IRELAND
Mirror
Adapted By Helen Carroll
BEATEN cruelly by her father and raped on the eve of her first communion, Kathy O'Beirne silently endured a hellish childhood.
She emerged from a mental institution, only to be sent to one of the infamous Irish Magdalene laundries, where the torture and torment continued. Here, Kathy, now in her 40s and from Clondalkin, Dublin, tells how she is fighting for justice for herself and her fellow Magdalene girls.
'AFTER a day in the furnace-like atmosphere of the laundry I I would collapse into bed, exhausted. The nuns considered the Maggies, as we were known, to be the scum of the earth - sinners who would never earn redemption and fallen women heading straight for the burning fires of hell.
The Devil himself could not have dreamed up a better hell than the Magdalene laundry.