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	My Stay in Prison Was a Relief Part 2 of Our Unmissable Book Serialisation By Helen Carroll Mirror [Ireland] May 22, 2006 http://www.mirror.co.uk/sexandhealth/kids/tm_objectid=17112556&method= full&siteid=94762&headline=my-stay-in-prison-was-a-relief-name_page.html BEATEN cruelly by her father and raped on the eve of her first communion, Kathy O'Beirne silently endured a hellish childhood. She emerged from a mental institution, only to be sent to one of the infamous Irish Magdalene laundries, where the torture and torment continued. Here, Kathy, now in her 40s and from Clondalkin, Dublin, tells how she is fighting for justice for herself and her fellow Magdalene girls. 'AFTER a day in the furnace-like atmosphere of the laundry I I would collapse into bed, exhausted. The nuns considered the Maggies, as we were known, to be the scum of the earth - sinners who would never earn redemption and fallen women heading straight for the burning fires of hell. The Devil himself could not have dreamed up a better hell than the Magdalene laundry. We were on our feet literally all day, while mice and rats scuttled around us. When a Maggie died a black cross was placed on her body by the nuns. It's a symbol of the Devil and used to ensure that the deceased went straight to hell. Her body was then wrapped in a sheet and dumped in a mass grave. When we tried to escape, the nuns, with the help of the police, would hunt us down and take us back. On Sundays we were visited by members of various lay groups, who would lecture us and give us holy medals and cards. One of these visitors, a man much older than me, singled me out and gave me sweets and cigarettes. We would sometimes go walking together and one Sunday he led me to a big green shed in the convent grounds. Once we were out of sight he pulled me to the ground, put his hand over my mouth and raped me. When he had finished I pulled myself from underneath him and ran back to the convent with tears streaming down my face. I told the other girls what had happened and they weren't shocked. One said: "Why do you think they come to visit here?" She warned me not to report it or I would end up back in a mental asylum. I was so innocent that I had no idea what was happening to me when, months later, my stomach began to swell. I was completely shocked when an older woman said to me: "You are probably having a baby." A month before my 14th birthday I gave birth to a baby girl, weighing 4lbs 3ozs. Annie was a beautiful blonde-haired, blue-eyed little thing. She was also very sick with a rare bowel condition. Sad though that made me, it at least meant that she would not meet the same fate as other babies born to the Maggies. They were taken from their mothers, shipped off to America and sold to wealthy couples. I got to spend three blissful months with my daughter in a mother-and-baby home before being sent back to slave labour in the laundry. The nuns kept Annie, and I lived for the few weekends I was allowed to go visit her. Around the time of my 15th birthday my friend Patricia and I managed to escape from the laundry and went on the run for several weeks. Penniless, we were eventually arrested for shoplifting and terrified that we would be returned to the laundry. It was a huge relief to instead be sent to Dublin's Mountjoy prison. The three months I spent there were the happiest of my young life - a breeze compared to life in a Magdalene laundry. I was fed, clothed, treated like a human being and never beaten. In the years that followed I was back in the control of the nuns, with visits to Annie the only bright points. Aged 17, after losing my temper through frustration and punching out windows, I was sent to another mental hospital. There I saw a psychiatrist who was the first person ever to listen to what I had been through. She kept her promise to have me released from the hospital, and soon afterwards a social worker found me a flat. Without doubt the most painful time of my life was losing my precious daughter when she was only 10 years old. Annie died as a result of her bowel condition and it is a loss from which I will never recover. I've spent the past few years piecing together my past and gaining recognition for everything my friends and I suffered while in the care of the nuns. Recently Ireland's appalling record of child abuse and the neglect of children in state-run institutions was pushed to the top of the political and media agenda following the broadcast of a documentary series called States Of Fear. I, like many others, am now fighting for compensation through the Residential Institutions Redress Board, though it will never heal the scars. At the same time, I am determined to ensure a headstone is erected at the mass grave which became the final resting-place of my fellow Maggies - innocent girls condemned as sinners by the nuns. The headstones will recount the history of the Magdalene laundries and dignify the memory of all the women who died there.' When a 'Maggie' died a black cross was placed on her by the nuns Extracted from Don't Ever Tell, by Kathy O'Beirne (Mainstream Publishing, £6.99). Call Mirror Direct on 0870 07 03 200 or order online at www.mirrordirect.co.uk
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