in
the convent.
Now we're not telling you about every priest.
I don't know all the priests.
I'm just talking about the convent in my personal testimony of convent life.
And you know, we know something about what's out in that room.
And here we are, we know we're going to confession today.
It may take all day long.
And here he comes.
And I have never seen a Roman Catholic priest come into the convent that I was in
without intoxicating liquor under his belt.
And I say a man or a woman, regardless of who you may be, when you get liquor under
your belt, you're not a man, neither are you a woman.
You become an animal and a beast.
And so we have a beast sitting out there.
There's a straight back heart bottom chair.
No other furniture but the crucifix and the Virgin Mary.
But here he is sitting on that chair right out there in the middle of that room.
Now here a little girl has to walk out there alone.
And she has to kneel down.
Think of it.
Why bless your heart, I really sometimes, I'm saved now, I'm out of the convent,
and I now look back at that Roman Catholic priest, and I often say, I'm sure he was a
twin brother to the devil, because he's full of sin.
He's full of vice.
He's full of corruption.
And we go out there and kneel down at his knees.
Now you're a lucky girl if you get away from that man without being destroyed.
Why?
He's drunk.
He's a beast.
He's not a man.
Oh, he has a holy habit on.
He's an ordained Roman Catholic priest.
And so I'll assure you, we don't like to go to confession, but we must go once a
month.
Those little girls can't help themselves, and nobody comes out into that room but
the priest and I until it's all over, and then we can come back, and the next
one will have to come.
And I'll assure you, we don't appreciate that day.
And those little girls don't know any better.
They don't know anything about the plan of salvation.
They don't know that Jesus went to Calvary and died for them.
They don't know that he shed his blood for them.
Those little girls know nothing about it, because to me, as I repeat again,
the Bible was a hidden book to every one of those little girls.
And so now they can do things like this.
Now if a Roman Catholic priest comes into the convent, he may go to the Mother
Superior and ask her to permit him to go into the cell where one of the nuns are.
And you know that mother with her carnal mind and her carnal heart, and she's very
hard and very carnal, and she is the mother many times of many illegitimate
children.
They belong to the priest.
And you know, she'll take that priest, and he's drinking.
She knows it.
They bring liquor in with them.
Sometimes some of the nuns will drink with them, and the mother usually drinks with
them.
And it's really a terrible place.
It is not a religious order.
It does not live up to that name whatsoever.
But here she brings that priest into one of our cells.
Now I wonder if you realize how serious it is.
That Roman Catholic priest, he has liquor under his belt.
We know that.
But he has a big, strong body.
He's had three square meals of food every day of his life.
He can eat all the food that he wants.
But you know, there's a little nun that may have a broken body, and she may not
have very much strength.
And what did he come into that cell for?
For nothing other than to destroy that little nun.
I often say, I wish the government could walk into a convent just about the time
one of those priests are let in the cell.
The mother will turn a key on the lock, and you're locked in there with that
priest.
Now, we have no way to defend ourselves.
And I often say, I have had to nurse those little girls.
I'm an Aryan.
I got my nurse's training by going through the tunnel over to the hospital as I lived
in an open order convent.
But may I say, after that priest is taken out of there, if you could look upon the
body of that little nun, she looks like something you've thrown out in a hog pen.
And half a dozen old sows have just mauled that child's body.
And this is convent life.
I can understand why your priests are calling over the phone every day or two
and screaming their heads off because I'm in this city giving this testimony.
But may I say to you, I don't mind if they continue to scream.
I don't mind what they do.
I'm not one bit afraid of them.
I'll continue to give this testimony as long as God gives me strength,
I'll be giving this testimony regardless of your priests or your bishops in this
country.
I know what I'm doing.
I know what I'm saying.
And I'm not afraid of anybody in all of this world.
I'm a child of God.
And I believe God won't let anybody put a hand on me until my work is finished.
And then I often say, I don't care what you do to my body after I leave this body.
I'm sure I don't mind.
And so I will continue to give the testimony regardless of what your priests
think about it.
Because I think God saved me to pull the cover off of convent.
I believe he saved me to uncloak those places that are writing under the cloak of
religion.
I believe that with all of my heart, I'll assure you I do.
Now if I refuse to give my body, you know we're just supposed to give our
bodies voluntarily to those priests.
Many times the nuns are overpowered.
But if I refuse to give my body voluntarily to them, then you know he
becomes very angry.
And he goes immediately to the Mother Superior.
Then when two carnal minds come together, they can invent things that you and I,
we don't have enough evil in our heart to invent things like that.
We don't have enough sin in our lives to even think of such terrible things.
And when those two carnal minds come together, the next time I want you to know
they're all ready.
Now the Mother Superior might say to me in a day or two, we're going to do penance.
Now the penance that they'll inflict on me is something that the Mother Superior and
the priest has invented.
And it can be very, very cruel.
They might take me down into one of the dirty dungeons, and there's no floors in
those places.
And you know they have a place down there, there are rods about three feet long.
They have them burrowed down into cement, and at the top of it there's a ring about
this big sticking out of the ground.
They have some leather straps fastened there.
And when they take me down there, they put my foot, either foot through
those rings, and then they strap my ankle securely.
Now I'm standing with my feet in those rings.
