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'I'm still angry': Survivors to discuss how Magdalene Laundries should be remembered

“I was taken in by the nuns at 15 – I hadn’t even kissed a boy”: Elizabeth Coppin told RTÉ about her experience in a Cork Laundry.

Magdalene Laundry stock Niall Carson via PA Images Niall Carson via PA Images

Updated at 2.45pm

A NUMBER OF Magdalene Laundry survivors arrived in Heuston Station this afternoon ahead of a gathering at Áras an Uachtaráin to meet President Michael D Higgins.

Around two or three dozen women and some family members arrived from Cork this morning and will attend an event at the Áras later this afternoon. Other women arrived at Dublin Airport yesterday and at Citywest this afternoon.

The women, most of whom wish to remain anonymous, are gathering in Dublin for the next two days as part of a consultation to discuss how women’s experiences of Magdalene Laundries should be remembered. Around 220 women are expected to attend the event at the Áras today; many of those women are aged in their 80s.

Magdalene Laundries were institutions run by the Catholic Church which took in so-called ‘fallen women’ and gave them manual labour to do. Many survivors said they were cruelly and brutally treated during their time there, with reports of women being beaten, put into solitary confinement, their hair cut, threatened, and verbally abused.

Josie Keane from Cork, who was at The Good Shepherds Magdalene Laundry in Limerick from the age of 15, told reporters gathered at Heuston that “it felt brilliant” to be at an event like this and to be able to meet other women.

She said that she was still angry about what had happened to her. She and her twin sister had been sent to two separate Laundries, and didn’t meet again until they were 21. Her sister died three years ago.

I’m sad that she’s not here and I feel bad about that now.

She said she did think people should know about the stories of women who were in the Laundries.

“Yes I think they should to be honest. I was 15 when I went in there and I was torn apart like. I’m always thinking that I’m back there again.”

She said her life after the Laundries was “miserable really, very untrustworthy and everything and still to this day like”.

It wasn’t my fault that I was put in there, but I do feel angry.

Flowers for Magdalenes remembrance The third annual Flowers for Magdalenes remembrance event in Glasnevin cemetery, Dublin. PA Archive / PA Images PA Archive / PA Images / PA Images

Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan spoke to Morning Ireland about the long battle for redress that many for the women had to go through, saying that anyone who suffered the “horrific Magdalene Laundries” should have an opportunity to apply for redress sooner rather than later.

He said that over 700 women had applied for a redress scheme, but added that a hundred women had been excluded “because of a narrow interpretation” of the scheme, such as those who had worked in the Laundries but lived in institutions next door.

He said that there were also disputes “over the length of their stay at the Laundries, and women who lacked capacity because of the seniority of age”.

Flanagan said that it was “essential that everybody involved in Magdalene Laundries applies to the scheme”.

It’s important that we move forward, and today’s events represent a very important part of that.

Elizabeth Coppin, who was born in a mother-and-baby home and was subsequently sent to three different Magdalene Laundries, told Morning Ireland that she didn’t hesitate to attend the event.

Today is overwhelming, I’ve so many mixed emotions. I can’t believe I’m sitting here and I’m going to meet the President.

She said it was great “to actually feel that we can voice our opinions” and thanked the Justice for Magdalenes Research group and Dublin Honours Magdalenes for their work.

Elizabeth’s story

Elizabeth’s mother gave birth to her at the age of 19 in 1949.

She was housed in the industrial school, and would see her mother “once every two or three years for about an hour, which was always supervised”.

When asked why she was put in Laundry after the school, Elizabeth said that her interpretation was that when a woman who worked in a Laundry died, the nuns would “get onto the Education Department and they would ring around” to find a replacement.

I was taken in by two nuns from the industrial school. I was only 15 – I hadn’t even kissed a boy.

Describing her first impression of the Peacock Lane Laundry in Cork, she said:

It’s just total shock first, it was surreal what was happening. At nighttime we were all locked into this cell, they were like prison cells. Once you went in there at night the bolt was closed shut from the outside.
If you wanted to go to the toilet there were was a pot… In the morning you had to go and slop out – I feel sick now thinking about it.

She said that when she was 16, her and another girl tried to run away.

I ran away from that place – we jumped out from the first floor windows. There were bars on most windows, but the ones facing for the public to see had no bars and we jumped out the windows.

They went to the Bon Secours hospital, but were taken back to The Good Shepherd’s Laundry in Cork where they changed her name to Enda. “I discovered after that that it was a boy’s name.”

There, they shaved my hair and said ‘Now you will never run away’.

