Magdalene girl: ‘I cried for weeks and weeks. I was nobody. I was 16’
Thursday, December 31, 2009 – Irish Examiner.
CLAIMING that the new “information wasn’t available” when he rejected a distinct redress scheme for Magdalene survivors, Education Minister Batt O’Keeffe’s response rings hollow (Irish Examiner, December 17). It is important, moreover, to emphasise that evidence of state complicity rests not only with the materials laid before the Department of Justice on December 14.
Indeed, the Department of Education must also acknowledge its own complicity in this matter.
Had officials from the department attended the scheduled meeting with Justice for Magdalenes (JFM), I would have pointed to the department’s awareness of children being placed in Magdalene laundries as late as 1970 (beyond those transferred from state residential institutions).
This awareness never led to direct corrective action or intervention. Indeed it is still unacknowledged. As such, it calls into question the department’s commitment to “cherish all of the children of the nation equally”.
The Reformatory and Industrial School Systems Report 1970 (ie, the Kennedy Report), commissioned by the Department of Education, documents two distinct populations of children so confined. In a discussion of children placed in “religious convents” by “parents, relatives, social workers, welfare officers, clergy or garda”, the report states that “the committee is satisfied that there are at least 70 girls between the ages of 13 and 19 confined in this way who should properly be dealt with under the reformatory schools’ system”.
Likewise, in a table attempting to capture the “total number of children in care”, the report asserts that there were 617 children resident in “voluntary homes which have not applied for approval”. As the department can affirm, these “voluntary homes” were typically Magdalene laundries and other “religious convents”.
The report’s two figures – 70 and 617 – offer a snapshot for the scale of the problem in 1968/’69. My questions to the officials from the Department of Education, again if they had attended, would have been the following:
1. Given the department’s awareness, and the moral and constitutional obligations to protect children and provide a basic minimum education, can the minister now account for each of these children?
2. Given its awareness that children were being “cared” for in these institutions, did the department ever visit, inspect or license these “religious homes”?
I ask these two questions in light of the Ryan report offering a window into what life was like for children transferred to the laundries from a residential institution.
We are told the regime was “like a prison”, that doors were locked all the time … working conditions were harsh, “constantly washing laundry in cold water and using heavy irons for many hours”. One survivor remembers her child labour: “I did collars; you had to keep ironing them until they became real stiff. There was a little wooden thing you could stand on.”
One young girl remembers being “put in the middle of older and middle-aged women. I cried for weeks and weeks on end. I was nobody. I was 16”.
In his letter rejecting a distinct redress scheme (September 4, 2009), Minister O’Keeffe asserts: “The situation in relation to children who were taken into the laundries privately is quite different to persons who were resident in state-run institutions”. But surely when one is addressing institutional child abuse such distinctions are meaningless. Either it was child abuse or it wasn’t. How a child ended up in the laundries is hardly the issue at hand.
Finally, it is disingenuous for the Department of Education to infer that the new evidence presented to Department of Justice officials on December 14 wasn’t available in September when Minister O’Keeffe rejected the JFM proposal.
Indeed, the proposed scheme was first circulated to all members of Dáil Éireann on July 3 last and both the “key terms” and “elements of an apology” sections refer explicitly to women referred to and/or placed “on remand” in the laundries by the courts. Likewise, I wrote to the Taoiseach on September, 22, 2009, and outlined in some detail the evidence of state complicity. Mr O’Keeffe was copied on that letter, as were other ministers. I am still awaiting a formal response.
After the “scheduling error” on Monday, December 14, an official from the Department of Education spoke with me by phone the following afternoon and I offered to meet with him later that evening. I also offered to meet on Wednesday morning (December 16) before travelling back to Boston. Neither offer was taken up.
In conclusion, it is significant that the Department of Justice has come forth and accepted its role in placing women “on remand” at the Seán McDermott Street Laundry. The Department of Justice is also examining other archival material addressing women placed “on probation,” and it is formulating a response to a series of questions put to them at our meeting.
Hopefully, the New Year might see the Department of Education resolve to do likewise.
Dr James M Smith
Associate Professor
English Department and Irish Studies Programme
Boston College
Connolly House
300 Hammond Street
Chestnut Hill
Massachusetts 02467
USA
It means that any comment sent to the website has to be approved by the webmaster. That is, myself. It is an extremely rare occasion that a comment is not approved or ‘moderated’. I hope this answers your question. Paddy.
What does ‘comment awaiting moderation’ mean?
The abuse will never stop as long as the Church is allowed to claim ‘Moral Authority’ based on the premise that the Son of God gave that authority to the Church before he died to save us from the curse of Original Sin, the doctrine that we are all born as co-sinners with Adam and Eve.
The inconvenient truth,however, is that there is no mention of that in Genesis. So why did Jesus die? And whence the authority of the Church? My heart goes out to all …keep the fight!
Sad to say but wherever there are vulnerable children there are predators – many of these predators are in the so called religious life. If there is a God all I can think of to say is: God Help Us All. Paddy.
