We have to learn how to come out of unclean situations cleaner than we were, and even how to wash ourselves with dirty water when we need to. – Friedrich Nietzsche
Though the Catholic Church had always held prostitution to be a “necessary evil”, this view started to change in the 13th century; the idea then arose that whores were “fallen women” who could be “reclaimed”, often by confining them against their will in order to “cleanse them of their sins” by penance, usually unpaid drudgery of the type generally performed by peasant women. Though most of the “Magdalene homes” where these women were imprisoned were closed during the Black Death, the practice was revived in the English-speaking world in the mid-18th century, then dramatically increased with the rise of the “purity movement” in the late 19th. Though they vanished everywhere else by the First World War, they survived in Ireland because the nuns who ran them had recognized that they could be run as profitable commercial laundries staffed by slave labor, many of whom were condemned to that condition by the Irish government from 1922 onward.
In 1993, the discovery of hundreds of bodies in unmarked graves on the site of a closed laundry triggered a public outcry which resulted in the closure of the last few in 1996. Over the next few years articles, television documentaries and a movie (The Magdalene Sisters, 2002) called more public attention to the long-ignored atrocities, and the outpouring of sympathy inspired many former inmates (who had previously felt too intimidated by the Church) to tell their stories. But though the Irish government admitted in 2001 that the women were abused by the nuns, it refused to apologize for its part in the outrage, to pay compensation or even to investigate the matter on the grounds that the laundries were “privately run”. Finally the group Justice for Magdalenes presented its case to the United Nations Committee on Torture in 2011, and on June 6th that body strongly urged the Irish government to set up an inquest. The government grudgingly capitulated, and the 1182 page report of that investigation was at long last released last Tuesday, February 5th. As you might expect from a governmental self-analysis, it attempts to whitewash and provide feeble excuses for the brutal enslavement of over 10,000 women:
The committee…to inquire into the Magdalene laundries has found clear evidence of state involvement in the religious…work houses. However, it notes that there was a legal basis for the way the state operated…more than a quarter of 10,000 women who entered the laundries were referred there by the state. But it paints a more benign picture of life in the laundries than may be popularly believed…The committee did not find physical abuse or torture…and there was no evidence that the women were sexually abused…
The prime minister then issued a mealy-mouthed “apology” which was basically the political equivalent of “I’m sorry you’re ugly”:
Enda Kenny…said he was sorry thousands of women had to live in austere conditions…after a report said the state was responsible for sending many women and girls to the laundries…“I am sorry for those people that they lived in that kind of environment…I want to see that those women who are still with us…that the state provides for them with the very best of facilities and supports that they need in their lives.” But, survivors quickly rejected his apology and demanded a fuller and more frank admission from government and the religious orders involved…Justice for Magdalenes said it welcomed the report’s central findings and said it ensured that it can no longer be claimed that these institutions were private and that the ‘vast majority’ of the girls and women entered voluntarily. The group added that it is calling on the Irish government to establish a transparent and non-adversarial compensation process that includes the provision of pensions, lost wages, health and housing services.
The government’s hypocrisy is most obviously revealed in the fact that it has not only continued to fund the anti-whore crusades of the two orders who ran the laundries (under their new guise, Ruhama), but also continued to collude with them in the persecution by attempting to impose the Swedish model on Ireland via a series of kangaroo hearings featuring “evidence” from the likes of Melissa Farley and the Skarhed report, and the total exclusion of sex workers and their advocates. The truth is, neither the nuns behind Ruhama nor the Irish government which enables their evil is sorry for their systematic mistreatment of whores and other women; they’re only sorry they got caught, and now they’ve regrouped and are starting the whole campaign over again.
Typical. Governments get all upset about hunting for trafficking, and sexual slavery where there isn’t any, yet contribute to actual slavery.
A first glance at the report suggested that conditions were much more benign than the stories said; and that 60% of inmates stayed for less than seven months. But, a tweeter pointed out that much of the data are missing, and that the length of stay is unknown for 58% of inmates. There do also seem to have been a lot of deaths.
I’m waiting for someone to look coldly at the figures.
