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It is a report that has
been very well worthwhile producing.

2
00:00:57,740 --> 00:01:02,740
The overriding requirement was to
deal with the stigma that was

3
00:01:02,820 --> 00:01:05,540
attached to those people who

4
00:01:05,620 --> 00:01:07,300
worked in Magdalene Laundries,

5
00:01:07,380 --> 00:01:10,220
the 'fallen women', as they
often were referred to.

6
00:01:10,820 --> 00:01:15,140
The stigma needs to be removed
and should have been removed

7
00:01:15,220 --> 00:01:16,420
long before this.

8
00:01:16,940 --> 00:01:20,500
But far from jumping to conclusions
here, we should treat this with

9
00:01:20,580 --> 00:01:23,260
the measure of calmness and
consideration that it deserves.

10
00:01:23,340 --> 00:01:27,460
Come back in 2 weeks and have a
debate in the Oireachtas about it.

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00:01:27,540 --> 00:01:30,660
They were young, vulnerable
women, imprisoned.

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00:01:30,740 --> 00:01:34,700
So the time for the apology,
Taoiseach, is now.

13
00:01:34,780 --> 00:01:39,180
The long awaited report into the
Magdalene Laundries has found there

14
00:01:39,260 --> 00:01:40,980
was significant State involvement.

15
00:01:41,060 --> 00:01:43,620
The Taoiseach expressed
his regret but stopped short

16
00:01:43,700 --> 00:01:45,580
of offering a full apology.

17
00:01:45,660 --> 00:01:48,620
I'll start by asking, are you
satisfied with the Taoiseach

18
00:01:48,700 --> 00:01:50,780
and the government's reaction
to the report?

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00:01:50,860 --> 00:01:53,260
No, we're not satisfied with
the government's reaction.

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00:01:53,340 --> 00:01:56,620
Um, there is absolutely irrefutable
evidence of State involvement

21
00:01:56,700 --> 00:01:57,940
in the Magdalene Laundries.

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00:01:58,020 --> 00:02:02,620
So to get up in the Dail today and
refuse to apologise to a group

23
00:02:02,700 --> 00:02:06,380
of ageing and elderly and vulnerable
women is frankly cynical.

24
00:02:06,460 --> 00:02:10,060
These women suffered the most
serious violations of their civil

25
00:02:10,140 --> 00:02:13,420
and political human rights, and the
fact that they were women

26
00:02:13,500 --> 00:02:18,380
should not influence the Taoiseach
perception of what that amounted to.

27
00:02:18,460 --> 00:02:20,340
It was abuse, plain and simple.

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00:02:20,420 --> 00:02:23,980
These girls and women were
absolutely in the dark as to often

29
00:02:24,060 --> 00:02:27,180
why they were there and why they
were kept there.

30
00:02:27,260 --> 00:02:30,820
The State failed to make sure that
these women's rights were protected.

31
00:02:30,900 --> 00:02:33,500
Then that's absolute and utter
and abject failure.

32
00:02:33,580 --> 00:02:36,020
(Camera shutters clicking)

33
00:02:36,980 --> 00:02:39,820
Well, it's statutory based torture?

34
00:02:39,900 --> 00:02:43,380
Statutory based arbitrary
incarceration.

35
00:02:43,460 --> 00:02:46,300
There's also significant
international interest in this now:

36
00:02:46,380 --> 00:02:47,820
A spotlight on Ireland.

37
00:02:47,900 --> 00:02:52,620
And the news today is that there is
absolute, irrefutable evidence of

38
00:02:52,700 --> 00:02:54,900
State involvement in the Magdalene
Laundry system,

39
00:02:54,980 --> 00:02:57,780
and the State has refused
to refused to apologise.

40
00:02:59,020 --> 00:03:04,140
(Haunting music)

41
00:03:35,380 --> 00:03:39,300
(Children playing; laughter)

42
00:03:39,380 --> 00:03:42,460
(Haunting music continues)

43
00:04:15,580 --> 00:04:18,420
The Irish State is guilty of torture.

44
00:04:18,500 --> 00:04:22,780
I don't know what part of
incarcerating women and children

45
00:04:22,860 --> 00:04:24,820
against their will is not torture.

46
00:04:24,900 --> 00:04:28,260
I don't know what part of separating
women and children from

47
00:04:28,340 --> 00:04:29,980
each other is not torture.

48
00:04:31,180 --> 00:04:33,900
We have to put the
State in the dock,

49
00:04:33,980 --> 00:04:37,980
make it answer for the crimes
against its citizens that it had

50
00:04:38,060 --> 00:04:41,580
been involved in,
and had done nothing to prevent.

51
00:04:48,460 --> 00:04:49,780
(

52
00:04:49,860 --> 00:04:51,500
I was adopted.

53
00:04:51,580 --> 00:04:55,500
I grew up essentially not knowing
anything about my own background.

54
00:04:55,580 --> 00:04:57,940
Didn't even know my own name.

55
00:04:58,540 --> 00:05:03,060
The Magdalen Laundry system was part
and parcel of the overall system

56
00:05:03,140 --> 00:05:05,260
that obliterated our identities.

57
00:05:07,620 --> 00:05:10,900
In August 2003, a story broke.

58
00:05:11,940 --> 00:05:15,300
It was Mary Raftery's investigation
into what happened at

59
00:05:15,380 --> 00:05:18,420
High Park Magdalene Laundry
in Drumcondra in Dublin.

60
00:05:20,100 --> 00:05:23,740
The Sisters of Our Lady of Charity
had gotten into debt.

61
00:05:23,820 --> 00:05:26,540
They'd also lost money on
the stock exchange,

62
00:05:26,620 --> 00:05:28,860
so they wanted to sell the land.

63
00:05:28,940 --> 00:05:34,300
However, in order to facilitate road
access, it required the exhumation

64
00:05:34,380 --> 00:05:36,220
of Magdalene women from a graveyard.

65
00:05:37,140 --> 00:05:39,660
The women were in the way,
essentially.

66
00:05:39,740 --> 00:05:43,140
There was no way to do the
development without getting

67
00:05:43,220 --> 00:05:45,100
rid of the graveyard.

68
00:05:46,540 --> 00:05:47,540
The process began.

69
00:05:47,620 --> 00:05:51,900
Everybody assumed it was women being
dug up for the for the sake of

70
00:05:51,980 --> 00:05:55,220
a property development, and nobody
knew that there was a whole

71
00:05:55,300 --> 00:05:56,500
other story happening.

72
00:05:57,180 --> 00:05:58,300
From day one,

73
00:05:58,900 --> 00:06:00,780
they were finding unknown remains.

74
00:06:02,180 --> 00:06:03,620
There were huge anomalies.

75
00:06:05,220 --> 00:06:07,180
One woman had no skull.

76
00:06:08,220 --> 00:06:12,260
Over a hundred women are essentially
unaccounted for.

77
00:06:14,700 --> 00:06:18,220
Directly after the exhumations,
the women were cremated.

