IRELAND
Irish Times
GENEVIEVE CARBERY
Some 10,000 women and girls entered Magdalene laundries since 1922 with more than a quarter of referrals made or facilitated by the State, a report has found.
The ‘Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee to establish the facts of State involvement with the Magdalen Laundries’ was published this afternoon. It found “significant” State involvement in the laundries.
In the report, the committee said it found “no evidence” to support the perception that “unmarried girls” had babies in the laundries or that many of the women were prostitutes.
“The reality is much more complex” committee chairman Dr Martin McAleese writes in the introduction.
The women admitted to the laundries “have for too long felt the social stigma” of the “wholly inaccurate characterisation” of them as “fallen women”, he said. “[This is] not borne out of facts.”
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