The Irish Times – Wednesday, June 15, 2011
PAUL CULLEN, Political Staff
THE GOVERNMENT has ordered a limited investigation into the treatment of women and girls in Magdalene laundries.
The form of the investigation, an inter-departmental committee chaired by an independent person, falls short of the statutory inquiry demanded by the UN Committee against Torture and the Irish Human Rights Committee.
The remit of the committee has been confined to asking it to “clarify any State interaction with the Magdalene laundries and to produce a narrative detailing such interaction”.
The Government believed it was essential “as a first step” to establish fully the true facts and circumstances relating to the Magdalene laundries, Minister for Justice Alan Shatter said in a statement last night.
The statement made no reference to another key demand of the UN, the IHRC and groups representing former residents, the payment of compensation, but did promise to put in place a “restorative and reconciliation process” involving the religious congregations that ran the laundries and former residents.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny told the Dáil last May the Department of Justice was considering a reparation scheme for former residents.
Mr Shatter and the Minister of State at his department, Kathleen Lynch, are to meet the congregations and ask them to make their records available to former residents.
They will also be asked to provide information on the number of former residents still in their care.
The decision to set up an inter-departmental committee on the matter was taken at yesterday’s Cabinet meeting. It was agreed that the committee would make a progress report within three months.
Last month, the UN Committee against Torture recommended that the Government set up a statutory investigation into allegations of torture and degrading treatment against women and girls committed to the laundries and forced to work without pay.
The committee said the perpetrators should be punished and redress provided to the women.
The group’s report criticised the State for failing to regulate or inspect the laundries, which were run by four congregations: the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity, the Religious Sisters of Charity, the Sisters of Mercy and the Good Shepherd Sisters.
Mr Shatter said the Government welcomed last week’s indication by the four congregations of their willingness to bring “clarity, understanding, healing and justice in the interests of all the women involved”. Consideration was being given to the appropriate independent person to chair the inter-departmental committee, he added.
Last May, speaking at a hearing of the UN committee in Geneva, Department of Justice secretary general Seán Aylward said the State couldn’t “rewrite its history” with regard to the Magdalene laundries.
The first Magdalene laundry opened in Dublin in 1767 and in the 20th century 10 laundries were in operation throughout the State. Most closed in the 1960s and the last one shut its doors in 1996.
THE 2 PILLARS OF ALICE MILLER’s THERAPY
**** The WHAT? and the HOW TO? ****
================================================
THE LONGEST JOURNEY – or WHAT CAN WE EXPECT FROM PSYCHOTHERAPY.
( excerpt taken from 5th paragraph )
http://www.alice-miller.com/articles_en.php?lang=en&nid=56&grp=11
……therapy should open up access to our own feelings: the wounded child must be allowed to speak, and the adult must learn to understand and engage with what that child is trying to say.
If the therapist is a genuine Enlightened Witness, as opposed to AN educator, then
the client will have learned to admit his/her emotions, to understand their intensity, and to transform them into conscious feelings leaving new traces of memory.
Of course, like any other individual, the former client will need friends with whom to share worries, problems, and questions. But here communication will take on a more mature form, free of any kind of exploitation, because both sides have seen through the exploitation experienced in childhood.
************************************************
TAKING IT PERSONALLY: INDIGNATION AS A VEHICLE OF THERAPY
( 7th, 6th and 4th paragraphs from the end )
http://www.alice-miller.com/articles_en.php?lang=en&nid=54&grp=11
……to be able to break with that denial, they would have needed not a neutral therapist but a partial one, someone who sided unequivocally with the tormented child and displayed indignation at the wrongs done to that child before the client is capable of doing so.
……genuine indignation at what clients have been through in their childhood is an important vehicle of therapy.
……the open display of indignation on the part of the therapist as witness ultimately sets off a process of liberation that has previously been impeded by the moral standards upheld by society.
————————————————
Raymond’s Note: Definition of INDIGNATION:
The feeling excited by that which is unworthy, base, or disgraceful; anger mingled with contempt, disgust, or abhorrence.
“THE GOVERNMENT has ordered a limited investigation into the treatment of women and girls in Magdalene laundries.”
Yes, let’s LIMIT this problem to the Magdalene laundries… as if the rest of Ireland was a normally functioning society – as if …
FFS people, lets get real here: the whole of Irish society (apart from a tiny minority) were active participants of all that normalised criminal sociopathy – it still is. As George Bernard Shaw put it: “Ireland is the biggest open-air lunatic asylum in the world” .
I would agree with that observation (whether it is accurately attributable to GBS or not) – in other words, the Irish as a people, even today, are a morally-bankrupt people, wherever they live on the planet. It may well be that 800 years of British Empire oppression of our little country destroyed all but destroyed our humanity? NB, I’m Irish born and raised myself, but I have little time for my fellow Irish men and women…
But what is stopping things really. its absurd to say that thay need more time to sort this out.If the church never paid these women. well its about time that thay as the government should act in the interests of these ladies.no arrangments were made for thier release. And no fixed period of detention was leaving them in danger of life imprisonment.So its up to them to solve the problems of thier nowadays lifstyle.In all the years thay worked no arrangments were made for when thay reached retirment age.thats awful. no future at all after all that work .
An apology is the least that women who have slaved in Magdalene laundries should have been given by the government. It now appears as if Mr. Shatter T.D and his colleagues are engaged in a process that will serve no useful purpose other than to slow up the process of redress to which Magdalene women are clearly entitled.
Shame on the Government and on Alan Shatter T.D. for not offering an apology to Magdalene Women who worked as slaves for religious orders. One can’t help but get the impression that the government are engaging in a foot dragging exercise. Many of these women are elderly and cannot wait around with the government sits on its hands.