In the sweltering summer of 1843, three men vanished from the slave markets of New Orleans, only to reappear in the most unlikely location behind the locked gates of Sacred Heart Orphanage, where two nuns ran an institution dedicated to the care of abandoned children.

What these holy women did with those men under the blind eye of their superior, Bishop Edmund Walsh, would remain hidden for 37 years until a deathbed confession forced the church to confront a scandal so profane that it threatened to shatter Catholic credibility throughout Louisiana.

The men were never truly enslaved to the orphanage.

They were never formally registered.

And what transpired within those sacred walls makes clear that corruption recognizes no sanctuary.

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Now, let us enter the shadowed halls of Sacred Heart Orphanage.

The summer of 1843 found New Orleans at the height of its antibbellum power.

The city’s population had surpassed 100,000 souls, making it the third largest city in the nation.

Its port handled more trade than any save New York, with ships from across the world docking along the Mississippi to unload goods and purchase cotton, sugar, and human cargo.

The city’s unique character, a blend of French, Spanish, and American influences, created a social landscape unlike anywhere else in the South.

And within this landscape, the Catholic Church wielded enormous influence.

The church’s power in New Orleans extended far beyond spiritual matters.

Catholic institutions ran hospitals, schools, and orphanages throughout the city.

They received substantial donations from wealthy families seeking salvation through charity.

They held property worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and they operated with minimal oversight from civil authorities who generally deferred to church governance in matters involving Catholic institutions.

Sacred Heart Orphanage stood on Rampart Street, a three-story building of weathered brick that housed between 40 and 60 children at any given time.

Founded in 1831 with money donated by the Bowmont family, one of Louisiana’s oldest and wealthiest clans, the orphanage served children of all races, though in practice they were segregated within the building.

White children occupied the upper floors, while children of color lived in basement dormitories.

The institution was run by Sister Josephine Reed and Sister Adelaide Perry, both members of the Sisters of Charity Order.

Sister Josephine, at 41 years old, had come to New Orleans from Boston in 1833, drawn by what she described as a calling to serve the city’s most vulnerable.

She was tall and thin, with sharp features and pale blue eyes that seemed to look through rather than at people.

Those who knew her described her as severe but competent, managing the orphanage with ruthless efficiency.

Sister Adelaide, six years younger, had been born in New Orleans to a prominent Creole family.

Her entry into religious life had been considered unusual, as she had been engaged to be married at 19 before abruptly breaking the engagement and entering the convent.

She was shorter than Sister Josephine, with darker coloring and a manner that observers found more approachable, though no less determined.

The two women had formed a partnership that ran Sacred Heart with remarkable autonomy.

They reported to Bishop Edmund Walsh, whose dascese encompassed all of Louisiana, but in practice received little direct supervision.

The bishop visited perhaps twice a year, reviewed financial records that Sister Josephine meticulously maintained, and generally approved of the orphanage’s operation.

As far as he could tell, the institution served its purpose admirably, housing children who would otherwise starve on the streets and preparing them for lives as domestic servants or laborers.

What the bishop chose not to notice, what he actively avoided seeing, was the peculiar arrangement regarding the orphanages male workers.

Most orphanages of the era employed enslaved people for heavy labor, cooking, and maintenance.

This was standard practice, raising no eyebrows.

But Sacred Hearts arrangement differed in subtle ways that would only become apparent upon close examination.

The orphanage officially owned no enslaved people.

This fact appeared in its financial records, which showed no expenses for slave purchases or maintenance.

Yet three men lived on the property, slept in a small building behind the main structure, and performed all manner of labor for the institution.

Their names were Silas Newton, Gabriel Dawson, and Moses Gardner, and their presence at Sacred Heart was arranged through methods that existed outside normal legal channels.

Silas Newton, at 34 years old, was the oldest of the three.

He had been purchased in June of 1843 at a private sale arranged by Sister Josephine through an intermediary, a free man of color named Felix Miles, who operated a boarding house on Doofine Street and occasionally facilitated discrete transactions for white clients.

The purchase price of $800 was paid from orphanage funds listed as maintenance expenses for roof repairs that were never actually performed.

But the sale was never officially recorded with the city recorder’s office, and Silas was never formally registered as property of Sacred Heart Orphanage.

Instead, he simply appeared one morning, moved into the outbuilding behind the main structure, and began working.

He stood 5 ft and 11 in tall with broad shoulders and strong hands that made him ideal for the heavy work required in maintaining a three-story building housing dozens of children.

His skin was dark, his features strong, and his bearings suggested someone who had received better treatment than field workers, though his life had been far from easy.

He had been born on a tobacco plantation in Hanover County, Virginia in 1809, the son of an enslaved woman named Celia, who worked in the main house.

His father’s identity was never confirmed, though whispers among the enslaved community suggested it was the plantation owner’s younger brother.

Silas had been trained as a carpenter and general maintenance worker.

Skills that made him valuable in urban settings where such expertise commanded premium prices.

He could repair furniture, fix broken windows, patch roofs, and handle the hundred small crises that arose in any large building.

These skills had kept him in relatively privileged positions throughout his life.

Working for owners who valued his abilities enough to provide adequate food and avoid the harshest punishments.

He had been sold away from Virginia in 1838 when the plantation changed hands following his owner’s death.

The new owner, consolidating properties and eliminating what he considered unnecessary expenses, had sold several enslaved people, including Silas, to a trader who brought them to New Orleans.

Silas had ended up as property of a merchant named Thomas Gates, who operated a dry goods store on Royal Street.

Gates had treated Silas reasonably well, employing him to maintain the store building and the attached residence, where Gates lived with his wife and three children.

Silas had his own room above the store, received adequate meals, and was rarely subjected to physical punishment.