Survivors are meeting the Irish prime minister today.
[Background: The Ryan Commission into Child Abuse reported in 2009 into Industrial Schools and Reformatories in Ireland. It talked to many survivors of the systems, believed them, and found evidence of considerable, systemic physical, emotional and sexual abuse, and of neglect. There were concerns about the amount of financial compensation.
Ryan Commission link:
http://www.childabusecommission.ie/index.html
Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_Report
The Ryan Commission did not investigate the Laundries as the Irish government had consistently maintained that the state was not involved with them. The McAleese Inquiry found that the state had been directly involved. (And indirectly, through state registration of deaths.) This Committee — the Chairman — did talk to survivors, but comment about conditions etc was outside its terms of reference. The Committee was not empowered to draw conclusions or make recommendations; it’s remit was limited to discovering the facts of any extent of State involvement.]
There’s a “how to read the McAleese Report” here:
http://www.mcgarrsolicitors.ie/2013/02/06/how-to-read-the-mcaleese-report-into-the-magdalen-laundries/
It’s not yet complete, but gives a good overview.
But … but … Michael D. Higgins is an INTELLECTUAL who’s written books of poetry!!!
I reckon it’s a bitter pill for ole’ Mike to swallow – all this foreign intervention via the UN in Irish internal affairs.
Well … let him choke on it then … since he’s always had an “itch” to criticise U.S. and it’s politics.
http://freakoutnation.com/2012/02/28/president-of-ireland-smacksdown-tea-party-talk-show-host-and-sarah-palin/
Listen to how much PASSION the guy puts into an issue that hasn’t a whit to do with Ireland. Listen to the righteous indignation as he demonizes people who don’t agree with nationalized healthcare.
Hmmm … where’s his passion for IRISH WOMEN and the real issues they faced here?
Hypocrite.
Krulac, the president of Ireland has very little political power, so what Higgins wishes would happen probably matters little. The taoiseach (prime minister) is the one in question here, his office holds real power.
Michael D Higgins lent his PR guy to Ruhama until a family crisis caused him to withdraw last spring.
I am sitting here, in Ireland, gaining insight into how the laundries, and Dachau got away with it. Last week the Justice Committee heard from a “Survivor” they had already been offered concrete evidence was never a sex worker at times and in places she claimed to be.
The Committee Chairman declared this was “even more harrowing” than the Magdalene Survivors…
ie. Any ould b*llsh*t that suits the laundry orders is more harrowing than the distilled quintessence of decades of the abuse they subjected unlawfully imprisoned women to…
The sums up the Irish State in a nutshell, if you are any way vulnerable you become no more than a cash cow for the NGO sector and that is all you will ever be seen to be…with no more real rights than the beasts in the field.
…and this is “help” and this is “rescue”…and it gets forced upon you whether you like it or not with the option of having your life dropped off a cliff as the only alternative.
Other unwanted Irish people were stuffed away in mental hospitals for decades…
If there were a God I would implore him to help us all right about now.
This propensity for atrocity seems to be the Catholic Church’s ethical Achilles Heel.
Say what you will about the Germans, but they have taken atonement for the Holocaust to be serious business. The Catholic Church would do well to follow their example.
Whether it is witch burnings, or converso auto’s da fe, or suppression of science, or priest pedophilia or the latest atrocity, there is always someone who will either tell us it didn’t happen, or it wasn’t really that bad. I had one interlocuter tell me that the Catholic Church had nothing to do with witch burnings. My reply?
“Oh, reallly? So the fact that “The Witches’ Hammer,” the premier handbook for torturing confessions out of witches had as a preface, a papal bull on the subject written to the author and the fact that the author, who had been removed from his post by local authorities was re-instated by said pope means the Catholic church had nothing to do with it?”
“Well, the church couldn’t control what was published!”
“You mean the same church that routinely burned books together with their authors and had a list of proscribed books couldn’t do anything about it?”
Private actions of private believers are their own business. But when the church and the state get into the same cart as has happened in Ireland, they become Juggernaught – crushing all the tiny people and sinners before them. Well, sinners, but only if they’re not part of the church hierarchy. Those folks get to hitch a ride inside the cart.
