Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Gael Murphy on August 11, 2013 at 6:24pm

Bernard, I am not hoping to revise the Catholic Church; I am waiting for its demise.

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Permalink Reply by Rónán Gearóid Ó Domhnaill on August 12, 2013 at 3:09am

so are the Orangemen and the KKK.

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Permalink Reply by Gael Murphy on August 12, 2013 at 8:02am

Oh, the church as victim card?  The Irish dispute was always over land and power.  The KKK is shriveled and in disrepute.  The church herself is the present problem.  She has so much dirty linen under her skirt, all the Magdalene Laundries that ever were could never wash it clean.  

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Permalink Reply by Bernard Raymond O'Brien on August 12, 2013 at 12:31pm

Exactly right.

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Permalink Reply by Bernard Raymond O'Brien on August 12, 2013 at 12:40pm

Sad Gael, but that's about where I have been.  And millions. 

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Permalink Reply by Mari Steed on August 12, 2013 at 11:13am

Gerry invited me to reply to this thread, so with some trepidation I shall. I would first like to condition my response with the fact that Justice for Magdalenes, the advocacy org I co-founded back in 2003, officially ended its political campaign this past May. We are however, continuing to work on the historical legacy and narrative of the Magdalene Laundries (including a thorough review and dissection of the Interdepartmental Committee Report by Dr. McAleese) and to monitor the Magdalen Commission's redress process along with the UN and other human rights groups. That said, I see a number of comments which might be aided by a better understanding of what the Laundries were, how they operated, and the history of our campaign for restorative justice for survivors. I suggest a good starting point would be a read of Professor James Smith's "Ireland's Magdalene Laundries and the Nation's Architecture of Containment" (Notre Dame Press).

While the Magdalene Asylum was hardly a Catholic creation -- Protestant women's groups in the UK and Ireland began the concept in the 18th century -- the more modern-day model we are all familiar with was very much a creature of the Catholic view on morality and virtue. The original idea was to reform prostitutes, teach them a trade (laundry, sewing, etc.), and prevent the spread of venereal disease. However, by the time Catholic orders began opening similar establishments, particularly in Ireland, prostitution and venereal disease weren't so widespread as in other parts of the world. So they cast their net wider -- girls who were deemed "morally at risk," women who had been remanded by the courts for petty crimes (and often the more serious, and sad, crime of infanticide), developmentally disabled girls, girls who had been raped (often the result of incest) and, of course, women who had borne children out of wedlock. There were, in fact, parents who sent their girls to Magdalene Laundries mistakenly believing they were "schools" and their daughters would receive a good education at the hands of the nuns. The paths into a Laundry were varied and arcane.

With regard to the McAleese report: the State was tasked by the UN Committee Against Torture in 2011 (after our submission and an embarrassing review/response by Dep. Sec'y Sean Aylward in Geneva) to conduct a thorough, independent investigation of the State's involvement in the Laundries. Then-Senator Martin McAleese could hardly be considered independent, so that was the first misstep. However, under the remit given by the State, Dr. McAleese did admirably find ample evidence (not that we hadn't already found it) that the State was complicit in remanding girls and women to Laundries from industrial schools (which was my mother's case: at age 14, after her single mother attempted to take her out of industrial school in Waterford, which resulted in a row with the nuns, my mum was quickly spirited down to Sunday's Well Laundry in Cork, where she spent the next 10 years of her life), through court remands and through other State-sanctioned devices (even after a girl left school at age 14-16, if she was found without parental supervision, the gardai had the authority to bring them to a Laundry up until age 21). But unfortunately, Dr. McAleese took it a step further and offered sketchy and manipulated evidence and a glossy story that 'no abuse' had taken place, giving the religious orders a complete pass. He also inferred (based on a reading of a set of accounts provided by the financial advisors for the Sisters of Mercy) that these were 'subsistence' operations, when even Diocesan evidence found in the archives in Galway suggests otherwise. Moreover, he was given no records at all by the orders for two of the largest Laundries - Galway and Dun Laoghaire, under the assumption they'd been 'lost or destroyed'. The maths in the report are badly bungled; numbers do not jive for routes of entry, mother-baby home crossover and in many other areas based on existing evidence. And he ultimately chose to ignore more than 700 pages of eyewitness testimony (both survivors and others involved in the Laundries, including workmen, gardai, doctors and managers) Justice for Magdalenes submitted to him, including two sets of in-person interviews with women we brought forward to him in 2012. I was present for the second of those interviews and can attest that in my 10-15 minutes of sitting with Dr. McAleese and his assistant, the inference was clear: he was trying to convince the women (and me, on my mother's behalf)  that they were confusing any abuse they suffered in a Laundry with abuse they suffered in an industrial school (and sure, weren't you already compensated for that?)

If you are locked behind four walls 24/7, being forced to do unpaid commercial labour, that IS abuse. Abuse isn't just sexual or physical (yet we had evidence of both examples as well -- in fact, Sister Stanislaus Kennedy in her 1980's book provided several eyewitness accounts of horrendous physical abuse in Laundries, but her work was not included in Dr. McAleese's investigation). These women suffered legitimate human rights abuses. Their names were taken from them, they were assigned numbers, they were not allowed to converse freely with each other, they were often physically punished and abused, often involving withholding of food or shearing of hair (both defined as torture by the UN), being forced-marched in wed bedsheets, made to lay prone on the floor for hours or kneel for hours. We can waffle on and on about what constitutes abuse, but it's clear in my mind if not the minds of others. The McAleese report is already receiving critical review at the hands of legal firms, the IHREC and the UN. As far as Brian O'Neill's and Thomas Oddie's reviews in the Telegraph and Catholic Herald, respectively, it became patently clear that they only read the Introductory segment of the report and did not bother to read any further historical or evidenciary data to augment their reading and understanding. That's a grave mistake and not good journalism on either gentleman's part. I won't even go into Catholic League's Bill Donohue's attempt to throw his "expertise" into the ring. It's an embarrassment, but then he always is.

