IRELAND
Gazette
Survivors of Catholic run workhouses in Ireland have rejected a government apology for the incarceration of thousands of women in the Magdalene laundries.
As an inquiry found 2,124 of those detained in the institutions were sent there by the state, campaigners accused Taoiseach Enda Kenny of a “cop out”.
Records have confirmed that 10,012 women spent time in the laundries between 1922 and 1996. Justice for Magdalenes and Magdalene Survivors Together claimed thousands of women forced into slavery and torture deserved a full state apology and compensation.
Mari Steed, whose mother Josephine Murphy was in a laundry in Sunday’s Well, Cork when she was adopted by a family in America, described the Government’s response as horrifying, saying: “What we witnessed today was absolutely shameful, I can’t recall ever been so angry.”
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