Let me tell you, I am a stalwart defender of Jews and of Israel – and I can tell you I don’t believe that Germans living in Germany today have anything to atone for. 99 percent of them … were simply not alive or were too young to do anything about the holocaust.
I don’t know why we feel the need to attach the sins of the father to son. We seem to rarely attach the good deeds of the father to the son …
I don’t attach the responsibility for witch hunts and burnings to today’s Catholic Church. I do attach the responsibility for priest pedophilia to them … and for these slave laundries. Witch burnings, the inquisition, those were all pretty much carried out before the age of reason. If we blame Catholics alive today for all that … may as well hang me as a slave owner and repremand the Italians for wiping out the culture of the Gauls.
History is for learning lessons … not assigning blame to contemporary players.
I agree that the modern germans have nothing to “atone for;” perhaps that was a bad choice of words. Ditto the modern Catholics for witch-burning. What I’m referring to here, though, is an apparent failure to learn from history. A refusal to acknowledge that institutionally, they did some very bad things and an attempt to make them inconsequential is what I’m referring to.
Yes, these things did occur before the age of reason, although the Catholic church was still kidnapping and converting jewish children in the 19th century in Italy on the basis of alleged baptism. That was after the age of reason. And if my various interlocutors were making the secular argument that institutions evolve and progress then I’d accept that argument as well. But these folks were trying to have their cake after they’d swallowed it whole and without regurgitating it; They wanted all the credit to the Catholic Church as a divine institution without any of the repercussions of those operating under divine license and doing evil things. Nuh uh. Not gonna let them get away with that.
If one argues that God leads your church and that that leadership grants a pass for the evil that your church did and that despite that evil the church gets to maintain their aura of holiness – well then you get what you have in Ireland today. Serial evil masquerading as God’s work. It wasn’t that long ago that Ratzinger was saying – as exposed by the Wikileak diplomatic cables affair – that Irish-Catholic priests shouldn’t be prosecuted for pedophilia on the basis on diplomatic immunity – they being representatives of the Vatican. Now the Magdalene Laundries have only been recently revealed but pre-date the pedophilia scandal by decades. And as Maggie has pointed out, Ruhama is yet another incarnation of serial evil being perpetrated by clergy in the Catholic church. These aren’t some historical and long dead issues – these occurred within the living memory of most of the people reading this blog.
My point in harking back to history is plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. And that I don’t think that it is accidental that the Catholic church keeps showing this kind of face to the world. There seems to be an institutional reason why this continues to happen.
krulac,
I think that the best way to describe the German mindset is not atonement but dedication; that is, they’re dedicated to making certain they never forget this particular lesson from history.
” I do attach the responsibility for priest pedophilia to them … and for these slave laundries.”
Placing the blame for a secular problem on the Catholic Church is easy to do but it’s scapegoating.The Catholic Church didn’t fail to prosecute pedophiles, they didn’t fail to carry out criminal investigations into the possible detentions or harsh conditions within the Magdalene laundries because they had no power to do so. The Catholic Church isn’t responsible for the widespread sex scandals within secular institutions that are rocking the British and Irish establishments at the moment. The Catholic Church has taken responsibility for its past, and should do so. However recently, the Church has been far more willing to take responsibility than most governments, police forces, social services, health services, prison services and courts.
One could argue that the Magdalene Laundries were a secular institution if one ignored that there were Catholic religious orders administering them.
Ditto their new incarnation in Ruhama, an issue of very recent vintage.
And I suppose it depends upon how one defines recent; at the beginning of the Magdalene inquiry, the Vatican was attempting to invoke diplomatic immunity to keep their senior officials from answering questions about those issues. See here;
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/11/wikileaks-vatican-pressur_n_795334.html
It’s not scapegoating to point out that the Catholic church did not exercise those options within it’s power – disciplining the religious orders and informing the authorities of criminal behavior that they concealed for at least 60 years – and thus bears the moral responsibility for the abuses that occurred on their watch. The fact that the Irish secular establishment failed in their responsibilities does not exonerate the Church from the moral opprobrium that attaches that failure.