78
00:06:18,300 --> 00:06:22,780
That immediately made it impossible
to investigate it further.

79
00:06:24,220 --> 00:06:27,340
A group of concerned women got
together and started campaigning,

80
00:06:27,420 --> 00:06:31,500
largely for a public funeral,
that at least the womens' reinterment

81
00:06:31,580 --> 00:06:34,220
would be a dignified occasion.

82
00:06:36,780 --> 00:06:41,180
On the morning of the reinterment,
they were tipped off by a journalist

83
00:06:41,260 --> 00:06:44,300
that it was happening in
Glasnevin Cemetery.

84
00:06:46,500 --> 00:06:50,100
It's an enormous cemetery and they
just about made it on time

85
00:06:50,180 --> 00:06:54,220
before the soil was put
in over the urns.

86
00:06:55,420 --> 00:07:00,420
Even that moment where it could have
been a moment of dignity

87
00:07:00,500 --> 00:07:03,220
for these women, was denied to them.

88
00:07:03,300 --> 00:07:07,140
(Gentle traditional Irish music)

89
00:07:07,900 --> 00:07:12,860
What the High Park exhumations tell
us about the treatment of women in

90
00:07:12,940 --> 00:07:15,740
Magdalene Laundries in
20th century Ireland

91
00:07:15,820 --> 00:07:18,420
is that they were disposable,

92
00:07:19,500 --> 00:07:23,100
treated appallingly in life,
and appallingly in death.

93
00:07:24,220 --> 00:07:27,180
(Slow music continues)

94
00:07:30,700 --> 00:07:34,900
Meanwhile, across the complex,
the nuns own graveyard was

95
00:07:34,980 --> 00:07:35,980
in pristine condition,

96
00:07:37,460 --> 00:07:38,500
untouched.

97
00:07:38,580 --> 00:07:39,940
(Music fades)

98
00:07:42,500 --> 00:07:46,380
The story of the High Park graves is
what ultimately led to the

99
00:07:46,460 --> 00:07:48,460
Justice for Magdalenes campaign.

100
00:07:48,540 --> 00:07:51,260
We just felt we had to do something.

101
00:07:51,340 --> 00:07:54,100
Little did we know where
it would lead us.

102
00:07:54,180 --> 00:07:55,180
(PA announcement): "Departure,

103
00:07:55,260 --> 00:08:00,460
Shamrock jet flight 113 to Shannon,
Boston and New York."

104
00:08:00,540 --> 00:08:02,900
Catriona: I was working in the
National Archives

105
00:08:02,980 --> 00:08:05,980
and I found two files on
children adopted in America.

106
00:08:06,060 --> 00:08:09,340
I thought there must be more
to this than I'm seeing.

107
00:08:09,420 --> 00:08:12,700
There has to be a scheme
of some sort behind it.

108
00:08:12,780 --> 00:08:15,020
Nothing - I couldn't find
anything anywhere.

109
00:08:17,700 --> 00:08:20,060
So I did what historians
and archivists do,

110
00:08:20,140 --> 00:08:21,740
I found reference numbers.

111
00:08:22,500 --> 00:08:25,460
Went down to the third floor where
those records are,

112
00:08:25,540 --> 00:08:30,460
and discovered 1740 files, each
relating to an individual child,

113
00:08:30,540 --> 00:08:32,740
adopted from Ireland to America.

114
00:08:37,420 --> 00:08:39,500
Most of the children
who were adopted

115
00:08:39,580 --> 00:08:41,380
came from mother and baby homes.

116
00:08:41,980 --> 00:08:46,300
I looked at the files and I found
they contained one document only

117
00:08:46,380 --> 00:08:47,980
relating to the birth mother.

118
00:08:48,060 --> 00:08:51,700
And that was the document that she
signed, handing over her child,

119
00:08:51,780 --> 00:08:55,700
usually to a nun, and promising she
would never attempt to see this

120
00:08:55,780 --> 00:08:58,220
child again as long as she lived.

121
00:08:58,300 --> 00:09:02,420
There were also 2 or 3 boxes of
records relating to how the scheme

122
00:09:02,500 --> 00:09:06,700
operated, mainly to do with the
vetting of prospective parents in

123
00:09:06,780 --> 00:09:10,460
America and details about their
travel arrangements, and so on.

124
00:09:10,980 --> 00:09:14,540
Children had to get passports to be
adopted, and the Department of

125
00:09:14,620 --> 00:09:16,900
Foreign Affairs held these
files accordingly.

126
00:09:18,900 --> 00:09:24,100
It was the beginning, I suppose, of
the gradual unpeeling of the horrors

127
00:09:24,180 --> 00:09:27,340
that had happened to people in
church-run institutions.

128
00:09:27,420 --> 00:09:30,020
(Rail crossing bell ringing)

129
00:09:30,740 --> 00:09:32,540
(Train horn blaring)

130
00:09:34,340 --> 00:09:38,660
I was born in Ireland at the
Bessborough mother baby home.

131
00:09:38,740 --> 00:09:42,540
I was flown to the US
at the end of 1961,

132
00:09:42,620 --> 00:09:45,700
so I was about 18 months
when I arrived.

133
00:09:49,420 --> 00:09:53,060
My adoptive father actually captured
brilliant film footage of us

134
00:09:53,140 --> 00:09:56,340
arriving down the stairs
and across the tarmac.

135
00:09:58,940 --> 00:10:03,100
They claimed I was very quiet on the
flight and just ate french fries,

136
00:10:03,180 --> 00:10:05,780
chips, and just didn't say anything.

137
00:10:08,140 --> 00:10:10,780
Banished from our country of origin

138
00:10:10,860 --> 00:10:13,140
and quite literally trafficked
to the States.

139
00:10:13,220 --> 00:10:17,700
Some to the UK, Canada, Australia,
even a couple to Egypt, I believe.

140
00:10:20,100 --> 00:10:23,060
There were very strict demands
that were put in place

141
00:10:23,140 --> 00:10:24,460
by Archbishop McQuaid.

142
00:10:24,540 --> 00:10:28,100
He wanted them in good Catholic
homes, Catholic educated.

143
00:10:28,620 --> 00:10:33,140
Our poor adoptive parents had to
pass a physical exam to prove that

144
00:10:33,220 --> 00:10:37,140
they had not shirked the natural
responsibilities of marriage.

145
00:10:38,460 --> 00:10:41,420
I've spoken to banished babies
who said, "No, my parents

146
00:10:41,500 --> 00:10:44,900
weren't Catholic,
I was raised by Protestants."

147
00:10:44,980 --> 00:10:47,620
It really didn't matter
about the religion.

148
00:10:47,700 --> 00:10:49,180
It was about the money.

149
00:10:49,260 --> 00:10:50,740
The troops are mustering.

150
00:10:50,820 --> 00:10:51,900
Good morning Mari.

151
00:10:51,980 --> 00:10:54,980
Good morning. I guess
we'll kind of get rolling here.