She said that after five months there, she was told “she wasn’t settling in properly” and would be sent to another Laundry in Waterford. “They were excellent at trafficking,” she said.

Asked about the effect living in the Laundries had on her, Elizabeth said:

It stays with you for life. You’re overprotective of your children, I’m especially overprotective of my daughter.
We didn’t even get a chance to be educated. I was 12 years old when I finished my education.

She said she now has a “love-hate relationship” with the Irish State and Catholic Church.

“When I came back to Ireland, I came back with mixed emotions – excitement and anticipation. Sometimes it seems what happened to me is like a dream, it’s surreal and to think it was a so-called Free State, so-called good-for-all Catholicism – but they were evil deeds they did.”

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    Mute bopter
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    Jun 5th 2018, 10:18 AM

    I met a lady yesterday outside one of the homes in Dublin where babies were sold off to Americans. She was about 70 yrs old and she was defending the nuns.

    I said they were sold and she corrected me to say they were adopted, not sold. But it’s a matter of record that babies from this particular home were sold to families in Ohio in the ‘50s and ‘60s.

    Her defence was bizarre; she said, “well this home only took girls having their first babies, and these girls came from good homes. Other girls had to go somewhere else.”

    Dread to think what happened a girl from a poor home, and on her second fall from grace!

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    Mute Annie Citric
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    Jun 5th 2018, 10:23 AM

    @bopter: I think that must be a narrative which she constructed to help her cope. Very sad she distances herself from others in the same situation.

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    Mute Bernard Keating
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    Jun 5th 2018, 1:05 PM

    @bopter: did you say you met a lady !!!

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    Mute Gus Sheridan
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    Jun 5th 2018, 1:23 PM

    @bopter: sadly brainwashed like many altar rail biters….

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    Mute Mary Elizabeth Whittle
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    Jun 5th 2018, 2:57 PM

    @bopter: either this lady was brainwashed or she has blocked out a trauma similar to what the others have experienced .

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    Mute The Poet
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    Jun 5th 2018, 3:53 PM

    @Gus Sheridan: so you would like her to give you an intwrpretation that suits YOU! The arrogance is astounding! What happened to compassion/tolerance for victims of this treatment?

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    Mute Matt Beaumont
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    Jun 5th 2018, 6:58 PM

    @bopter: Stochholm Syndrome I suppose!
    Probably helped her to cope with her situation!

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    Mute Prince Ozymandias
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    Jun 5th 2018, 10:41 AM

    The elephant in the room is that the Church was there for them when no one else was; these were abandoned children, and such as these died in their millions (at that time) in countries from sickness, hunder and neglext where no institution was there to pick up the pieces.
    An elementary bit of historical research will reveal this.
    Given the pending ’12 week rule’, many of their contempories will never see the light of day, and will end up in a clinic bucket.
    Savage, but true.

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    Mute ed w
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    Jun 5th 2018, 10:46 AM

    @Prince Ozymandias: I suspect there families would have been there if the church had a bit more tolerance and not preach the treatment of these girls as pariahs.
    I don think treating them as slaves is “being there” for anyone.
    Nice try at revisionism.

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    Mute Michele Savage
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    Jun 5th 2018, 10:48 AM

    @Prince Ozymandias: priests would call them from the altar for being pregnant; families were not encouraged by the church to cherish and support their “sinning” daughters and their babies. Very Christian, altogether

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    Mute Dean Anderson
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    Jun 5th 2018, 10:54 AM

    @Prince Ozymandias: they were abandoned because the church labelled these babies as illegitimate &treated their mothers like dirt. if the church had spoken up for these “fallen” women there would have been no need for laundries &Irish society would have been transformed for the better. the irony of the church calling these Magdalene laundries – Jesus never once treated Mary Magdalene with anything less than kindness &love &theres no record of him trying to sell her baby or anyone else’s babies to rich Americans to profit from the theft of human children. Pro life my foot

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    Mute Gaz Barclay Dunnes
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    Jun 5th 2018, 12:04 PM

    @ed w: it was another mouth to feed, hunger and illness ravaged the country then , you can’t judge it on today’s terms and a woman who had a child at a young aide had no chance of marrying , if the church didn’t take I dread to think of what would have occurred but it does not excuse the workhouses but they too had to feed, dress, educate and nurse these kids

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    Mute Mary Elizabeth Whittle
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    Jun 5th 2018, 1:13 PM

    @Prince Ozymandias: to imprison women & work them like slaves, take away their rights & basic rights like food & water not to mention medical & sanitary is not ” being there”..

