Say Sorry

Conceived out of wedlock, Ann was just two months old when placed in the care of a Catholic orphanage. From the beginning, she was taught her mother was sinful and that she would be too unless the devil was beaten from her soul. She was sexually abused from an early age and forced to work long hours on the orphanage farm.

At night, three or four nuns performed the grisly ritual of stripping Ann naked, tying her to the four posts of a bed and savagely attacking her with belts, hoops and sticks.

It would take more than sadistic nuns to quell Ann's irrepressible spirit, however, and in the course of her virtual enslavement, she acquired the qualities of generosity, kindness and resilience.

'Say Sorry' documents the 19 years of abuse inflicted on Ann and the ongoing consequences. It is also the story of her battle to get authorities within the Catholic Church to accept responsibility for the past institutionalised abuse of young people in its care, and to admit - unconditionally - that there was wrong doing.

The draw-dropping account ends with an expose on sexual abuse by Father Tom Doyle, JDC, DADC, a former Canon lawyer for the Vatican Embassy in Washington. Of Ann's harrowing experience at the hands of Catholic clergy, he says it's possibly the most brutal he's ever encountered.