152
00:10:55,060 --> 00:10:56,780
I have lots of friends,

153
00:10:56,860 --> 00:10:59,820
folks like myself, who have
been sent to the States.

154
00:10:59,900 --> 00:11:02,220
Banished babies was what
we called ourselves.

155
00:11:02,300 --> 00:11:05,540
How many of you?
Just as a, like, rough count here,

156
00:11:05,620 --> 00:11:07,940
have been able to find family.

157
00:11:08,820 --> 00:11:10,100
Good, bad or indifferent?

158
00:11:12,780 --> 00:11:16,420
I had a relatively happy
adoptive growing up.

159
00:11:16,500 --> 00:11:19,700
Went through the usual Catholic
school activities,

160
00:11:19,780 --> 00:11:21,180
joined Girl Scouts.

161
00:11:21,260 --> 00:11:24,740
All the typical American things
that you can think of.

162
00:11:25,540 --> 00:11:28,780
It was in my senior year
of high school,

163
00:11:28,860 --> 00:11:31,380
I found out that I was pregnant,

164
00:11:31,460 --> 00:11:35,460
and that caused a
whole different shift.

165
00:11:35,540 --> 00:11:39,820
It just erupted into, you're going
to be giving this child up and

166
00:11:39,900 --> 00:11:42,220
there's just no way around it.

167
00:11:42,700 --> 00:11:46,620
So there I was, standing in the
same shoes that my mother was

168
00:11:46,700 --> 00:11:48,180
18 years before that.

169
00:11:52,140 --> 00:11:55,700
When I relinquished my daughter,
it brought up a lot of feelings,

170
00:11:55,780 --> 00:12:00,780
a lot of, kind of a longing, like,
so what about my mother?

171
00:12:00,860 --> 00:12:03,660
I wonder if I could find her.

172
00:12:04,980 --> 00:12:09,620
I began to learn more about my
mother's history and started hearing

173
00:12:09,700 --> 00:12:12,340
about these places called
Magdalene Laundries.

174
00:12:12,420 --> 00:12:14,540
I wrote to the Good
Shepherd Sisters.

175
00:12:14,620 --> 00:12:18,500
They sent me back this bizarre
letter that, "Oh yes, Josie was with

176
00:12:18,580 --> 00:12:23,100
us for ten years, did beautiful
sewing and embroidery."

177
00:12:23,180 --> 00:12:27,300
They made it sound like she had been
at holiday camp for ten years,

178
00:12:27,380 --> 00:12:30,020
you know, not that she
had slaved away

179
00:12:30,100 --> 00:12:32,300
sewing for Ireland for ten years.

180
00:12:33,100 --> 00:12:36,900
So our little merry band
of adoption folk,

181
00:12:36,980 --> 00:12:39,940
which included Claire McGettrick,
came together.

182
00:12:40,940 --> 00:12:43,740
Like, "What do we do for
these women?"

183
00:12:43,820 --> 00:12:45,340
CLAIRE: It was about justice.

184
00:12:45,420 --> 00:12:47,500
Justice for the living and the dead.

185
00:12:49,060 --> 00:12:50,660
(Music fades)

186
00:12:54,420 --> 00:12:55,420
Right.

187
00:12:56,340 --> 00:13:01,020
In those early days, we had no
evidence that the State knew that

188
00:13:01,100 --> 00:13:04,260
the women were being abused in
the Magdalene Laundries,

189
00:13:04,340 --> 00:13:07,100
but we knew it had to
be there somewhere.

190
00:13:07,180 --> 00:13:09,580
We had no bargaining chips
with the government.

191
00:13:09,660 --> 00:13:12,220
We had nothing other than, "My God.

192
00:13:12,300 --> 00:13:13,540
Why won't you act?"

193
00:13:15,500 --> 00:13:17,060
Oh, I see it.

194
00:13:18,620 --> 00:13:20,780
(Ominous music)

195
00:13:22,860 --> 00:13:26,140
MARI: Next thing you know, we get
contacted by an academic

196
00:13:26,220 --> 00:13:27,940
in Boston, Jim Smith.

197
00:13:28,020 --> 00:13:30,220
Claire: Jim brought evidence
with him,

198
00:13:30,300 --> 00:13:33,900
and it was evidence that we
just simply didn't have.

199
00:13:33,980 --> 00:13:36,100
(Ominous music continues)

200
00:13:37,420 --> 00:13:39,820
JIM: I wrote a book,
"Ireland's Magdalene Laundries

201
00:13:39,900 --> 00:13:41,940
and the Nation's Architecture
of Containment."

202
00:13:44,940 --> 00:13:47,300
It set out to tell a partial history

203
00:13:47,380 --> 00:13:49,180
of the Magdalene Laundries
in Ireland.

204
00:13:49,260 --> 00:13:52,260
It could only ever be partial
because the religious orders

205
00:13:52,340 --> 00:13:54,700
did not afford access
to their records.

206
00:13:55,300 --> 00:13:57,980
When I put this book out
in the world,

207
00:13:58,060 --> 00:14:00,780
I wasn't prepared for
what was to come.

208
00:14:00,860 --> 00:14:05,300
My phone rang and I literally just
caught 1 or 2 utterances.

209
00:14:05,380 --> 00:14:06,860
It was a halting voice.

210
00:14:06,940 --> 00:14:07,980
An Irish voice.

211
00:14:08,060 --> 00:14:09,820
"Are you the man?

212
00:14:09,900 --> 00:14:13,500
Are you the man who wrote the book
about the Magdalene Laundries?

213
00:14:13,580 --> 00:14:15,660
How do you know my story?"

214
00:14:15,740 --> 00:14:16,900
(Music stops)

215
00:14:16,980 --> 00:14:19,380
My mother died in childbirth.

216
00:14:19,900 --> 00:14:24,700
My stepmother never touched us,
but she touched us with her tongue.

217
00:14:25,340 --> 00:14:29,020
We were nothing,
only Annie Donovan's bastards.

218
00:14:29,100 --> 00:14:31,060
(Gentle music)

219
00:14:31,140 --> 00:14:37,020
At the age of 14, my father took
me on his bicycle to New Ross.

220
00:14:37,700 --> 00:14:40,420
He didn't tell me where I was going,

221
00:14:40,500 --> 00:14:43,580
but I realised
I was being abandoned.

222
00:14:45,260 --> 00:14:49,220
I honestly thought after being
treated the way I was at home,

223
00:14:49,300 --> 00:14:52,660
that at least the nuns
would be kind.

224
00:14:54,060 --> 00:14:55,500
They were NOT!

225
00:14:56,980 --> 00:15:00,300
One time I broke out and said,
"You're all bloody liars."

226
00:15:00,380 --> 00:15:02,060
I was VERY angry.

227
00:15:02,140 --> 00:15:04,700
She had, they were called penitents.

228
00:15:04,780 --> 00:15:06,660
She had them hold me down,

229
00:15:07,500 --> 00:15:12,100
and she came with her scissor
and she cut off all my hair.