For an enslaved person in New Orleans, the position was relatively fortunate, but Gates had fallen into debt in 1842 due to bad investments in shipping ventures.

By spring of 1843, he faced bankruptcy and needed to liquidate assets quickly and quietly to satisfy creditors before formal proceedings began.

The private sale arranged by Felix Miles allowed Gates to receive cash for Silas without the transaction appearing in public auction records that creditors might review.

Sister Josephine, seeking a skilled worker for the orphanage, paid slightly below market value, but provided immediate cash that Gates desperately needed.

The arrangement benefited both parties while leaving Silas in legal limbo.

Neither properly registered nor documented, Gabriel Dawson arrived in July of 1843 through similar means.

At 28 years old, he was lighter skinned than Silas.

The product of a union between an enslaved woman and her owner.

He could read and write, unusual for enslaved people in Louisiana, where education of slaves had been illegal since 1830.

This literacy made him valuable for tasks requiring recordkeeping, though officially he was employed as a groundskeeper.

The circumstances of Gabriel’s acquisition were even murkier than Silas’s.

He had belonged to a family that was relocating to Texas and needed to liquidate assets quickly.

Sister Adelaide had arranged the purchase through her family connections, paying $700 from a donation earmarked for building improvements.

Like Silas, Gabriel’s sale was never officially recorded, and he existed at Sacred Heart in a legal gray area, neither clearly enslaved nor free.

Moses Gardner completed the trio in August.

At 26, he was the youngest and the most physically striking, standing over 6t tall with features that several observers would later describe in testimony as remarkably handsome.

His lighter complexion suggested mixed ancestry, though his history provided no clear answers about his parentage.

He had been trained as a carpenter and blacksmith by a German immigrant craftsman in Mobile, who had purchased him specifically for his quick mind and steady hands.

These dual skills made him exceptionally valuable in a society where skilled tradesmen commanded high prices.

His purchase price of $900, the highest of the three men, reflected both his skills and his physical attributes.

The money came from funds donated specifically for purchasing new clothing and shoes for the orphanage children, a contribution from a wealthy widow who had died the previous year, and left instructions that her bequest be used solely for the children’s direct benefit.

Sister Josephine had redirected the entire sum without informing the woman’s executive or the other trustees of her estate.

The clothing was purchased using different funds, and the donation’s misappropriation was concealed through creative accounting that spread the false expenditures across multiple ledger categories.

Moses had been acquired from an estate sale following the sudden death of his previous owner, a cotton factor named Lewis Grant, who had died of yellow fever during the epidemic that swept through Mobile in the summer of 1843.

Grant’s widow, overwhelmed by debts her husband had concealed and desperate to settle accounts before relocating to her family in France, had authorized the rapid sale of all her husband’s property, including 11 enslaved people who had worked in Grant’s warehouse and residence.

The estate sale had been conducted hastily and somewhat chaotically with buyers negotiating privately rather than through public auction.

Sister Josephine’s intermediary, Felix Miles, had traveled to Mobile specifically for this sale.

After learning of it through his network of contacts in the slave trade, he had identified Moses as someone who would meet Sister Josephine’s specifications, someone young, skilled, physically impressive, and available for purchase through channels that would not create public documentation.

The negotiation had taken less than an hour.

Miles had offered $850, claiming he represented a buyer in Pensacola, who needed skilled workers for a ship building operation.

The widow, eager to conclude sales and Depart Mobile before Yellow Fever claimed more victims, had accepted with barely any haggling.

She had asked no questions about the buyer’s identity or location, had signed paperwork that Miles prepared himself, and had taken the cash gratefully.

Miles had then transported Moses to New Orleans on a riverboat, claiming during the journey that his new owner operated a furniture manufactury and needed craftsmen.

Moses, having no choice in the matter, and hoping that a manufactur might be better than plantation labor, had asked no questions.

He had arrived in New Orleans in late August and been delivered to Sacred Heart Orphanage.

Learning only then that his actual destination was a Catholic institution rather than a commercial operation, the three men were told they would be working at a Catholic orphanage, performing labor to maintain the facility and care for the children.

This arrangement seemed unremarkable on its surface.

Enslaved people worked at churches, schools, and charitable institutions throughout the South.

But what made Sacred Hearts arrangement different? What crossed boundaries that even that brutal era generally respected was what Sister Josephine and Sister Adelaide demanded of these men beyond their labor.

The pattern began within two weeks of Silus Newton’s arrival.

Sister Josephine had summoned him to her private office on the third floor, a room she used for administrative work and meetings with donors.

The office was sparssely furnished with a desk, several chairs, and a small bookshelf containing religious texts and ledgers.

A crucifix hung on one wall, and a window overlooked the orphanage grounds.

Sister Josephine had locked the door, an action that immediately struck Silas as odd.

She had then asked him to sit, which violated every protocol of their relationship.

Enslaved people did not sit in the presence of their owners unless performing specific tasks that required sitting.

The invitation was wrong outside the natural order that governed such interactions.

She had poured him water from a picture on her desk.

She had asked him questions about his life, his thoughts, his feelings about his circumstances.

Her manner was not kind exactly, but it was engaged in a way that made him deeply uncomfortable.

She was treating him as though he were a person rather than property, but not out of compassion.

There was calculation in her questions, assessment in her gaze.

Then she had made a request that shattered any remaining illusion about her intentions.

She ordered him to remove his shirt.

When he hesitated, she reminded him coldly that he belonged to Sacred Heart, that resistance was impossible, that punishment for disobedience would be severe.

She spoke not as a nun concerned with spiritual welfare, but as an owner asserting absolute authority over property.

What occurred in that room over the following hour was never recorded in any document Sister Josephine left behind.

But Silas would later testify when circumstances finally forced revelation that Sister Josephine had examined him like livestock, touching him in ways that violated every boundary between nun and enslaved man, between holy woman and human property.

