and continuing to spend his money each night by gambling and drinking at local bars. Consequently, the siblings were severely neglected as children, with their parents seldom present in the household. In spite of this dysfunctional environment, Bonin and his brothers were actively raised Catholic by their parents and baptized according to church doctrine. They attended St. Mary's Catholic School where staff repeatedly made complaints of Bonin's aggression toward other students, absence from school, not paying attention in class, and an incident in which he rode his bike into a group of young girls. For this offense, Bonin was briefly placed in juvenile hall. After returning home, Bonin was reportedly more recalcitrant toward his parents than before the punishment. Receiving constant complaints from various authorities and locals regarding Bonin and his older brother's delinquency, the parents – frequently neglecting to discipline their children – began to feel stress regarding their two sons. On September 6, 1953, Bonin's mother placed Bonin and his older brother in the Franco-American School located at 357 Pawtucket Street in Lowell, Massachusetts, in an apparent effort to protect her children from the ongoing domestic violence within the family home. This Catholic convent was known to severely discipline the children it housed for major and minor breaches of conduct, with punishments administered including harsh beatings, stress positions, repeatedly pacing staircases until exhausted, and partial drowning in sinks filled with ice water. In more extreme cases, orphans faced alleged assaults such as having their heads dunked in toilets and being threatened with knives by older children, as well as being left with hematomas on their head and buttocks from beatings received by nuns. Despite these forms of mistreatment, contemporary records indicate Bonin – a typically troublesome child – was observed by officials to function well under the controlled environment of this convent. Bonin recollected being physically assaulted and bullied by other children at this orphanage without intervention by authorities before being defended from this peer abuse by a thirteen-year-old orphan in 1955. According to Bonin, this individual escorted him to a restroom, where Bonin agreed to sexual advances from this individual under the condition that the older boy's hands were bound with a towel to make Bonin himself feel safer. Loosing his restraints, the orphan bound and performed fellatio on Bonin before attempting to rape him and forcing Bonin to orally copulate him. Following the assault, Bonin vowed