There Is No Sexual Abuse Policy in the Church: Flavia Agnes

The Hindu
January 13, 2014

http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Mangalore/there-is-no-sexual-abuse-policy-in-the-church-flavia-agnes/article5572923.ece

Teachers and officials participating in the centenary celebration of St. Agnes Convent in Mangalore on Sunday.

She was addressing a gathering at the centenary celebrations of St. Agnes Convent, Bendore.

Students and staff of St. Agnes Convent, Bendore, celebrated the centenary of its foundation on Sunday with a public function.

Mother Aloysia, the second Superior General of the Apostolic Carmel, searched for five years various sites between Kankanady and Kadri, including a plot of ‘Hulli Mulli’, an arid area and the surrounding plots which were inhabited by 16 proprietors in clustered huts and cottages on more than 12 acres of land, which were bought on June 29, 1913.

On February 8, 1914, Paul Perini, the then Bishop of Mangalore, laid the foundation of St. Agnes Convent to educate girls. The next day, the Secondary English Medium School started running Class 1 and 2 with 80 pupils.

A week later, an elementary school with 46 pupils began. Since then, the campus has grown with St. Agnes College (the first college in India by an Indian private management) in 1914, and was followed by St Agnes Special School for the mentally challenged in 1970.

The convent started in 1914 for the education of girls in the suburban area around Kadri and Kankanady.

While St. Ann’s School, Bolar, started by the Sister of the Apostolic Carmel was founded by Mother Veronica, an Englishwoman, in 1870, St. Mary’s School, Falnir, started to accommodate the increasing number of students and Victoria Caste, School, Dongerkery, Kodialbail, (later shifted to Ladyhill), the release said.

Meanwhile, addressing a gathering at the concluding function of centenary celebrations Flavia Agnes, a Mumbai-based activist and an advocate, said on Sunday that a link had to evolve between spirituality and modern material reality. She said education had to be in “the right direction”.

She said rapes were committed not only by ordinary people but judges and editors. There was no such thing as a sexual abuse policy in the Church, Supreme Court or in Tehelka, she said.