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Notre Dame Academy vandalism considered hate crime

Vandals, who left beer cans in their wake, defaced three statues at Notre Dame Academy in Hingham sometime overnight Monday into Tuesday morning.

Graffiti was also found on the side of the building and on the Hingham Middle School, which is also off that part of Main Street (Route 228) not far from Queen Ann's Corner.

In addition the beer cans, police also found a T-shirt from Assumption College and are speculating that the perpetrators might be college students home for the holiday weekend.

Hingham Police spokesman Lt. Michael Peraino said police received a call a 7:55 a.m. Tuesday (Nov. 20) from the Catholic girls high school reporting severe vandalism to the school grounds.

When Officer Roland Simonelli arrived, the custodians had covered up statues of the Virgin Mary, St. Julie and St. Joseph, which had been defaced.

The eyes on the statue of the Virgin Mary were painted red with red paint dripping down like blood. The base of the statue of St. Joseph was painted with the words "for enslave us all" and the word "rape" was painted on the St. Julie statue on which the vandals glued a rubber device depicting a penis.

On the side of the building "in God we thrust" was spray-painted. Police think the incident may be related to one that occurred Sunday at St. Paul's Catholic Church in downtown Hingham. That same phrase was found painted on the back of the church.

On a wall at Hingham Middle School, vandals painted the phrase "home of the retarded hands" and the four-letter, "F" word.

Because most of the vandalism occurred at NDA and at St. Paul's police are treating it as an anti-Catholic hate crime.

Peraino said damage is estimated in the thousands and it is not clear how the statues could be repaired.