She had asked him to perform acts that degraded both of them, though her position of absolute power meant degradation fell entirely on him.

When he left that office, Silas understood several things with terrible clarity.

He was not simply enslaved to perform labor.

He was owned for Sister Josephine’s personal use in ways that defied everything he understood about religious women.

Resistance was impossible because who would believe an enslaved man’s word against a nun? And this arrangement would continue because Sister Josephine’s authority within Sacred Heart was absolute within 3 weeks of Gabriel Dawson’s arrival.

Sister Adelaide summoned him to her quarters under the pretense of needing assistance moving trunks.

The trunks required no moving.

What Sister Adelaide wanted was the same thing Sister Josephine had claimed from Silas.

Access to a man’s body without consent, without witnesses, without any accountability.

Gabriel’s education made him more aware than most enslaved people of the profound wrongness of what was happening.

He understood that Catholic doctrine strictly forbade such conduct, that nuns took vows of chastity, that the entire foundation of their religious authority rested on adherence to those vows.

But he also understood that his knowledge meant nothing against Sister Adelaide’s power.

She had been more careful than Sister Josephine in her approach, framing her demands in language that almost suggested consent.

asking rather than ordering at first.

But the illusion of choice was exactly that, an illusion.

Gabriel was enslaved, owned by the institution she ran, subject to punishment that could include sale to plantations where conditions were far more brutal.

Her requests were orders dressed in gentler language, and they both knew it.

By September of 1843, all three men were being regularly summoned to private areas of the orphanage where Sister Josephine and Sister Adelaide exercised control that went far beyond the bounds of their religious vows or acceptable conduct, even within the dunest framework of slavery.

The two nuns had developed a systematic arrangement.

Tuesdays and Thursdays were Sister Josephine’s days, when she would summon one or more of the men to her office or to empty rooms on the third floor.

Wednesdays and Saturdays belonged to Sister Adelaide, who preferred using her private quarters or a storage room in the basement where interruption was unlikely.

The pattern was not random.

The nuns shared information about the men, discussing their attributes and characteristics in ways that treated them as objects for evaluation and comparison.

Sister Josephine preferred Silas and Moses, drawn to their physical strength and bearing.

Sister Adelaide favored Gabriel and Moses.

Appreciating Gabriel’s education and Moses’s striking appearance.

Moses Gardner found himself caught between both women’s attention, summoned by each of them multiple times per week.

His position was the most precarious because he could not afford to displease either woman.

Yet satisfying one often meant exhausting himself before being called by the other.

He existed in a state of constant tension, never knowing when a summons would come.

Unable to refuse, forbidden from speaking about what was happening, the orphanages daily operations continued normally despite this hidden corruption.

Children were fed, clothed, and educated in basic skills.

Donors continued supporting the institution, pleased by reports of successful placements and grateful children.

The city’s Catholic community viewed Sacred Heart as a model of Christian charity, and Bishop Edmund Walsh, on his infrequent visits, saw nothing a miss, except he did see.

He saw, but chose not to understand, the bishop’s first visit after all three men had been acquired came in October of 1843.

He arrived unannounced, a practice he employed occasionally to ensure institutions were maintaining proper standards.

He toured the facility, reviewed financial records, and spoke with Sister Josephine about the orphanage’s needs.

During this visit, he encountered all three men performing various tasks around the building.

He noticed that none were included in the official registry of enslaved people owned by Catholic institutions in his dascese.

When he inquired about this discrepancy, Sister Josephine explained that the men were hired workers compensated through modest wages and housing rather than owned outright.

This explanation was obviously false.

Hired free black laborers would have required documentation of their free status.

They would have needed permissions to work in the city.

They would have been paid wages that appeared in financial records.

None of these elements existed.

But Bishop Walsh accepted the explanation without pressing further.

Why did he accept such an obvious fabrication? The answer lies in the complicated relationship between Catholic institutions and slavery in Louisiana and in the bishop’s own priorities regarding church reputation.

The Catholic Church in Louisiana existed in a delicate position regarding slavery.

While the church officially condemned the slave trade and advocated for humane treatment of enslaved people, it also owned enslaved people itself.

Churches, convents, and institutions throughout the dascese held humans as property justified this through theological arguments about natural hierarchy and the responsibility of Christians to Christianize Africans.

Bishop Walsh appointed to the dascese in 1840 had inherited this contradiction and chosen to navigate it by avoiding direct confrontation with the institution.

He focused on spiritual matters on building churches and schools on expanding Catholic influence in a city where Protestantism was gaining ground.

Scandals involving Catholic institutions and enslaved people would damage the church’s reputation and credibility.

So when he encountered an arrangement at Sacred Heart that was clearly irregular, he chose to accept a flimsy explanation rather than investigate further.

Investigation might reveal problems he preferred not to know about.

It might force him to take action that would create scandal, better to maintain plausible ignorance, to trust that Sister Josephine and Sister Adelaide were managing the institution appropriately.

His second visit in December of 1843 presented him with more obvious warning signs.

One of the orphanages donors, a wealthy widow named Clarissa Lane, mentioned to the bishop that she had been surprised to see Sister Adelaide walking in the gardens with one of the male workers in what appeared to be familiar conversation.

The bishop had dismissed this observation, noting that Sister Adelaide had grown up in New Orleans and was comfortable with people of all classes, but the comment should have prompted inquiry.

Nuns did not walk in gardens having familiar conversations with enslaved men.

Such behavior violated numerous rules about propriety and separation.

Yet, Bishop Walsh chose not to investigate, chose to accept that Sister Adelaide was simply being pastoral in her interactions.

By spring of 1844, the systematic exploitation of the three men had become routine.

They were summoned several times per week, subjected to demands that violated both their humanity and the religious vows of the women making those demands.

