Ireland apologises for Laundries

Two weeks afterwards Magdalene Report, Kenny apologised “unreservedly” and promised redress.

The Irish administration do history recently by offering an apology to the women who were inmates of the Magdalene Laundries.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny gave an excited, 17-minute speech in the Dáil during which he apologised “unreservedly” to the women, speaking on behalf of all the Irish people to have intercourse and regret the abuses and stigma they suffered.

The apology came after a Dáil debate, convened to discuss the findings of the Inter-departmental committee to free-base the facts of soil involvement with the Magdalene Laundries which was published at the beginning of this month.

The Committee, which was great deal up after a recommendation from the United Nations Committee Against Torture (UNCAT), had delayed its report from its initial publication succession of summer 2012.

The facts contained in the report were not news to approximately people in Ireland, but illustrated for the first time and in scathing terms the extent of State involvement with the ill-famed Magdalene institutions.

For those unfamiliar with this sordid branch of Ireland’s past, the Magdalene asylums were institutions which housed so-called ‘ locomote women’ and sought to rehabilitate them back into ordering.

Such institutions operated across Europe and matrimony America but became oddly pernicious aspects of Irish society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

In asset to ‘fallen women’, a euphemism for prostitutes, they housed unmarried mothers as well as women and girls who had fallen victim to societal ills such as illegitimacy, home(prenominal) or sexual abuse, incest, poverty, and disability.

Some were committed by their families as a means of dealing with potentially shameful accusations, while others were incarcerated by the judicial system.

In Ireland, the asylums were named for Mary Magdalene. They operated laundries which took private and public contracts and thus became cognize as Magdalene Laundries.

The Laundries became notorious in Irish life as homes for women and girls cast aside for perceived shameful behaviour.

In a demesne mired in the iron grip of the Catholic Church, whatsoever kind of promiscuity or licentious behaviour – until now where the girl or woman in question had been the victim of abuse – was deemed too shameful to discuss or acknowledge and the societal solution was to cover it up.

By confining these women and girls to the Laundries, which were run by religious associations, they could conceal unwanted, out-of-wedlock pregnancies and other behaviour which was deemed not in keeping with the pious mores of the time.

The last Laundry closed in 1996.

Over time, survivors became increasingly vocal about the abuses they suffered and the hardships they faced.

Justice for Magdalene, an advocacy group set up to seek redress for former inmates, has provided testimonies of hundreds of women who had spent time in the Laundries.

The grim portrait painted was of a veritable life of slavery, hidden behind high walls and rigorous social structures, where girls and women were forced to give up their names on entry, hand over their babies – and any(prenominal)times never see them again- and do endless hours while subsisting on a meagre aliment of bread, porridge, potatoes and sausage.

One report from a survivor revealed that the women were given “one ball a year, on Easter Sunday”.

No effort was made to educate girls of school-going age.

In June 2011, UNCAT recommended that an inquiry be set up to check into State collusion with the operators of the Laundries.

The United Nations committee had stated that it was “ earnestly” concerned at the State’s failure to foster women and girls who had been incarcerated involuntarily between 1922 and 1996.

The Report found that more than 2,500 women and girls were send to the Laundries by the State, yet inspections into their working and living conditions were passing rare.

The State gave lucrative contracts to all the Laundries in Ireland, yet did so without compliments to fair wage and social insurance contracts.

It, further, inspected the Laundries under Factories Acts so that the inmates were forced to continue to work slavishly with no pay.

Those incarcerated worked extremely long hours in atrocious conditions, dealing with bleach and toxicant chemicals while operating the laundry machines and having to lift extremely baleful loads of linen for washing.

Temperatures were extremely hot and injuries were common, with the chemicals leaving sores on the women’s skin and bleach often getting in their eyes.

The inmates were locked in the Laundries at night, with bars on the windows and high walls surround the institutions.

Those who escaped were often caught by the Garda Síochana – the police – and although not legally bound to be at the institutions, returned to the Laundries.

Inmates were not allowed to progress unless they had found a “suitable place to go”, harmonise to the Mother Superior of one convent that operated one Laundry.

When women died in the Laundries – and rough spent their entire lives in the institutions – they were buried unceremoniously in Laundry graveyard plots.

When the report was first published on 5 February, there was outrage at the reaction of some Irish politicians.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny stopped short of an official apology – and was criticised for suggesting the government take time to absorb the Report.

He later met with survivors ahead of the Dáil debate.

Other party leaders such as Micheál Martin of the formerly ruling Fianna Fáil party express regret that the matter had not been dealt with earlier.

When the Taoiseach finally did apologise, in an emotional and heartfelt speech, there was a sense that one of Ireland’s darkest legacies was finally dissolving.

The country has never had a strong jumper cable record where protecting its women is concerned, not least due to the and recently loosened stranglehold of the Catholic Church, but the systematic and cruel manner in which society and government had failed the women of the Magdalene Laundries is particularly shameful.

Tánaiste Éamon Gilmore, who also spoke during the debate, made reference to the twisted blood of Church and State when he said “there is zip fastener so blind as the blindness imposed by a dominant ideology, and a subservient State.”

It is both striking and shocking to realise that some inmates spent up to 70 years in asylums that were veritable prisons, especially given the come life sentence of a tried and sentenced criminal in Ireland is 17 years.

The government is now seeking to set up a fund to provide redress to former inmates of the Laundries, including compensation for work, medical cards, and counselling services amongst other provisions.

It has appointed seek and president of the Law Reform Commission John Quirke to commence a three month review and make recommendations as to criteria that should be applied in providing such assistance.

 

Materials taken from Womens Views on News