'Testimony' Documentary Explores Magdalene Laundries Abuse
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Now, it's reckoned that at least 10,000 women and girls were essentially imprisoned in Ireland's Magdalene laundries, forced into unpaid labour, subject to much cruelty and suffering. And if you think that this was very much just a 20th century story, remember that the last Magdalene laundry only closed 30 years ago in 1996. And many of the women and children who went through the Magdalene laundries are still alive and still very much remember their experiences. There is a major TV documentary on tomorrow evening on RTE. It's already been screened elsewhere as a feature-length documentary. It's called Testimony and it is directed by Aoife Callagher. We have two contributors to Testimony with us this evening here on The Last Word.
We're joined by Dr. Maeve O'Rourke, who is a human rights lawyer from the University of Galway, and also by Dr. Mary Harney, a survivor of one of the mother and baby homes who recently completed her doctorate in human rights. You're both very welcome to The Last Word. Thank you for joining us.
Thanks for having us.
Dr. Mary Harney, if I can start with you, please, first. Can you maybe just tell me a little bit, please, about your story?
My story is that I was born in 1949 in Bessborough Mother and Baby Institution and I was with my mother there for two and a half years and then I was taken away from her at a half an hour's notice. She had not signed any documents and I was fostered or boarded out to an elderly care couple who consequently had neglected me and also abused me physically. And then the cruelty man or the prevention of cruelty to children officer took me from them. I was taken to Cork, the courthouse in Cork, where the judge sentenced me to the Good Shepherds Industrial School in Cork until I was 16. So that's basically my life in a nutshell in the institutions.
Can I just run through that again? So what age were you when you were separated from your mother? Were you old enough to have any memories of her?
No, I was two and a half when I was taken from her. So I didn't remember her. But when I was taken away from the institution, although it was an institution, the dormitories where the babies were kept were full of light and, you know, airy. They were big dormitories. And then when I was taken to, the foster parents, it was a small, dark, two up, two down house and I was always terrified there.
How long were you with them and did you ever find out why it was they were chosen to foster you?
What is the Testimony documentary and why focus on Magdalene laundries and Mother and Baby Homes?
Well, I did find out and it turns out that the foster mother had a connection to one of the nuns in Bessborough and they were chums, I think you'd call them, and was able to, even though they were in their, I would say, probably mid-50s, my mother was only 22 at that time, I was just handed over to them. Simply because one of the nuns, they had asked for a child, and one of the nuns thought, We'll give him Mary.
And then when you went to the Good Shepherd Convent, was that the one on Sunday as well in Cork?
That's right, yes.
Okay, I know it because I grew up very near to it and everybody was very much imprisoned in there, I remember. So what age were you when you went in there and what was that like, the years that you spent there?
Yeah, I was almost five when I went there, so I'd been with the foster parents parents for two and a half years, and I'd already gone to school in the South Press. So I went up there to the Good Shepherds when I was almost five. And from then on, as you say, it was incarceration until I was, I was supposed to come out according to the judge at 16, but the nuns had that extended.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–4:06
2
What is the Testimony documentary and why focus on Magdalene laundries and Mother and Baby Homes?
4:06–9:38
3
Who are the guests and what perspectives do Dr. Mary Harney and Dr. Maeve O'Rourke bring?
9:38–12:15
4
How did Dr. Mary Harney describe her childhood in Bessborough and separation from her mother?
12:15–22:51
Speakers
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