They performed their regular labor during the day, maintained the building and grounds, and at night or during private hours were called to serve in ways that left them degraded and powerless.

The psychological impact on all three men was profound.

Silas developed a permanent weariness, his eyes always watching for the signal that he was being summoned.

Gabriel, whose education had given him hope that knowledge might provide some path to freedom, found that knowledge only made the horror more clear.

And Moses, desired by both women, lived in a state of exhausted dread.

They could not speak to each other about what was happening.

The nuns had forbidden it, threatening severe punishment if the men discussed their situations.

They could not flee because they were enslaved, subject to capture and brutal consequences if caught running.

They could not appeal to authorities because an enslaved person’s word meant nothing against white testimony, let alone the testimony of nuns.

The children in the orphanage sensed something wrong, but could not articulate what.

The older children noticed that the three men seemed afraid, that they would sometimes disappear for hours during the day, only to return looking exhausted.

Some children heard sounds from Sister Josephine’s office or Sister Adelaide’s quarters that they could not explain.

But children in orphanages learned not to ask questions, not to challenge adults, not to speak about things that might bring punishment.

The orphanages other workers, women who cooked and cleaned and cared for the youngest children, also noticed irregularities.

They saw the men being summoned, saw the locked doors, heard the whispered conversations between the two nuns about which man would be called when.

But these women were also vulnerable, employed at the orphanage with few alternatives, and they knew better than to question the nuns who controlled their livelihoods.

In May of 1844, a crisis nearly exposed the arrangement.

Moses Gardner collapsed while working in the garden, his body simply giving out after weeks of insufficient sleep and constant stress.

The orphanage’s physician, Dr.

Horus Peton, was summoned to examine him.

Dr.

Peton found Moses severely exhausted, undernourished despite adequate food being available, and showing signs of sustained physical stress.

The doctor, who had served as Sacred Hearts physician for 5 years, asked pointed questions about Moses’s work schedule and living conditions.

Sister Josephine had deflected these questions smoothly, explaining that Moses had been ill recently, and had insisted on continuing to work despite medical advice to rest.

The doctor accepted this explanation but recommended that Moses be given lighter duties for at least 2 weeks.

Sister Josephine agreed readily, then completely ignored the recommendation, Moses was back to full duties within 3 days.

Summoned to Sister Adelaide’s quarters within a week, Dr.

Peton, reviewing the situation years later, when truth finally emerged, would testify that he had suspected something was profoundly wrong, but had not pushed his inquiry further.

He had been unwilling to accuse nuns of impropriety based on suspicion.

He had trusted that religious women would not engage in conduct that violated their vows so flagrantly.

His trust, he later admitted with obvious anguish, had been profoundly misplaced.

The pattern continued through 1844 and into 1845.

Bishop Walsh made three visits during this period, each time encountering evidence that something was irregular, but choosing not to investigate.

During one visit in August of 1844, he arrived late in the evening and heard sounds from the third floor that seemed inconsistent with an orphanage’s evening activities.

He did not investigate, did not inquire, simply noted it mentally, and moved on.

By 1845, the arrangement had become so routine that Sister Josephine and Sister Adelaide had grown careless.

They summoned the men more frequently, sometimes in daytime hours when discovery was more likely.

They spoke more openly with each other about the men.

Their conversations sometimes overheard by children or workers who could not fully understand what was being discussed, but recognized wrongness in the tone.

The first real crack in the concealment came from an unexpected source.

A girl named Hope Randall, 14 years old and residing in the orphanage since her mother’s death three years earlier, had been assigned cleaning duties on the third floor.

One afternoon in June of 1845, she heard sounds from Sister Josephine’s office that disturbed her profoundly.

Hope was not naive.

Orphanages house children from desperate circumstances, and she had seen and heard things that robbed children of innocence early, but what she heard from that locked office shocked her enough that she mentioned it to another girl, Phoebe Austin, who was 15 and had been in the orphanage for 5 years.

Phoebe told Hope to forget what she had heard, to never speak of it again, to pretend it had not happened.

This advice came from experience and fear.

Phoebe had seen children punished for asking questions or making accusations.

She had learned that survival in an orphanage meant accepting what adults did and staying silent, but Hope could not forget.

The sounds haunted her, and when she saw Silus Newton the next day, saw the exhaustion in his face, and the defeated set of his shoulders, she began to understand that what she had heard was not isolated, that something sustained and terrible was happening.

Hope did something remarkably brave and remarkably dangerous.

She wrote a letter to her aunt who lived in Baton Rouge describing what she had heard and asking if it was normal for nuns to lock themselves in offices with male workers.

The letter was carefully worded, asking questions rather than making accusations, but the implications were clear enough.

Her aunt, Amelia Douglas, received the letter in late June.

Amelia was a widow of moderate means, devout in her Catholicism, and genuinely fond of her niece despite being unable to house her.

The letter’s contents disturbed her greatly.

But she faced a dilemma.

If she took the letter to civil authorities, she would be accusing nuns of serious misconduct based on a child’s observations.

If she ignored it, she would be failing to protect her niece.

Amelia chose a middle course.

She traveled to New Orleans and arranged a meeting with Bishop Walsh, presenting the letter and expressing her concerns.

She was careful not to accuse directly, instead framing her visit as seeking reassurance that everything at Sacred Heart was proper.

Bishop Walsh read the letter with growing discomfort.

The girl’s description, though vague, suggested exactly the kind of impropriy he had been avoiding confronting for nearly 2 years.

He could no longer maintain plausible ignorance.

Not when a concerned relative was sitting in his office holding physical evidence of potential scandal.

He assured Amelia Douglas that he would investigate personally and thoroughly.

He promised that if any impropriy was occurring, it would be ended immediately and those responsible would face consequences.