230
00:15:12,180 --> 00:15:14,260
JIM: Catherine would stay there
until shortly

231
00:15:14,340 --> 00:15:15,860
after her 18th birthday.

232
00:15:15,940 --> 00:15:19,180
Even in England, she was afraid
that she would fall under

233
00:15:19,260 --> 00:15:20,860
the control of the nuns.

234
00:15:20,940 --> 00:15:23,060
So she came here to Boston.

235
00:15:23,140 --> 00:15:24,980
That phone call changed my life.

236
00:15:25,060 --> 00:15:28,180
It transformed a project
which was academic.

237
00:15:28,260 --> 00:15:30,620
Immediately it became embodied.

238
00:15:30,700 --> 00:15:34,180
There was a voice, and Catherine
finished that phone call,

239
00:15:34,260 --> 00:15:36,700
and it was interesting,
her choice of words,

240
00:15:36,780 --> 00:15:40,460
she said, "What are WE going to do
about it?"

241
00:15:42,260 --> 00:15:45,820
In the months following Catherine
Whelan's phone call, I was in touch

242
00:15:45,900 --> 00:15:48,660
with a friend and a former
colleague, Katherine O'Donnell,

243
00:15:48,740 --> 00:15:51,740
who was at the time the director of
women's studies

244
00:15:51,820 --> 00:15:53,300
at University College Dublin.

245
00:15:53,380 --> 00:15:56,580
Katherine had much more experience
as an activist.

246
00:15:56,660 --> 00:15:59,660
She was much closer to the
scene, on the ground.

247
00:15:59,740 --> 00:16:02,300
Hearing from and meeting survivors,

248
00:16:03,220 --> 00:16:05,660
Katherine certainly provided
us with a spark.

249
00:16:06,300 --> 00:16:08,220
(Tense music)

250
00:16:09,100 --> 00:16:12,340
When Jim asked me to become involved
in justice for Magdalenes,

251
00:16:12,420 --> 00:16:17,260
it was clear that we had to build a
campaign on a number of fronts.

252
00:16:18,380 --> 00:16:21,180
What was missing was testimony.

253
00:16:21,860 --> 00:16:25,340
The witness statement, the statement
of those directly affected.

254
00:16:25,820 --> 00:16:29,420
So I knew that I would have
to be part of that,

255
00:16:29,500 --> 00:16:31,100
gathering oral histories.

256
00:16:32,900 --> 00:16:34,820
(A curlew calling)

257
00:16:34,900 --> 00:16:38,940
We always conducted the oral
histories face to face.

258
00:16:39,020 --> 00:16:43,340
We always travelled to meet the
ladies, generally in their own home.

259
00:16:46,620 --> 00:16:51,060
Once we turned on the recorder,
these women

260
00:16:51,140 --> 00:16:52,460
unburdened themselves.

261
00:16:55,100 --> 00:16:58,860
And it's just this woman telling the
story of her remarkable life.

262
00:17:03,780 --> 00:17:05,020
Hello, how are ye?

263
00:17:05,660 --> 00:17:06,660
Welcome.

264
00:17:07,580 --> 00:17:10,820
You're asking me about the history
of the Magdalene and my

265
00:17:10,900 --> 00:17:11,940
experience of it.

266
00:17:12,020 --> 00:17:14,940
Um, that's not hard to find.

267
00:17:15,020 --> 00:17:16,060
(Music stops)

268
00:17:16,140 --> 00:17:18,900
I have no recollection
whatsoever of Tuam.

269
00:17:19,380 --> 00:17:22,260
I was four years old when
I was fostered.

270
00:17:22,340 --> 00:17:25,340
There were two brothers and
a sister in the house.

271
00:17:25,420 --> 00:17:27,220
That's what I grew up with.

272
00:17:27,300 --> 00:17:29,700
My foster mother, she was a lady.

273
00:17:29,780 --> 00:17:30,780
She never married.

274
00:17:30,860 --> 00:17:35,300
She was as good as any birth
mother and better than some.

275
00:17:35,380 --> 00:17:38,300
It was a great life, a farm life.

276
00:17:38,380 --> 00:17:40,780
I was as wild as a march hare.

277
00:17:40,860 --> 00:17:45,300
But I was, I was,
I was treated like a queen.

278
00:17:48,140 --> 00:17:51,220
My foster mother died when I was 13.

279
00:17:51,300 --> 00:17:55,340
That was the worst thing that
could have happened me.

280
00:17:55,420 --> 00:17:56,620
The State took over.

281
00:17:57,380 --> 00:18:00,780
They wouldn't leave me in the
house with two men.

282
00:18:00,860 --> 00:18:04,100
I was taken out of a classroom
in school.

283
00:18:04,180 --> 00:18:08,060
Half an hour later, I walked in the
door of the Magdalene Laundry

284
00:18:08,140 --> 00:18:11,340
in Galway with a
school bag on my back.

285
00:18:11,420 --> 00:18:15,860
I said to the nun, "Why am I here?
I don't want to be here.

286
00:18:15,940 --> 00:18:18,100
When am I going back to school?"

287
00:18:18,180 --> 00:18:21,460
And she looked at me in
kind of a sneering way

288
00:18:21,540 --> 00:18:24,780
and laughing, and she said, "You're
in the finishing college now."

289
00:18:24,860 --> 00:18:27,340
(Bell rings)

290
00:18:27,420 --> 00:18:28,740
I was no angel.

291
00:18:28,820 --> 00:18:31,540
I couldn't say I was
a good girl there,

292
00:18:31,620 --> 00:18:33,260
I was far from perfect.

293
00:18:33,340 --> 00:18:35,500
But I bloody well didn't
deserve that.

294
00:18:35,580 --> 00:18:38,460
Like you know,
I was only 14 years old.

295
00:18:38,540 --> 00:18:42,700
Jeez, they didn't give me time
to get a boyfriend. (Laughs)

296
00:18:45,020 --> 00:18:47,540
But, the Magdalen was
a different thing.

297
00:18:47,620 --> 00:18:50,300
The four and a half years
I was there,

298
00:18:50,380 --> 00:18:52,820
I never seen the sun, moon or stars.

299
00:18:52,900 --> 00:18:56,420
You went to work in the morning,
ran straight to your job,

300
00:18:56,500 --> 00:18:59,180
in the evening you
went to the dining room

301
00:18:59,260 --> 00:19:00,460
and went straight upstairs.

302
00:19:03,100 --> 00:19:06,140
The girls there used to say
"This is a prison."

303
00:19:06,220 --> 00:19:09,860
But the Magdalene was supposed
to be a house of refuge.

304
00:19:09,940 --> 00:19:12,020
Why beat them?

305
00:19:12,940 --> 00:19:14,260
Why cut their hair?

306
00:19:14,340 --> 00:19:17,580
And why throw insults at them
and make little of them?

