IRELAND
Irish Independent
By Paul Melia
Wednesday February 06 2013
THE authorities were warned over 70 years ago that the Magdalene Laundries were not appropriate places to rehabilitate women convicted of crimes.
A report found that the laundries, which were offered as an alternative to prison, had a “lack of any specialist training” to provide girls with a “fresh start” in life and that education was “absent”.
Written by a probation officer in 1941, the report referred to “young country girls who get into trouble in Dublin, where their inexperience is easily recognised and readily exploited by the depraved”.
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