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It’s not where you come from… I’m me, it doesn’t change who I am. At the end of the day if anybody has to stand up for these people, somebody has to without shame.
FOR MARY COLLINS and her daughter Laura Stewart, a trip from the UK to Cork this month will be full of difficult memories. Together, they will travel to St Finbarr’s cemetery in Glasheen on the 27th to light candles and remember Angelina Collins, Mary’s mother who died at a Magdalene laundry.
They will remember not just Angelina, who they say died after years of abuse, but the other women and children of Magdalene laundries across Ireland. Mary grew up in an industrial school after being removed from her mother’s care, and said she suffers post-traumatic stress disorder from the abuse she suffered there.
Speaking to TheJournal.ie, the pair underlined how much they believe the Irish State needs to apologise to the children of Magdalene women – a State apology was given to the women themselves in 2013 – and how they feel they have been forgotten by Ireland.
It’s understood that at least 1,663 former Magdalene women are buried in Irish cemeteries – many in unmarked graves. In 2013, Taoiseach Enda Kenny apologised to Magdalene women in an emotional speech, saying the laundries “have cast a long shadow over Irish life”.
Collins told TheJournal.ie that her mother, an unmarried Traveller woman, was put into a Magdalene laundry, while Collins was put into an industrial school.
Collins visited her mother from the age of seven but said she didn’t realise until she was an adult the true extent of what her mother had gone through while at the laundry.
Collins said she herself was abused while in the industrial school, leaving her with post-traumatic stress disorder. Stewart and Collins protested outside the Dáil and Department of Justice last year to call for justice for the children of Magdalene women, saying they want a full apology from the State and acknowledgement of what the women and children went through.
They also say that a full investigation needs to take place around Magdalene mass graves.
Angelina’s story
Angelina Collins was living in a caravan in Tuam when she was taken and placed into a county home with Mary.
Her eldest daughter Margaret – aged 14 – was placed into a laundry. Margaret later took her own life at the age of 27, on Christmas day. Her youngest child Teresa was taken into care and later adopted.
Angelina escaped with Mary but after being found, Mary was placed into an industrial school and Angelina into a laundry.
Stewart said that records state her grandmother was “a good mum and all the children were healthy”, and believes she was taken into a county home due to being an unmarried Traveller mother.
Angelina did not go out and rob a shop and got herself arrested – she was a mother caring for her children.
“All it is based on is she didn’t have a ring on her finger and was a Traveller,” said Stewart.
Mary Collins said that discovering the true story of the Magdalene women “was a big shock to me – that my mother suffered inside the laundry”.
“Growing up they made me hate her,” she said, describe how she was told she was being beaten because of who her mother was. “It came as a big shock to find my mother was being locked in and tortured as I was.”
Mary said that she used to be very ashamed of who she is and where she came from, but since her son suffered a serious illness she has realised the importance of heritage and family.
“[My son] turned around and said ‘when I’m big I will put flowers on the grave,’ it touched me for the first time that this woman is related to these children.”
This kicked off her campaigning on behalf of her mother and women like her.
She said that a further shock came when she read the Magdalene Commission Report. “When the report came out I was shocked again because the children were left out of this commission and report,” said Mary.
“I feel Ireland has been neglecting the children of these women,” said Laura Stewart, herself the mother of young children. “My mum went over for the Magdalene apology and was hoping they would include the children that were made to visit the laundries and see their mums. Children shouldn’t have been made to go through that. What they had to go through was enough.”
“My family history is history that should be put to rest. What they don’t understand is my mum travels over [to Ireland and] it’s all out of her pocket. My mum shouldn’t have to do all those things to gain justice for what happened to her innocent mum.”
Both Stewart and her mother say that the government should look at the Magdalene laundries, mother-and-baby homes and industrial schools together, as they believe they were all connected.
“They are wasting more money opening commissions when what you have to do is look at these things as a whole,” said Stewart.
Stewart said that the hurt the situation has caused is filtering through the generations of the family.
“When I was younger I didn’t understand it and now it’s beginning to affect me,” she said. “It makes me so sad for [my mum] and my family sometimes – I wonder how she feels and how she’s hurting.”
She said that she wants the Irish government to “see the hurt and acknowledge it, and they have to because at the end of the day they don’t understand the suffering that these people are going through”.
“I want an apology for the children the same way they gave it to the women,” said Mary. “I want the apology. I do want the apology and it would help me because it would be the first time I had been recognised and my mother recognised as an irish citizen.”
The pair also hope that by drawing attention to the mass grave, other family members of the women buried there will come forward to claim them.
Mass grave
Since she found out about her mother’s story, Mary Collins said she hasn’t been able to visit the gravesite.
