Those who ended up in a monastery of the Good Shepherd lost themselves. That is what the six women who today spoke to the judge in the lawsuit against the monastic community of the Good Shepherd, in the court in Haarlem. They say they had to perform forced labor and demand compensation. The verdict will follow in May.
“The feeling of being locked up has always remained,” one of the women told the judge today. As a fourteen-year-old girl, she was sent to the nuns in Bloemendaal for six weeks. For observation, because she couldn’t stand up for herself. She ended up staying there for four and a half years. She told her husband and children only a few years ago.
Name and language taken away
Liesbeth Zegveld, the women’s lawyer, started her plea with a request to the judge to allow six women to briefly share their experiences. The Sisters of the Good Shepherd had made it known in advance that they did not want the women in court to talk about their experiences. According to Zegveld, it was significant that the Good Shepherd ‘tried to take away their name and their language’.
Joke de Smit was one of the speakers. She told the court about her time in the convent in Bloemendaal, and later in Zoeterwoude. About how she once spent fourteen days in solitary confinement, and had to work every day without ever getting paid for it. “I’m not afraid of hell, because I’ve already been in it.”
Parties and excursions
The monastic community, which is defended by lawyer Pieter Nabben, says the case is time-barred and that they are not legally liable. Nabben argued in court that the sisters taught the girls to stand on their own two feet. The conditions in the monastery were also less harrowing than the women claim: parties and excursions were said to have been organized.
The women in the room sigh at Nabben’s plea. They whisper to each other, often go to the toilet. Half an hour earlier, one of the women had pleaded in court, crying. “I needed help going in, but I needed a lot more help coming out.” In Bloemendaal she had ‘thoroughly unlearned to stand up for herself, because you never knew whether you would be punished or the group’.
“You never knew if you would be punished or the group”
According to Zegveld, the monastery has taken away the self-reliance of the women. “They have been placed outside society and softened so that they were no longer able to resist themselves.”
Reconciliation
In court, Nabben argued that the nuns have always had the best interests of the girls, who were often placed in the convent by the juvenile judge. The nuns say they prepared the girls for a better life. “The question is what would have become of the girls if they had not been taken care of.” According to the lawyers of the Catholic order, the case should therefore not be judged with glasses from the 21e century.
The lawyers finally said that the sisters had not seen the lawsuit coming. Nabben emphasized that the sisters consider a procedure like this ‘not beneficial’. The representatives of the denomination would like to sit down with the women to determine together how the women can be recognized. “There is no statute of limitations for the path of reconciliation,” said Nabben.
“I’m not afraid of hell, because I’ve already been in it”
The path of reconciliation has already been walked by a number of other women. They are talking to the representatives of the denomination. Sister Patricia Diet, for example, offered a written apology for the abuses in 2020, and a monument was unveiled in December 2022 at the former monastery in Velp. Sister Lucie Kabaze also apologized there.
The judge submitted the proposal for a ‘transformative conversation’ to Zegveld, as an alternative to a legal verdict. Together with the women she left for the corridor, where they discussed the options in a circle. Back in court it became clear that the women want a verdict. The women did not get the impression that the sister of the Good Shepherd acknowledged the facts.