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KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — An 83-year-old "activist nun" was convicted of breaking into a nuclear facility and defacing a uranium processing plant in Tennessee.
Sister Megan Rice, along with two other protesters, got into the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., by cutting through fences last July. Prosecutors say they caused more than $8,500 worth of damage by spray-painting walls, stringing crime scene tape and chipping walls with hammers. The BBC reports that they also sprayed the outside of the complex with baby bottles containing human blood.
The three protesters — Rice, Michael Walli and Greg Boertje-Obed — belong to the group Transform Now Plowshares, a reference to the book of Isaiah in the Bible, which says, "They shall beat their swords into plowshares. They shall learn war no more."
The group was in the complex for two hours. When a guard finally approached the group, they "offered him food and started singing," according to the BBC.
Sister Rice is a Roman Catholic nun of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus, but she has a long history of "civil disobedience," according to the New York Times. She has been arrested 40 or 50 times, one of which occurred when she and other protesters knelt to physically block a moving truck at a nuclear test site.
Megan Gillespie Rice was born in Manhattan in 1930 and became a nun at age 18. She later received degrees in biology from Villanova and Boston College, "where her studies included class work at Harvard Medical School on how to use radioactive tracers," the Times reports. From 1964 to 2004, she served her religious order as a teacher in Africa, "with occasional breaks" in which she traveled home to the United States.
Sister Rice's antinuclear views are deep-seated, and she became formally involved in American antinuclear protests in the early 1980s. In an interview with the New York Times, she says she detests "the criminality of this 70-year industry," adding, "We spend more on nuclear arms than on the departments of education, health, transportation, disaster relief and a number of other government agencies that I can’t remember."
According to the New York Times, Sister Rice's "bold acts and articulate fervor highlight how the antinuclear movement has evolved since the end of the cold war. They also illustrate the fierce independence of Catholic nuns."
“We’re free as larks,” Sister Rice said of herself and others like her. “We have no responsibilities — no children, no grandchildren, no jobs.”
That's why, as she put it, "the lot fell on us" to fight nuclear arms.
“We can do it. But we all do share the responsibility equally,” she told the Times.
Sister Rice said her aim in targeting the Oak Ridge facility was to draw attention to the nuclear work going on there. The Y-12 Complex was built as part of the Manhattan Project that developed the first nuclear bomb. The complex "has had a hand in making, maintaining or dismantling parts of every nuclear weapon in the country's arsenal," according to the Christian Science Monitor, and the plant holds the nation’s main supply of highly enriched uranium — enough for thousands of nuclear weapons, reports the New York Times.
"It is manufacturing that which can only cause death," Sister Rice said of the complex.
It's the criminality of this 70-year industry. We spend more on nuclear arms than on the departments of education, health, transportation, disaster relief and a number of other government agencies that I can't remember.
–Sister Megan Rice
Defense attorneys said in court the actions of the trio were meant to be symbolic, and they did not mean to cause any serious harm.
Prosecutors disagreed. For the break-in and vandalism, the three activists were charged with trespassing on government property (a misdemeanor) as well as its destruction and depredation (both felonies) — in short, interfering with national security.
The group accomplished something unexpected, however: The ease with which the trio — with a median age of 68 — broke into one of the allegedly most dangerous places in the world highlighted some serious flaws in security.
Congress and the United States Energy Department investigated the facility and found "troubling displays of ineptitude" there, the BBC reported. "Top officials were reassigned, including at the National Nuclear Security Administration," and the WSI, the company in charge of the facility's security, was dismissed.
While many saw this as a small victory, the three defendants were still convicted May 8 and now await sentencing. According to the Times, the charges carry penalties of up to 16 years in prison and fines of up to $600,000.
A judge ruled May 11 that the trio will stay in jail until sentencing in September.
Sister Rice carries just one regret: She told members of the jury that she wished she hadn't waited 70 years before taking such direct action.
“I believe we are all equally responsible to stop a known crime,” Sister Rice said from the witness stand, according to quotes published by her group. Allegedly, she smiled as the verdict was read.
