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	Irish Human Rights Watchdog Asks Government to Probe Abuse of Women in Catholic Laundries By Shawn Pogatchnik Canadian Press November 9, 2010 http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5jouNBGe23Oc57tjpEiKfv3-f3CFQ?docId=5079805 DUBLIN — Ireland's human rights watchdog appealed Tuesday to the government to investigate the abuse of women and girls in prison-style Catholic laundries, an issue left unresolved by state probes into scandals inside other church-run institutions. The Irish Human Rights Commission said in a report that Ireland's civil authorities for decades dumped women — often teenagers being punished for petty crimes or becoming pregnant out of wedlock — into the so-called Magdalene Laundries, a network of 10 workhouses that operated in independent Ireland from the 1920s to the mid-1990s. Over the past two decades, Ireland has been slowly confronting the scale and severity of covered-up child abuse within Catholic dioceses and church-run institutions. Last year, the government published two state-ordered investigations that documented the unpunished abuse of thousands of children in workhouse-style schools and orphanages and the Dublin Archdiocese. But the government has repeatedly ruled that it bears no responsibility for what went on inside the laundries, which were privately owned and received no formal financial support from the state. Its chief argument has been that families themselves ordered their morally errant sisters or daughters into the laundries, and state authorities never inspected conditions inside. "These secretive institutions should have been inspected, but the state instead washed its hands of these vulnerable, trapped young women," Olive Braiden, Ireland's human rights commissioner, said in an interview. She said Irish judges frequently ordered young girls and teenagers to move into the residential facilities — but once inside, only the senior nun wielded power to determine when, if ever, they could leave. Anecdotal stories abound of women who remained prisoners for life, giving birth to children who, if not put up for adoption, were transferred to church residential homes and then, eventually, transferred back to become laundry workers themselves. Braiden said the commission — which has powers to shed light on abuses but cannot compel the government to do anything — said the government must form its own probe armed with the power to force orders of nuns to hand over their records of laundry administration. "The real problem is the dearth of information, the dearth of records. It is only with a state inquiry that we will uncover the truth of what happened to women," Braiden said. Prime Minister Brian Cowen, whose country is battling a debt crisis unprecedented in its history, said he has asked his attorney general and other legal officials to read the report. In a statement Cowen criticized the commission's approach to its four-month investigation. He said the government regretted that the human rights commission did not ask government officials "to contribute to the commission's considerations of this matter to facilitate a fully balanced evaluation of all the facts." He declined to elaborate. A pressure group representing several hundred former inmates of the laundries, Justice for Magdalenes, thanked the commission for hearing its evidence — and accused the government of trying to delay any state inquiry until the now-elderly victims have passed away. "The time to act is now. The government must move beyond its 'deny 'til they die' policy," said James Smith, an English professor at Boston College who advises the pressure group. He authored a 2007 book, "Ireland's Magdalene Laundries and the Nation's Architecture of Containment," and co-authored Tuesday's report. "People disappeared into the Magdalene laundries system like it was Pinochet's Chile," said Smith, who noted that the youngest known inmate was aged 11. "You could be put inside on the word of a priest, a judge or your own family. Many women got out, but you had to be claimed or have somewhere to go." Smith said survivors in Ireland, Britain and the U.S. mainly hoped to receive a formal apology from the Irish government and the orders of nuns that ran the laundries. He said the laundries operated as businesses but paid its workers nothing, breaking myriad Irish laws on forced labour, ill treatment and personal freedoms in the process. In 2001, the government apologized to thousands of people who suffered physical, sexual and psychological abuse inside church-run institutions for children. It launched a compensation fund that eventually awarded payments averaging €62,860 ($86,750) to more than 13,000 claimants worldwide. But residents of the laundries were specifically excluded from the system. Catholic officials declined to comment, arguing that Tuesday's report concerned the victims and the government. Officials from the four orders that ran the laundries — the Sisters of Mercy, Sisters of Charity, Good Shepherd Sisters, and Sisters of Our Lady of Charity — all declined comment.
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