IRELAND
Irish Times
Breda O’Brien
‘There is no single or simple story of the Magdalene laundries.” By the time you finish ploughing through it, it becomes more and more clear that the opening sentence of Martin McAleese’s report is an understatement.
Was there any section of Irish society that did not have some involvement in the Magdalene laundries? There were the religious orders that ran them; but family members, priests, the Legion of Mary, the NSPCC, the courts, gardaí, industrial schools, mother-and-baby homes, psychiatric hospitals – they all sent women there. Even the Old IRA took 17 women to the laundries during the 1920s.
Some 16 per cent of the total were “self-referrals”. Think of the situations these girls and women must have faced that made the Magdalene laundry seem like the least bad option.
Why were the rest there? Poverty, intellectual disability, epilepsy, petty crime, psychiatric illness, sexual and physical abuse in the home – all of these were deemed sufficient reason, as was being “taken advantage of”, or even being in danger of being taken advantage of. Just being disobedient at home, or staying out late at night, were sometimes reason enough.
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