IRELAND
BBC News
By Sue Lloyd Roberts
BBC News, Ireland
An inquiry last year into Ireland’s Magdalene laundries, where for decades thousands of women were forced to work by nuns, found no evidence that workers were abused. But those who experienced life inside laundry walls angrily reject this, and are insisting that the nuns be held accountable.
“Oh my God! You know what? This brings back so much memories,” 65-year-old Elizabeth Coppin says as she pushes open the door to the Convent Church next to the Magdalene laundry where she was sent to work for the nuns when she was 14.
“We used to have to go to confession once a week,” she says, as we pass the confessional box. “The priest would sit in here and we would go in here to tell him our sins. But what sins did we have? We were working all the time. They were the sinners, not us. They were torturing us.”
For decades, Ireland ignored the stories told by the former Magdalene laundry workers. After all, weren’t people told by the priests that they were just fallen women, or the criminally insane, who deserved to be locked up for most of their adult lives and work, without pay, to atone for their sins?
Coppin had been abused by her stepfather and sent to an orphanage – one of a number of welfare institutions run by the church on behalf of the state. From there, still a child, she was passed into the network of Magdalene laundries and forced to work from eight to six every day except Sundays and bank holidays.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.