All right, they're going out of there.
They're going to leave me locked up in that place by myself.
And it's a dirty place.
Well, I might stand there for two or three hours if I have strength enough in my
body.
But what do you think is going to happen to me then?
I can't stand any longer.
Sometimes we faint, sometimes we just become exhausted and we go down.
But when I go down, he flips my ankles over like that, and I can't do anything
about it.
I don't have what it takes for me to get up.
I may have to lie in that position for two or three days, and no one will come near.
They won't give me a bite of food, they won't bring me one drop of water,
but I must stay there.
And the next thing you feel is the bugs crawling over my body and the mice running
over me.
And I still have to stay there.
I can understand why they don't want me to uncover.
They don't want the world to know these things are going on.
No priest in this country wants it.
And if he doesn't want the world to know it, then they better be pretty careful
that nobody ever gets out of a convent after they've spent a few years back
there.
But may I say again to you, my God is greater than all the outside forces.
My God can reach his hand over into those convents, this country, any other country,
and make a way for a girl to come out and he won't have to ask the bishop to help
him.
He won't have to ask the priest to help him.
But God can make a way for us to come out.
I'll assure you that.
Well, on it goes.
Then sometimes the priests come and they get angry at us because we refuse to stand
with them voluntarily.
And you know, after all, the nuns' bodies are broken after we're there a while.
And many, many of the time, to have him strike you in the mouth is a terrible
thing.
I've had my front teeth knocked out.
I know what it's all about.
And then he'll get you down on the floor and then kick you in the stomach.
Many of those precious little girls have babies under their heart.
And it doesn't bother a priest to kick you in the stomach with a baby under your
heart.
He doesn't mind the baby's going to be killed anyway because those babies are
born in the convent.
Why wouldn't babies be born when you run places like this under the cloak of
religion?
The world thinks it's religious orders.
And there are babies born in there.
And most of the babies are premature.
Many of them are abnormal.
Very, very seldom do we ever see a normal baby.
You say, Sister Charlotte, do you dare to say that?
I most definitely do dare to say this.
And I intend to keep on saying it.
Why?
I've delivered those babies with these hands.
And what I've seen with my eyes and what I've done with my hands, I just challenge
the whole world to say it isn't true.
And the only way they can ever prove it isn't true, they'll have to open,
if they ever serve a summons on me, and call me into court.
I'll assure you this one thing.
Convents are coming open.
And then the world is going to know what convents really are.
And they'll have to open them to vindicate my testimony.
Because I know what I'll do if they ever serve a summons on me.
I've been before the highest laws we have in the United States.
I know what I'm doing.
I know what I can say.
And I'm not one bit afraid to say it.
Because I've been a part of this.
I've been connected with this system 22 years behind convent doors.
And it is a terrible thing.
After when that dear little nun, looking forward to that day when her
precious baby will be born.
Most of you dear mothers, oh, you have everything ready.
The beautiful nursery.
All the baby's beautiful clothes are made.
Everything is lovely.
You're looking forward to that.
Precious little immortal soul is going to be born into your home.
And everything is ready.
And oh, I wish you could see that little nun.
She's not looking forward to that.
There won't ever be a blanket around his body.
They'll never bathe that baby's body.
But he can only live four or five hours.
And then the Mother Superior will take that baby and put her fingers in his
nostrils and cover his mouth and snuff his little life out.
And why did they build the lime pit in the convent?
What is the reason for building it if it isn't to kill the baby?
And that baby will be taken into the lime pit and chemical and lime is put over his
body.
And that's the end of babies.
Oh, when I think about it.
That's why I try to challenge people.
Pray.
If you know how to pray, you know how to contact God.
Pray and ask God to deliver the girls from behind convent doors.
In other words, pray that God will make a way for every convent in the United States
to be opened and let the government go in.
And when the government goes in, you won't have to worry.
The convents will be opened, the nuns will be taken out, and they'll be closed up.
Just as they opened the convents in Old Mexico in 1934.
There are no convents in Old Mexico.
Every cluster, it is open.
And they found all of the corruption back there, the lime pit.
If any of you are taking a vacation, go over to Old Mexico.
The government owns them.
They're public museums.
And go through the convent.
Look with your own eyes.
Touch with your own hands.
And then come home and see if you believe my testimony.
It'll stir every bit of red blood in your veins.
I mean, it'll do something to you that nothing else has ever been able to do.
Go through them and look at them.
Go into the dungeons.
Go into the tunnels.
Go through the lime pit.
Look at the skulls, rooms of skulls over there.
And then ask the guides of where they come from.
And go and see all of the devices of torture they placed upon the bodies of the
little nuns.
Go into their cells and look at their beds and see for yourself.
Oh yes, you can go.
It'll cost you 25 cents to go through each one of them.
You look at those things and see them for yourself and then come home.
And maybe it'll give you a greater burden to pray for little girls that have been
enticed behind convent doors by the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church.
I wonder how you would feel if this was your child.
And remember, I have a mother and daddy, or had one.
And they love me just as much as you love your children.
And when they let me go into the convent, I'm sure my mother and daddy didn't expect
these things to happen because they didn't know.
They never dreamed a convent was like this.
But you know, I wonder how you'd feel if you could walk in some day and out there
in this particular room, that floor is built for this purpose.
