By Trish O'Dea
The Corkman
July 2, 2009
http://www.corkman.ie/news/millstreet-filmmaker-tells-harrowing-story-of-the-forgotten-maggies-1802125.html
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| Right: Stephen O'Riordan and his sister Joanne pictured at their Millstreet home. Stephen made the documentary 'The Forgotten Maggies' which premieres at the Galway Film Festival on July 8. |
A YOUNG documentary maker from Millstreet, whose ' The Forgotten Maggies' is set to stir up a storm of controversy at the Galway Film Festival next Wednesday, admits that in the process of making the film "I felt ashamed to be Irish".
The 'Forgotten Maggies' picks up the stories of four women who were inmates of Cork's notorious Magdalene Laundries after they left the workplaces they were forced into because they became pregnant when they were unmarried.
In some cases the harrowing effects of what happened to these women reverberate down through the generations. Along with the 30,000 women who lived and worked in the laundries until the last was closed in 1996, the children of these women, this documentary shows, are often deeply damaged by this legacy.
Stephen O'Riordan, who is now 25 years old, felt compelled to do something after watching Peter Mullins‚ award-winning ' The Magdalene Sisters'. He was haunted by the feeling that "there was no way in the world those women rode off into the sunset and lived happily ever after, not after what happened to them".
One woman who was torn away from her unmarried mother at two and sent to a children's home, where she was routinely beaten because of the circumstances of her birth, is among the unforgettable contributors to the documentary.
She was brought to a laundry to meet her mother when she was seven. Mother and daughter sat in a room for some time without exchanging a word.
When she got back to the children's home, the woman who had accompanied her stripped her naked, beat her severely and locked her in a coal shed as punishment for her social ineptness. The woman tells Stephen on film: "I didn't know what to say to her — I didn't know what a mother was".
Stephen, a graduate in film studies, felt enormous pressure to get this right, and he feels he has created an important documentary. "These are four real women and, for all of them, it was their first time coming forward and telling their stories. We really want to get their voices heard."
Stephen was motivated to try and make a difference, in part, because of his inspirational sister Joanne O'Riordan, who was born without arms and legs and who leads a full and active life. Joanne, 13, has just completed her first year of secondary school at Millstreet Community College.
And so began a three-and-a-half year trek around Ireland and England gathering these stories and working with the women to make a stand against a redress board which, in one case, flatly refused to believe the woman's account of her treatment in one of the Magdalene Laundries.
Stephen is reluctant to release too much detail before the premiere but the documentary is set to be explosive. The content focuses on what happened after the women left the laundries and brings their stories right up to date with Stephen and his colleagues, Gerard Boland and Seamus Hegarty, drawn into their fight for justice. He was also greatly assisted by Elaine Hooper, also from Millstreet, who became an adviser, soundingboard and confidante.
It was all done on a shoestring and all of them ultimately gave up three and a half years of their lives to get it finished.
Every woman TD in Ireland has been invited to the premiere at the Town Hall Cinemobile at 10am on July 8th and Stephen believes they must attend. "These women need redress and need a State apology for the injustice they have suffered."
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