IRELAND
Dublin Inquirer
LOUISA MCGRATH
MARCH 9, 2016
When she arrived at the Donnybrook laundry, Sara was given a number and told to remember it. The number 100. This was her new identity.
In her survivor testimony for Justice for Magdalenes’ (JFM’s) submission to the Inter-Departmental Committee set up to investigate state involvement in the Magdalene laundries, Sara W described the conditions in the Donnybrook laundry between 1954 and 1956, before she was moved to another Magdalene laundry, in Cork.
“At nine o’clock every night you were locked into that cell,” she says. “The windows used to be up very high, like a small little window . . . and I used to climb up the top of the bed to look out.”
“I never seen daylight for two years,” she continues. “The only bit of freedom — we were allowed to walk up and down a place called ‘the bleach’, where they put out the sheets in the summertime, clothes lines and all that. You’d walk up and down there. That was your freedom.”
Sara’s crime? She didn’t commit one.
At 15, she was working at a bed and breakfast. As she recalls it, members of the Legion of Mary promised her a better job and brought her to the Donnybrook Laundry. There, they told her they were putting her in the institution for her own safety.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.