There's a partition right out there.
And there's just a little thing they can touch.
It automatically opens.
And you know, there's a deep hole underneath that floor.
And this little nun has done something.
I can't tell you what she's done because I wasn't there when she done it.
But she's done something.
And to them, it's very serious.
And when they bring her, they bring her to this particular place.
Her little hands and feet are going to be bound securely.
They're going to drop her in that horrible, horrible pit.
And then they're going to put the boards back down.
No one will ever know.
Oh, there's plenty of chemical and lime down there.
But you know, they don't do that.
Six little nuns have to walk around that hole.
We'll chant as we walk around that hole.
We don't want any evil spirits to come out into the convent.
So we sprinkle holy water over that hole.
Then we may walk for six hours.
And then they'll appoint six more nuns.
And on and on it goes until we hear the last moan.
And that's the end of the little nun they place down there.
No, she'll never be delivered from the convent.
But does it bother you to know that that little nun will die and be lost?
Does that bother you?
It bothers me.
Because I didn't know Jesus.
I couldn't tell her about God.
I didn't know Him myself.
But it bothers me very, very much.
But God won't hold me accountable.
Her blood will not be on my hands because I didn't know the Lord.
And I couldn't tell her about it.
And so on it goes.
And I wonder how you like to see it.
Here we are.
A body of those little nuns.
On this particular morning, the Mother Superior might say this.
We're all going to be lined up here.
And I don't know what she's lining me up for.
And then, you know, there might be ten of us.
There might be fifteen of us.
And then she'd tell us all to strip.
And we have to take every stitch of our clothing off.
We're certainly not anything beautiful to look at.
Our eyes are back in our head.
Our cheeks are falling in.
Our bodies are wasted.
God only knows what we look like because I never saw myself in twenty-two years.
I didn't know I had gray hair.
I didn't know I have lines in my face.
I didn't know how old I was.
I only found that out about six years ago.
You know nothing about what you look like.
And here we are lined up.
And here comes two or three Roman Catholic priests with liquor under their belt.
And there they're going to march in front of those nude girls.
And choose the girl they want to take to the cell with them.
These are convents.
Clustered convents.
Not open orders.
The priest can do anything he wants to and hide behind the cloak of religion.
Then that same Roman Catholic priest will go back into the Roman Catholic churches.
And there he'll say mass.
And there he'll go into the confessional box and make those poor people believe he
can give them absolution from their sins.
When he's full of sin.
When he's full of corruption and vice.
Still he acts as their God.
What a terrible thing it is.
And on it goes.
Well, I live there.
Now all the time these things are going on.
What do you think is happening inside of Charlotte?
God love your hearts?
I didn't know people could hold so much hatred and bitterness.
And it went on and on and on.
I was filled with bitterness and hatred.
And I mean it continued to build.
I began in my heart to think, when I can get the Mother Superior in a certain
place, I'll kill her.
Isn't it awful to get murdered in a hut?
I didn't go into the convent with a heart like that.
Nor a mind like that.
But I began to plan murder in the convent.
How I could kill her.
How I could kill a Roman Catholic priest.
And on and on it goes.
And oh, I tell you, every time she did fix something awful on my body that I'd have
to suffer so terribly.
When I could think sensibly again, then I would begin to plan how could I
kill that woman.
And on it goes.
Well, after all you can't help it.
For instance, I wonder how you would feel.
The Mother Superior, here she is.
And she's going to sit me down in a chair.
And you know, that chair is a straight back, high bottom.
And I don't have any hair.
She's going to take everything off my head.
And you know, she's going to put my hands like this.
They'll be out here in stocks.
And I'm going to have to bend my head over like that in order to put the stocks
across my neck.
And I'm fastened securely.
And over my head there is a faucet of water.
And you know...
Sorry.
There is a faucet of water just above my head.
And my head's over.
Now that Mother's going to turn that water on.
Just a drop.
And the drop will just come about this fast.
It'll hit me right there on the back of my head.
And you know, I can't move either way.
I sat there one hour, two hours, three hours, four hours.
What do you think's going on?
I'm sitting there.
I can't move.
I'd do everything to get away from that drop of water in the same spot on my head.
Why God love your hat if you could look in.
You'd see us frothing at the mouth.
You'd see those little girls.
They're trying so hard to move.
To get away from that water.
And they let her stay there sometimes ten hours.
All day long.
Many, many times a little nun.
Cracks up completely.
She goes stark raving mad under this particular penance.
What in the world did they do with her?
I'll tell you in a few minutes.
Don't you worry.
They have a place for us after we go mad in the convent.
They take care of us.
They have places for the little nuns.
There's places built down there for us.
Well, on it goes.
Well, you know, these things went on and went on and went on.
And it was terrible.
But you know, I began to plan and plan and plan.
After she's done something like that to me, it's terrible.
One day, the Mother Superior took violently ill.
You say, who would take her place?
There are about three, sometimes they have four older nuns.
And they always pick the one that's hard.
The one that's seemingly as carnal.
That one that has no conscience to be a Mother Superior.
And she works under this one.
One day, if something happens to the main Mother Superior, another one will take her
place.
And on it goes.
But you know, this particular day, they sent word to me.
