That's A Fact, Jack

After the Million Little Pieces fell apart into dust, one might think that a publisher would be a bit wary of memoirs that tell some highly sensational stories. By uniting thinking and publishing, however, you have made a critical error. It's money that makes the publishing world go around, and by all accounts, Mainstream Publishing did not let facts stand in the way of profit.

Mainstream is responsible for Kathy O'Beirne's bit of history, along with ghost-writer Michael Sheridan. Don't Ever Tell has been a stellar success, flying off the shelves in the UK and Ireland. Unfortunately, her facts are not checking.

Ms. O'Beirne claims that she was locked up in a Magdalen laundry, abused and eventually tossed into a mental institution. If you've read Mary Raftery's expose of the industrial schools and laundries, you'll find some remarkable similarities between the reports of former inmates and Ms. O'Beirne's so-called recollections. That's about where the similarities end, because the Sisters of Charity who ran the laundries have no record at all of Kathy O'Beirne.

Her family doesn't remember any long-term incarceration either, and you'd think that if Kathy was put away for fourteen years, her brothers and sisters might have noticed. Now, she did serve six weeks in an industrial school, but that's the extent of it. A bit of exaggeration, would you say, and oh so very Million Little Pieces. In fact, five of her siblings have come out with a detailed account of her whereabouts for those years that Kathy claims were passed behind the walls of a Magdalen laundry. Not in the laundry, our girl, but she was put in St. Anne's industrial school when her parents couldn't deal with her anymore. And she did spend some time in St. Loman's psychiatric hospital. Then there was a spell in Mountjoy. She also was housed in Sherrard House, a refuge for homeless people. No rape by two priests, no pregnancy at thirteen, and the siblings don't believe that she was abused by their father, either.

Bill Campbell of Mainstream Publishing says that he checked out Ms. O'Beirne's story with the nuns. The good sisters, however, are stating that they told Mainstream Publishing and ghost-writer Michael Sheridan that the whole story was a cod, and that the publisher was informed as far back as April of 2005. Yes, Mr. Campbell did indeed receive the letter, since he responded last May.

The tribunals investigating the industrial schools and Magdalen laundries have been running for years. What they have revealed is truly and genuinely horrifying. Mainstream Publishing has piggy-backed on a tragedy and generated some sizable sales figures, and that is the only fact that truly matters to them. Unless, of course, the O'Beirne clan decides to sue for libel. Cuts into the bottom line, those pesky monetary claims and lawsuits. Will Mainstream Publishing offer a money-back guarantee, do you think?