Amelia left the meeting reassured, trusting that the bishop would handle the matter appropriately.

Bishop Walsh did investigate, but not in the way Amelia Douglas would have hoped.

He did not arrive unannounced at Sacred Heart.

He did not interview the three men privately.

He did not speak with Hope Randall directly.

Instead, he sent a letter to Sister Josephine requesting a meeting at his residence to discuss orphanage operations and recent concerns raised by a donor.

The letter gave Sister Josephine time to prepare.

She understood immediately what had prompted the bishop’s summons.

She had known that Hope Randall had been cleaning near her office, had suspected the girl might have heard something, had worried about potential consequences.

Sister Josephine met with Sister Adelaide immediately.

The two women made calculations about their situation.

They could deny everything, claim that a child had misunderstood innocent sounds.

They could argue that an enslaved man’s testimony would never be believed against theirs.

they could remind the bishop that scandal would damage not just them but the entire church in Louisiana.

When Sister Josephine met with Bishop Walsh in early July of 1845, she was prepared with explanations and counterarguments.

The bishop confronted her directly with the contents of Hope Randall’s letter.

Sister Josephine responded with carefully crafted denials mixed with just enough admission to seem honest.

She acknowledged that she sometimes met privately with the male workers to assign tasks and discuss maintenance needs.

She admitted that these meetings might appear irregular to someone unfamiliar with the practical needs of running an orphanage.

She explained that locked doors were necessary when discussing disciplinary matters or orphanage business that should not be overheard by children.

As for the sounds the girl had heard, Sister Josephine suggested that Hope had likely heard her reprimanding Silas Newton for sloppy work.

The reprimand had been firm, perhaps harsh by some standards, but necessary for maintaining discipline among workers.

A 14-year-old girl might misinterpret such sounds, especially if she had an overactive imagination or had been exposed to inappropriate ideas.

Bishop Walsh wanted to believe these explanations.

Believing them meant avoiding scandal.

It meant not having to confront that two nuns under his authority had violated their vows in the most egregious manner possible.

It meant not having to address the exploitation of enslaved men, a topic fraught with complications in Louisiana’s slave society, but he could not quite fully believe.

Sister Josephine’s explanations were smooth, too smooth.

Her manner suggested preparation rather than surprised innocence, and his own observations over the previous two years, the irregularities he had noted and dismissed, came back to him with uncomfortable clarity.

He told Sister Josephine that he would be implementing new oversight procedures for Sacred Heart.

He would visit monthly rather than semianually.

He would review financial records in detail, particularly expenses related to workers.

He would speak privately with children and staff during visits.

And he expected Sister Josephine and Sister Adelaide to maintain absolute propriety in all dealings with the male workers.

Sister Josephine agreed to everything.

She expressed gratitude for the bishop’s guidance.

She assured him that any appearance of impropriy was exactly that, appearance without substance.

She returned to Sacred Heart and informed Sister Adelaide that they needed to be more careful, at least temporarily.

For several months following the bishop’s investigation, the two nuns curtailed their exploitation of the three men.

Summones became less frequent.

Private meetings were shorter and more circumspect.

The orphanage operated more normally with the men performing only their regular labor duties.

But by October of 1845, the old patterns had reasserted themselves.

The bishop’s monthly visits had become prefuncter, following predictable schedules that allowed preparation.

His reviews of financial records found nothing a miss because Sister Josephine’s accounting skills were excellent.

His conversations with children and staff revealed nothing because everyone understood that speaking against the nuns meant punishment or dismissal.

The systematic exploitation resumed.

Sister Josephine and Sister Adelaide had learned to be more careful about sounds, about scheduling, about leaving evidence, but they had not learned to stop.

Whatever psychological need or moral corruption drove them to abuse their positions of power over the three men remained unchanged.

The second exposure came in March of 1846 and proved far more difficult for the bishop to ignore.

Gabriel Dawson attempted escape.

His run was not carefully planned or well executed.

He had simply reached a breaking point after nearly 3 years of systematic exploitation and decided that death as a runaway was preferable to continuation of his circumstances.

He fled on a Saturday night, taking nothing with him but the clothes he wore.

He made it approximately 15 mi before being captured by a patrol on Monday morning.

Louisiana law prescribed brutal punishment for captured runaways, whipping and sometimes branding or hobbling to prevent future attempts.

But Gabriel Dawson was officially not supposed to exist.

His purchase had never been recorded.

Sacred Heart Orphanage did not legally own him.

His capture created an administrative nightmare.

The patrol had a prisoner who claimed to be enslaved, but whose ownership could not be documented.

Sister Josephine was forced to reveal Gabriel’s existence to civil authorities and to explain the circumstances of his acquisition.

Her explanation that he had been purchased informally to save paperwork and that the orphanage had simply neglected to file proper registration was transparently false.

Officials questioned why an orphanage would purchase a slave informally, why registration had been neglected for nearly 3 years, why proper documentation had not been maintained.

The questioning might have expanded into genuine investigation except that Bishop Walsh intervened.

He met with New Orleans’s mayor and several council members, explaining that Sacred Heart had made administrative errors that were being corrected.

He offered assurances that proper documentation would be filed and that the church was handling internal discipline regarding the negligent recordkeeping, his intervention worked because city officials generally deferred to church authority in matters involving Catholic institutions.

Gabriel was returned to Sacred Heart with minimal punishment.

The required documentation was hastily prepared and filed, and Bishop Walsh was left with undeniable evidence that something was profoundly wrong at the orphanage he had been avoiding confronting.

This time he could not avoid action.

He summoned both Sister Josephine and Sister Adelaide to his residence and confronted them together with a directness he had previously avoided.

He demanded the truth about the three men, about the irregular purchases, about the private meetings, about everything he had been willfully ignoring for years.

The two nuns faced a choice.