The Mother Superior, I was to come into her room.
She's very sick.
And quicker than lightning, I began to think, if I get in that Mother Superior's
room, I know what I'll do.
You know, after all, I'm a sinner.
I'm a nun, but I'm a sinner.
And I don't know God.
And I have a lot of hatred in my heart.
And I walk in that room.
They have called in an outside Roman Catholic doctor.
She's a very sick woman.
And he has left all orders.
And they left the medicine and everything.
Now I'm supposed to take care of her.
And that was wonderful.
And I do take care of her.
All day long, I did what they told me to do, what I'm supposed to do.
On those particular tablets, I knew what they were, and I knew what they would do,
and what she was taking them for.
But anyway, all day long, I gave her her medicine.
I done everything I'm supposed to.
All evening long.
Why?
I want to be sure what I'm doing.
What I do, I have to be careful.
And you know, I waited until 1 o'clock in the morning.
Why?
Because every night, those little nuns have to be gotten out of bed and go chant
from 12 to 1.
I thought, I'll wait until all the nuns go back to bed, then I'm going to do
something.
And bless your hearts, after they were all back in their beds, I'll tell you what I
did.
I took five or six of those tablets.
I was only supposed to take one in a half a glass of water every so often and give
it to her.
But because of the type they were and what type of tablet it was, I knew what he
would do.
I put six of them in a glass of water and stirred them up.
And I gave them to her.
I knew she would go into convulsions.
It would twist her completely out of shape.
I knew that woman would suffer a million deaths within 25 minutes.
I knew that.
And I thought, I'm going to watch her suffer because she has punished us.
She has hurt us so many thousands of times.
I'll watch her suffer.
Isn't it terrible to think a child can be lived, live in a place like that long
enough, until she has the same kind of a heart almost a mother superior has.
But that's what comes when sin gets in your life.
And so I waited.
You know, I gave them to her.
And something happened to me.
I got scared.
And I looked at that woman and she began to change color.
And I couldn't find her pulse.
I couldn't find her respiration.
I was frightened.
And I thought, oh, what shall I do?
If they find her dead, only God knows what they'll do to me.
I'll tell you what I did.
I got that stomach pump.
I pumped as quick as I could.
I pumped that woman's stomach.
I massaged that woman.
I done everything there was to do.
And oh, thank God she didn't die.
I said, I thank God.
But you know, I sat down by the bed and held her hand and watched her carefully
until the respiration came back normal, until her pulse was normal.
And I felt she would live.
And I thought of another thing I'll do this then.
I saw where her keys were hidden, her shelf right there in her old room.
So they're on a big chain or a big ring.
And I thought, I'm going to take those keys.
I'm going down into that dungeon.
There's a, when I say down, this is two stories under the ground.
I'm going someplace where she's always wandered.
It's a solid wall like that.
And clear to the back end of that wall, there's one door.
And it's heavy.
And it's always locked.
And I've heard her tell me scores of times, and I'm sure she has the others,
don't ever try to go through that door.
What in the world is over there?
And why did she tell us that?
We can't get through it.
And it's locked.
But you know, I wondered what was back there.
Because when they had me in the dungeon for a long time once, I heard screams
under the ground.
I heard such blood-curdling screams.
And I knew there were some girls locked up somewhere.
And so I'm going through there if I find the key.
And so I got her keys, and I went into that particular place.
And when I got back there, it took a while to do it, I want you to know, to find the
key.
But oh, when it unlocked that door.
I walked through that door, and I walked into a hall.
The hall, I would say, was maybe five feet wide, maybe wider than that.
That's just a guess.
And anyway, on the other side of the hall, there were a number of cells over there,
small rooms.
And they had real heavy doors.
And in those cells were little nuns.
And when I went up to the first one, near the top of the door, there's a little
place about this long.
It's about that wide.
It has iron bars going across there.
And I looked right into the face of a little nun that I knew, one that I'd sit
across the table from, one that I'd prayed with in the chapel.
I knew that girl.
And here she is.
And they had chains and lock chains around either of her wrists and around her
waistline.
And I said, when did you have something to eat last?
And no answer.
How long have you been here?
No answer.
I went down to the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth, and the stench was
getting so bad I couldn't stand it.
And you know those little girls would not talk.
Why?
I lived in the convent, you know, a long time.
And every... I don't care if I was two miles under the convent.
Way back there, we were working back there.
And we'd whisper.
The next day I'd have to suffer because the convents are wired.
And the mother superior can hear every voice, every whisper.
And then somebody tells.
And you're in some serious trouble.
And those nuns have been there long enough.
What have they done?
I don't know.
But those nuns are supposed to have cracked up mentally.
And so they have to put them in those chains.
And when they die, they can't fall down to the floor.
They're just dropping those chains in slumps.
When they go in there, they don't give them any more food.
No more water.
That's a slow death.
And so as I saw all of that, I became so sick from the terrible stench because many
of them are already dead.
And I don't know how long they've been dead.
I came out of there and walked back up to this room where the mother superior was.
And she was lying there sleeping.
And I watched her carefully.
And she slept until the next day.
Long, long hours and didn't wake.
And when she did, she said, I've had a long sleep.
And I said, yes.
They let me take care of her for three days.
And you know the third day?
