I’ve previously mentioned how little boys who had wet their bed (accidentally urinated while asleep) were punished, humiliated and subjected to ridicule by being forced to wear their urine-soaked pajama bottoms tied around their neck for an entire day. Despite this being so obvious to every nun as well as the Commandant and Coach Bill (since we all wore the same uniform) this cruel behavior continued unabated while I was there. As bad as this was, there was another way that bedwetters were humiliated by the Benedictine sisters.
I have just finished reading a book by a Linton Hall alumnus who attended during the mid-1950s, in which he mentions that when he was eight years old and in the third grade, one of his classmates was made to parade back and forth on the cement walkway outside the building while wearing a little girl’s party dress, in full view of the other boys looking out the dormitory window, as punishment for having wet the bed. The sisters had told the boy that if he was going to be behave like a sissy, he was going to have to dress like one too.
He goes on to say that the boy “was the picture of utter humiliation as he paced the cement, his head hung and shoulders hunched in an attempt to hide his face … I could see that the ordeal was devastating for him …” (Page 70 of his book)
To get a true picture of how many sisters were involved in this disgusting behavior towards little boys, keep in mind that these sisters had taken vows of adhering to the monastic life, which includes common ownership of all property, so that no individual nun should have had any of her own money to buy a little girl’s party dress, and thus the decision to buy that little dress, and the purpose to which it would be used, would have been a community decision approved at the highest level, either by the school principal or prioress. (Lucky for them, I don’t know their names.
I don’t know when or why Linton Hall Military School stopped humiliating bedwetters by making them wear a dress, but it would not be unreasonable to speculate that if a parent had complained, the nuns might have stopped doing that and come up with another way to humiliate bedwetters by making them wear their urine-soaked pajama pants around their neck all day, as they did while I was there, when the principal was Sister Doris Nolte (then known as Sister Mary David, OSB) and the prioress was Sister Ernestine Johann. (Unfortunately for them, I do know their names.)
As it says in Luke 12:2-3, “Nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered … and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be proclaimed from the housetops.” (NSRV)
I read this book because it is an autobiographical account of a LHMS alumnus, but this is all he had to say about Linton Hall.
The book’s main theme is about something else.
When he mentions the above incident, he says that he “felt both sympathy and envy” for that boy and “would have given anything to be in his place” as he was envious of his sister who “not only was allowed to live at home, but she got to wear pretty clothes.” (pages 69-70.)
He cites this as an early example of feeling uncomfortable being a boy, which eventually led him to undergo sex change surgery when he was 26 years old. (page 78)
Living as a woman did not magically change his life as he had expected, and over the next few years attempted suicide 36 times, with the final (unsuccessful) attempt in 1978, at age 33. (page 239)
He eventually found Jesus through various Christian churches, and in late 1980, when almost 36 years old, had his silicone breast implants surgically removed and resumed living as a man and using his birth name. (page 283) Presumably his body below the belt remained as it was as a result of the 1971 operation.
He died in 2019 at age 74 and was buried in Northern Virginia.
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In order to cite my source while respecting the privacy of any surviving relatives of this alumnus, I will not mention his name. The title of the book is The Agony of Deception, published in 1983.
I ask readers not to mention his name in your comments.
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Read more in my two books: Linton Hall Military School Memories: One Cadet's Memoir" and "Linton Hall Military School Memories Volume 2."
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