‘We asked no questions’: New documentary hears from Magdalene laundry survivors
Gabrielle O'Gorman in Ireland's Dirty Laundry
More than 10,000 Irish girls and women were imprisoned and enslaved in Magdalene laundries over seven decades. A new documentary series will detail how survivors are still fighting for the care, redress, and acknowledgement promised to them.
Starting tonight on RTÉ, the first episode of contains shocking testimonies from the women who spent time in the laundries and highlights that this is not ancient history but a living memory.
The last laundry in Dublin’s Seán McDermott Street closed in 1996, and now-elderly women tearfully describe their experiences of being sent away as young girls, sometimes as a result of domestic and sexual abuse. The documentary provides a graphic account of what they suffered, psychologically and physically, within the system.
“You were constantly being told, ‘Nobody loves you. Nobody wants you. Your mother dumped you,’” survivor Maureen Sullivan says. Gabrielle Gorman adds: “I’ve felt that there was a great injustice served to us. Sometimes, I think we were punished for being born.”
The women featured in , many of whom missed out on an education, are determined to teach others about what they went through.
“I had seven children, five sons and two daughters. I now have 27 grandchildren. I now have 24 great-grandchildren,” says survivor Teresa O’Connor. “And what’s important for me is that they know about what their mother and their grandmother and great grandmother went through. And let’s hope it never happens again. The truth be told.”
Expert commentary also provides context for the laundries and their place within Irish society at the time.
“Families dumped daughters and aunts and sisters, who were deemed ‘in the way’ or perhaps the objects of shame,” says James M Smith of Boston College.
“Irish society and Irish families re-victimised the female victims of male sexual violence, be that rape, be that incest, be that sexual abuse. The family was sacrosanct after the 1937 constitution – inalienable rights.
Professor Katherine O’Donnell of UCD adds: “We managed to lock up 1% of our population within a whole network of related institutions – psychiatric institutions, mother and baby homes, Magdalene laundries, industrial schools. And there’s not a family in Ireland that actually isn’t affected by this legacy.”
- airs at 9.30pm on RTÉ One tonight.