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    Mute Bernard Keating
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    Jun 5th 2018, 1:18 PM

    @Prince Ozymandias: the church was there for them !!!! There is no doubt that they were selling the kids they then used these poor women as slave labour might I respectfully suggest that you do some research into the history of these crimes you might begin at bessborough in cork

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    Mute Gus Sheridan
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    Jun 5th 2018, 1:26 PM

    @Michele Savage: lets hope the CEO of this evil organisation brings the money these monsters still own their victims, hopefully people will remind this character of his debt to them !

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    Mute Dotty Dunleary
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    Jun 5th 2018, 2:56 PM

    @Prince Ozymandias: Nice use of the pain and suffering that these women went through to take a dig at the referendum results..

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    Mute The Poet
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    Jun 5th 2018, 3:57 PM

    @ed w: More than a few were there because the males in tbe family raped them or the parents were too proud to let the neighbours know. They wouldn’t let the home even after the baby was adopted in some cases.

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    Mute GerryCummins
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    Jun 5th 2018, 4:12 PM

    @Gaz Barclay Dunnes: don’t forget the sewers, the sewers!

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    Mute Trish O'Leary-Dunne
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    Jun 5th 2018, 5:54 PM

    @Prince Ozymandias: Ffs.next you will be saying the women should compensate the nuns who “took them in”.There is no justification in the world for the way these women were treated.

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    Mute Matt Beaumont
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    Jun 5th 2018, 7:03 PM

    @Prince Ozymandias: brainwashed nonsense! If the church hadn’t created a toxic guilt environment in the whole country , there wouldn’t have been any need for these church gulags, the women wouldn’t have been stigmatised and could have stayed home!
    But don’t let facts get in your way, your masters in Rome or elsewhere will be proud of you!

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    Mute Bobby wilson
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    Jun 5th 2018, 9:35 PM

    @Trish O’Leary-Dunne: it was not just in Catholic counties that condemned children born out of wedlock in the past years…in the world of 2018 some countries in the world women can be sent to prison or worst if they have children out of wedlock which we never here about at all ..

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    Mute Carmel S Larkin
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    Jun 6th 2018, 1:21 AM

    @Prince Ozymandias: This was cheap laborer and Monty for baby’s I cannot see the church doing any good for poor girls who did not have a say

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    Mute Rei
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    Jun 6th 2018, 3:34 PM

    @Prince Ozymandias: children were stolen from mothers. What about that woman who paid the nuns to mind her child, but one day she came back from work and they’d sold off her baby. Disgusting. The church and state has a lot to answer for for this disgusting human trafficking.

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    Mute Rei
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    Jun 6th 2018, 3:39 PM

    @Gaz Barclay Dunnes: sorry but that is complete bullshit. My grandmother married after having her first child and I have heard of many women who did the same. It’s not like 50 years ago people didn’t fall in love or care about each other. I’m sure a lot of people back then hated the laundries and selling of babies.

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    Mute Paul Maher
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    Jun 5th 2018, 11:33 AM

    Its brilliant news, but the Gardai hasn’t issued a public apology regarding their role in assisting the “then” church in what is one of our darkest histories …..

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    Mute GerryCummins
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    Jun 5th 2018, 4:15 PM

    @Paul Maher: what did the Gardai do???

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    Mute Seamus Mac
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    Jun 5th 2018, 10:03 PM

    @GerryCummins: they escorted women to the laundries

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    Mute eastsmer
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    Jun 5th 2018, 10:29 AM

    It was under direct State Complicity that these crimes were committed.
    Yet some people are happy then to meet up with the President

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    Mute Dean Anderson
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    Jun 5th 2018, 10:45 AM

    @eastsmer: if the church had spoken out for these women &said treat them with love &compassion then Ireland would not have needed these places to lock up women for daring to have sex. President Higgins is a decent honourable man (unlike the chairman of the Vatican bank who’s coming here in August) so why wouldn’t they want to meet him?

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    Mute GerryCummins
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    Jun 5th 2018, 4:14 PM

    @eastsmer: no they are happy to meet up with our compassionate President! Troll on !

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    Mute Matt Beaumont
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    Jun 5th 2018, 7:07 PM

    @eastsmer: President Higgins is a beacon of integrity and a trustworthy man!
    The only politician we have who is not completely inept, corrupt and greedy!
    Why wouldn’t they want to meet the only decent politician this country has to offer?

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    Mute Prince Ozymandias
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    Jun 5th 2018, 10:46 AM

    The elephant in the room is that the Church was there for them when no one else was; these were abandoned children, and such as these died (at that time) in their millions from sickness, hunger and neglect in countries where no institution was there to pick up the pieces.
    An elementary bit of historical research will reveal this.
    Given the pending ’12 week rule’, many of their contemporaries will never see the light of day, and will end up in a clinic bucket.
    Sad and savage, but true.

