IRELAND
Irish Mirror
A brave woman who was thrown into a padded cell, had her hair shaved off and was given a boy’s name by nuns in the Magdalene Laundries has taken her fight for justice to the United Nations.
Terrified Elizabeth Coppin was just 14 when she was taken out of the Co Kerry industrial school she had attended for 12 years and “locked up” in the Peacock Lane Laundry in Cork.
She was never told why she was hauled away from everything she knew and dumped in the hated institution with the chilling warning: “It will be a very long time before you get out.”
And it was the start of a hellish four years in three laundries for Elizabeth where she was:
* FORCED to work long days with no pay
* MADE to sleep in a cell with bars over the window and only a bucket for a toilet
* LOCKED in a bare padded cell for three days after being falsely accused of stealing another girl’s sweets, and
* PUNISHED by having her beautiful hair shaved off and her named changed to Enda after she ran away to escape the nightmare.
Now 64, Elizabeth has returned home from England to Listowel, Co Kerry, to fight for justice for herself and the thousands of women like her who were treated like slaves in the Laundries.
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