I don't know.
You say, did she ever find out she was down there?
Well, not yet.
I hope she didn't while I was there.
But anyway, three days they put me out in the kitchen.
In other words, when we go to the kitchen, six of us go for a six week period.
And this particular time they put me out in the kitchen with five other little
nuns.
What am I there for?
I'm doing the kitchen work.
I'm going to do all the cooking that's done out there and take care of the work
in the kitchen.
And so when I went out of the kitchen, we have a long table back here.
And it's a work table.
And our vegetables will be prepared for the soup.
And that's what we were doing, all six of us.
And something happened.
Our kitchen is a very large room.
And a very long room.
Not as wide as it is long.
And over one end of it, you will find over here the stair steps leading about four of
them leading down.
Then there's a landing right there.
Over there is a big heavy outside door.
But here there's a landing.
Our garbage cans sit there.
And right here is a stairway, cement one, leading down one story under the gown.
Now I'm up on first floor in this kitchen.
All right, as I'm in there and we're there working, something happens.
Somebody touched a garbage can.
You know all my convent life.
We are taught never to break silence.
We don't dare to make noises in the convent.
We are punished for them.
And when something touched the garbage can, that's a noise.
And who in the world, six of us and we're all together, who's touching the garbage
can?
I wheeled around and they wheeled around and we saw a man.
And you know that man was picking up the full can, leaving an empty one.
I've never seen that before.
I've been in that convent for years.
And in the kitchen.
But I never saw anything like that happen.
I believe God had His hands on me.
With all my heart I believe it.
And you say, what happened?
Well, we turned around quickly because to us it's a mortal sin to look upon a man
other than a Roman Catholic priest.
And I mean we turned around quick and went to our work.
But you know, I thought, if that man comes back again to get another full can,
I'm going to give him a nose and I'm going to ask him if I can run out with him.
But I didn't do that.
But you know what I did?
When we run out of something in the kitchen, there's a pencil hanging up there
on a chain.
And bless your heart, I have to, or whoever it is who runs out,
you have to write it on a tab.
And of course, I stole a piece of paper off of a sack.
And I thought, I'll carry that little piece of paper in my skirt pocket.
And every time I can get a hold of that pencil, I'm going to write a word or two
on a note.
And that's what I did.
It took quite a while to do it.
But oh, I watched that garbage can.
Every time I could take the garbage down there, I did it.
And you know, when it was just about full.
And I thought the next evening, it'll be full when we put all the garbage
in it.
And so that afternoon I broke my crucifix and I laid it up on a shelf.
And I had a hard time doing it because they're watching me.
But I did it and I laid it up on a shelf.
And I did that to have a way to get back to that room, of course.
And so when our dinner work is over, our supper dishes, everybody has to go out
at the same time.
And we marched by the Mother Superior.
And you know, when I marched by, I stopped and said, please, may I speak to
you?
And I did.
And I said, Mother Superior, I broke my crucifix and I left it in the kitchen.
May I go for it?
And of course, no nun goes without her crucifix.
And she said, how did you break it?
I lied to her.
Everything she asked me, I lied to her.
You say, why did you lie?
She lies to us.
And we're all sinners, so we all lie.
And it doesn't make any difference in there.
And so we lied.
And I lied to her.
And then finally she said, you go get the crucifix and come right back.
And that's all I wanted anyway.
I have to have a reason.
You can't go back to the kitchen after you've left it.
And so I didn't go for the crucifix, but she thought I did.
And I run for this tin can.
Why?
That night when I put my garbage in there, I put a note right on top of that garbage
and left the lid off, which I was not supposed to do.
And you know, I said on the note to the garbage man, if you get this, won't you
please help me out?
Won't you do something to help the little nun down?
I told him about those 19 cells down there and those 19 nuns in him.
I told him about some of the babies that have been killed.
I told him some other little nuns that are locked up in the dungeons and they're
bound with chains.
I told him a plenty.
And I said, won't you help us?
And if you will, please leave a note under the empty can.
That's what I went back for.
And when I lifted up the can and found a note, you don't know how I felt.
I froze to the floor.
I was so scared I didn't know what to do.
I picked that piece of paper up and I read.
And this is what that man said.
I'm leaving that door unlocked.
And I'll leave the big iron gate unlocked.
You come out.
Oh, let me tell you, that's almost more than you dare.
Well, I never dreamed I'd get out of a convent.
I never thought of ever getting out.
I wanted out.
But you say, oh yes, when I could collect myself.
I reached over and turned the knob and you know it was stood unopened.
I walked out of that convent and I slammed it through.
I was sure the lock was on it.
And I got out to the big iron gate.
But oh, he had me trapped.
That iron gate was just as locked as it was ever locked.
You don't know what he'd done for me to stand there looking at the iron gate.
I'm locked out of the convent.
I have no right out there.
You can't imagine.
I don't know if I grew old right there.
I don't know.
I know I suffered enough because I'm scared half to death.
And what will I do if I go back and pound on that door?
What will they do with me?
And oh, the fear that grips your heart.
And you say, what did you do?
I didn't have any shoes and stockings on.
I'd wore those out years ago.
When I think of the Roman Catholic Church being the richest church in the world and
they let those little nuns go winter and summer without any shoes and without any
hose, living in crucial poverty, I wonder how they can do it.