They could maintain denials and risk the bishop conducting a genuine investigation that might involve interviewing the men themselves, or they could offer limited admissions, carefully framed to minimize their culpability.

gambling that the bishop would accept a sanitized version to avoid scandal.

Sister Adelaide chose confession, she broke down, admitting that she had developed inappropriate attachments to the male workers, that she had allowed loneliness and isolation to lead her into sin, that she deeply regretted her failures and sought the bishop’s forgiveness and guidance.

Her confession was carefully constructed.

She portrayed herself as weak rather than predatory, as a lonely woman who had made mistakes rather than someone who had systematically exploited three enslaved men for years.

She did not admit to coercion or the full extent of her actions.

She presented a narrative of mutual attraction gone wrong, implying some level of consent that had never actually existed.

Sister Josephine remained silent initially, then offered a similar confession.

She acknowledged inappropriate conduct, framed it as moral weakness, and emphasized her desire for redemption through proper penance.

Bishop Walsh accepted these confessions because full rejection would require actions he desperately wanted to avoid.

If he acknowledged the full truth that two nuns had been systematically sexually exploiting three enslaved men for years under his authority, he would have to take dramatic action.

The nuns would need to be defrocked and possibly prosecuted.

the men’s testimony would need to be heard.

Scandal would engulf the church in Louisiana.

Instead, he chose damage control.

He ordered both nuns to cease all inappropriate contact with the male workers immediately.

He arranged for the three men to be sold, removing them from the orphanage, and thus eliminating the source of temptation and potential testimony.

He assigned a priest to provide regular oversight at Sacred Heart, ensuring that similar situations could not develop, and he imposed penences on both nuns.

Though these penences were private and spiritual rather than public or legal, the sale of the three men was handled quickly and quietly.

Silas Newton was sold to a plantation in Assumption Parish for $600.

Gabriel Dawson went to a sugar plantation in Street Mary Parish for $500.

Moses Gardner was sold to a buyer in Mobile, Alabama for $750.

None of the men were consulted about these sales.

None were given any choice about their destinations.

They were simply informed they were being sold and were shipped to their new locations within days.

Their years of exploitation at Sacred Heart ended with further degradation, being sold like livestock to pay for the sins of the women who had abused them.

The bishop’s intervention in March of 1846 could have ended the story there.

The men were gone.

The nuns had confessed and accepted penance.

Oversight had been implemented.

The scandal had been contained within the church’s internal processes, avoiding public exposure.

But truth, particularly truth involving such profound injustice, has a way of resisting burial.

And the ultimate exposure would come from a source Bishop Walsh could not control or contain.

Sister Adelaide Perry died in February of 1880 at the age of 72.

After decades of continued service at Sacred Heart Orphanage, she had never left the institution, never sought transfer or reassignment.

She had lived the remainder of her life in the place where she had committed her greatest sins.

A choice that some might interpret as penance and others as attachment to the scene of her crimes.

On her deathbed, attended by a young priest named Father Raymond Price.

Sister Adelaide made a full confession.

Unlike the carefully sanitized admission she had offered Bishop Walsh in 1846, this final confession contained the complete truth.

She described the systematic exploitation of the three men, the deliberate nature of their acquisition, the regular schedule of abuse, the lack of any real consent despite her earlier claims of mutual attraction.

She confessed that she and Sister Josephine had shared the men, had discussed their attributes and preferences, had treated them as objects for their use.

She admitted that Gabriel Dawson’s escape attempt had been driven by desperation.

That Moses Gardner had been worked nearly to death, serving both women’s demands, that all three men had suffered enormously under their control, most damaging to the church’s institutional interests.

She revealed Bishop Walsh’s knowledge.

She explained that the bishop had been informed of problems as early as 1845, that he had conducted minimal investigation, that he had accepted transparent fabrications to avoid scandal, and that his intervention in 1846 had focused on containing damage rather than achieving justice.

Father Price was faced with an ethical dilemma that had no easy resolution.

The confession was made under seal of confession, typically inviable in Catholic practice.

But Sister Adelaide, knowing she was dying, explicitly released him from that seal.

She asked him to make her confession known to ensure that the truth she had hidden for 34 years did not die with her.

Father Price took Sister Adelaide’s written confession to the new bishop, Bishop Philip Perry, who had succeeded Bishop Walsh in 1868.

Bishop Perry, only 5 years into his tenure, now faced a choice similar to the one his predecessor had confronted.

He could suppress the confession, bury it in church archives, and maintain the sanitized history of Sacred Heart Orphanage, or he could acknowledge what had happened and confront the institutional failures that had allowed it to continue.

To his credit, Bishop Perry chose differently than his predecessor.

He understood that the church’s credibility depended not on concealing wrongdoing, but on addressing it honestly.

He also recognized that Sister Adelaide’s death meant the scandal was already partially public as her confession had been witnessed by hospital staff and other clergy.

Bishop Perry ordered a full investigation of Sacred Hearts operations during the 1840s.

He appointed a committee of priests and lay people to review surviving records and interview anyone who had been present during that period.

He directed that the findings be compiled into a comprehensive report.

The investigation conducted between March and August of 1880 uncovered extensive documentation of the financial irregularities surrounding the acquisition of Silus Newton, Gabriel Dawson, and Moses Gardner.

It found witnesses who had seen or heard troubling incidents, but had remained silent.

It reviewed Bishop Walsh’s minimal intervention in 1846 and his decision to sell the men rather than seek justice.

Most significant, the investigation attempted to locate the three men themselves to hear their testimony directly.

This effort proved tragically difficult.

Silas Newton had died in 1867, according to plantation records, worked to death in the Cain Fields at age 58.

Gabriel Dawson’s fate could not be determined, as records from his plantation had been destroyed during the Civil War.

