Ireland apologizes to women of Catholic laundries

by designs 17 Replies latest social current

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  designs

  The Catholic laundries known as the Magdelene Laundries were where thousands of women were kept incarcerated as 'prostitutes' although very few actually were. Most of the thousands of women were from broken homes and homeless.

  Ireland has conducted 5 formal investigations into these Catholic run houses. These women were sentenced to these labor and boarding houses by the State and Courts. Once there they performed laundry duties for outside interests like hotels, hospitals, and prisons, they also made crafts for the Catholic Church to sell for profit (Rosaries).

  Prime Minister Enda Kenney called this treatment a 'National Shame' because the women were forgotten as they labored in conditions that were 'morally unacceptable' as to how the Catholic Nuns treated their charges.

  Begun after Ireland became independant in 1922, the 'fledgling' state assigned the Catholic Church to address wayward women and young boys. Under a similar program tens of thousands of young boys were sent to Catholic boarding run schools where many experienced the sexual abuse that is now coming to light.

  Kenny felt that more than an State apology was needed and compensation will be offered to the remaining 1000 women who survive today. The last Magdalene Laundry was closed in 1996.
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  tec

  I saw the movie, the Magdalene Sisters. Good movie. Glad they are realizing how bad things were and are offering apologies and acknowledgment, and perhaps compensation.

  Peace,

  tammy
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  designs

  tec- You can imagine the mental anguish these women endured in addition to the hard physical labor and being seperated from family.
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  FlyingHighNow

  They had them in the USA, too and they were run by Irish Nuns and priests. I can remember girls saying, "My parents are threatening to send me to live in a convent." The laundries were bad.

  I do want to add that not all convents and convent schools for girls were like the Irish Catholic Magdalene Convent/laundries. My sister was sent to live in a Roman Catholic home for unwed mothers in New Orleans when she was 15. She said the house was a big, grand, victorian house. The girls had their own bedrooms, chores to do and they were allowed to go take the bus or trolley around the city. She said they each cooked meals sometimes as well. She said she was treated well and could have chosen to keep her baby if she would have had a way to support the baby and a place to live.
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  designs

  That is good to know. Many churches do run decent homes for unwed pregnant teens. As an elder I suggested setting up a shelter for JWs out of work or homeless, all I got from the meeting were stares.
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  Pterist

  I grew up in this "crappy" type theocracy in Ireland, and my right wing American friends here in the USA can't understand why I'm so against their religious input into American politics. It was terrible in Ireland, and is terrible in the middle east. ...Vote for the tea party and GOP, if you want to go back to the middle ages !!!
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  designs

  Pterist- Did you live in Ireland at the time when the last Magdalene Laundry closed (1996).
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  Sulla

  Hmmm. Or, maybe not so much...

  http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/brendanoneill2/100202781/catholic-bashers-have-embellished-the-truth-about-abuse-in-catholic-institutions-its-time-to-put-the-record-straight/

  with link to the 1,000(!) page study:

  http://www.justice.ie/en/JELR/Pages/MagdalenRpt2013

  From the Irish Times:

  http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2013/0209/1224329839729.html

  “We have always said the one-size-fits-all model of survivor does not apply,” says James M Smith, a leading researcher on the laundries and a member of the Justice for Magdalenes advisory committee.

  Of Mullan’s film, he says: “I have said then and since, no survivor I have spoken to has alluded to women suffering sexual abuse in the Magdalene laundries. They were predominantly female and run by female religious; sexual abuse was endemic in male institutions.”

  He notes survivors have also denied that women were stripped naked and examined by nuns, as depicted in The Magdalene Sisters. However, the use of hair cutting as a punishment is confirmed by a set of laundry “house rules” that Dr Smith discovered.

  This document is included in the McAleese report, along with testimony of three women who said they had either experienced or seen hair-cutting as a punishment. Head-shaving was reported only once, however, in a case of head lice.
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  Pterist

  Nope, I have been this side of the Atlantic since 1990, before that a year in Australia ! ;)
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  FlyingHighNow

  I read somewhere in the past couple of days that there were laundries up until 2012 I think it was. I read that the nuns thought they were helping the women and girls do penance. The laundries started out in earlier centuries as places to help prostitutes get off the streets. It evolved into something corrupt with the nuns, priests, police and even families involved.