, a woman suffering trauma caused by her time in a laundry. There, she gave birth, only to have her baby taken away from her and taken to an unknown location. Maureen, now 71, from Carlow, says: 'It was very cruel and evil how I was treated. That should not have happened to me.' Tens of thousands of women across Ireland suffered abuse at the Magdalene laundries, which date back to the early 19th century. The asylums housed orphans, unmarried mothers and their children, abuse victims and 'fallen women' entering via the criminal justice system, reformatory schools and social services. Mass grave Once admitted to the workhouses, which were run as commercial laundries, the women would have to carry out unpaid labour. Some victims were confined there from birth until death. 7 Some victims in the workhouses were confined there from birth until death Credit: Wikipedia The asylums became the subject of a media scandal in the Nineties, when a mass grave holding 155 bodies was discovered on the land of a former institution in Drumcondra, North Dublin . The last laundry closed in 1996. Maureen was one of the youngest people to have been held in a laundry when she arrived at the Good Shepherd-run establishment){kind=link}
LITTLE Maureen Sullivan expected some help when she confided in a nun that she had been sexually assaulted for three years by her stepfather.
Instead, the 12-year-old was thrown into a Magdalene laundry where she had to do back-breaking jobs from 6am to 9pm, with “no education, no playtime and no speaking at all”.
Ireland’s cruel religious institutions – named after the Biblical figure Mary Magdalene – are now the subject of BBC One drama Woman In The Wall, starring Ruth Wilson and Daryl McCormack.
It follows the story of Lorna Brady (Wilson), a woman suffering trauma caused by her time in a laundry.
There, she gave birth, only to have her baby taken away from her and taken to an unknown location.