Irish religious forced labour scandal

This video says about itself:

The Magdalene Sisters

The Magdalene Sisters (2002)

Written and directed by Peter Mullan and starring Eileen Walsh, Dorothy Duffy, Nora-Jane Noone, Anne-Marie Duff, and Geraldine McEwan, The Magdalene Sisters is based on true events depicted in the documentary, Sex in a Cold Climate.

Mullan’s film tells the story of three Dublin women in 1964, fictional composites of real cases. Abandoned by society and cast out by their families for crimes they did not commit, these women found themselves stripped of their liberty and dignity and condemned to indefinite sentences of manual labor. Within the church-run Magdalene Laundries, they were forced into institutional servitude in order to cleanse themselves of the “sins” of which they had been accused.

The Magdalene Laundries were institutions sponsored and maintained by the Catholic Church in Ireland for the incarceration of young women thought to be a moral danger to themselves and others – unmarried mothers or simply girls who were considered hussies and whores, no better than they should be.

With the legal consent of their fathers, they were imprisoned and made to work for no pay in imitation of Mary Magdalene in laundries, always exploited and in many cases sexually abused. The laundries existed until the 1970s, but the very last did not close until 1996. Peter Mullan has remarked that the film was initially made because victims of Magdalene Asylums had received no closure in the form of recognition, compensation, or apology, and many remained lifelong devout Catholics. Former Magdalen inmate Mary-Jo McDonagh told Mullan that the reality of the Magdalene Asylums was much worse than depicted in the film.

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

Kenny: no apology for workhouses

Tuesday 05 February 2013

by Our Foreign Desk

Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny expressed his personal regret today to the victims of the Catholic church’s scandalous Magdalene Laundries scheme and admitted government complicity in the business.

But his regrets didn’t amount to a formal government apology and fell far short of what had been demanded by campaigners.

An 18-month investigation into the shameful workhouses went into the Irish state’s involvement in the vicious exploitation of vulnerable women in the Catholic church’s chain of Magdalene Laundries between 1922 and 1996.

Senator Martin McAleese‘s inquiry into the Magdalene scandal was prompted by a report from the UN committee against torture in June 2011.

But the report went nowhere near reflecting the criticisms of campaigners and the victims themselves, minimising both the number of victims and the depth of their suffering.

Contrary to claims by some victims, Mr Kenny told the Dail that the report found no evidence of sexual abuse in the laundries, that 10 per cent of inmates were sent by their families and 19 per cent entered of their own volition.

The money-spinning chain of laundries was run by four orders of nuns, the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity, Mercy, Charity and the Good Shepherd.

The state sent girls and women into the laundry system through courts and mother-and-baby homes and then abandoned them.

The women earned nothing and were even deprived of their names.

They were locked in and forced to work long hours in dreadful conditions.

Women who tried to escape were rounded up by police and returned.

Girls as young as two were consigned to the laundries and left there to work unpaid, some for the rest of their lives.

The Irish government has acknowledged that women in the laundries were abuse victims, but the victims have received no compensation.

It is doubtful if they will let the issue rest there.

Related articles

• Enda Kenny to Star in ‘Magdalene Sisters 2, The Whitewash: This Time It’s Persil’ (donegaldollop.wordpress.com)
• Report due on Magdalene laundries (herald.ie)
• Magdalene Laundries: Victims Await Report (news.sky.com)
• Survivors of Magdalene Laundries once again ‘disappointed’ (independent.ie)
• Ireland finally apologizes to the 10,000 ‘Magdalene Sister slaves’ of its Catholic workhouses who were locked up and brutalised by nuns (mablizzyofficial.com)
• Magdalene laundries report due (herald.ie)
• Magdalene laundries: Government knowledge of forced detention in workhouses to be laid bare (independent.ie)
• Magdalene laundries survivors threaten hunger strike (guardian.co.uk)
• Ireland finally says sorry to the 10,000 ‘Magdalene Sister slaves’ of its Catholic workhouses who were locked up and brutalised by nuns | dailymail (andrewazzopardi.org)