Sisters’ 40 years of care for women in need

It was 1972 and Sr Colette Hickey of the Good Shepherd Sisters saw an urgent need to provide a shelter for women and children in Cork who couldn’t remain in their own homes due to domestic violence.

And so she opened a refuge in the Mardyke providing a place of safety for families too terrified to remain at home.

But once she had opened the night shelter, she realised she was casting these families adrift by day: releasing them onto the streets so they could loiter around the back of churches and wander in and out of shops repeatedly with kids in tow.