HayZeus! …within its power. It’s possessive, not a contraction.
The Magdalene Laundries were clearly religious institutions and I’m not making an apologia for the Catholic Church, nor have I suggested the crimes of the Irish state obivate the Catholic Church of it responsibilities to the Maggies, but what I am saying is that the responsibility for investigating and prosecuting incidents of abuse lies with the secular authority, not the Catholic Church and for that the Irish State bears sole responsibility. Also there was no legal imperative on the Church to inform the secular authorities of anything, and seeing as priests, doctors and lawyers all have a code of confidentiality, and no other public or private bodies would be be expected to do this it’s a not reasonable to expect the Catholic Church to do so. It should have sacked the individuals in question and set policies to report abuse.
You referenced the atrocities of the Holy Inquisition, the Catholic Church was clearly culpable in the auto-da-fé but it was secular authorities not the Catholic Church that carried them out. There is a tendency amongst secularists and anti-Catholics to ignore the role of secular authorities or to overemphasis the role of the Catholic Church in incidents of pedophilia and physical abuse. The problem with the Magdalene Laundries is they did far more good than harm in Irish society, and few people in authority (or Irish society) wanted to investigate any crimes that were being perpetrated within them. Also the abuse was nowhere near on the scale of secular institutions like the workhouses in the Six Counties.
Let’s put this in perspective, there was serious abuse taking place in the Magdalene Laundries, but there is far more serious state sanctioned abuse in American jails. What is the US Federal government doing to address male rape in Federal prisons? What are the State governments doing to address male rape in State penitentiaries? What about the slave labour in American jails? Why does the American electorate not give a fuck about convicts? It’s the same thing.
The other problem is that there was such widespread sexual and physical abuse of individuals in institutions within Ireland and the UK, and so much government and institutional complicity it is manifestly more than an issue of abuse within the Catholic Church.
You referenced the atrocities of the Holy Inquisition, the Catholic Church was clearly culpable in the auto-da-fé but it was secular authorities not the Catholic Church that carried them out.
This is a distinction without a difference. These atrocities were done at the instigation of the Catholic Church. And yes, I realize that the Protestants were just as active in this kind of atrocity as the Catholic church as Calvin’s judicial murder of Michael Servetus amply demonstrates.
This attempt to split the culpability for the mass murder of the Inquisition (or their Protestant counterparts) away from the religious authorities involved is akin to the apologists who might argue that the Killing Fields or the tortures and murders of S-21 cannot be laid at the feet of the Khmer Rouge gov’t (overzealous underlings) or who even deny that such mass murder ever occurred (Noam Chomsky).
In the particular case of the Conversos, the actions of the Dominicans – with their Convert or Die initiative – is particularly egregious. They forced the conversion of the Jews and then used the power of the Inquisition to torture, disposses and murder them as heretics when they did not (or were merely accused of not) continuing to adhere to their new religion.
And so, the Catholic Church and their religious orders force the conversion of Jews. Then they take the assertion of heresy and “prove” it by the rack, the bastinado, and other means that avoid the “shedding of blood.” Once the Inquisitor pronounces the sentence of death – by hanging or burning – the victim is then “relaxed” to the “secular authorities” who carry out the sentence.
Exactly how this obviates the culpability of the religious authorities involved escapes me. It’s a bit like the SS trying to say they had no moral involvement in the Final Solution because the Sonderkommando were the ones that disposed of the bodies even though everything that led to that atrocity – doctrine, policy, institutions, logistics – were conceived of and carried out by the Nazi regime. The analogy to the culpability of the religious authorities in these atrocities is exact.
Those that attempt to excuse the sectarian authorities from their share of moral blame – as the instigators of the practice – are precisely what Pope John Paul II referred to when he said,
An excuse is worse and more terrible than a lie, for an excuse is a lie guarded.
“This is a distinction without a difference. ”
No it’s a huge difference, which you choose to ignore. I’ve made not attempt to deny the culpability of the Catholic Church in any auto-da-fé carried out with it’s approval but it is nevertheless a fact, and a very important fact, that these human sacrifices carried out in the Church’s name were carried out under the auspices of secular authorities.Therefore the secular authorities who perpetrated these acts are also culpable.
