This article is from page 33 of the 2013-12-31 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 33 JPG
CLARE’S dark history at the centre of the Magdalene Laundry system was laid bare by the McAleese Report, which was published in February.
The report identified 261 Clare women who spent time as unpaid slaves in these institutes between the 1920s and 1980s – the fifth highest of any county in Ireland.
The real number of Clare women in these asylums was likely to have been far higher, however. No Clare laundries were identified in the report, despite the insistence by many Clare people, including the Kildysart-born former trainee nun Patricia BurkeBrogan, that a laundry operated in Ennis for many decades.
Two decades ago, Ms Burke-Brogan turned whistleblower on the Magdalene system through her acclaimed play ‘Eclipsed’ and in February she claimed that the McAleese Report only scratched the surface of a nationwide problem, where women were subject to slave labour conditions by Church and State.
According to Ms Burke-Brogan, the report failed to “grasp the real horror” of what went on in laundries around the country.
“This report went into what happened in 10 or 11 laundries – there were 42 of them around the country. They were in Galway, they were in Clare, they were everywhere,” she said.
“It softened the story. That’s my main complaint. For someone who hasn’t experienced or seen what was going on in those places. I find it distressing. In some ways what’s in this report makes it worse.” The Clare People also discovered an account given by one woman, who claimed to have been physically apprehended by nuns at St Joseph’s Hospital in Ennis when she was just 15, and brought away to work in a Magdalene Laundry.
This woman’s story was part of a submission by the Justice for Magdalenes Group to the United National Committee Against Torture. The woman, who was not identified in the report, said she had worked as an unpaid maid in the hospital at the time and was targeted by the nuns when she was discovered speaking to a male hospital porter.
“One nun came in this side entrance [of the chapel in St Joseph’s] and she calls out to me. And I could see the other nun coming in the other door. And I felt strange – somehow I felt, something within me, something was going to happen to me,” she said.
“They grabbed me. And they bundled me into this car outside the chapel… I was crying. And I remember them saying to me, ‘you’re going to the Magdalene Laundry’.”
The McAleese Report also detailed the stories of three Clare girls, age 16 and 17, who were ordered to a Magdalene Laundry because their foster parents no longer wanted them. According to the report, this was common at the time as State payment for foster children ended once the child turned 15.