IRELAND
Daily Mail
‘I want an apology before I die’: The ‘wayward’ women abused by nuns in Ireland’s notorious Magdalene laundries who are still demanding justice more than two decades after the last one closed
By SUE LLOYD-ROBERTS FOR THE DAILY MAIL
PUBLISHED: 27 September 2014
On a squally September day, an elderly lady with her jacket done up tightly against the wind walks solemnly up to a grave in a cemetery in Dublin and lays down a bunch of flowers. There are 160 names on the giant headstone.
‘One of my jobs was to lay out the bodies when they died’, says 83-year-old Mary Merritt, a survivor of one of Ireland’s notorious Magdalene Laundries where single mothers and ‘wayward’ women were forced to work for the nuns in wretched conditions.
Those who were able to get away crossed the Irish Sea to England, where they found a more forgiving and less judgmental society. …
Mary was one of them. Standing in that chilly cemetery she explained that she had found some solace in the sad business of laying out the bodies of the girls who had died.
‘I would say to myself, “at least they’ll escape the nuns now and get some rest.”’
‘I hate coming here. I come here to do what I have to do and then I leave as quickly as possible, to get back home.’
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