Hungry as we are.
Your priests are all nice and fat.
The little nuns are so hungry.
I wonder how they do it sometimes.
You say, what did you do Charlotte?
Well, I'll tell you, I just took a hold of that big old iron gate and I tried to
climb it.
That's all there was for me to do.
And up about a foot and a half from the top is a ledge about six inches wide.
I thought if I could get high enough to get my knee on the ledge, I'm safe.
And I did.
I got one knee on the ledge, but this time I don't have any strength left either.
And you know, I thought, what'll I do?
I'll put one foot over, then I'll get the other over.
Then I realized, you know, I have three skirts on.
My skirts are gathered on a belt and they're clear down to my ankles.
My veil, of course, is down to my knees in front and that lung in the back.
How will I ever get over those sharp points?
And I thought, I can't go down, I don't have strength enough, so I'll have
to jump.
And if I jump, I'll break every bone because I was a broken body, of course.
And you know, I thought, what'll I do?
Well, I pulled all my clothing up around my body and held them with one hand.
And then I thought, I'll have to jump.
And you know, they have a buzzer in the convent.
And when a little nun tries to escape and they catch her, they put a buzzer on.
And oh, if the priest tells you they don't come to the convent, I wish you could see
the priest then.
You'll find a good many of them there.
And they immediately are after that nun.
They don't want her out.
If she comes out of that convent, she's going to give a testimony someday.
And it'll pull the cloak off of the convent.
Not assure you they don't intend for us to get out.
And so as I let loose of that top of that gate and I made that jump, I just didn't
make it.
My clothing caught on top of those points and I hung there, but I let loose.
And I often say, you know, I don't know what I look like.
I don't know, I didn't know I had gray hair.
But I've often said, maybe my hair turned gray there.
Maybe you'll never know what I suffered hanging on top of that gate, knowing that
buzzer can go on any minute.
And then what would they do to me?
I was scared.
So I thought I tried to wiggle my body and to foreswing it.
If I can get back far enough to grab the gate with one hand, maybe I can help
myself.
And I did.
And then with the other hand, I tried to pry the snappers loose on my skirt.
And that let me fall between them.
Do you know what happened to me?
I hit the ground.
I was out.
I was unconscious for a while.
I don't know how long, though we have no way to tell.
But when I came to, I had a shoulder broken and my arm was broken right in
here.
The place, the bone had snapped right through my place because I didn't have any
meat on me.
And I thought, what'll I do?
And I realized I'm on the outside.
And where am I going?
Where do you think you'd go?
I'm not in the United States.
I'm in another country.
And I don't know a thing about that country.
When they took me over there, I was heavily veiled.
And they took me from that particular park or train to the convey.
I was heavily veiled.
I couldn't see anything.
And I don't know where I am.
I don't know where to go.
I don't know if I have any people.
I don't know if I know anybody in the world.
And I'm a pauper.
I don't have any money.
And I'm hungry.
And my body's broken.
And I'm hurt now.
Where do you think you'd go?
I tell you it's something to think about.
I just started to wave it.
Get away from the convey.
And I did.
And I started moving away.
And all the leaves were falling.
And they made so much noise.
And I was scared.
And I kept on moving.
And finally dark overtook me.
Or rather, there's no twilight in that part of the country.
It just drops off into darkness.
And, you know, I saw this little building beside the road.
And I thought I'll crawl in it.
It was a doghouse or maybe a chicken coop or something.
But it's dirty.
And I crawled in there because I was shaking and scared.
And I laid in there for a little while to get a hold of myself.
And then I thought I'll have to travel.
It's dark.
It's safer for me.
So I got out to travel that night.
And the next day I hid behind pieces of board and tin that was piled up against an
old building.
And all day long imagined hiding in that hot place.
And hungry as I was with broken bones, do you realize what it was all about?
No, you'll never know.
But I do.
And then, you know, when night came again, I have to go because I'm going to get away
from the convey.
And I'm afraid to rap on somebody's door.
Remember, I'm scared.
I don't know, I might rap on a Roman Catholic's door.
They will immediately notify the priest and I'll be taken back to the convent.
And I'd rather they kill me than take me back.
And so I didn't.
But I went on and on and on.
And then the next night, or the next day, I hid out in an old straw sack.
And then that afternoon on the third day, I was scared then.
Because this armor was swollen as tight as you could spell.
Well, I was having to carry it in the other hand.
And all my fingers began to turn blue and I realized gangrene poisoning setting in.
And you know, nobody should do anything for you.
And I realized I'm going to die just like a rat beside the road.
That's a terrible feeling.
And I thought, what'll I do?
I'll just get out and go a little sooner.
Maybe I'll have to rap on somebody's door.
And that's what I did.
And I remember as I walked, I don't know how far, I saw this lamp.
It was an old-fashioned lamp burning.
Very poor house, no paint on it.
And I knew those were poor people.
So I walked up to the screen door and I rapped on it.
And a tall man came to the door.
He was rather old.
And I said, please, may I have a drink of water?
And you know, that old man didn't answer me.
But he walked back in the house and called his wife.
And God bless her heart, she's like most old-fashioned mothers.
She came to the door and she didn't say, who are you and what do you want?
