AUSTRALIA
7 News
ABC
BY MIKE SEXTON
September 5, 2014
A confronting art exhibition in Adelaide exposes the cruelty suffered by women and girls who worked at Magdalene Laundries across Australia last century.
The exhibition entitled Enslaved is by New York-based artist Rachael Romero, who worked in the Adelaide laundry from the age of 14 in 1967 after she fled from her abusive father.
She remembers it as a workhouse like something from a Dickens novel and says women and girls were abused and injured.
“Women had hands like claws from the mangle, a woman with Down syndrome folded hankies next to loud machines and others had burns from the hot water,” she said.
Magdalene Laundries and dormitories operated across the world and the Australian ones were run by the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, training women and girls and providing income for the church.
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