307
00:19:17,660 --> 00:19:21,500
I got a fist in the face and I
got my hair cut

308
00:19:21,580 --> 00:19:23,340
for giving a back answer.

309
00:19:23,420 --> 00:19:24,700
It wasn't right.

310
00:19:26,540 --> 00:19:29,700
I remember they made the
film, 'The Quiet Man'

311
00:19:29,780 --> 00:19:34,620
and I ironed Johnny Wayne's shorts
and Maureen O'Hara's blouses.

312
00:19:36,460 --> 00:19:40,180
The people didn't think about the
Magdalen women like, you know.

313
00:19:40,260 --> 00:19:42,820
It was just a laundry to them.

314
00:19:42,900 --> 00:19:45,060
(Gentle music)

315
00:19:51,940 --> 00:19:53,740
So as time went by,

316
00:19:53,820 --> 00:19:57,700
all I could do was bide my time
and watch for a chance

317
00:19:57,780 --> 00:19:59,620
to try and escape.

318
00:19:59,700 --> 00:20:01,700
(Thunder rumbling)

319
00:20:01,780 --> 00:20:03,020
I remember it well,

320
00:20:03,820 --> 00:20:05,900
it was thunder and lightning.

321
00:20:05,980 --> 00:20:07,860
The rain couldn't be any worse.

322
00:20:08,980 --> 00:20:11,180
I deliberately did it for rain.

323
00:20:11,260 --> 00:20:15,380
If you grew up in the country and
you run around the fields with

324
00:20:15,460 --> 00:20:18,620
animals, I knew you went
out in the rain.

325
00:20:18,700 --> 00:20:20,780
They wouldn't be able to follow you

326
00:20:20,860 --> 00:20:23,380
because they wouldn't know
what direction you went.

327
00:20:23,460 --> 00:20:29,260
I had spotted earlier a ladder,
and I put that ladder up the wall

328
00:20:29,340 --> 00:20:31,180
and I got over that wall.

329
00:20:31,260 --> 00:20:33,980
I remember saying to
myself, "I'm out, I'm out."

330
00:20:34,060 --> 00:20:35,940
And I was gone, headed eastward.

331
00:20:38,500 --> 00:20:43,020
But the one thing I wanted to make
sure, I was nowhere near the town,

332
00:20:44,060 --> 00:20:47,180
because that's where they'd
be looking for you.

333
00:20:49,740 --> 00:20:53,900
I knew if I got to my foster father
then everything was all right.

334
00:20:58,740 --> 00:21:01,140
I was put to bed and looked after,

335
00:21:01,220 --> 00:21:04,220
and he took over and
got me out of Galway,

336
00:21:04,300 --> 00:21:07,300
where they couldn't touch me,
and that was it.

337
00:21:07,380 --> 00:21:09,060
That's how I made it.

338
00:21:11,860 --> 00:21:13,660
It left its mark on me.

339
00:21:15,700 --> 00:21:19,580
I'm going to no nursing home,
I'm not tied behind lock and key.

340
00:21:19,660 --> 00:21:23,300
But that's the feeling
of being locked in.

341
00:21:24,660 --> 00:21:27,020
It's something you can't shake off.

342
00:21:28,660 --> 00:21:30,460
It's left its mark.

343
00:21:30,540 --> 00:21:32,340
(Music fades)

344
00:21:33,140 --> 00:21:34,740
(Gentle music)

345
00:21:37,980 --> 00:21:41,980
Maeve: In the summer of 2009,
I had just graduated from UCD.

346
00:21:42,060 --> 00:21:43,540
I was going to Harvard.

347
00:21:43,620 --> 00:21:46,580
I was really looking forward to
a career internationally,

348
00:21:46,660 --> 00:21:48,780
and maybe working for the UN

349
00:21:49,380 --> 00:21:53,540
and advocating for human rights in
countries all around the world.

350
00:21:53,620 --> 00:21:58,380
What stopped me in my tracks was one
night watching the TV programme,

351
00:21:58,460 --> 00:22:01,700
'Questions and Answers,' and they
were talking about the Ryan Report

352
00:22:01,780 --> 00:22:03,700
into industrial schools.

353
00:22:03,780 --> 00:22:06,820
In the audience was a man called
Michael O'Brien,

354
00:22:06,900 --> 00:22:09,300
who had been a local politician,

355
00:22:09,380 --> 00:22:13,340
and I will NEVER forget watching
him describe the horrific

356
00:22:13,420 --> 00:22:14,700
abuse that he suffered

357
00:22:15,220 --> 00:22:19,060
in the industrial school,
but also the decades of suffering

358
00:22:19,140 --> 00:22:20,380
that that led to.

359
00:22:20,460 --> 00:22:24,820
I got raped of a Saturday,
got a merciful beating after it

360
00:22:24,900 --> 00:22:27,860
and then he came along the
following morning and put

361
00:22:27,940 --> 00:22:30,620
Holy Communion in my mouth.

362
00:22:30,700 --> 00:22:32,500
You don't know what happened there.

363
00:22:32,580 --> 00:22:35,020
You don't know what
I feel inside me.

364
00:22:35,100 --> 00:22:37,460
You don't know the hurt that I am.

365
00:22:37,540 --> 00:22:39,700
You said twas non-adversarial,

366
00:22:40,540 --> 00:22:41,540
My God!

367
00:22:42,100 --> 00:22:43,100
Seven barristers

368
00:22:43,940 --> 00:22:45,420
throwing questions at us

369
00:22:45,940 --> 00:22:46,940
non-stop.

370
00:22:47,820 --> 00:22:49,820
I attempted to commit suicide.

371
00:22:49,900 --> 00:22:52,620
There's the woman who saved me
from committing suicide.

372
00:22:52,700 --> 00:22:57,220
On my way down from Dublin,
after spending five days at

373
00:22:57,300 --> 00:23:00,340
the Commission.
Five days I spent at the Commission.

374
00:23:00,420 --> 00:23:02,580
They brought a man over from Rome.

375
00:23:02,660 --> 00:23:06,340
90-odd years of age,
to tell me I was telling lies,

376
00:23:06,980 --> 00:23:11,180
that I wasn't beaten for an hour
non-stop by two of them,

377
00:23:12,380 --> 00:23:13,660
by two of them.

378
00:23:13,740 --> 00:23:18,020
Non-stop from head to toe,
without a shred of cloth on my body.

379
00:23:18,860 --> 00:23:20,180
My God, Minister.

380
00:23:20,780 --> 00:23:21,900
For God's sake,

381
00:23:22,780 --> 00:23:25,140
try and give us some peace.

382
00:23:25,220 --> 00:23:29,620
Try and give us some peace, and
not to continue hurting us.

383
00:23:29,700 --> 00:23:34,140
That woman will tell you how many
times I jump out of bed at night

384
00:23:34,220 --> 00:23:38,060
with the sweat pumping out of me,
because I see these fellows at

385
00:23:38,140 --> 00:23:42,300
the end of the bed with their
fingers doing that to me, pulling me

386
00:23:42,380 --> 00:23:44,580
into their room to rape me,

387
00:23:44,660 --> 00:23:48,580
to bugger me, and beat
the shite out of me.