Thank God, there are a lot of good people in this world.
That dear little woman just pushed that door open and said, won't you come in and
sit down?
Do you know that's the most beautiful music I've ever heard in my life?
I should say I'll come in and sit down.
And she pulled out a chair.
And I sat down on it, relaxed and sat down.
And you know, the house was poor.
There was no rugs on the floor of any type.
A tablecloth, red checkered tablecloth on the table.
A little old stove over there in the corner and there was a fire in it.
And that woman put some milk in a pan and heated and brought it over to me.
And you know, I'm hungry.
I don't have any manners.
I forgot how to act.
I forgot a lot of things in 22 years.
And I grabbed that glass of milk before she ever set it down and I gobbled it
down.
I'm so hungry.
I felt like I'm going stark mad.
And I took it instantly and the moment it touched my stomach, of course I couldn't
retain it.
I lost it.
I haven't had any whole milk in 22 years.
You could understand why I couldn't take it.
And she knew what to do.
She went out in the kitchen and she heated some water.
Or rather, over to the stove and heated some water.
And with her heart she put sugar in that water and brought it over to me.
And she sat down and gave it to me from a spoon.
I took every bit of it.
Oh, it was good.
It was nourishing.
And then the daddy walked over by me and he said, Now tell us who you are and where
did you come from?
I began to cry.
I was scared then.
I said, I've run away from the convent and I'm not going back.
And he said, What happened to you?
And my hand was laying up on the table.
And I said, Well, I tried to get over the gate.
And I fell and I'm hurt.
And you know, he said, We'll have to call a doctor.
And bless your sweet life.
Then I really became hysterical.
I got up from the table.
I was going to run back outside and they wouldn't let me.
He said, Wait a minute.
We're not going to hurt you.
You're hurt.
You have to have help.
I said, I don't have any money and I don't have any people.
And I can't pay a doctor bill.
Of course, I was just... I was just in a terrible mess, if you want to know it.
And that man said to me, I'm going after a doctor.
He said, And he's not a Roman Catholic.
Neither am I.
That dear man didn't have a car, but he hitched up a horse and buggy.
And he drove nine miles to get a doctor.
The doctor came out in his car.
And when he got out to the place, he got there ahead of the man.
And when the doctor walked in and walked around me, he just kept walking around me.
He was swearing.
Maybe he didn't realize it was a terrible effect on me.
When he stopped and looked at me, of course he was mad.
He was mad.
Why was he mad?
He was mad because he was looking at something that was supposed to be a human
being.
And I didn't even look like a human being.
I was in such a horrible condition.
But finally he calmed down.
He came over to me and said, I'll have to take you to the hospital tonight.
Oh, I became hysterical.
I said, I don't want to go.
Please don't make me go.
And then he sat down carefully and took my hand.
And he began to say, I'm not going to hurt you.
You have to have help.
And I want to help you.
That doctor took me into the hospital that night.
And that's where I learned how much I weighed.
He weighed me, and I weighed exactly 89 pounds.
I weigh 178 right now.
And then, you know, they took me into surgery.
And, of course, they tried to get the swelling and the inflammation out of my
hand and arm, that they might do something for me.
It took about 12, 13 days.
And then, of course, they had us.
But this time it started to nip, and they had to all to break over again
and put me in a cast.
I did a lot of suffering.
Well, you know, one day a way was made for me to be released from the hospital.
Who did they release me to?
I begged to go out to those old people to stay with them, and they let me go.
Because they'd been good to me, and I trusted them.
And the doctor wanted to take me out to his home.
I was in that hospital three and a half months.
And they took me out there, and I stayed for a period of time.
And then one day, this same doctor, he wrote a letter, and you know what he
sent in that letter?
A letter, he sent a check.
He told the people to go and buy me a suitcase and get me some clothing.
He was coming for me on a certain day.
He had told me, I'm going to find your people for me.
You know, that doctor's a stranger to me.
But, oh, I thank God that he has men and women across this world.
And those men and women are not so selfish that they won't use some of the money that
God has allowed them to have to help that one that's less fortunate than they.
Here, they spent a lot of money on me.
I was in that hospital three and a half months.
And I mean, there was a lot of money spent on me, but he paid the bill.
How appreciated.
And you know that, dear doctor, oh, they took me, bought my clothing for
me, got my suitcase, and everything was ready.
And the day came when he come and, you know, that doctor took me to the
train.
And he put me on a train in care of somebody, of course.
He found my people for me.
I was on buses and trains and boats for a long time.
And one day, oh, after that, he had gotten my visa to get back into the United
States.
And I was always in charge of somebody because they wouldn't trust me to travel
alone because of having lived under the ground for long.
And one day, they called the name of the town where I was or where my mother and
daddy lived.
Don't you know I knew where mother and daddy lived?
And I got off of that train and run down to their home, five blocks from that
depot, just a very small town.
And when I rang the bell, my daddy come to the door and, you know, I looked at his
face.
I didn't know him.
And because I didn't know him, I said, do you know where my father lives?
And he said, who are you and what's your name?
And I said, my name.
And I didn't give him my church name.
I gave him my family name.
And that man looked at me and, of course, it was his name.
And he said, whokey, is this you?
My father didn't know me, of course.
