MAGDALENE DOCUMENTARY: INTERVIEWS WITH FORMER INMATES SCREENED:CRITICISM OF the failure by State and religious orders to apologise to thousands of Irish women incarcerated in the Magdalene laundries was articulated by several former residents who were in Galway yesterday for the screening of a documentary on the issue.
The failure by the State’s redress board to hear the cases of such women was a “disgrace”, the documentary’s director, Steven O’Riordan said.
Maureen O’Sullivan, one of several women interviewed for his documentary, did have her case heard last week before the redress board.
However, this was only because she was able to prove that she had stayed at an industrial school adjoining a laundry in New Ross, Co Wexford.
Speaking after the screening, Mrs O’Sullivan said she had received a settlement and a Taoiseach’s apology. “The fact that it took me six years to have my case heard – and that I am an exception – takes a lot of the good out of it. They have left it too late.”
The mother of two never told her husband of her experiences in three separate laundries run by nuns – having been sent there at the age of 12. Her husband died three years ago.
Two Irish women now living in England, who were also interviewed, attended the screening. Kathleen Legg said that in 38 years of marriage she had never told her husband what had happened, in spite of the fact that she often had terrifying nightmares. Her visit to Galway was her first return to Ireland in 50 years.
Mary King described constant beatings and abuse during her time, and said that no doctor was called by the nuns when she slipped into a coma due to rheumatic fever.
“They called the priest to anoint me,” she said. Her treatment, the failure of the nuns to provide any education and the long working hours had turned her and thousands of other women into “child slaves”, she said.
The documentary asks why a plaque to 155 women, whose bodies were found during construction on a former convent in Drumcondra in 1993, was never erected by the developer after purchase of the site from a religious order.
As reported at the time, and by Mary Raftery in this newspaper, the list of names provided by the nuns for the exhumation licence did not match up to names on a mass grave – and one date, for April 31st, 1948, did not even exist.
In a statement issued yesterday, the Labour Party women's group said the screening of the documentary, The Forgotten Maggies, was an opportunity to "rectify in some small way, the wrong that was visited upon these women over many decades".
“We should take this opportunity to express our determination that the plight of the Magdalene women will never be forgotten, and that nobody will ever again be forced to endure the pain, anguish and humiliation that they suffered,” the statement said.
“There has never been a formal apology of any sort to the Magdalene women, either from the religious orders involved, or from the State, which was in many ways complicit in subjecting these women to this awful treatment – and that is something that needs to be addressed.”
The group called for a signal to be given “in a real and meaningful way” that “families torn asunder in such a cruel and brutal manner will not be tolerated again”.