At the end of the day, the State and the religious orders got the report they wanted. The religious got a pass and feel they've no obligation to pony up and pay their half of the redress. I'm sure their solicitors and financial advisors have urged them not to; to take the moral outrage in the public and just stay quiet, sure it will all blow over. And at the end of the day, they get away with it once again. The RCC is a master at the shell game, at deflecting bad press, and at laying low and hoping the dust blows over. Yet interestingly, I've attended several US conferences where I've met up with female religious from American orders who are absolutely appalled at the actions of their Irish 'cousins'. Several have offered to push public letters of support for our campaign an urge their Irish compatriots to do the right thing. The American Sisters of Mercy actually issued a full-page newspaper apology back in 2003 for the Laundries, despite that they had no hand in running them. Throughout our 10-year campaign, despite numerous attempts to reach out to the four religious congregations in respectful dialogue, we were refused. Even Cardinal Sean Brady called our campaign "fair and balanced" and urged the orders to meet with us.

Over the last two years, we've held graveside memorials at several of the mass graves in Dublin, Cork and Galway on International Women's Day, well attended by the public, families, survivors and politicians; yet despite invitations, not one nun came to pay her respects. Not one. Instead, we had "Sisters A and B" on radio, expounding their smug, middle-class values and insisting that survivors would just fritter or drink away any money they got. Shame on those nuns for their moral superiority. Much like in the Stanford Prison Experiment, it was that very attitude and misplaced superiority that led these women to see fellow women as something less than human, and treat them accordingly. Simple compassion and remorse would go a long way and in fact, would be far more important and meaningful than a financial contribution. But let's face it, the Church ruled Ireland with a moral fist and the new Irish State was so concerned with upholding a national image of morality and virtue, of piety and purity, that they gladly abdicated their duty of care for their citizens to the Church, and the Church in turn abused that care as well. They both share equal responsibility and the orders should do what's right. And its more than just "redress": there are issues with derelict grave sites, properly identifying women, families who wish to have their relatives reinterred (or even just find their relatives) and other extended issues, not to mention those of us who were taken from our mothers and trafficked overseas or adopted within Ireland. However, I am not holding my breath that they even know what's right anymore. If this were the mafia or some drug-smuggling cartel, CAB would be all over it.

I welcome anyone with interest in the topic to read the *full* McAleese report (all 1,000+ pages - not just the Introduction), and then go back and read all of the evidence and data submitted prior to its publication, all of which is freely available on our website at http://www.magdalenelaundries.com, including survivor testimonies (redacted).

And to whichever poster referred to these girls and women as "maggies," please don't do it again. That's horribly demeaning and derogatory. These poor ladies have suffered enough and had to hide their backgrounds in order to survive in their own ex-pat communities in the UK, US and elsewhere. They never, ever mention that they were in a Laundry (including my own mother) because they end up being bullied by their own for it and called snide remarks like "maggie." My mother will sooner talk about her 2 years at the Bessboro mother-baby home in Cork where she had me than the 10 years she spent at Sunday's Well. That's how stigmatic an experience it was for them. The term "maggie" is as offensive to them as the term "n----r" is. Just don't do it. They were also not "residents", "employees" or "workers". They were slaves, full stop. Let's not gloss over the reality of it. We don't need the hyperbole that some of the press often use, nor do I believe they should exploit survivors to sell the "exoticness of trauma," but we should not diminish the truth of what these places were, either, and how badly marginalised these women were.

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Founding MemberPermalink Reply by Nollaig 2016 on August 12, 2013 at 11:24am

Well said Mari

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Permalink Reply by Bernard Raymond O'Brien on August 12, 2013 at 12:36pm

Thank you thank you Mari.  We needed someone like you to pass their personal knowledge.  God Bless to you and all effected; and we were all effected in one way or another.

Please do not go away Mari.  

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Permalink Reply by Mari Steed on August 20, 2013 at 10:34am

Thanks, Bernard. And I don't plan on going anywhere. We still haven't ripped up the last piece of dirty carpet in Ireland's "architecture of containment": the mother-baby homes. Since adoption became legal in Ireland in 1952, more than 52,000 Irish adults still do not have access to their original birth certificate or documents concerning them, including medical records. Many of those 52,000 were illegally or forcibly taken from their mothers, and some 2,000+ trafficked to the US. I was one of them. We were also subjected to illegal vaccine and other medical trials without our mothers' consent. So we've miles to go before we sleep. A friend recently bought me a baseball cap reading "Women Who Behave Rarely Make History." I live by that and will continue to "misbehave" until all of Ireland's most marginalised receive justice. So unless Opus Dei decides to take me out with a group of crack snipers, I'll be here ;-)

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Permalink Reply by Bernard Raymond O'Brien on August 20, 2013 at 4:43pm

God Bless you Mari, and I will continue to continue, doing what I can.  Keep leading, speaking out, writing etc.  Bernard

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Permalink Reply by Gael Murphy on August 12, 2013 at 1:52pm

Thank you!

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Permalink Reply by Gerry Regan on August 13, 2013 at 9:06am

It is, indeed, vital that we are able to hear first-hand the heavy cost borne by those women who became virtual prisoners, typically for the sin of being young and fully human. A sad chapter for Ireland, certainly.

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