Fallen Women Forgiven: Enda Kenny and the Magdalene Laundries

By Helen McBride

Prompted by the UN Committee against Torture in 2011 to set up an inquiry, the Irish government has released a report on State collusion with the Catholic Church in the treatment of girls and women in the work houses known as the Magdalene Laundries. These Laundries were run by four Roman Catholic orders of nuns.

The laundries were institutions started by the Catholic Church in 1922, in which thousands of vulnerable women were incarcerated. While in reality those sent to the laundries were products of poverty, homelessness, and dysfunctional families, the myth of the “bad girl” and “fallen woman” sent to the laundries to reform has persisted. Those that were sent to these institutions spent months or years in hard labour, with no access to education, little respect and in many cases lived in constant fear. Work included doing laundry for hotels, hospitals and prisons.

Justice Delayed, No Longer Denied

By Mary Griggs

One little known aspect of the policy against “homosexuality” for the US military was that service members who were discharged for being gay or lesbian, had their separation pay cut in half. The policy, which was not part of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” statute was, therefore, not changed with the law was repealed. Laura Schauer Ives, managing attorney for the ACLU of New Mexico, rightly called this a “double dose of discrimination.” The ACLU The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of New Mexico had filed a class action lawsuit against the policy.