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	Doubt over Unholy Story of Childhood The West Australian [Ireland] September 20, 2006 http://www.thewest.com.au/default.aspx?MenuID=29&ContentID=7362 An author whose memoirs recount a harrowing childhood of torture and rape while working in a Catholic religious order is at the centre of a row over the accuracy of her claims. Kathy O'Beirne's account of her early life, published as Don't Ever Tell in Britain and Kathy's Story in Ireland and Australia, has sold 350,000 copies. In the book, she alleges she was beaten and abused by her late father. The book claims that O'Beirne endured 14 years of forced labour in the Magdalen laundries, a Catholic institution which was originally set up to rehabilitate fallen women. While Don't Ever Tell rides high in the British non-fiction chart, some members of her family are adamant that her book should be re-categorised as a work of fiction. Although in the book's acknowledgments O'Beirne pays tribute to the support she has received from her brother Brian, some of her other seven siblings are angered by its contents. Her publisher, Mainstream, based in Edinburgh, has defended the book. However, members of her family were due to host a press conference in Dublin disputing much of what she has written. Several brothers have rejected allegations that she was beaten and abused by her father, Oliver, when she was growing up in a workingclass suburb of Dublin. Her older brother John O'Beirne, 51, denied the book's allegations of sadistic abuse by his father. Mr O'Beirne described the sequence of events outlined by his sister as "a jigsaw puzzle and nothing fits". He said that his father was a loving man, who held down two jobs to provide for his family. "Kathy has hurt a lot of people and it's now time for the truth to be told," he said. Rather than working in a Magdalen laundry, Mr O'Beirne recalled visiting her in St Anne's Children Home, Dublin, and St Loman's, an institution for troubled children. A younger brother, Eamon O'Beirne, 48, denied her claim that she bore a child after being raped by a male visitor to the laundries. In the book, she claimed that the child later died in the care of an unnamed religious order. Several women have come forward to say they lived with O'Beirne in the 1970s in the Sherrard Street hostel for girls in Dublin. They claim O'Beirne never mentioned having had a child or of working in a Magdalen laundry. The Sisters of Our Lady of Charity, the religious order running the laundry, has denied that O'Beirne was a resident and is considering taking legal action. O'Beirne stood by her claims last week on RTE radio, saying she had proof of everything. London
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