“Exactly how this obviates the culpability of the religious authorities involved escapes me. ”
I never suggested that it did, in fact I said the opposite:
“nor have I suggested the crimes of the Irish state obivate the Catholic Church of it responsibilities to the Maggies”,
but what I did say which you have failed to acknowledge “is that the responsibility for investigating and prosecuting incidents of abuse lies with the secular authority, not the Catholic Church and for that the Irish State bears sole responsibility.”
That is a pretty important legal and factual distinction, particularly as the issue is not limited to Catholic organisations, it was pervasive in British and Irish secular institutions as well. The fact is that sexual predators have had free access to workhouses, children homes, hospitals, approved schools, jails and mental asylums in Britain and Ireland and there is growing evidence that members of British and Irish governments were complicit as was the BBC.
I apparently misunderstood your point. I’m not denying that the secular authorities were culpable or should be exonerated because of the prior inputs of the sectarian authorities. For instance, I hold the Genevan Council as much to blame for the judicial murder of Michael Servetus as I do Calvin. I mistakenly thought you were exculpating the sectarian authorites – a position with which I could not agree. So apparently we’re not as far apart as I had thought.
Let’s put this in perspective, there was serious abuse taking place in the Magdalene Laundries, but there is far more serious state sanctioned abuse in American jails. What is the US Federal government doing to address male rape in Federal prisons? What are the State governments doing to address male rape in State penitentiaries? What about the slave labour in American jails? Why does the American electorate not give a fuck about convicts? It’s the same thing.
I’m not indicting Catholic members in this denunciation. They are not the ones exercising authority within the Church. I am indicting the Catholic Authorities in this because they have (or had) the power and it was their exercise and abuse of that power that led to these atrocities. So the comparison to the American electorate is invalid unless you are willing to indict the Catholic layman as complicit in the abuses of Church power. I’m not willing to do so.
However, if you want to change your indictment from the American
Electorate to the penal authorities, the special interest groups that lobby for private prisons and the state authorities charged with oversight of those institutions, then I would endorse your charge 100%.
The Irish electorate didn’t give a fuck about the Maggies when this was happening, that’s the correlation.
In American jails there is abuse on an industrial scale, yet the US and State authorities fail to act, it’s not like American don’t know this is going on, but most Americans think that jails are beneficial to society, if for no other reason than they keep convicts away from them, so there is no imperative for the Obama administration to admit culpability for sexual abuse within the penal system, let alone do anything about it.
In that light, then I would have to agree with you. I think that the American electorate – or at least signficant numbers of them – are in favor of the tough on crime and particularly the Drug War. Now I’m tough on crime – but for me it has to be rights’ violations, not personal vices which is what the various prohibition movements actually target. AFAIK the vast majority of prisoners are actually victims of the prohibition mindset rather than criminals – this is
where the expense to the taxpayer and the profits for the correctional corporations, the cop and correctional unions and their hangers-on come from. So in that sense, yes, the electorate – those that support the prohibition agenda, are morally culpable.
Maggie you are oversimplifying the issue and ignoring Irish history, in particular the changing role the Magdalene laundries in Irish society during the period of the Poor Laws, Irish white slavery, which only ended in 1839, the Great famine of 1845-1849, Transportation ended 1868, the Mini Famine of 1879, the Great War (over 200,000 men enlisted 30,000 fell), the Easter Risings, the Irish War of Independence, the Irish Civil War, the Great Depression and WWII. The most sickening lines in the “Fields of Athenryn” are “For you stole Trevelyan’s corn, So the young might see the morn, Now a prison ship lies waiting in the bay.” The reality of that statement in Cork during 1845-1849 was dead babies lying in the street because they famine exhausted and homeless mothers didn’t have the strength to bury them, and there husbands had been deported. Selling pussy wasn’t really an option in Ireland at that time, that’s what those girls did when they arrived in London. When you hear the crowd bellowing out “Fields of Athenryn” in Croke Park it’s even more poignant because that was the scene of a massacre during 1920, when the RUC open fired on the crowd and players during a match between Dublin Vs Tipperary killing 14 people.
