IRELAND
Deutsche Welle
A probe in Ireland has found that the state was complicit in the “Magdalene laundries,” where thousands of women were subjected to forced labor until 1996. Ireland’s premier has expressed sympathy to the victims.
Irish governments referred more than a quarter of the estimated 10,000 women and girls sent to Ireland’s Magdalene laundries over a period of seven decades, according to a report released on Tuesday. Previously, the state had denied involvement in what it had described as private institutions run by several Catholic orders of nuns. …
The women who had been sent to these institutions were portrayed over the years as “fallen women.” However, Tuesday’s reported sought to dispel the idea that many of the victims were prostitutes or mothers who then gave birth within the confines of the institutions, saying that “the reality was much more complex.”
Referrals fell into the two main categories, the report found. Non-state entities, including Industrial Schools, agencies and families, accounted for cases in which women were forced to live and work in a Magdalene laundry without being told why or for what duration they were to stay.
By contrast, the criminal justice system and social services stipulated both the reason and the sentencing.
“The majority … described the atmosphere in the [laundries] as cold, with a rigid and uncompromising regime of physically demanding work and prayer, with many instances of verbal censure, scoldings or even humiliating put downs,” the introduction to the report said.
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