Only Moses Gardner was found alive.

Moses had been sold several times after leaving the mobile household that had purchased him in 1846.

He had ended up in northern Mississippi where he had been freed following the Civil War.

He was 53 years old when investigators located him in 1880.

Living in a small house he had built himself and working as a carpenter.

The investigators traveled to Mississippi and interviewed Moses over three days in September of 1880.

His testimony was recorded in a document that runs 47 pages and contains details so disturbing that portions remain sealed in church archives to this day.

Moses described the systematic exploitation, the impossibility of resistance, the psychological trauma that had never fully healed, even after 15 years of freedom.

He confirmed every element of Sister Adelaide’s deathbed confession and added details she had not included.

He described how Sister Josephine had threatened to have him whipped or sold to brutal plantations if he resisted.

He explained how Sister Adelaide had convinced herself that her conduct was somehow mutual or consensual despite the fundamental impossibility of consent between owner and enslaved.

He recounted the exhaustion, the shame, the desperate hope that death might provide escape.

When asked why he had not fled like Gabriel Dawson, Moses explained that he had considered it many times, but had been too afraid of the consequences.

His previous owner in Mobile had been relatively humane, and Moses had feared that flight would result in sail to somewhere worse.

This calculation, the weighing of different forms of suffering and choosing the less terrible option, reflects the impossible choices enslaved people face daily.

Moses also provided information about what happened to Gabriel after his capture and returned to Sacred Heart.

Gabriel had been beaten severely, not by the nuns themselves, but by an overseer they had hired specifically for the purpose.

The beating had been intended to intimidate all three men into continued submission.

It had worked.

Neither Moses nor Silas had attempted escape afterward.

The investigation’s final report delivered to Bishop Perry in November of 1880 concluded that Sister Josephine Reed and Sister Adelaide Perry had engaged in sustained sexual exploitation of three enslaved men between 1843 and 1846.

It found that Bishop Edmund Walsh had been informed of irregularities but had failed to conduct adequate investigation and had prioritized scandal avoidance over justice.

It determined that the sale of the three men in 1846 had been primarily intended to eliminate potential witnesses rather than to address the nuns misconduct.

The report recommended that Sacred Hearts history during this period be acknowledged publicly, that the church formally apologize for its failures, and that procedures be implemented to prevent similar abuses in other Catholic institutions.

It suggested that financial restitution be offered to Moses Gardner as inadequate but necessary recognition of the harm he had suffered.

Bishop Perry accepted most of the reports recommendations.

In December of 1880, he issued a pastoral letter to be read in all churches in the dascese.

The letter acknowledged that serious misconduct had occurred at Sacred Heart Orphanage decades earlier, that church authorities had failed to address it adequately, and that the church recognized its institutional failures and sought to prevent their recurrence.

The letter was carefully worded to acknowledge wrongdoing without providing extensive detail.

It did not name Sister Josephine or Sister Adelaide specifically.

It did not describe the nature of the exploitation graphically.

It presented the scandal in terms that admitted fault while minimizing sensational elements.

Public reaction was mixed.

Some Catholics appreciated the bishops honesty and willingness to confront historical failures.

Others felt betrayed by revelations that challenged their understanding of Catholic institutions.

Protestant churches used the scandal to attack Catholic moral authority.

Newspapers ran stories that ranged from measured reporting to sensational exaggeration.

Moses Gardner received $500 from church funds, described as compensation for injustices he had suffered.

The amount was both insultingly inadequate given years of exploitation and more than most formerly enslaved people ever received as acknowledgment of wrongs done to them.

Moses accepted the money because he needed it, not because it represented meaningful justice.

In a letter to Bishop Perry, Moses wrote that no amount of money could restore what had been taken from him.

The years of exploitation had left psychological scars that had never healed.

He had nightmares decades after leaving Sacred Heart.

He struggled to trust anyone, especially white people and especially religious authorities.

The compensation was appreciated, but changed nothing fundamental about his experience.

Sister Josephine Reed had died in 1872, 8 years before Sister Adelaide’s deathbed confession forced exposure.

She had continued working at Sacred Heart until her death at age 70.

Unlike Sister Adelaide, she never confessed publicly or privately to the full extent of her actions.

Her death meant she never faced any accountability for her role in the systematic exploitation.

Records indicate that Sister Josephine destroyed many of her personal papers before her death.

including journals that might have provided additional details about the period between 1843 and 1846.

This destruction suggests she remained concerned about exposure even decades later that she understood the severity of what she had done and wanted to prevent full documentation.

Bishop Edmund Walsh died in 1863 long before the scandal became public.

He never faced questions about his failure to investigate adequately or his decision to prioritize scandal containment over justice.

His legacy in Louisiana Catholic history was generally positive, remembered for building churches and expanding Catholic education.

The darker elements of his tenure only emerged postumously.

The investigation into Sacred Heart also revealed institutional patterns that extended beyond this specific case.

Reviewers found evidence that other Catholic institutions in Louisiana had employed enslaved people in irregular arrangements similar to Sacred Hearts.

While no other cases involving systematic sexual exploitation were documented, the financial irregularities and legal gray areas were common.

These findings prompted the church to conduct broader reviews of its relationship with slavery during the antibbellum period.

These reviews conducted in the 1880s and 90s revealed extensive church involvement in slaveholding and participation in the slave economy.

Catholic institutions had owned hundreds of enslaved people across Louisiana, had profited from their labor, and had often failed to live up to stated principles about humane treatment.

The broader reckoning with the church’s involvement in slavery proved uncomfortable for an institution that prided itself on moral authority.

It forced acknowledgement that Catholic principles had been compromised by participation in an inherently evil system, that good intentions about humane treatment had not prevented participation in human trafficking and exploitation for New Orleans’s black Catholic community.