Between 1809-1950 the Magdalene asylums kept women alive, and they had very little to do with prostitution. And I disagree with your assertion that they survived in Ireland post 1920s “because the nuns who ran them had recognized that they could be run as profitable commercial laundries staffed by slave labor”. The reason they existed so long in Ireland is that the workhouses were abolished in 1925, as a hated British institution, but the Irish Government had no alternative provision. So the Magdalene asylums became the Irish Government’s dumping ground for unmarried mothers, female orphans, mentally and physically handicapped women and otherwise destitute women, bearing in mind that in the Six Counties, workhouses remained into 1948.
The abuse that these women suffered and the fact that they were effectively used as slave labour is a serious issue for both the Catholic Church and Irish Government, but it is equally important to acknowledge that these institutions were absolutely necessary for the survival of many of the women who entered them, and that the vast majority of them did so willingly. Also it has to be put in the context of the far more substantial abuse of “unfortunates” in the workhouses, children’s homes and girls approved schools in Britain during the same period. This isn’t a tu quoque – there is no mitigation for the abuse but this problem is far wider than the Catholic Church issue, and is more prevalent in secular establishments. What all these major abuse scandals in the UK and Ireland have in common is a systematic failure of various authorities to deal with the issue to the extent that the British and Irish governments, along with the Catholic Church, must have knowingly been complicit in the abuse of vulnerable people. There’s the same complicit negligence in America towards male rape in prisons.
Damn, I like your comment. This era in Ireland was really, really bad. I hit a link to this from another subject on Ireland and was not only appalled but sad that it was just one more mark against Christianity’s Great Schism.
Thanks, yeah it was an appalling time and very difficult to comprehend when I think that my Grandma lived in Cork during the 30s and 40s, and my great grandfather was playing Gaelic football in Cork in 1920. The Great Schism has a lot to answer for and not just in Ireland.
Prisons are necessary if you don’t want to just execute or exile every law-breaker on the spot. But the abuse of prisoners, including the tendency to look the other way when it comes to prison rape, is still wrong.
Well I think that report also says that the laundries were largely not profitable, and worked on subsistence levels. So if correct they didn’t survive because they were profitable.
It also has some interesting details on who attended such laundries. These included female criminals (prison space for women was extremely limited), orphaned children who had been rejected by their foster parents once they grew too old to be entitled to welfare, and women with psychiatric or intellectual problems. So there was a diverse range of people in such places, for a range of reasons.
I’m not sure why we should presume the report is any kind of white wash. Also I’d be patient on waiting for a government apology, which may follow. There have been even members of the government calling for the taoiseach to apologise and offer compensation.
Finally I’m not completely sure that we can connect this phenomenon with attempts to criminalise the purchase of sex. The impression I get – and I may be wrong – is that those who hate the Catholic Church the most are among the loudest supporters of the End Demand policy.
I’ve only browsed the executive summary so I’ll stand to be corrected, but I had thought that most people in society – government, police, public, courts – trusted the Catholic institutions. Abuse is surely inevitable in any institution if it is written a blank cheque of trust.
Quick update on this: the Taoiseach Enda Kenny has formally apologised for the Magdalene Laundries. I just saw some of the victims interviewed on the evening news and they were weeping and smiling with joy and relief. The head of the biggest party in opposition also apologised, since his party had been in power for many years and hadn’t acted on this. They are in the process of organising compensation.
http://www.rte.ie/news/2013/0219/368465-maglalene-report-government/
Good move! You can see the video of his speech on that link too.
This is good news. Gives one hope that even people in power get it right every great once in a while.
I’m glad to hear that the head of the gov’t has done this. I wonder if the persistence of the criticis of his half-apology earlier prompted it. In any case, it is a heartening development.
[…] di Moran con il governo Irlandese, ma le mie speranze al riguardo sono davvero poche, considerando l’ossequiosa deferenza che ella ha usato e continua a usare nei confronti dell’ordine delle Magdalene, che si parli di una […]