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I grew up in an orphanage in Chicago. It held 600 of us. Initially it was called The German Catholic Orphanage, but that sign was taken down and replaced and it became known as AGO. Like many of the other child residents, I was not truly orphaned; in other words, my parents were not deceased. There was only one of the 600 children that had no parents! So what gives in the church and social system?

We were all given numbers. Odd as it may seem, no one who ever left there has ever forgotten their number. Last week my brother sent me a database which required a password -- it was his number! If you look at it logically, to assign numbers to children much like the military seems like a reasonably efficient method to solve who's who and what belongs to whom. The first two numbers indicated which cottage you were in and the next two indicated your locker number. By the time the levels of bureaucracy are satisfied you have a lot less than you expected or thought you could get. And all this is before you reach the human-to-child level of contact. If you follow the history of those who left, most are still lost identities.

My experience was not a good one. Many of the other children at AGO never healed from their orphanage experience.

Priests and nuns ran the orphanage. What happens when the religious caregiver is too old to provide the care of children, now at the age of 50-60 with 33 kids assigned to them? If you go back to the kids who were at the orphanage when it was young and the nuns were also, they faired differently then those of us who saw its 150th anniversary. By then modes of discipline had changed and the State had let its guard down.

Discipline was the way they raised us. Boys were told to bend over, hold on to their ankles and then they were hit with a 2x4 by the priest. Another form of discipline was to shave their hair into the form of a cross. What for? Because he might have been caught talking to a girl. That girl might have even been his sister. If the priest was not in the mood for taking charge, then the nun in charge of the boys would have the other 32 of 33 in a cottage beat up the troublemaker and if you refused to participate then you would be next.

I watched in fear and horror as these things happened to my brothers, one of which was my twin, a younger one and the other just nine months older than us. We were a family, a family of four, and they forced ties to be broken. They painted yellow lines which separated the boys side from the girls side. We were children, not teens inflamed with passion and romance! Just children.

At first I was passive, compliant and obedient in this new world so I would stay out of trouble. However, as I watched my older brother who refused to comply with all the rules get literally beaten up by religious 'brothers,' and then removed from the orphanage to another home for troubled kids, I too found the courage and fought back.

I remember working in the kitchen throwing away rotten food they intended to serve us. I got caught and while beating me the nun said, “What would your Aunt think of what you did?” My response shocked her. I replied, “What would she think if I told her what you are doing?”

I think I know your first argument defending this institution -- that was long ago. But it wasn't. This orphanage closed its doors in 1973, two years too late for three boys who were sniffing glues and flameables and then decided to smoke a cigarette. Too late for a girl who in my cottage went into a diabetic coma and died because there was no doctor on the premises and you were not sent out because you might tell someone something.

I was born with a genetic brain tumor, which I never saw a doctor for because they never knew or cared why I got the severe headaches. When ever I got seizures or passed out I was punished because it happened in church, G-d forbid. Sometimes when the headaches were so bad that the fear of punishment no longer frightened me, I cried. I was locked in a closet to cry it out or given more work to do --something they thought would help me forget about it and stop being a baby.

I was just five-years old when this institution became my prison. By the time I was 13-years old, life seemed bleak. I share with you a poem I wrote at that time.

And then there is what happens when you leave, as you must either when you turn 18-years old or graduate high school. My brother graduated high school at age 16 so we were on the streets together. I was pregnant -- no, not unmarried, but my husband (also from the orphanage) was drafted to Vietnam. Imagine never seeing the outside world only to go to another world in chaos!

Then there is Tony who couldn't cope and blew his face off with a gun. Why? He had just lost his first job! That first job meant more than a teenager's first job. It was your 'sink or swim' test. Remember, you had no family (that cared) and if you lost that first job you didn't eat or have a place to sleep. Then there was Yaunta. She took to the streets to survive and ended up dead, killed by a john. Or Jesse, who last I heard still sleeps in his car that doesn't run and never did. Then there was Bernie who couldn't make it either, especially after his brother killed himself when he couldn't figure out what it meant to be gay.

If society would have spent even half the money they spent on us being abused in an orphanage, they could have helped my mother take care of us. We were 'unsuitable' candidates for foster homes because there were too many problems associated with us; my father ran off and my mother, who was mentally ill, attempted suicide out of desperation. State law prevented us four children from being separated and consequently it was difficult to find a home for children ages six, twin five-year olds and four.

The State paid the church $600 per month per child in the orphanage. Surely for $2,400 per month it would have been cheaper to hire a full-time homemaker. In contrast, my mother did not have access to daycare, social workers, or any social programs. We were a rural family on a farm with an outhouse, a well pump and a pot-belly stove for heat. The only family trouble we had was economic.

Those who build orphanages whether in their minds or in concrete do not solve the problem of broken homes. Families must somehow be made to see that orphanages are not the utopia they hoped for and thus they are equally responsible for what it produces.

History is remembered so it doesn't get repeated.