“It made me physically sick and angry thinking about that.” But this year, she has decided it is time to return to her mother’s grave.
Thirteen years ago, she had the mass grave at St Finbarr’s cleaned and a single headstone for her mother was placed on it. She knows the forthcoming visit will take an emotional toll.
“If I’m totally honest with you I don’t want to be there. I feel I’m being forced to do it. I think it is going to affect me. I don’t want to be there. It just reminds me of all those poor dear ladies I knew [who are buried there].”
She wants her mother’s remains to removed from the grave so she can bury her, but said she hasn’t heard back from the order in charge of the grave.
She has also been in contact with the police over a woman she says abused her in the home. The woman no longer lives in Ireland.
If she ever meets this woman, Collins said she wants to “ask her that question: ‘Why?’ Look at me, I am not dirty.”
‘Somebody has to stand up for these people’
At 18, Mary moved to the UK to work caring for a family’s children. “I was very in on myself,” was how she described her demeanour back then.
“I didn’t communicate. I didn’t make friends. I was very deep but I was always the person that cared just for people who suffered.”
She was 28 when her mother died at the age of 57.
Today, she works with people who have mental health issues, and says that her own experiences help her to have the skills to “fight… for them”.
I learned it from life experiences. People that learned it from textbooks, they wonder where I get these skills from but at the end of the day, if you are institutionalised you are able to relate.
The memorial service will take place on 27 January at midday in St Finbarr’s Cemetery in Cork. Laura Stewart and Mary Collins run the Justice For All Magdalene Women and Children Facebook page.
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My heart goes out to all of your family….i hope that you get justice…..
Thankfully Catholic Ireland is a dying thing. Evil organisation
@Eye_c_u: The Apology is a hollow one, If the state doesn’t confiscate all church property and sell it to compensate all its victims.
@Stephen murphy: Instead the state has bailed out religious orders to the tune of 1.5 billion to pay compensation to victims of all the past abuse of religious orders in Ireland – we are all paying for that – the state says they are still committed to trying to recoup half of that from the orders, but those orders (many of them educational orders) have since put their assets beyond reach in trusts, so fat chance. They agreed to pay a paltry amount towards the costs, but have not done even that. They said they would hand over several millions in assets and money – we could do with some of those buildings to build the multi-denominational schools that Irish citizens want to have.
@Little Diddy No: Bertie Ahearn was responsible for that as he protected the religious with the indemnity trust which protected the church from being prosecuted by the victims.
The Magdalene laundries were a failure of the state and those poor women should at the very least receive a full apology. It’s important to remember though that they were a reflection of the times. The government of the time fobbed off their responsibilities to the religious orders as did those poor girls parents and relatives. You can jump up and down and blame the religious as much as you want. They were indeed culpable but so was a lot of other people!
I dont think the government ever consented to rape and torture . The blame lies entirely with the church , those churches should be closed . You can pray at the end of your bed
It was an open secret. No one wanted to know about these women who were considered lower than low and were getting what they deserved. That makes them complicit. I see the Catholic Church are extremely quiet for a change. A few weeks ago they were upset by the term fatal foetal abnormality but these children are born and now grown and want answers and an apology for what happened to them and their family. Where’s their care and consideration now? I thought not.
@Deborah Behan: of course Deborah, she’s a fully grown woman and not a foetus, they only care about the foetus.
@aoife✨: The state has bailed out religious orders to the tune of 1.5 billion to date to pay compensation to victims of the orders’ past abuse – the orders only committed to pay a fraction of that huge bill but have not even kept to that commitment. As a people we have more than paid for the costs of compensating people abused by religious organisations – the state is supposed to still be seeking to recoup a half of that 1.5 billion from the orders – I would not hold my breath.
@Little Diddy No: you seem to forget that the state has taken control of many of the schools owned by the religious plus land which I might add a brand new school was build on some of this land in limerick during Roar Quinn’s tenure as the Minister for Education, and the state are being well paid back for the monies so called handed over to the victims of abuse – no money could compensate for the abuse done to the children of abuse or the mothers in these homes. The state have and are still trying to find ways not to pay the survivors – you must remember it wasn’t just the church that abuse the children but the state abuse them to they worked hand in hand with each other and took away the lives of so many – still suffering the post traumatic stress of what happened and nothing been done to help them recover – http://theenchantingvalley.ning.com/
And the same rich mafia bandits still live amongst us today . Still taking tax free envelopes for dropping a name at mass .
Alan believe it or not a lot of that money goes towards the maintenance of church property that being mostly schools. The government hasn’t stopped fobbing off their responsibilities onto the church.
@aoife✨: I believe it not Aoife because I know that the schools get money from the government for maintenance and repairs and the schools also get the parents of the children attending to get money for these things through sponsored events etc. The church don’t do anything in this country without an alterior motive, they are involved in the education system to indoctrinate and nothing else.
