The Freedom From Religion Foundation’s Sunday TV show guest has made visible an extremely shameful aspect of organized religion: widespread child abuse.
Award-winning journalist and author Christine Kenneally has a Ph.D. in linguistics from Cambridge University. She’s written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, Slate, Time and Scientific American. Her books include The Invisible History of the Human Race: How DNA and History Shape Our Identities and Our Futures, one of the New York Times’ 100 notable books that year. Kenneally was a senior contributor at BuzzFeed for four years, and her 2018 BuzzFeed story about American orphanages was viewed more than 6 million times in six months. It became the basis for her newest book out earlier this year called Ghosts of the Orphanage: A Story of Mysterious Deaths, a Conspiracy of Silence, and a Search for Justice.
“The physical abuse was terrible,” Kenneally tells “Freethought Matters” co-hosts Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor in an interview from her home in Melbourne, Australia. “The emotional abuse was equally awful for these little children who had been ripped away from their families, who were in these strange institutions, who didn’t know anyone there, didn’t know why they were there, were often told that they were there because they were bad. And then, of course, there was the sexual abuse, as well.”
If you don’t live in the quarter-plus viewership of the nation where the show broadcasts on Sunday, you can already catch the interview on FFRF’s YouTube channel. New shows go up every Thursday.
“Freethought Matters” airs in:
- Chicago, WPWR-CW (Ch. 50), Sundays at 9 a.m.
- Denver, KWGN-CW (Ch. 2), Sundays at 7 a.m.
- Houston, KIAH-CW (Ch. 39), Sundays at 11 a.m.
- Los Angeles, KCOP-MY (Ch. 13), Sundays at 8:30 a.m.
- Madison, Wis., WISC-TV (Ch. 3), Sundays at 11 p.m.
- Minneapolis, WFTC-29, Sundays at 7:30 a.m.
- New York City, WPIX-IND (Ch. 11), Sundays at 10 a.m.
- Phoenix, KASW-CW (Ch. 61, or 6 or 1006 for HD), Sundays at 8:30 a.m.
- Portland, Ore., KRCW-CW (Ch. 32), Sundays at 9 a.m. Comcast channel 703 for High Def, or Channel 3.
- Sacramento, KQCA-MY (Ch. 58), Sundays at 8:30 a.m. (Note: the show has been pre-empted for this Sunday, Oct. 22.)
- San Francisco, KICU-IND (Ch. 36), Sunday at 10 a.m.
- Seattle, KONG-IND (Ch. 16 or Ch. 106 on Comcast). Sundays at 8 a.m.
- Washington, D.C., WDCW-CW (Ch. 50 or Ch. 23 or Ch. 3), Sundays at 8 a.m.
Upcoming guests include Nation magazine Justice Correspondent Elie Mystal, eminent philosopher Daniel C. Dennett and Kate Cohen, atheist and contributing columnist for the Washington Post.
You can catch interviews from past seasons here, including recent ones with Gloria Steinem, Ron Reagan, “Daily Show” co-creator Lizz Winstead, author John Irving, actor John “Q” de Lancie and award-winning columnist Katha Pollitt. Past interviews include Julia Sweeney and Reps. Jared Huffman, Jamie Raskin, Hank Johnson and Eleanor Holmes Norton, among many other notable authors, activists, musicians, actors and freethinkers.
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