    38
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    Mute Kt Kelly
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    Jun 5th 2018, 11:04 AM

    @Prince Ozymandias: The very reason that so many children were abandoned was because their families had too many children, as dictated by the Catholic church. Also bearing in mind that the vast majority of families only had the father at work again, dictated by the Catholic church and thus enshrined in our constitution. Trying to feed 8 or 9 people + is it any wonder they were sent to these institutions? And finally, they were put to WORK in these places – most having little or no education. There was something like this in the States with African Americans – it was called slavery!!

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    Mute Mark Gearey
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    Jun 5th 2018, 11:37 AM

    @Prince Ozymandias: Lies. And repetition

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    Mute Prince Ozymandias
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    Jun 5th 2018, 11:50 AM

    @Kt Kelly: My wife’s family had 11 in her family, all fathered and raised by a mid-level civil servant,
    Most abandoned children were illegitimate. Fact.

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    Mute Prince Ozymandias
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    Jun 5th 2018, 11:55 AM

    @Mark Gearey:
    Which facts are ‘lies’, do tell ?
    Which facts do not fit your paradigm ?
    Children abandoned (essentially by feckless fathers) were not ‘sold’; finance was obtained from well-off Americans (who adopted these children) to help defray the orphanages running costs. Go and speak to someone who actually had to administer these refuges.

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    Mute Gaz Barclay Dunnes
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    Jun 5th 2018, 12:09 PM

    @Kt Kelly: there’s great stories of large families which is a sad dwindling statistic, and two could work , it was common to pay a nanny too, but women actually wanted to bring up their kids ( fancy that) and the man had his 9-5 , now we have regressed to the 2.4 kids, mortgage, double jobs, which is a virtual prison

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    Mute Kt Kelly
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    Jun 5th 2018, 12:11 PM

    @Prince Ozymandias: So you advocate slavery… but only if the child is illegitimate? They were essentially slave labour camps, no matter what way you look at it. I’m so glad people like you are few and far between these days.

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    Mute Gaz Barclay Dunnes
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    Jun 5th 2018, 12:12 PM

    @Prince Ozymandias: fully agree , children were registered as Bar Sinisters and pre succession act allowed immoral fathers behave like shits

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    Mute Prince Ozymandias
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    Jun 5th 2018, 12:39 PM

    @Kt Kelly: I advocate life, and a future with boundless potential. But I don’t live in cloud cuckoo land; children born to the feckless and/or are abandoned by the unloving will undeniably struggle.
    Are you striving for a socialist Nirvana, and if so, please show me a working model ? If pressed, you may even say that ‘life is not fair’ . . .
    Right now I’m on an island whose economy was underpinned for aeons by Islamic piracy and slavery, albeit one has to read actual history books to discover that, as it’s no longer a popular ‘fact’. If real slavery is your fascination read up on the Janjaweed, the Berbers, the Ottoman Empire, and stop making infantile comparisons with nuns who gave their lives to serve others.

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    Mute Seamus O Laighleis
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    Jun 5th 2018, 1:29 PM

    @Prince Ozymandias: You must be Father prince ozymandias

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    Mute Kt Kelly
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    Jun 5th 2018, 1:33 PM

    @Prince Ozymandias: I’m going to re-iterate my last comments; I am so very glad that there are very few people like you left in Ireland. And those numbers are getting smaller by the day. Anyone who believes that the Magdalene Laundries were anything but slave camps is brainwashed or ignorant or both. The only people that reaped the any sort of reward from them was Catholic Church.

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    Mute Prince Ozymandias
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    Jun 5th 2018, 2:06 PM

    @Kt Kelly: @Kt Kelly
    So, by your lights I’m ‘ brainwashed or ignorant – or both ‘ Cheers.
    The old ad hominen is inevitably deployed by those of whom you accuse me of belonging.
    The capacity to read versus actually objectively reading the facts placed before one is a sign of a critical capacity; slinging insults is typical that of a spoilt child – of whatever age.
    I shall not respond to you on this matter again.

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    Mute Kt Kelly
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    Jun 5th 2018, 2:23 PM

    @Prince Ozymandias: I don’t believe calling those who ignore the facts ignorant is slinging insults; I believe it is actually speaking the truth :)

    Toodle pip.

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    Mute GerryCummins
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    Jun 5th 2018, 4:20 PM

    @Kt Kelly: brainwashed, looking to find something to justify his life of devotion to the sky fairy as it crumbles before him! I do have empathy but how these type can’t see the wood for the trees confuses me.