388
00:23:48,660 --> 00:23:53,180
Maeve: I really couldn't speak after
I'd seen it, but when I did,

389
00:23:53,260 --> 00:23:56,780
I said to my dad,
who was sitting next to me,

390
00:23:56,860 --> 00:24:01,540
"I don't know why I'm going anywhere
to work on human rights."

391
00:24:01,620 --> 00:24:03,020
So yeah, it actually

392
00:24:03,580 --> 00:24:05,060
still, gosh.

393
00:24:06,660 --> 00:24:07,660
(Whispering) Sorry.

394
00:24:07,740 --> 00:24:08,740
Yeah.

395
00:24:12,460 --> 00:24:14,060
(Maeve sobbing)

396
00:24:17,820 --> 00:24:21,100
I probably equated human rights
lawyering

397
00:24:21,180 --> 00:24:23,980
with international human
rights lawyering.

398
00:24:24,060 --> 00:24:27,380
I suppose it just woke me up to all
those issues

399
00:24:27,460 --> 00:24:29,820
that are right there
on your front doorstep.

400
00:24:36,940 --> 00:24:41,100
Human rights definitely isn't the
mainstay of Harvard Law School

401
00:24:41,180 --> 00:24:47,540
legal education, but one of the
absolutely amazing aspects of Harvard

402
00:24:47,620 --> 00:24:50,820
was studying sex equality with
Catharine MacKinnon,

403
00:24:50,900 --> 00:24:54,780
who is a really well-known
radical feminist.

404
00:24:56,380 --> 00:24:59,660
Catharine MacKinnon's class is
really about seeing how the

405
00:24:59,740 --> 00:25:03,460
patriarchy operates everywhere,
essentially,

406
00:25:04,940 --> 00:25:08,540
I decided to write my master's
thesis on the State's responsibility

407
00:25:08,620 --> 00:25:10,660
in relation to the
Magdalene Laundries.

408
00:25:10,740 --> 00:25:14,580
That's what then brought me to
meeting Jim Smith in Boston College.

409
00:25:15,100 --> 00:25:18,380
Jim said we should "Apply to the
Irish Human Rights Commission

410
00:25:18,460 --> 00:25:19,580
for an inquiry.

411
00:25:19,660 --> 00:25:22,380
Do you know how to do that?"

412
00:25:22,860 --> 00:25:26,900
I then wrote my master's thesis to
be the legal submissions to

413
00:25:26,980 --> 00:25:28,500
the Irish Human Rights Commission.

414
00:25:29,420 --> 00:25:33,340
And Jim asked that I would consider
joining 'Justice for Magdalenes'.

415
00:25:34,180 --> 00:25:35,180
(Sighs)

416
00:25:36,460 --> 00:25:37,460
Thank you.

417
00:25:37,540 --> 00:25:41,740
Jim: Maeve brought a different level
of expertise and a different mindset

418
00:25:41,820 --> 00:25:45,420
to the campaign: legal arguments
and human rights arguments.

419
00:25:46,180 --> 00:25:49,540
Maeve is the person who
joined the dots.

420
00:25:53,300 --> 00:25:57,900
She compiled four extensive
testimonies from women who had

421
00:25:57,980 --> 00:26:00,580
different experiences in different
Magdalene laundries,

422
00:26:00,660 --> 00:26:06,060
allowing survivors to speak for
themselves and to recognise that

423
00:26:06,140 --> 00:26:09,500
their stories were actually
testimony,

424
00:26:09,580 --> 00:26:13,180
and that as testimony,
counted as a form of evidence.

425
00:26:14,420 --> 00:26:17,580
She moved us from a place where
we were saying:

426
00:26:17,660 --> 00:26:19,740
"will you not do the right thing?"

427
00:26:19,820 --> 00:26:22,580
to "how can we shame or
embarrass the State?

428
00:26:22,660 --> 00:26:23,660
Here's the evidence.

429
00:26:23,740 --> 00:26:25,100
Will you not apologise?"

430
00:26:25,180 --> 00:26:27,260
She moved us to a place where,

431
00:26:27,340 --> 00:26:32,500
"no, you had obligations, and you
had responsibilities and you failed

432
00:26:32,580 --> 00:26:34,300
to fulfil your duty."

433
00:26:34,380 --> 00:26:36,180
(Big Ben chiming)

434
00:26:36,260 --> 00:26:39,900
Maeve: I was starting to train as
a barrister in London.

435
00:26:39,980 --> 00:26:43,540
The Irish Human Rights Commission
issued its report in response

436
00:26:43,620 --> 00:26:44,620
to our application.

437
00:26:44,700 --> 00:26:47,780
The Government has asked the
Attorney General to consider a

438
00:26:47,860 --> 00:26:51,220
report by the Irish Human Rights
Commission into the treatment of

439
00:26:51,300 --> 00:26:54,260
women and girls who resided in
the Magdalene Laundries.

440
00:26:54,340 --> 00:26:57,100
The commission has called for a
statutory inquiry into

441
00:26:57,180 --> 00:27:00,420
their treatment, and says they must
have their case for compensation

442
00:27:00,500 --> 00:27:01,980
investigated immediately.

443
00:27:02,060 --> 00:27:04,660
This was just monumental.

444
00:27:04,740 --> 00:27:06,740
That felt like the first win.

445
00:27:06,820 --> 00:27:09,580
Jim: The JFM campaign went
international on that day.

446
00:27:09,660 --> 00:27:12,900
The media turned up, the
following day there was an article

447
00:27:12,980 --> 00:27:15,940
in the Boston Globe and the San
Francisco Chronicle and

448
00:27:16,020 --> 00:27:17,020
the Chicago Tribune.

449
00:27:17,860 --> 00:27:18,860
...And nothing happened.

450
00:27:20,700 --> 00:27:24,620
Time was the one commodity
these women did not have,

451
00:27:24,700 --> 00:27:28,060
and the wheels of justice
were grindingly slow.

452
00:27:30,460 --> 00:27:34,700
Maeve: I met Sally Mulready, who ran
a women's survivors support group.

453
00:27:36,060 --> 00:27:38,780
She had been aware of our
application to the

454
00:27:38,860 --> 00:27:41,580
Irish Human Rights Commission,
and she said to me,

455
00:27:41,660 --> 00:27:45,460
"What you're missing is that the
police returned girls and women

456
00:27:45,540 --> 00:27:48,900
to the Magdalene Laundries,
and this was State involvement

457
00:27:48,980 --> 00:27:50,700
on a whole new level."

458
00:27:52,700 --> 00:27:55,860
I was born in 1945,

459
00:27:55,940 --> 00:27:57,940
in a mother and baby home.

460
00:27:58,700 --> 00:28:02,460
My mother hadn't told any of her
family about her pregnancy,

461
00:28:02,540 --> 00:28:04,900
so I was kind of like the secret.

