The Explosive Report On The Magdalene Laundries

After much delay and numerous promises, the Government will soon release its extensive report into the Magdalene laundries that were little more than slave labor camps for vulnerable Irish women, from the founding of the Irish Free State in 1922 through the 1980s.

Keep in your prayers the women who survived the brutal regime, who will now re-live all the horror as their truth is exposed for all the world to see and hear.

Justice for Magdalenes has been fighting for many long years to have the story told.

In what is a touch of justice for those women, those who were brave enough to come forward and tell their stories to an unbelieving public will be vindicated. Those who cowered in fear, who hid in the shadows out of shame, will know that their experiences can no longer be kept from view by the Catholic Church or the Irish government.

The next step, however, will require more struggle, and it is hoped that the report prepared by Senator Martin McAleese will grant the former Magdalenes the public support they need to obtain redress for their many years of slavery. The women who scrubbed the sheets from Mountjoy Jail or posh Dublin hotels never received a penny for the labor, and so, they now receive no old-age pensions.

Suffering from psychological problems related to post-traumatic stress, without the funds to pay for medical care, without money to provide the basics when they are too old to work, the forgotten Maggies have their best chance of turning some of that around.

The abusive system is spelled out in fictional form in THE LEAVEN OF THE PHARISEES. Read the novel. Read the report. You'll find that fiction did not stray from the truth, no matter how unbelievable it might seem.