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    Mute Matt Beaumont
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    Jun 5th 2018, 7:18 PM

    @Prince Ozymandias: you didn’t present any facts so far just bizarre opinions with no sources to back them up!
    Everything you say about the laundries has been proven wrong by experts and committees and everyone who ever spent some time researching it.
    A pathetic attempt to glorify the ugly Ireland of the past when the church ruled the land with an iron fist without any compassion and mercy!
    It‘s sad that people like you still exist and spread their poison!
    Thankfully time will solve this rather sooner than later!

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    Mute Kevin Slater
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    Jun 6th 2018, 5:13 AM

    @Prince Ozymandias: good old Catholic mental reservation. Don’t cut the mustard anymore mate. You and your cult are being expunged from this country. Enjoy the twilight.

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    Mute Rei
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    Jun 6th 2018, 3:43 PM

    @Prince Ozymandias: posting this twice? Really? Women would’ve been better off homeless with infants than in those hell holes. You’re just revising history to suit your narrative. Defend the church all you want but I hope one day you’ll open your eyes.

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    Mute John Mc Donagh
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    Jun 5th 2018, 2:17 PM

    In the young and fiercely Catholic Ireland that come about after independence It was ordained by the controlling hierarchy that we should demonstrate moral superiority to “Pagan England” at all levels and that didn’t allow for casual sex,premarital sex or “children born out of wedlock”. Hense we had Parish priests, curates and of course the missioners (the Catholic storm troopers) bawling from the pulpits about scandals and declaring that this “type of thing” would not be tolerated. That is why these poor unfortunate ladies were incarcerated in these terrible places. The Clergy were in charge and I know of one case where a rape victim was sent to a home because the P.P. judged “that she now had sexual experience an was therefore a danger to the morals of the community”——–That’s the type of Ireland that we had to live in!

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    Mute The Poet
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    Jun 5th 2018, 4:10 PM

    @John Mc Donagh: when I was growing up in rural Ireland three families were invilved in behaviour that was totally outside the Catholic Church. They didn’t go to Church, confession or anything else Catholic but all their girls went to mother and baby homes. Members of their own families continuously raped and abused both boys and girls and neglected to provide for them, even though it was public knowledge, the State/Health Board did nothing. My parents fed the children of two of these families and put clothes on them. They also reported the abuse but were ignored. There were many sides to what happened. Parents were to blame because they didn’t act responsibly, drinking the money needed for their children and subjecting them to horrific abuse. By the time some pf them went to homes they had experienced far worse treatment.

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    Mute Prince Ozymandias
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    Jun 5th 2018, 6:01 PM

    @The Poet: Horrific story, but inconvenient nonetheless; it’s does not fit in with the stereotypical construct now useful as a battering ram to all that’s not Fabian Socialist.
    You brought up one very pertinent (but suppressed) matter: the abuse of alcohol as led to the destruction of many families in the early post Independence era. But to know this, you would have had to had firsthand experience, or study history objectively; not something much in evidence on these boards.

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    Mute Seamus Mac
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    Jun 5th 2018, 10:36 PM

    @Prince Ozymandias: well said

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    Mute davo gazeley
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    Jun 5th 2018, 10:26 AM

    These ladies deserve the best of everything after their experience,the nuns are going to hell,if hell is a place.

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    Mute Brian Higgins
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    Jun 5th 2018, 3:05 PM

    I would be interested to hear Bishop Callinan’s comments.

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    Mute Fabio Dillon
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    Jun 5th 2018, 3:19 PM

    I’m angry about things that happened when i was younger. I can’t imagine the ante these women feel. It must tear them up. Nothing will ever take that away.

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    Mute SFLounyTouny
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    Jun 5th 2018, 10:21 AM

    Those nuns will burn in he’ll.. if such a place exists.

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    Mute Patrick King
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    Jun 5th 2018, 1:02 PM

    @SFLounyTouny: Thankfully, redemption is available to all.

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    Mute Gus Sheridan
    Favourite Gus Sheridan
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    Jun 5th 2018, 1:28 PM

    @Patrick King: but no compensation from these monsters!

    26
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    Mute John Mc Donagh
    Favourite John Mc Donagh
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    Jun 5th 2018, 5:41 PM

    @The Poet: Terrible stuff, you obviously came from a good caring home where your family were concerned with your own and your neighbours welfare, but I remember the first words of a new P.P.’s inauguration back in the late forties, “He thundered so loudly–about illegitimacy. At that time sex was the only sin in Ireland and it was unforgivable,

    8
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