Madam, – The new committee set by Alan Shatter to investigate the State’s links to the Magdalene laundries would do well to ponder the following question: how were the laundries able to keep incarcerated hundreds of adult women who, under law, were free to walk away from them whenever they wished? The answer will show that the laundries had the full support of the State apparatus to keep their inmates incarcerated.
Over the years the number of women who “escaped” from the laundries were few, and far between. Those who succeeded did so by fleeing to Britain, and beyond. The reason “escapees” had to go to Britain is very simple. The Garda routinely returned “escapees” to the laundries.
These were adult women who committed no crime and who were perfectly entitled to go where they wished in this State, without hindrance from anybody. Gardaí illegally arrested these women and returned them to the laundries. Such actions by the Garda proved to the inmates that escape was impossible and that the law supported the religious orders in their incarceration. I knew gardaí who told me that they personally returned “escapees” to Magdalene laundries.
These women had their civil and human rights taken from them by agents of the State, who handed them back to their illegal jailers. If the State had not acted so clearly in support of their jailers, isn’t it likely that the women would have left their slave-labour camps and rejoined the free world in their droves? Without the direct support of the forces of law, the Magdalene laundry gulag would have collapsed very quickly. The State has a serious case to answer for its role in maintaining the false imprisonment of so many defenceless women for so long. – Yours, etc,