Abstract
Ireland and the Magdalene Laundries is a much needed book which simplifies the nuanced political journey towards justice for Magdalene survivors. Furthermore, it furnishes an overview of governmental investigations including the Ryan Report and the McAleese Report, and the failures of the State to treat survivor testimony ethically and with credibility.
The Forward, by Mari Steed, provides a personal experience of institutionalisation and it provides an appropriate opening. The book then consists of eight chapters representing different stages of the campaign. Chapter 1 provides a brief historical narrative of the laundries and how Irish elites established and were able to maintain such cruel institutions (see also Finnigan, 2001). It argues that the rise of the Roman Catholic middle class in the nineteenth century, and the history of Reformation and British colonization, gave the Church cultural respectability.
Chapter 2 provides a brief history of the institutions and covers entry, living conditions, lengthy of stay and difficulty in leaving. Moreover, it provides an overview of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (CICA, 2009; see also Garrett, 2013a, 2013b). It outlines the flaws of the CICA and the complexity surrounding around its establishment which has largely gone unacknowledged and under-researched. The book is very critical of Justice Sean Ryan's interpretation of abuse, suggesting that ‘Judge Ryan might be accused of historicizing crimes that merit legal investigation’ (p. 35).
Chapters 3 and 4 provides an overview of the political campaign and strategies by the Justice for Magdalene's Research group (JFMR). In 2011, JFMR took a case to the United Nations Committee against Torture (UNCAT). UNCAT recommended that the State should ‘prosecute and punish the perpetrators … and ensure all victims obtain redress’ (p. 75). The Inter-Departmental Committee (IDC) was established in 2013 to investigate the Magdalene Laundries and this book illuminates the limitations of this investigation. For example, the ‘IDC did not have mandate to investigate allegations of abuse…no powers to compel witnesses, to subpoena documentations or make recommendations’ (p. 84). Importantly, this chapter also includes extensive research on the laundries carried out by JFMR.
Chapters 5 and 6 critically analyze the IDC Report which was published in February 2013. The authors state that there was no public call for testimony, yet the IDC Report says 118 women ‘came forward’ and ‘engaged’ with the Committee (p. 119). The JFMR submitted 800 pages of survivor testimony that they it had compiled, but startlingly this was not even considered.
Ireland and the Magdalene Laundries critically interrogates the manifest flaws in the report. For example, the IDC reported that duration of stay in the institutions was 3.22 years and the median was 27.6 weeks. The calculation ‘treats transfers between laundries or repeat entries as beginning a new period of detention’ (p. 116). Indeed, the authors describe the IDC Report as ‘an exemplarily document of how governing classes exert power through strategies of ignorance’ (p. 114).
Chapter 7 covers the whole issue of Redress and, in this context, the onus was on the survivors themselves providing evidence of their time in an institution and ‘that they had suffered injuries’ as a direct consequence (p. 39). Most stated that the records kept by the congregations did not accurately reflect their ‘length of time there’ (p. 141). In this chapter, readers also ‘hear’ from survivors and this is very welcome addition to this important book.
Chapter 8 focuses on the discovery, in Dublin, of the remains of 115 Magdalene women in High Park, Drumcondra in 1993. The IDC states that all 155 exhumed women have been accounted for, but the authors note that this is ‘simply untrue’ (p. 165). The authors call for: full access to personal records for survivors and their relatives; public access to administrative records of institutions; an opportunity for survivors to deposit testimony; and further resources for the National Archives of Ireland.
The authors conclude that the IDC refused to treat survivors’ testimony as evidence and issued false information in its report. Perhaps, surprisingly the book does not mention the recent Mother and Baby Home Report, although we know that many women were moved from the Laundries to Mother and Baby Homes and other institutions. However, all of the authors have written extensively elsewhere on the quasi-incarceration of so-called ‘unmarried mothers’ and I am sure that they will go on to produce a detailed critiqued of the 2021 Report (see also O’Rourke et al., 2018; Smith, 2020). Ireland and the Magdalene Laundries: A Campaign for Justice is rightly, lucidly and incisively critical of governmental investigations that have been inefficient and unethical. In short, this book is vital for anyhow interested in the historical arc of social policy in relation to pariah groups. It also highlights the enormous efforts of the JFMR and their continued struggle for justice.