@aoife✨: In the nearly 100% of our state and state-funded schools still controlled by the church, the state pays ALL the expenses for maintenance and upkeep, refurbishment and in a huge number of cases the state pays to completely re-build these school buildings – to the tune of many millions each year – buildings which then remain the assets of the orders – and we get nothing back since those schools are still legally allowed to discriminate against local families that are not Catholic. The Catholic Church does not put its pocket in its hand to pay anything towards our education system – it is wholly paid for and resourced by the state, with the back-up of parents locally paying ‘voluntary contributions’ for extra-curricular activities and PTS’s fund-raising.
@Little Diddy No: sorry – it’s hand in its pocket!
Sickening to think the last laundry closed it’s doors in 1996. Heartbreaking to know how pregnant women were treated and how babies were taken from their grasp as soon as they were born. My grandmother had my dad at 16 years old, was kept at home for the duration of the pregnancy and her mum passed the baby off as her own. I would love to give that woman a big hug. Compensation would do little to heal the hurt but it would be a bloody good start. There is a film called SONG FOR A RAGGY BOY, it pulls on many heartstrings
The question should also be asked, who placed people in these homes, the answer is usually uncomfortable, in many cases families were responsible. An uncomfortable truth, place the blame where it should lay.
Who told them these women were disgusting sinners that brought shame on the family and the men/boys who also engaged in this “shameful” activity were not to be punished?
@bigjake: in many cases the nuns would make the families take the young girls so they could sell the babies
The catholic church seems to have gotten nothing right since it was set up. And society frowns at aithiasts
Seriously David ? Nothing right in over 2000 years ? Even during the dark 50′s in Ireland the church ran all the hospitals. That included all the TB hospitals. There was no such thing as super bugs like MRSA when the ward nurses were in charge. Since the hospitals have been divested of the religious things have only gotten better haven’t they David !
Aoife I do agree with you about the state of hospital wards compared to when the sisters ran these wards their was no such thing as contract cleaners . But these Monastery’s where these young boys were kept were nothing short of torture chambers .
@aoife✨: yes Aoife and the bed linen was spotless because it came straight from one of the laundries where this womans mother was locked up. If the hospitals were so great why did people say that you went to hospital to die? I’d rather have taken my chances in a hospital where women didn’t have to be churched after giving birth or where they were butchered through symphysiotmy because the church believed that it would mean they would have loads more children. .
@aoife✨: You seem to be unaware Aoife that most of our major hospitals are STILL ‘owned’ by, and controlled by, orders of nuns – St. Vincent’s University Hospital is a case in point. Nobody can deny that we all, via the state, paid for that huge hospital to be built, and that the HSE completely funds and staffs the whole shebang, but the management committee is still dominated by members of a religious order, who run the hospital ‘in line with their ethos’. So if you think standards were better under the nuns in the olden days, think again!
Dell
You’re living in the past. You are stuck.
Move on.
@Tom Burke: You persistently try to defend the indefensible and forgive the unforgivable. It is easy for you to forgive when you are not one of the church’s victims. Disgraceful. Go and join the Church and stop spreading the passive aggression that characterises Christianity online.
Please show me where I defended any wrongdoing by the church?
If we are going to have any discussion then please don’t lie.
I never defended it and I never suggested we just forget.
Never.
So how are the religious orders running these hospitals according to their ethos? I’ve been in Vincent’s and I just see a hospital with medical staff.
I don’t see this ‘ethos’ that you see but nobody else can see.
You’re just prejudice and angry.
Not so many years ago it was legal in the USA to discriminate against people by the colour of their skin.
In the 70′s in the uk, accommodation and jobs were advertised with the proviso of no blacks or Irish need apply.
The Catholic Church are right up there with the wrong they did.
Lots of things were wrong in the past but we move on.
Many rightly condemn those wrongs yet fail to see anything wrong with their desire to see abortion on demand.
The irony of the hypocrisy.
@Tom Burke: If Christians were really great believers they would be upset at the violence commanded by their God who became their Jesus in the Bible. A man was even stoned to death for picking sticks on the Sabbath. It is spiritual abuse to make children love this God. Sinn Fein applauds much IRA violence and the Church applauds its evil God and Bible. They serve as examples of how politics and religion are too often okay with evil.
take a look at this website and it might give you an insight as to what our government/church are still doing to survivors of abuse – http://theenchantingvalley.ning.com/
http://wisecatholic.blogspot.ie and http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/middleaged-man-claims-young-priest-he-met-through-gay-dating-site-sexually-assaulted-him-35367203.html prove that the Church is as unsympathetic as ever.
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