"SHE'S the sweetest, nicest person you could ever have. And there are lynch mobs out there saying she should be hung, drawn and quartered. It's killing me," says Alan starting to cry. "It's killing us all."
Soon, Ann and Jenny are crying too. Like Alan, they do not recognise the portrayal in the media of Sister Xavieria, the nun who reared them at St Kyran's and, treated them with tenderness and love.
In a room in the Grand Hotel, Wicklow, we are sitting looking at photographs of Sister Xavieria and some of the children she cared for at St Kyran's in Rathdrum, Co Wicklow, in the 1960s and 1970s. The pictures have the feeling of intimate family photographs, informal and full of smiles, with the children looking happy and well fed. All that is missing are the parents, who gave up the children through inability to care for them or left them by, disappearing to England.
Jenny, Ann and Alan - who are showing me the photographs - are just three members of the newly formed Sister Xavieria Support Group, which is made up of more than 20 adults in their thirties, all of whom were raised by Sister Xavieria and others at St Kyran's during the 1960s and 1970s. Sister Xavieria, they tell me, became a dedicated surrogate parent to them and never lost touch or stopped caring for them, even after they had left St Kyran's to make their way in life.
Jenny, who was sent to Rathdrum at the age of three when her parents' marriage broke up and her mother disappeared, shows me a photo of Sister Xavieria tenderly holding her newborn baby. The nun attended Jenny's wedding and her babies' christenings.
Alan, who entered Rathdrum in 1965 at the age of nine when his parents "cleared off", shows me cards and letters he had received from Sister Xavieria over the years, cards whose words of encouragement meant so much to him that he has kept them.
"St Kyran's did not feel like an institution. Sister Xavieria was a loving, tender, kind person to me. I was corrected when I did wrong. But I can never recall her hitting me, although I saw her slap other boys with her hand," says Alan.
Ann was between eight and 10 when she entered the home in 1965. She left in 1975 and has no doubt she was cared for better by Sister Xavieria than she would have been if left with her father after her mother had died.
Ann mentions that she met Sister Xavieria regularly once a week up to the time of the present controversy. She cried from shock and could not see or talk to anyone for two days after hearing that Sister Xavieria was being named as the nun at the centre of the cruelty allegations in the television documentary Dear Daughter. "It's been like a death in the family for me, a bereavement," she says.
When Jenny saw Dear Daughter she had no idea that the cruel nun at the centre of it was allegedly her beloved Sister Xavieria. Instead her first thought was: "Those poor people. We were raised in an institution. Thank God that didn't happen to us."
By Wednesday of last week, however, Sister Xavieria was being identified as the cruel and abusive nun not only in the Goldenbridge case but also in allegations about St Kyran's.
Jenny, Ann and Alan immediately began telephoning each other and, by the weekend, the Sister Xavieria Support Group had been set up. So far, more than 20 former residents of St Kyran's have signed a letter for publication in the newspapers.
"We could not let the stories going around about her continue. We had to say that was not our experience of that nun," says Jenny. "I feel that I had a very good relationship with Xavieria. She was always there for me, even in aftercare. Whenever there was a problem, I knew that I could turn to her."
Jenny adds that the group is not saying there was never abuse at St Kyran's. "Another nun did slap us and hit us with keys, but we are not here to talk about that. We simply want to focus on Xavieria."
She adds: "We are not saying that everything was rosy. We are not saying that we weren't slapped. But we feel she's being made to take all the blame."
Nor is the support group trying to portray a saccharine view of Sister Xavieria as overtly affectionate. Alan describes her as a "domineering woman who knew how to get things done".
"She did slap me once," says Jenny. "But I know why she did it and I deserved it."
"She was like a mother to me. She slapped me and I knew what I got it for. I was a devil," says Ann, laughing.
They tell of her going out of her way to help them and others find their parents, who had disappeared. And, rather than nightmares, they have happy memories of their time at St Kyran's, which included ballroom dancing on Thursday nights, scouts, cubs and girls' clubs on Wednesdays and, Irish dancing on Tuesdays. The children lived in family units of 14 in rooms equipped with TV sets, a new, more intimate atmosphere which they say was introduced by Sister Xavieria, who also changed the name of St Kyran's from "orphanage" to "school".
"We would like to plead with the Irish media to look at both sides with Xavier and to see that there must be balance and there must be justice," says Jenny. "We have felt up until now that no one in the media wanted to listen to us. Our stories are true as well. We are not contradicting any one of the other stories that anyone else has told. We are just speaking from our own experience.
"We just want her to be able to return to live in Rathdrum," says Ann, sadly. "She must be the loneliest woman in the world."