The revelations about Sacred Heart confirmed what many had always understood, that religious authority did not prevent racism or guarantee justice.

The fact that two nuns had exploited three enslaved men, and that a bishop had covered it up reinforced skepticism about white religious leadership and institutional trustworthiness.

Some black Catholics left the church following the scandal’s exposure.

Their faith in the institution shattered.

Others remained, but demanded greater representation in church governance and stronger protections against abuse.

The scandal became a rallying point for black Catholics seeking voice and power within the church structure.

Sacred Heart Orphanage itself continued operating into the 20th century, though under different leadership and with extensive reforms.

The building on Rampart Street was eventually torn down in the 1920s, replaced by newer facilities.

The institution’s name was eventually changed to distance it from the historical scandal.

In modern Catholic historical scholarship, the Sacred Heart Scandal is studied as an example of institutional failure to confront wrongdoing.

It demonstrates how concern about reputation can override commitment to justice, how power structures enable exploitation, and how silence protects perpetrators while abandoning victims.

The case also raises uncomfortable questions about consent that extend beyond this specific situation.

Sister Adelaide’s claim that her relationship with the enslaved men involved mutual attraction reflects a profound misunderstanding or willful distortion of power dynamics.

Enslaved people could not consent to relationships with those who owned them.

The power imbalance was too extreme, the potential consequences of refusal too severe.

Yet, Sister Adelaide convinced herself otherwise, highlighting how exploiters rationalized their actions.

This pattern of rationalization appears throughout slavery’s history.

Enslavers convinced themselves that enslaved people were content, that harsh treatment was necessary discipline, that exploitation was mutual benefit.

Sister Josephine and Sister Adelaide’s self-justifications fit this larger pattern of denial and distortion.

For the three men whose lives were destroyed by Sacred Hearts exploitation, justice never truly arrived.

Silas Newton died enslaved, worked to death without ever experiencing freedom.

Gabriel Dawson’s fate remains unknown.

Lost in the chaos of war and emancipation.

Moses Gardner survived to freedom but carried trauma that never healed.

received token compensation that could never restore what was taken and died in relative obscurity in 1894.

Their story, like so many stories of enslaved people who suffered exploitation beyond even the standard horrors of slavery, was nearly lost to history.

It survived only because Sister Adelaide chose deathbed confession over silence, because Bishop Perry chose accountability over continued concealment, and because Moses Gardner lived long enough to provide testimony that could not be dismissed.

The final archival record related to the case is a letter Moses Gardner sent to Bishop Perry in 1893, a year before his death.

In this letter, Moses thanked the bishop for acknowledging what had happened and for the compensation, inadequate though it was, but he also expressed hope that the story would be remembered not for scandal’s sake, but as a reminder of what slavery made possible.

I hope people will understand.

Moses wrote that what happened to me and to Silas and Gabriel was not unusual because we were at an orphanage or because the people who owned us were nuns.

It was possible because we were enslaved because we had no rights, no protection, no voice.

As long as some people own other people completely, these things will happen.

The uniforms the owners wear do not matter.

Their religious vows do not matter.

What matters is the absolute power slavery gives to some humans over others.

That power will always be abused.

This insight offered by a man who had survived enslavement and lived to see freedom cuts to the heart of why the sacred heart scandal matters.

It was not an aberration but an illustration of slavery’s fundamental corruption.

When human beings own other human beings, when power is absolute and accountability is absent, exploitation follows inevitably.

The Sacred Heart scandal forced the Catholic Church in Louisiana to confront this truth, to acknowledge that participation in slavery had corrupted Catholic institutions as thoroughly as any other institutions.

The acknowledgement came late and incompletely, but it came preserved in archives and historical records that ensure the story cannot be completely forgotten.

Today, more than 140 years after Sister Adelaide’s deathbed confession, the Sacred Heart Scandal remains a challenging chapter in Catholic history.

It demonstrates institutional failure, individual moral corruption, and the particular ways that slavery enabled exploitation of the most vulnerable.

It shows how concern about reputation can enable continued abuse, and how justice delayed is often justice denied.

For those who study the hidden histories of American slavery, cases like Sacred Heart provide essential evidence of what the institution made possible.

They reveal exploitation that went beyond the standard brutalities of forced labor, showing how absolute power over human beings enabled every form of abuse imaginable.

And for those who wonder whether religious faith or institutional authority prevents such abuses, the Sacred Heart Scandal offers a sobering answer.

Faith and authority provide no automatic protection against corruption.

They can even enable it by creating presumptions of virtue that allow abuse to continue unchallenged and by prioritizing institutional reputation over individual justice.

The impossible secret that two nuns shared three male slaves was ultimately made possible not by the nuns particular depravity or the bishop’s specific failures, but by a system that treated human beings as property and granted their owners unlimited power.

What happened at Sacred Heart Orphanage between 1843 and 1846 could have happened anywhere slavery existed.

And similar stories probably did occur throughout the South, buried by time and deliberate concealment, Sister Josephine, and Sister Adelaide were able to exploit Silas Newton, Gabriel Dawson, and Moses Gardner for years because those men had no legal standing, no voice that would be heard, no protection under law.

Their exploitation was enabled by slavery’s fundamental premise that some humans could own others completely, could use them in any way they chose, and faced no meaningful accountability for their actions.

This is the lasting lesson of the sacred heart scandal.

Not that nuns can be corrupt or bishops can fail, though both are true, but that slavery by its very nature creates conditions where exploitation becomes inevitable, where power is absolute and victims have no recourse.

abuse follows.

The uniforms the abusers wear and the buildings they occupy change nothing fundamental about this truth.

If you found this forgotten chapter of American history as disturbing and important as we did, share it with others who need to understand how deeply slavery corrupted every institution it touched.

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We will see you in the next investigation into the secrets they tried to bury.