After Years of Stigma, the Magdalene Women Want to Tell Their Stories

By Grainne Cunningham
Irish Independent
February 20, 2013

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/after-years-of-stigma-the-magdalene-women-want-to-tell-their-stories-29082136.html

JANE and Ellen, 45 years each. Margaret G, 46 years. Mary K, 51 years. Agnes, 66 years.

The list read aloud outside the Dail sounded like a record of prison sentences.

In many ways it was, as Justice for the Magdalenes remembered the women who never left the laundries.

While inside Government buildings, some of the group awaited Taoiseach Enda Kenny's words, outside among the candles, eyes filled with tears as the names of those who died in the laundries were read aloud.

Except there was not enough time to call out the names of all 1,150 women who entered those high-walled places of hard work and never left, so a few of those who toiled there the longest were called out.

Some, like Margaret G are still there, buried within the confines of Sunday's Well. Others like Agnes were moved from Hyde Park to Glasnevin Cemetery "to make way for a property development".

Daughters, sons, grandchildren and other relatives of the women who spent time in the laundries held a candlelight vigil on the pavement outside the Dail as they waited for the Taoiseach to say that precious word 'sorry'.

After years of stigma and trying to forget, the women want to tell their stories and they want to remember.

People like Angela Downey of Dun Laoghaire who cried bitter tears for a lost childhood as Mary Coughlan sang about the Magdalene Laundries, a single voice in the cold evening air.

Angela's mother was raped at the age of 16 and she spent nearly 20 years working in the laundries, first in the Good Shepherd in Sean McDermott Street and then in Donnybrook.

Angela, the child of that rape, was put in an industrial home and first met her mother when she was aged 16 but her grandmother did not say who this strange woman was.

"She never spoke. She just cried and cried. I will never forget her hands, they were all swollen and her hair was cut short, with a clip," said Angela.

Others at the vigil included Patricia McDonnell, whose sister-in-law "Mary" spent 20 years at the Sisters of Mercy Magdalene Laundry in Dun Laoghaire.

Mary, who came from a comfortable family in Galway, was keeping house for her two brothers after her parents died.

But the local priest convinced them she was in moral danger and drove her to Dublin where she remained until her family threatened legal action if she was not released.

Mrs McDonnell said: "She was taken under false pretences, she was kidnapped."

Spokeswoman for Justice for the Magdalenes Claire McGettrick was critical of the Government for failing to provide a copy of the McAleese report to the women themselves and said she had a hard job explaining why their personal testimonies had been excluded.

And she reminded people that these were not fallen women and prostitutes, many of them were "young women taken against their will".