462
00:28:06,220 --> 00:28:10,380
At four, we were just sent
to other institutions.

463
00:28:11,900 --> 00:28:14,140
My mother would come once a year.

464
00:28:14,940 --> 00:28:17,620
It was hard because I didn't
really know when

465
00:28:17,700 --> 00:28:20,500
I was very young who she really was.

466
00:28:23,020 --> 00:28:25,940
Once you were 16, you had to leave,

467
00:28:26,020 --> 00:28:30,380
and this is when life
just changed for me.

468
00:28:31,740 --> 00:28:35,940
They took me to the Magdalene
Laundry in Sean McDermott Street.

469
00:28:36,620 --> 00:28:40,740
I remember going in,
big door shutting behind me.

470
00:28:42,140 --> 00:28:43,660
"Take your clothes off."

471
00:28:44,260 --> 00:28:49,820
And all I could see was these women
with brown and black and

472
00:28:49,900 --> 00:28:54,300
macintoshes working soap,
carbolic soap.

473
00:28:56,660 --> 00:28:58,620
It was like a prison.

474
00:28:58,700 --> 00:29:02,060
I hatched up a plan to get out.

475
00:29:02,900 --> 00:29:06,660
Got this other girl, and I said,
"I'll get you outta here."

476
00:29:06,740 --> 00:29:11,380
The van men used to come for the
laundry every day at two.

477
00:29:11,460 --> 00:29:14,060
I remember watching,
I could see the door.

478
00:29:15,140 --> 00:29:16,460
I said "Run."

479
00:29:16,540 --> 00:29:19,060
And we just charged.

480
00:29:19,900 --> 00:29:21,620
And that's when I escaped.

481
00:29:23,620 --> 00:29:28,580
But, she wanted to see an auntie
of hers, who knew the nuns.

482
00:29:29,540 --> 00:29:31,380
So we went to her house

483
00:29:32,780 --> 00:29:35,180
and immediately they got
the police...

484
00:29:39,020 --> 00:29:42,020
...and took us back to
Sean McDermott Street.

485
00:29:45,540 --> 00:29:46,780
And in the morning,

486
00:29:47,620 --> 00:29:50,740
they came to take me
down to Limerick.

487
00:29:52,060 --> 00:29:53,980
I had no idea.

488
00:29:54,060 --> 00:29:56,740
I thought they were going
to let me go.

489
00:29:59,500 --> 00:30:01,580
Again, the big gate.

490
00:30:02,700 --> 00:30:03,700
In you went,

491
00:30:03,780 --> 00:30:07,420
and I was stuck in there for
two and a half years.

492
00:30:07,500 --> 00:30:08,980
Impossible to get out.

493
00:30:11,460 --> 00:30:14,100
They changed my name from
Gabriel to Stella,

494
00:30:14,620 --> 00:30:18,620
and they said, "You know, Stella,
get down on your knees.

495
00:30:18,700 --> 00:30:21,740
You are here because
nobody wants you."

496
00:30:21,820 --> 00:30:25,460
And when you hear that,
you can actually believe it.

497
00:30:25,540 --> 00:30:27,780
Because it felt true.

498
00:30:27,860 --> 00:30:29,620
(Soft piano music)

499
00:30:30,500 --> 00:30:33,780
I wouldn't work in the laundry,
I wouldn't go to bed.

500
00:30:33,860 --> 00:30:35,420
I wouldn't eat sometimes.

501
00:30:36,860 --> 00:30:38,300
Giving them hell.

502
00:30:40,580 --> 00:30:44,060
I was bold, I was fighting them.

503
00:30:44,140 --> 00:30:46,500
I was trying to get out.

504
00:30:49,460 --> 00:30:52,140
Eventually then, they let me go.

505
00:30:55,740 --> 00:30:58,940
The Magdelenes affected
me really badly.

506
00:31:00,420 --> 00:31:04,340
Always dreaming, I was running,

507
00:31:04,420 --> 00:31:05,420
running, running.

508
00:31:05,500 --> 00:31:07,380
I always felt I'm back.

509
00:31:07,460 --> 00:31:09,260
(Gate squeaks open)

510
00:31:09,340 --> 00:31:11,540
When I used to wake up

511
00:31:11,620 --> 00:31:13,260
it was such a relief.

512
00:31:15,700 --> 00:31:20,780
I lost out a lot, and life was
very difficult afterwards.

513
00:31:21,580 --> 00:31:23,340
Nobody would believe us.

514
00:31:23,420 --> 00:31:25,820
Typically, why did women
end up in laundries?

515
00:31:25,900 --> 00:31:29,140
It was people that were regarded
as being morally impure and

516
00:31:29,220 --> 00:31:31,060
a danger to the menfolk... Yes.

517
00:31:31,140 --> 00:31:34,060
...outside the wall.
Well, I learned a lot after.

518
00:31:34,140 --> 00:31:35,460
(Inaudible audience comment)

519
00:31:35,540 --> 00:31:38,620
No, I'll come to you in a moment.

520
00:31:38,700 --> 00:31:41,980
I'll come to you in a moment
sister, because it is,

521
00:31:42,060 --> 00:31:44,260
a scandal that people who were

522
00:31:44,340 --> 00:31:47,580
16, 17 years of age should
be deprived of their liberty.

523
00:31:47,660 --> 00:31:49,460
On the face of it, yes.

524
00:31:49,540 --> 00:31:52,140
I'm not aware of people
deprived of their

525
00:31:52,220 --> 00:31:54,580
liberty in that way.
In our setup, that's...

526
00:31:54,660 --> 00:31:56,460
That's in your particular setup.
Okay.

527
00:31:56,540 --> 00:31:59,780
I grant you had your own
experience, but your reference to

528
00:31:59,860 --> 00:32:03,700
being in a place that was a
madhouse, I take exception to that

529
00:32:03,780 --> 00:32:07,020
I want to speak for women who
still live with us

530
00:32:07,100 --> 00:32:10,540
and who would certainly not describe
their situation in that way.

531
00:32:10,620 --> 00:32:14,180
You have had your say, sister,
but the facts that I said

532
00:32:14,260 --> 00:32:16,100
are absolutely true.

533
00:32:16,180 --> 00:32:19,820
I wake up, I get nightmares thinking
that I am back there,

534
00:32:19,900 --> 00:32:22,420
whether you like it or not,
it happened.

535
00:32:23,300 --> 00:32:26,860
(An eerie wind sound)

536
00:32:26,940 --> 00:32:29,300
Maeve: The Government still hadn't
responded to the

537
00:32:29,380 --> 00:32:32,980
Irish Human Rights Commission's
call for an official inquiry.

538
00:32:34,420 --> 00:32:38,340
I thought, where we should
go next is the UN.

539
00:32:39,020 --> 00:32:43,940
(Tense music starts)

540
00:32:46,420 --> 00:32:51,500
I gave my prepared presentation and
it contained the witness testimonies

541
00:32:51,580 --> 00:32:53,900
gathered from women in
their sitting rooms.

