The story doesn’t get better.
The truth about the ice cold, damp, grim, dark and immeasurably cruel saga of the Irish child penitentiary system is still unfolding.
The latest news concerns the Irish “Magdalene Launderies”.
Mary Magdalene — once reputedly a sex worker reviled by society, though this is now being described as a “misidentification” of her “sins” — became one of the closest associates or disciples of Jesus, according to the Gospel stories.
If memory serves, children were told stories of her washing the feet of Jesus with her hair [shown uncovered in most images — or, was it her “tears”?], as a mark of the most humble penitance.
If only that was all the “morally errant” girls of Ireland had to do… But, in the some quarters of the Irish Catholic Church, there was no forgiveness for girls who were identified as “morally errant”.
The Associated Press reported from Dublin today, which is posted here, that a new report compiled by the Irish Human Rights Commission says that “Ireland’s civil authorities for decades dumped women — often teenagers being punished for petty crimes or becoming pregnant out of wedlock — into the so-called Magdalene Laundries, a network of 10 workhouses that operated in independent Ireland from the 1920s to the mid-1990s”.
There has been no investigation, yet, into a system where girls “disappeared into the Magdalene laundries system like it was Pinochet’s Chile”.
The Irish government reportedly argues that “families themselves ordered their morally errant sisters or daughters into the laundries”.
State judicial authorities ratified the incarcerations — but never inspected conditions inside, according to the AP story.
Once inside, only the senior nun could decide when, if ever, “morally errant” girls could leave – their children may have become laundry workers too. Four Catholic orders of nuns reportedly ran the “Magdalene Launderies”: the Sisters of Mercy, Sisters of Charity, Good Shepherd Sisters, and Sisters of Our Lady of Charity.
“Anecdotal stories abound of women who remained prisoners for life, giving birth to children who, if not put up for adoption, were transferred to church residential homes and then, eventually, transferred back to become laundry workers themselves”, the AP wrote.
The co-author of the report, Boston College professor James Smith, authored of the book “Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries and the Nation’s Architecture of Containment” [published in 2007] told AP that “the laundries operated as businesses but paid their workers nothing”.
Girls who were residents in the “Magdalene Launderies” system were specifically excluded from Irish Government’s 2001 compensation program, according to the AP report, which also notes that “Over the past two decades, Ireland has been slowly confronting the scale and severity of covered-up child abuse within Catholic dioceses and church-run institutions. Last year, the government published two state-ordered investigations that documented the unpunished abuse of thousands of children in workhouse-style schools and orphanages and the Dublin Archdiocese”.
An advocacy group for girls who survived this system, Justice for Magdalenes (JFM), said on its website here that it “welcomes the Irish Human Rights Commission’s (IHRC) validation of the evidence submitted in seeking a formal inquiry into the State’s responsibility for human rights violations in the Magdalene Laundries. JFM’s submission argues that the treatment of the women and girls in the Laundries violated their constitutional rights, including the right to bodily integrity, the right not to be tortured or ill-treated, the right to earn a livelihood, the right to communicate, the right to individual privacy, the right to travel, the right to one’s good name and the right to one’s person”.
Servitude, slavery, abuse, torture and possibly death are some of the crimes that JFM says were perpetrated against Irish girls confined in the “Magdalene Laundries”.
The Irish Human Rights Commission’s president, Dr Maurice Manning, said on the groups website that “the State cannot abdicate from its responsibilities in relation to the treatment of women and girls in the ‘Magdalen Laundries’. The IHRC’s assessment reveals that there was State involvement where girls and women entered the ‘Magdalen Laundries’ following a court process; in the absence of access to clear information, serious questions arise in relation to the State’s duties to guard against arbitrary detention, compulsory labour, and servitude. The exhumation and cremation of unidentified women and girls from a communal plot attached to a ‘Magdalen Laundry’ also raises serious questions for the State in the absence of detailed legislation in the area. To vindicate the human rights of the women concerned, the Government must immediately establish a statutory inquiry mechanism to gather the evidence necessary to establish the facts behind the treatment of these women”. This is reported here.
A summary of the findings by the Irish Human Rights Commission says that “The information available to the IHRC indicates that the origins of Ireland’s Magdalen Laundries stretches back to 1767 when the first refuge for ‘fallen women’ was opened in Dublin. The first Magdalen Laundries in Ireland were founded and run by members of Church of Ireland denominations before being taken over by Roman Catholic orders in the nineteenth century. The name adopted by the institutions was influenced by the biblical figure of the prostitute, Mary Magdalene, as a role model for repentance and spiritual regeneration. As the name denotes, during the twentieth century Magdalen Laundries operated as private-for-profit laundry enterprises in which the women and girls living in the institutions were expected to work in order to ‘earn their keep’. Magdalen Laundries are not to be confused with State run, and religious order managed, institutions which also operated laundries in Ireland for much of the twentieth century and in which mainly children worked. Similarly, Magdalen Laundries should not be confused with the small numbers of Church of Ireland and Roman Catholic managed laundries which also operated in the State during this period but which do not appear to have been referred to as ‘Magdalen laundries’. Magdalen Laundries were, and indeed still are, officially regarded by the State as purely private enterprises for which the State has no responsibility. An appreciation of this official stance is key to understanding the debate around the call for redress for the women and girls who resided in the laundries. Other than the commercial work of laundering, it is clear from the limited records available that the Magdalen Laundries were regarded by the State as having a reformatory purpose in relation to the women and girls who came to reside there. The last Magdalen Laundry in Ireland closed in 1996. Women and girls were institutionalised in Magdalen Laundries for a variety of reasons. Some of the women and girls in these institutions remained there for life in circumstances where their ability to leave is unclear. Those who had been single mothers were separated from their children prior to entering the laundries. Conditions in the institutions were harsh and women were required to work, apparently without pay while there. There was no specific statutory basis for women to be confined in these particular institutions but nonetheless there is evidence of State involvement in their placement there. It is important to note that in referring to women and girls residing in the laundries, this encompasses unmarried mothers, girls who were referred by their families, clergy or a variety of State actors, women and girls who may have had an intellectual disability, as suggested by some State reports, women and girls who came to reside in the laundries under various court processes, and possibly a combination of one or more of the aforementioned circumstances”.
The report notes that the girls and women in the “Magdalene Laundries” system were in some places referred to as “inmate” and/or “penitent”.
It adds that the remains of some 155 souls were found in a common grave: “the Department of Justice and Law Reform [wrote] in its letter that Death Certificates (which should accompany a licence application) could be located for only 75 of the 133 persons buried and that some certificates referred to deceased persons known only by a religious name. It was further indicated that during the exhumations, additional bodies were discovered and the letter continues ‘it appears that a General Exhumation Licence for the exhumation of all human remains within the private graveyard was granted’. It was stated that a further 22 additional remains were located but not identified and that ‘All the remains were removed by Funeral Undertakers and subsequently cremated’.”
Vaccine trials were reportedly conducted on at least 58 babies from the Mother and Baby Homes which sent a number of unwed mothers to the “Magdalene Laundries”.