HI, You All:
I’m from the States. Over here we didn’t have Magdalene Laundries to my knowledge, but we had other Catholic-run orphanages/institutions which were just as sinister. In the 40’s and 50’s there was a social agenda of making our Native American Indians “more American.” They were put in Indian Schools or orphanages where they were forbidden to use their native languages, practice their religious customs, talk to their siblings, etc. This was supposedly accomplished by taking them out of the homes of loving parents and putting them in “indian Schools,” some of which were run by nuns. I understand that social workers in Canada did the same thing to their native populations. In Canada these Indian Children are often called “The Lost Generation.”
One of my friends, who is about 67, now, along with her two brothers, were placed in an Orphanage run by the Sisters of S. Joseph in Oklahoma. At that time, the children were about 4, 5, and 6 yrs old. Oklahoma has a large, indigenous Cherokee Indian population, and it is a dry, hot, miserably humid place in the summer. The orphanage “made money” by having the children pick their weight in cotton, every day. If they didn’t pick their weight in cotton, they were severely beaten, by their loving, uncharitable, merciless nuns. Picking cotton is very difficult and their hands were usually cut up.
My friend’s grandfather was a Cherokee Medicine Man. He was troubled because he intuitively knew that his grandchildren were being mistreated and abused at a Catholic Orphanage, but he had no idea where the children were located. My friend claims that one night her grandfather had a dream about where the children were being held (against their wills). The next day, he took his pick-up truck and a heavy metal chain, and pulled the iron gates off of the Catholic orphanage. He called out for the children and when they heard him they came running out of the orphanage. A nun was knocked down a stairway by one of her brothers, who was trying to break free.
After the children were freed, they told him how they were beaten and abused, and he took them down to the local newspaper, which took pictures of their belted backs and backsides. When she told me the story, she could tell that I found this kind of “Slave Labor” and abuse in the 20th century, almost incredulous. She then took out the newspaper article, along with the picture, and showed me her proof. I was dumbfounded that something as barbaric as this kind of abuse by nuns could have happened in the United States in the 1940’s and 50’s!
You might be wondering, “What ever happened to “The precious Brides of Christ, also known as the Black Veiled Monsters,” who abused them?” Well, the orphanage conveniently “burned down,” and the Sisters of St. Joseph never had any record of any Cherokee children being there, abused there, etc! To this day, she has never been able to get any kind of redress from the Catholic Church or recognition from the Sisters of St. Joseph.
I often wonder what the poor orphans in Church-run schools in Africa, Mexico and South America are experiencing? I wonder if they, too, are a source of “Slave Labor” and physical and/or sexual abuse.
When will the Catholic Church and Vatican learn that their sins will not only be shouted from the rooftops, but in our generation, from satellites in outer-space?
My prayers are with those who have been abused by the Church, all around the world. Truth Will Triumph!
Jeannie
Hanora, you really are the best.
Barry.
And if you tolerate this, then your children will be next.
If you don’t then there really be lots of Happy New Years!
I was told I was lucky not to have been placed in a Magdalene Laundry by the nuns when I told of my subsequent behaviour to being raped! This by a legal representative of our courts and country! He also represented a goodly number of applicants at the Redress Board. No need to ask where his sympathies lay!!!!
probation services- ah yes, my favourite group for loosing files in secret fires- how convenient.
I have witnesses to these officers screaming at innocent women to obey their masters and KNOW THEIR PLACE IN CATHOLIC IRELAND.
“How dare us women think we are equal to men”
Then go into court and the Dept Of Justice Judge will give the women the same lecture.
How dare women say they were victims of abuse.
How dare children say they were victims of abuse.
So, to keep the abuse hidden, women, men and children were locked away.
Paddy, we need all those who suffered under this regime of fear and abuse to come forward and tell their truth- even to write anon and send it to someone who wants to do the real research to uncover the true extent of abuse in Ireland.
Of course all the patriarchal agents of the state knew what was going on.
But, who cared,? after all they were only females, Magdalenes, whores, prostitutes, in the minds of this elite system.
No point in saying it any other way Paddy.
These are the words that were in the minds of the state agents at the time.
Now the agents call the children disposable shitbags.
If only people could hear what words are used by social workers, etc to describe abused children, we would return to the 1950’s when in my area , there was a shoot to kill policy on the child snatchers- aka social workers- do gooders to the outside world, child abusers in secret.
They knew back in those days, they know now.
For 16 years I am writing to Ministers for Children,and what response do I get?
“Sorry, but I am unable to do anything, as it is a matter for the courts.”
So, clearly people, we see the same tactics used to NOT BE BOTHERED ABOUT THE CHILDREN.
Each dept passes the parcel like a game- as to them children are not human.
So, let the agents keep lying and lying and before long Tara will see Lady Justice arise and then we see how these agents of evil find excuses for their deeds.
Go, Batty, go. You are one of the best at doing the worst. Please keep doing it, for as always the slippery worm that you are makes you positively glow.
Go, Batty, go,if you were not this bad then we all would not look this good.
Go, Batty, Go, you can take your place among the hallowed passages of Irelands history to have been someone to have so disregarded it and re-written to your will. With all the ‘mental reservations’ at my disposal, I say again, “go, Batty, go” before you are forced to.
Barry Clifford