FLORIDA
First Coast News
[with video]
Anne Schindler, First Coast News February 10, 2015
DEERFIELD BEACH, Fla. — The Oscar nominated movie “Philomena” was the first time most people learned about the dark side of Ireland’s convents, and the forced adoptions that occurred in some. But it wasn’t news to Catherine Deasy.
She was one of tens of thousands of children born in so called mother-baby homes in Ireland. Run by the Catholic Church, and called “Magdalene Laundries” for the work the women provided, they served as refuge for girls in trouble – unmarried and pregnant. But while they provided a place to live, the tradeoff was cruel.
“My mother was locked up for 40 years in hard labor as punishment for being pregnant and not married,” says Deasey. “They were all enslaved there.”
Some 10,000 women passed through the laundries between 1922 and 1996. Most were forced to cut their hair, and work in total silence. They weren’t paid and many endured physical or sexual abuse. Worst of all, they were forced to give up any claim to their children.
The laundries have since become a source of national shame, earning a formal apology from the Irish prime minister and compensation for survivors. But it was decades before Deasey learned about them. Her mother was a farm girl named Johanna Sheehy, sent to work in a Catholic laundry after falling in love with and getting pregnant by the farm owner’s son. Deemed unfit for society, and without resources, Sheehy remained there until she was well into her 70s.
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