Overcoming silence: a renewed effort to listen to the voices of religious sisters

Efforts to engage with the rarely heard stories of religious sisters have received a renewed pledge of support to further inform Australia’s understanding of women’s experiences in the Church.

With generous backing from the Ian and Shirley Norman Foundation, celebrated sociologist Dr Kathleen McPhillips will lead a project collating the experiences of gendered violence and abuse experienced by current and former nuns and religious sisters – women who have made a formal commitment to the church – across the globe.

More than 650,000 religious sisters work alongside communities experiencing disadvantage and injustice, contributing cultural, social and financial resources and shaping education, healthcare and social services globally.

The work will create new opportunities for recognition, healing, safeguarding and institutional reform.

“As a result of the International Survey of Catholic Women, we received a huge number of qualitative responses from self-identified religious sisters,” Dr McPhillips said.

“We read more than 800 responses from these women relaying their experiences of harm and abuse.

“Currently in Australia, this cohort of survivors is under recognised and there are very few narratives or accounts of gendered violence.”

The project, Overcoming Silence: Working with Impacted Communities of Church-Based Sexual Abuse, aims to build the first substantial Australian evidence base of the experiences of religious sisters affected by sexual and gendered violence.

"Religious sisters have made extraordinary contributions to Australian society, yet many have carried experiences of harm in silence," Dr McPhillips said.

"For too long, these voices have remained unheard. This research is about creating safe, trauma-informed opportunities for women to share their stories, while generating the evidence needed to support meaningful institutional change."

Building on previous research collaborations with German colleagues, this project has been jointly developed with Dr Tracy McEwan and will undertake in-depth interviews with current and former religious sisters, develop an anonymous international survey, and conduct an extensive review of Australian records, inquiries, memoirs and archival materials.

The efforts will be further supported by Dr McPhillips’ existing work with survivors of church-based abuse through the Hunter Outreach Project, which has successfully demonstrated the value of survivors being offered safe, trauma-informed pathways to share their experiences.

Founder and Chair of the Ian and Shirley Norman Foundation, Tracy Norman, said the Foundation was incredibly proud to be supporting such meaningful and impactful research.

“The Ian and Shirley Norman Foundation strives to fill gaps in overlooked issues, and this project absolutely meets that criteria,” she said.

“It takes courage and determination to look at such a difficult topic that very much needs to see the light of day. Congratulations to both Kath and her team, and to the University of Newcastle for taking such a courageous step to pursue the things that are this important.”

The research follows growing international recognition of abuse experienced by Catholic women and responds to increasing calls for greater accountability and safeguarding within religious institutions.

For more detail on the Overcoming Silence project, visit: https://www.newcastle.edu.au/research/centre/csov/networks/cwr

Religious sisters can participate in the anonymous survey here: https://redcap.link/CWRS

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