Awful Disclosures

Maria Monk (1816-1839) was a Canadian woman who claimed to have been a nun who had been sexually exploited in her convent. She, or ghost writers who used her as their puppet, wrote a sensational book about these allegations. Maria Monk's book Awful Disclosures was published in 1836. In it, she claimed that nuns of the Sisters of Charity of a Montreal convent of the Hôtel-Dieu were forced to have sex with the priests in the seminary next door. The priests supposedly entered the convent through a secret tunnel. If the sexual union produced a baby, it was baptized and then strangled and dumped into a lime pit in the basement. Uncooperative nuns disappeared. Historians are unanimous in their agreement that the whole account was false. The book caused a public outcry. Protestants in Montreal, Quebec, demanded an investigation, and the local bishop organized one. Inquiry found no evidence to support the claims, though many American Protestants refused to accept the conclusion and accused the bishop of dishonesty.