ESCAPED FROM CONVENT.

Taranaki Daily News, 9 April 1921, Page 12

ESCAPED FROM CONVENT.

GIRL OF NINETEEN YEARS. CHRISTCHURCH ALLEGATIONS. A statutory declaration by a nineteen-year-old girl, who claimed to have escaped recently from a Christchurch Roman Catholic institution at which, allegedly, she had been overworked and ill-treated for two years, was read by the Rev. Howard Elliot to a Presbyterian Political Association meeting recently in support of his argument that conventual institutions should be open to official inspection. Mr. Elliot stated that action would he taken in regard to the case and that a Dominion-wide campaign for the opening of convents was being launched. The discussion of the matter was somewhat interrupted by a few representatives of Labour, who had got into the meeting.

Numbers of people in New Zealand, said Mr.. Elliot, were interesting them'selves hi the question of convent inspection and a body of opinion was growing which would eventually, compel the Government and Parliawnt to take the matter ujb Without alleging or suggesting that. anything improper or immoral was going on within them, the Protestant Political Association insisted that conventual houses should be open to official inspection. If these houses were all that the dignitaries of the Roman Catholic Church claimed them to be, there could be no harm or injury in such inspection. If, on the other hand, the claims were not justified, or if there were women within the houses who could not get out if they wished, then, in the name .of British justice and of all that the British flag stood for, the houses ought to be open to investigation.

“I say,” said Mr. Elliot, “that there is need in this country and in this town, for the inspection of convents. There is, at present, a young girl in the keeping of a gentleman in Christchurch, who recently escaped from an institution in this town.” A Voice: Name it. Another Voice: Christchurch. (Loud laughter.) Mr. Elliott: I have here a statutory declaration signed by this young woriian in February, before Mr. Henry Holland. J.P. I am going to read it to you, but T will not give the g’rl’s name. It would not he advisable. Neither will I give the name of the institution. A Voice: You are hitting in the dark again. Mr. Elliott: No. I hit in the open. We are getting another document, and when we get it the doors of that institution will open in a Hurry.

Mr. Elliott then read the statutory declaration referring to the name which the girl is alleged to have been given to Mr. Elliott declared that in such institutions inmates were forbidden to disclose to each other their real namsc and family affairs, so that when one of them escaped she could do nothing to

help the companions whom she had left behind. A Voice: What about the giirl’s Mr. Elliott: Apparently he did not know all the girl’s letters were censored. A Female Voice: It’s funny he didn’t go and see her. A Male Voice (to Mr. Eliott): Would you go into the witness-box and read that? Mr. Elliott: Yes, and I’ll put the girl into the box when the time comes. “A campaign for opening of convents is now in progress in the Dominion,” proceeded Mr. Elliott. “Many people send clothes to be laundered at the place where these girls are employed. Those of them who are Protestants—well I can only say they are not Protestants at all. If the interjectors who have been interrupting this meeting to-night are upholders of Bolshevism or Red Labor I would ask them to get their leaders to apply the labor laws to that institution. It will be a test of what I have been saying this evening. I venture to say that they are not game to do it.”