Monday, September 28, 2009
PATSY McGARRY Religious Affairs Correspondent
A SEPARATE redress scheme for women detained in Magdalene laundries has been called for by an advocacy group for survivors.
Justice for Magdalenes wrote to Taoiseach Brian Cowen last week demanding that the State introduce legislation for a distinct redress scheme for survivors.
“We contend that the State is morally obliged to apologise for its role in facilitating and silently condoning the abuse of generations of Irish women and children in these institutions,” the group said.
In his letter to the Taoiseach on behalf of the group, Dr Jim Smith, associate professor at the English department and Irish studies programme at Boston College in the US, said he was doing so “to seek further explanation of the State’s rejection of calls for a distinct redress scheme for survivors of the Magdalene
laundries”.
In proposing a separate redress scheme for such people, he said the group recognised “that the nature of the State’s relationship to the laundries was different from its relationship with residential institutions.” He noted that “the only Magdalene survivors covered by the Redress Act are those young girls transferred from a residential institution (eg industrial or reformatory school) while still in State care”.
“Many other Irish children, however, were abandoned to the Magdalene laundries, many of them abandoned by their families. We assert that the State did have an obligation to provide for and protect these children from institutional child abuse.
“They were always Irish citizens. They were forcibly engaged in unpaid child labour. The Constitution governed the State’s obligation to ensure that they receive a ‘certain minimum education’.” How a child ended up in one of the laundries was “immaterial as this did not obviate the State’s constitutional obligation to protect her”, Dr Smith concluded.
The Irish Times 28th September 2009
“Twisters of Mercy”! Good one, Hanora, right on! One thing dyed-in the wool Catholics (clergy or not) are good at is saying one thing and doing the complete opposite. I thnk that’s a form of psychosis, I really do!
I am Irish, only because I happen to be born in Ireland, and I can tell you I am most definitely not proud to be Irish! Who in their right mind would be?!!!
When I went to collect my mother’s records, it was a one paged document like a court order and I noticed with horror that she even had to change her name to Dympna. She was not allowed use her own name which was Mary!! The nun, then proceed to patronise me by telling me how educated I was! Nothing changes in this country and unfortunately we have the vestiges of that era hanging on for grim death in case their power is eroded. Shame on you Ireland and as Portia says the world is watching. She was incarcerated in Sean Ross Abbey (now St. Ann’s) in Roscrea in Tipperary. If you drive around the back you can still see the old machines rotting and rusting in the elements. I had a look around inside and I prayed fervently for those young women, some only children, like my mother, who were given a warped view on life by these twisters of mercy!!!
Brilliant.
How aptly named- Magdalenes- based on the Patriarchal demonisation of the sacred female by the Catholic Cult church over 2,000 years ago.
Thankfully men like you Paddy know of the real sacred male and feminine.
The patriarchal church and state are still trying to keep the females as slaves.
Too late, the whole world is watching Eire now.