More Than Just Luck Podcast
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Even now, more than 30 years after she said she suffered physical and sexual abuse at Vista Maria, Jane Doe protects herself from painful memories.
Jane Doe, who used a pseudonym in this story and a blurred face in the "More Than Just Luck" video to keep her anonymity, said nuns at the all-girls, residential treatment facility punished her with "foot torture" when she was 15 years old.
"They would paddle our feet with little, black paddles until we couldn't walk," Jane Doe said on the recent edition of "Voices Unmuted," an investigative series hosted by Greg Wier on the "More Than Just Luck" podcast.
"To this day, I've never taken a shower without flip flops on or walk the floor without house shoes on. My feet still have that sensation and it triggers me and takes me back into a dark place at Vista Maria."
Watch Voices Unmuted Podcast Series on More Than Just Luck YouTube
Jane Doe, who was placed at Vista Maria in 1994 because of a history of school truancy, said nuns watched, participated and failed to stop abusive behavior at the facility in Dearborn Heights.
"They (nuns) just watched, touched," she said. "They had a guy, he was a maintenance guy or something, he would literally come into your room at night, make you get up, and do sexual acts on each other, girl on girl action. He fondled me and my roommate.
"I told my mom in therapy, I was being raped. She looked at me and said, 'No way. That couldn't be.' I was also raped by my uncle and I didn't know how to express it then. My mom is deceased now but my sisters are all saying now, 'You were telling the truth.'"
Nuns established a safe haven and anchor for vulnerable women and young girls beginning in 1883. Founded by the Sisters of the Good Shepherd and renamed Vista Maria in 1942, the Catholic order of nuns played a prominent role for nearly a century.
By the time of the decades-long abuse alleged in the 2026 lawsuits, stretching from the 1980s through the 2020s and documented on YouTube @morethanjustluck/videos, the nun's day-to-day presence decreased, leaving administration and services to secular staff and lay workers.
"This place is wicked," she said. "That's my truth. I just wanted to get it out there that it's been happening for a long time."
End the Deadline on Justice for Child Abuse Survivors in Michigan.
