The report out to-day opens up the abuse by the Catholic Church and by Nuns of young girls and woman.
Thousands of women and young girls sent to Catholic-run workhouses where they were subjected to a regime of hard work and prayer.
The Magdalene religious-run institutions started in the late 1700s as places to rehabilitate so-called “fallen” women. It is estimated that around 30,000 women, mainly single mothers and teenage girls, were placed in the laundries to work. There were 10 Magdalene laundries across Ireland and the last one closed its doors in 1996.
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The church authorities must have known this was happening because priest would be visiting and the nuns would have needed permission from the top to run all the laundries.
It found that more than 2,100 women, more than a quarter of those who were held in the Magdalene laundries for whom records survived, were sent directly by the government. The Irish government has always previously denied direct involvement in the system, which was run by four religious congregations: Sisters of Our Lady of Charity, The Good Shepherds, The Sisters of Mercy and the Religious Sisters of Charity.
Women were forced into Magdalene laundries for crimes as minor as not paying for a train ticket, the report found. The majority of those incarcerated were there for minor offences such as theft and vagrancy. A small number of the women were there for prostitution.
They all worked long hours and never got any pay, then they had to go to pray for hours.
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The Irish Taoiseach ( Prime Minister ) gave a short apology in Parliament to-day.
The Magdalene Survivors Together group quickly dismissed the prime minister’s apology. “He is the Taoiseach of our country, he is the Taoiseach of the Irish people, and that is not a proper apology,” Maureen Sullivan said.
More than 10,000 women, aged from nine to 89, were sent to eight of the ten laundries from which records were available between 1992 and 1996. Advocacy group Justice for Magdalen’s (JFM) said it was aware of at least 988 women who were buried in laundry plots in cemeteries across Ireland, meaning they stayed in the institutions until death. The inquiry could confirm only 879.
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