It was my dad.
Now, dear old man opened the door then and invited me in.
And I said, dad, is mother alive?
Because I didn't know about her.
And he took me back in to see her.
And there she was.
Seven and a half years she'd laid there an invalid, a horrible, horrible invalid.
And, of course, she didn't know me and I didn't know her.
Well, you know, that very night I took violently sick and they put me back in
another hospital for another three months.
But my father paid all of those bills.
He reimbursed the doctor and paid the doctor in another country and paid the old
people.
He reimbursed them all.
All of that was wonderful.
Well, then, you know, one day after my body was strong enough since I'm here in
the United States, oh, it took a long time, several years.
I'm a nurse and I took the examination to nurse.
And do you know what God did?
He let a woman come in to that particular hospital.
It was a Roman Catholic hospital.
This woman was a Church of God minister.
She came in and I thought, how strange.
Just across the Mississippi River is two magnificent Protestant hospitals and she
lives in one of those cities.
Right there, three cities joined together.
And why in the world did she come over here to this Roman Catholic hospital?
Why, I believe God had his hand on it all the time.
You know that woman who came in and the doctor said, I want you to stash her case.
And I went into that room to prepare that woman for the operating table.
And I heard her praying.
And I want you to know, I became that woman's private nurse, her special nurse.
After she left the hospital, she went home and I became her special nurse in the
home.
And that woman asked me if I wouldn't go to church with her.
And you know, I lived in her home long enough to hear her pray.
I lived in that home long enough to read the Bible to her because I am her nurse
and I did what she told me to.
I'd never read a Bible before in all of my life and she'd have to find the scriptures
and then I'd read them to her.
And you know, as I read the word of God, God began to get a hold of me.
And finally she said, won't you go to church with me?
And you know, I went to church with that woman.
And I sat back there and heard the gospel for the first time in my life.
And you know, I'll tell you, I went through four nights.
And it was really beautiful.
I've never heard anything like this.
And all the time she was telling me about the plan of salvation and telling me about
God and that I needed God and I needed to be saved.
And of course, I was believing her.
Do you know what I'd do every night?
I'd go home from church with that woman.
I'd say, you go to bed but let me go to the basement.
I'd lay my Bible down on a chair and there I'd challenge God and I'd say,
God, did you hear what the preacher said?
Did you hear it, God?
And then I would tell God everything that I could remember the preacher said.
And I said, God, you heard every word, didn't you?
Now, if you're God and the Bible is the word of God, and God, you're real,
I want what those people have.
But if you're not God and the word of God is not your way, then God, please don't
give to me what those people have.
Let me tell you, I challenged God.
I put him to a test.
God's not going to give you anything that's not of God.
Don't you worry.
And every night I continued to do that four or five nights and I didn't eat
either.
I couldn't sleep and I'd lost my appetite and I was losing a lot of weight.
It was terrific.
But you know, one night I come back to church and out of a clear blue sky,
right in the middle of that man's service, I just got out of my seat.
And with both hands up in the air, I come running right straight down an
aisle like that.
And I saw him at that altar and I cried out, my God, forgive me for all my sins.
I was a sinner.
I mean, God met me there.
Praise His wonderful name.
There's a pool of water on that floor.
I was sorry for everything that I did in the convent.
I stole potato peelings.
I stole bread.
I told lies.
I called the mother's superior names under my breath.
And I want you to know God met me down there and He forgave me of every sin there
was in my life.
And how I thank and praise Him for it.
Praise His wonderful name.
God's been very good to me.
Very good to me.
A few nights previous to that, I went back to church.
God filled me with the baptism of the Holy Ghost.
May I say to you, God means more to me than all the material wealth you have in
this city.
I'd rather have Jesus than anything you might have because I found Him to be the
best friend I've ever known.
I can tell Him anything I want to tell Him and He won't call you up and tell you what
I told Him.
I can sit at His feet and tell Him every day of my life, Jesus, I love you.
Jesus, I love you.
And every secret of my heart, I can pour out to Him and I don't worry about Him
calling you up and telling you what I told Him.
He's the best friend you ever had.
He's able to save you.
He's able to deliver you.
He's able to loose you from the things of this world, set you free to know Him.
Praise His name.
I have a wonderful God.
I love Him supremely.
I'd rather have Jesus than anything that you might have.
God is real in my life.
Really wonderful.
How God delivered me out of the convicts.
Pray for me.
I need much prayer.
I'll be going places where it's predominantly Roman Catholic.
I'll have to suffer much.
But I'm willing to suffer for Jesus.
That I might tell someone about Him and give my testimonies that other dear little
girls might be spared from convicts.
So pray for me, won't you?
God bless you.
Well, what do you think?
I told you at the beginning it would be a very, very good thing.
You'll recall that we introduced in Jamaica the book Maria Monk, which was
once a band video.
We feel this tape is a perfect complement to the book.
We've also introduced another volume, The New Illustrated Great Controversy,
which is being sold right now in many, many bookstores across the island,
including Sanchez.
We'd urge you to get a copy as quickly as you can.
You probably received this tape without paying anything for it.
We'd like to let you know that you have our permission to duplicate this tape and
to distribute it as far and as wide as you choose.
Freely we have received, freely we give to you.
May God bless you.