Irish-American activists pressure government over Magdalene Laundries

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A young girl at the Magdalene laundries.

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Story / Shocking new documentary tells stories of four Irish women forced into Magdalene laundries / Click here

Eddie Holt / Deafening silence over deaths of Irish babies / Click here

Story / Shock report reveals rampant child abuse in Irish Catholic institutions / Click here

Irish American activists are seeking to make the Irish government responsible for the maltreatment of young Irish women forced to work in Laundries. According to Mari Steed, spokeswoman of the group Justice for Magdalenes, the Irish government was complicit in the abuse the women suffered. It owes them an apology and compensation.

“Right now we’re encouraging everybody to contact ministers,” she says. “The thing is, we don’t want to lose focus. We’d like to keep the wave rolling.”

Last week, Minister for Education, Batt O’Keeffe, wrote in response to Parliamentary questions put to his department: “the Magdalene laundries were privately owned and operated establishments which did not come within the responsibility of the State and were not subject to State regulation or supervision.”

But the women were Irish citizens and deserved protection, Justice for Magdalenes asserts. Some were children and should have been at school. The state knew of the abuse and allowed it to go on.

“In 2009 the state is denying any role or function in these institutions,” says James M. Smith, an associate professor at the English department and Irish studies program at Boston College. “But the state’s fingerprints are all over this. The state is now conveniently scapegoating the Catholic Church when in fact church and state were partners throughout most of the twentieth century.”

It is hard to know how many women were in the laundries because the religious orders that ran them have not released their records. When they left the Laundries the women tended to emigrate. Many survivors are in the US.

“There are women in America – women in New York, probably in Philadelphia and Chicago too,” Smith says, “wherever there were large Irish communities in the 1940s and 1950s. Many went into nursing assistant jobs, into healthcare – into institutions, not dissimilar from what theyhad left.”

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