The Dirty Linen from the Magdalene Laundries Must Be Aired

Belfast Telegraph
May 30, 2013

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/news-analysis/the-dirty-linen-from-the-magdalene-laundries-must-be-aired-29307607.html

A memorial to victims of the Magdalene Laundries in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin

As recently as the 1980s, new-born babies were being forcibly taken from their mothers and given up for adoption by nuns in Northern Ireland's Magdalene Laundries. That's the allegation I have now heard from a number of women, who were forced into the laundries in Belfast and Newry after they became pregnant.

If true, it is just the most heartbreaking of a whole range of human rights violations alleged by the forgotten women of Northern Ireland's Magdalene laundries.

The publicity surrounding the publication of Martin McAleese's report into Magdalene Laundries in the Republic has prompted a number of women who were in similar institutions in Northern Ireland to approach Amnesty International.

Like their counterparts in the Republic, they appear to have suffered a range of serious human rights abuses including inhuman and degrading treatment, arbitrary deprivation of liberty and forced labour.

But, unlike their counterparts in the Republic, there has been no state-ordered investigation, no public acknowledgement of their suffering, no apology from government.

I have identified 12 Magdalene Laundry-type establishments for women and girls which operated in Northern Ireland.

They were to be found in cities and towns across the north: in Belfast, Derry/Londonderry, Lisburn, Newry, Armagh and Strabane.

In the main, they were operated by Catholic and Protestant Churches, or religious groups. They were seen as places for 'moral purification' for those accused of being prostitutes, 'wayward women', or for unmarried mothers-to-be.

Most institutions closed in the first half of the 20th century, yet a few remained in operation into the 1980s, particularly those run by nuns of the Good Shepherd Sisters religious order, which also ran laundries in the Republic.

Conditions could be bleak: women and girls report they were forced to work without remuneration, had a rule of silence and prayer imposed on them, were deprived of their identity through imposition of 'house names' and numbers and routinely suffered a lack of food and warmth.