You can't turn on the TV, flick on the radio or open a newspaper without seeing or hearing yet another "crybaby" complaining about childhood abuse. Every time we think we've been shocked enough, another category is added to the list. We've been through abusive parents, priests, doctors, teachers, therapists . . . And now it's nuns? Who wants to hear about that? Haven't we heard enough from the victim industry?

Those are the thoughts that went through US journalist Ashley Hill's mind when she pondered the contents of her filing cabinet five years ago. Inside it were reams of letters not only from adult survivors of child abuse by nuns, but also from nuns who, they alleged, had been abused by other nuns. Herself the subject of sexual abuse by a nun - when she was in the second grade in primary school - Hill had received the letters in response to print ads she had placed in various North American publications in an effort to answer the question: "Am I the only one?"

She wasn't. And this revelation brought her both relief, because the stories validated her own experience, and pain as she became overwhelmed by the extent of the suffering inflicted on children. The 45-year-old single woman, who describes her life as being one full of tragedy, has tried to keep childhood abuse in perspective and has resisted being part of the victim industry, but at the same time she felt compelled to give others an outlet for breaking "the last taboo" - child sexual abuse by women.

While the physical and emotional abuse was as devastating as it was perverse, this was not the worst aspect of the abuse. Hill writes in her book, Habits of Sin: An Expose of Nuns Who Sexually Abuse Children and Each Other: "Many of those who have been in touch with me have found solace through reading books that have dealt with abuse by priests and other types of sexual abuse. Many have spent years in therapy. Others have worked through their pain by creating art - painting, writing, music, collages, poetry. One has gone so far to start her own church. Gradually, the load from some has been lightened. Still, for many others, being able to cross the threshold that separates them from a spiritually joyful journey towards `home' remains unsuccessful, even unwanted. To me, that is the saddest legacy of all."

The very comfort - God and the church - which these young Catholics had a right to expect in their time of need was denied them. Many were so scarred by the abuse that they rejected the Church completely.

The unique aspect of abuse by those in religious orders is that these people are, supposedly, on the right hand of God. When a child brought up in the Catholic tradition is told by a nun that she is evil, that labelling is abusive in itself. Add to that the hurt of being sexually abused by a nun who then tells you that it was your evil that made her do this to you. In the stories of alleged abuse which she heard, Hill saw a pattern in which the abused child was subsequently punished severely for the abuse by the same nun who perpetrated it. To be "loved", then "punished" was a psychological trauma from which many never recovered.

One survivor wrote: "I had fear instilled in me about everything. I had the image that God was mean and punitive like the adults in my life . . . Emotionally, I was unable to get close to anyone for years. I could only have sex if I had a few drinks . . . it was usually with someone I had just met or didn't know well."

The accounts of abuse in the book - two of which came from Ireland - are as unsensational as they are horrifying. Hill has deliberately steered away from the risk of titillation. The simple facts are enough. In some cases, children's genitals were fondled by nuns who put their hands on their clothes. In other cases, nuns facilitated paedophile priests by providing children from their classrooms. Sado-masochism was a recurring theme: there was a nun who watched and laughed while older girls trapped a younger girl in the school basement and tortured her. A nun claimed that she had been raped by a priest and that when she complained to her Mother Superior, was told she was lying and was expunged from the order.

One Irish woman told Hill of an Irish nun (both of them living in the US) who strapped her naked to a table and sexually tortured her. Another woman told of having a long-running relationship over years with a nun, a camp counsellor, who slept with her at night and forced her to perform sex acts, some involving blood. In both these cases, these women were so hungry for attention that they were aroused and even gratified by the abuse, which they found confusing. It was as though they had been brain-washed.

IN Nazi concentration camps, the guards gained power over their victims by forcing them to strip and be naked in front of the guards and each other. "To be forced into nakedness is to be stripped of one's capacity to have control over one's personal space and security. [It is] one way to gain complete control of someone's body, mind and spirit.

"Childhood sexual abuse works in a similar fashion; it strips children of bodily and spiritual security," Hill writes. "But when that abuse is perpetrated by a member of a religious order, the violation is even `greater' than in cases of say, incest, because it is being done by someone who supposedly accepts the body as something reverent, even to adults. There is, of course, no reverence on the part of the abuser for the child's body and spirit."

Within schools, children were powerless to protest against abuse, and many told of how their parents refused to believe them. Within orders, the alleged sex abuse took place in a hierarchical way, with a revered Mother Superior providing university and post-graduate education for young nuns who provided sexual favours. This was in a larger context of extreme self-sacrifice and sexual denial, where the same nuns would self-flagellate and wear punishing horsehair girdles beneath their habits to eradicate bodily feelings. Their suppressed sexual frustrations would emerge in sado-masochistic ways.

Speaking from her home in New England (Hill will not disclose the precise location for fear of reprisals), Hill tells The Irish Times that she has had no interest in publicising her book on Jerry Springer or Oprah Winfrey because she didn't write it to attract notice. She merely wanted other people who had been abused by nuns to know that they were not alone.

Now suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome, Hill has closed the abuse-by-nuns network which she founded and has decided to get on with her life.

Habits of Sin: An Expose of Nuns Who Sexually Abuse Children and Each Other, by Ashley Hill, is published by Xlibris, $25 hbk/$12.80 pbk in US