Sunday, 27 September 2009 19:34
Former residents of Magdalene Laundries and their supporters held a march this afternoon in Carlow town, calling on the Government to compensate them for the abuse they suffered.
The march comes days after Minister for Education Batt O’Keeffe confirmed that women who were resident in the country’s 13 Magdalene Laundries are not eligible for compensation from the Residential Institutions Redress Board.
Only around 200 women who passed through the Magdalene laundries are still alive, living in Ireland and the UK.
Campaigner Christine Buckley attended the march and said the women were not ’employees’ and many had been sent to the laundries by the courts and other organs of the State.
She said most were children at the time, and they should be compensated in the same way as survivors of institutional abuse have been.
The Magdalene women were excluded from both the Residential Institutions Redress Board and the Ryan report.
Story from RTÉ News:
http://www.rte.ie/news/2009/0927/abuse.html
I have spent the last 4 weeks campaigning heavily for the Forgotten Maggies and it was disappointing to see such a small number there yesterday (approx. 100) and I have to say the denizens of Carlow were very patient with us for stopping the traffic.
There are people with their own agendas who for various reasons do not want this issue highlighted as it follows too close on the heels of institutional abuse but hang it I say let’s get it all out in the open once and for all and let the people decide where we go from here.
One has to spend time outside of this country to realize just how fucked up a race we really are! Parochial thinking reigns supreme. Women are second class citizens and woe betide you if you have half a brain as I found out. Even the young are being indoctrinated. Can we stop it? I doubt it but I’ll have a real good go!
As Brian Mahon (previous commenter) says “there is strength in numbers”.
The problem (with the Irish people) is they are an alienated people. That is, the Irish are completely estranged from their own families, never mind their own society. In other words, the Irish, per se, are a schizoid race/species!
Personally, I have met very very few Irish people (regardless of where they live – be it Britain or America) who have been raised by CATHOLIC parents who have any real, i.e., INTEGRATED, sense of their roots.
So far, the only Irish people I have met who have some grasp of where they are coming from – and what Ireland is still grappling with – are those who who were not raised by parents and/or guardians who were were not themselves indotrinated (brainwashed as children) by Roman Catholic dogma.
Such people are very rare in Irish sociey.
That’s because Ireland is the last bastion, as it were, of Rome’s 2000 year old “Divide & Conquer” policy.
Haven’t we Irish had enough of this RC sodomy?
I know I have!
Good to hear but why was it not widely publicised so people can give support.I have been in touch with the activist website to pledge support but have received no reply.The “e-card” link to the Government on the Magdalen site directs you to the Irish Adoption Agency .There is strength in numbers.
Good for them.
I hope they keep showing up the Governemnt for what it is.
Just shows though, that their concept of women as second class still exists in the elite.