Carmelite Home for Boys is changing its mission
The sign out front says Carmelite Home for Boys, which was true for 100 years but not anymore. The very last boy, a teen who had run afoul of the law, departed this month. He didn’t want to leave. “I said, ‘Why don’t you want to go home?’ He said, ‘Because I don’t have my own room,’” Sister Immaculata shared with me. She is mother superior of the Provincial House of Carmelite Sisters of the Divine Heart of Jesus.
The convent shares space on Kavanaugh Place in Wauwatosa with the boys home, which began in 1916 as an orphanage and changed in 1967 to a residential treatment facility for juvenile offenders from Milwaukee and other counties and transitioning from state lockups.
The Carmelite sisters are staying put and they’re looking for a new mission, possibly providing independent living space for mentally challenged adults. That has yet to be worked out.
I happen to live near the Carmelite Home for Boys, which is nestled on a residential street. Frankly, my neighbors and I are relieved to see it go.
For decades we co-existed more or less peacefully. But in recent years, runaways from the unlocked home stole and crashed a neighbor’s car, broke into other vehicles, entered someone’s home and caused other problems. During 2015 and 2016, Wauwatosa police responded to nearly 300 calls for boys who went AWOL, attacked the staff or raised a ruckus.
The tension came to a head last year when Milwaukee County offered to contract with Carmelite to house and rehabilitate up to 40 boys — four times the home’s census at the time — as a way of eliminating the use of troubled Lincoln Hills juvenile correctional facility up north. The neighbors objected, and Carmelite turned down the plan in November.
The nuns, their board of directors and their mother house in the Netherlands later agreed that the end had come for their combination convent and correctional center.
The sisters admit the boys they were taking in recent years were tougher and harder to control. The juveniles were ages 11 to 17; most stayed a few months on average.
“The problem is that there are no consequences for their actions. Even the police, their hands are tied. They can’t do anything to them,” said Sister Maria Goretti, who served as the boys home administrator.
“We had to think of our neighbors and of our sisters working with the boys,” she said.
Currently the convent is home to seven nuns, and three of them interacted directly with the boys. A lay staff of 16 included a director, teacher, social worker, art and music therapists, house parents and others. They have
“The problem is that there are no consequences for their actions. Even the police, their hands are tied. They can’t do anything to them. We had to think of our neighbors and of our sisters working with the boys.” SISTER MARIA GORETTI SERVED AS THE BOYS HOME ADMINISTRATOR