542
00:32:54,660 --> 00:32:57,940
The committee members said to
me, "Rest assured we will be

543
00:32:58,020 --> 00:32:59,100
raising this tomorrow."

544
00:33:00,260 --> 00:33:04,100
I think the Irish government really
did not expect the committee to be

545
00:33:04,180 --> 00:33:06,260
so interested in the
Magdalene Laundries.

546
00:33:06,340 --> 00:33:09,900
At the end of the committee's
session, the Secretary General

547
00:33:09,980 --> 00:33:12,140
of the Department of Justice,
Sean Aylward,

548
00:33:12,220 --> 00:33:15,780
he just took a moment to

549
00:33:16,300 --> 00:33:20,220
make some comments on all of these
queries that had been coming up

550
00:33:20,300 --> 00:33:21,820
about the Magdalene Laundries.

551
00:33:23,020 --> 00:33:27,380
These alleged events happened in
most cases a considerable time ago

552
00:33:27,460 --> 00:33:29,940
in privately run institutions,
and therefore the

553
00:33:30,020 --> 00:33:32,100
information available to us
all, is limited.

554
00:33:32,180 --> 00:33:35,420
As far as we know, the majority
of women who went

555
00:33:35,500 --> 00:33:38,460
to these institutions, went
voluntarily, or if they were minors,

556
00:33:38,540 --> 00:33:41,540
with the consent of their
parents or guardians.

557
00:33:41,620 --> 00:33:44,900
The Irish government is considering,
Chairman, how we can best resolve

558
00:33:44,980 --> 00:33:46,820
the issues raised by the women.

559
00:33:46,900 --> 00:33:49,620
Conscious that many of the
organisations which ran these

560
00:33:49,700 --> 00:33:52,500
private institutions and are the
subject of its allegations

561
00:33:52,580 --> 00:33:53,780
are still in existence,

562
00:33:54,340 --> 00:33:55,780
mostly orders of nuns.

563
00:33:55,860 --> 00:34:00,060
I also want to say that in absolute
fairness to some of the religious

564
00:34:00,140 --> 00:34:01,940
who manage some of
these institutions,

565
00:34:02,020 --> 00:34:04,540
their side of the story
hasn't been heard.

566
00:34:04,620 --> 00:34:07,900
It was just so clear that the
Government didn't think that

567
00:34:07,980 --> 00:34:09,820
it had any case to answer.

568
00:34:09,900 --> 00:34:13,900
I really want to get to this
question of "What is voluntary?"

569
00:34:13,980 --> 00:34:17,900
I think voluntary means that
one makes a choice.

570
00:34:17,980 --> 00:34:21,140
I think that voluntary means
that one is informed.

571
00:34:21,220 --> 00:34:25,260
I think that voluntary means that
one is then free to leave.

572
00:34:26,380 --> 00:34:31,060
We had testimony about locked doors
and people being captured by

573
00:34:31,140 --> 00:34:33,380
the police and returned
to the institution,

574
00:34:33,460 --> 00:34:35,020
so there's State involvement.

575
00:34:35,620 --> 00:34:39,460
The wilful failure to inspect
a place where acts of cruel,

576
00:34:39,540 --> 00:34:41,140
inhuman treatment occur.

577
00:34:41,220 --> 00:34:44,220
Wouldn't this apply to the
Magdalene Laundries?

578
00:34:44,300 --> 00:34:46,780
Were they exempt from standards?

579
00:34:46,860 --> 00:34:49,100
(Tense music continues)

580
00:34:49,180 --> 00:34:51,900
Maeve: Two weeks later, the UN
Committee Against Torture

581
00:34:51,980 --> 00:34:55,900
made a firm recommendation to Ireland
to investigate promptly,

582
00:34:55,980 --> 00:34:59,900
impartially and thoroughly,
to proceed to prosecuting

583
00:34:59,980 --> 00:35:03,460
perpetrators where appropriate
and to ensure

584
00:35:03,540 --> 00:35:05,820
that surviving women
obtained redress.

585
00:35:06,620 --> 00:35:09,900
The committee actually considered
this recommendation to be so urgent

586
00:35:09,980 --> 00:35:13,260
that it included it in its one year
follow up process,

587
00:35:13,340 --> 00:35:17,220
meaning that it would come back
in a year and ask the government

588
00:35:17,300 --> 00:35:18,580
to report on progress.

589
00:35:19,580 --> 00:35:23,580
The UN's recommendations were
national and international news.

590
00:35:23,660 --> 00:35:27,420
A dark chapter in Ireland's past
has come to light.

591
00:35:27,500 --> 00:35:31,580
For decades, thousands of women
endured brutal conditions while

592
00:35:31,660 --> 00:35:33,500
working in the
so-called Magdalene...

593
00:35:33,580 --> 00:35:35,340
...Asylums which forced thousands

594
00:35:35,420 --> 00:35:37,220
of young women into slave labour,

595
00:35:37,300 --> 00:35:40,700
are a dark chapter in the history
of the Catholic Church.

596
00:35:40,780 --> 00:35:42,700
Incredibly harsh conditions.

597
00:35:42,780 --> 00:35:44,860
Maeve: Within eight days,
the Government announced

598
00:35:44,940 --> 00:35:48,540
an inter-departmental committee
to establish the facts

599
00:35:48,620 --> 00:35:51,260
of State involvement with
the Magdalene Laundries.

600
00:35:53,980 --> 00:35:56,060
JIM: The Government made the
announcement that

601
00:35:56,140 --> 00:35:57,940
Senator Martin McAleese
would be appointed

602
00:35:58,020 --> 00:35:59,660
as an independent chairperson.

603
00:36:00,660 --> 00:36:03,660
He was the first gentleman
throughout the presidencies of

604
00:36:03,740 --> 00:36:05,300
his spouse, Mary McAleese.

605
00:36:07,180 --> 00:36:12,260
Given his service to the State,
he was certainly close to the

606
00:36:12,340 --> 00:36:13,700
political establishment.

607
00:36:16,260 --> 00:36:19,020
Maeve: The nuns insisted that the
McAleese Committee would

608
00:36:19,100 --> 00:36:23,420
return all documents that the nuns
gave, and destroy all of its copies

609
00:36:23,500 --> 00:36:25,620
at the end of its work.

610
00:36:26,460 --> 00:36:29,460
The nuns were arguing that their
records contained lots of

611
00:36:29,540 --> 00:36:30,940
sensitive information.

612
00:36:31,020 --> 00:36:34,340
The State doesn't seem to have
considered that it had a

613
00:36:34,420 --> 00:36:39,340
responsibility to obtain and keep
those sensitive personal records,

614
00:36:39,420 --> 00:36:42,740
so that it could help women and
families understand their own

615
00:36:42,820 --> 00:36:44,540
identities and histories.

616
00:36:45,980 --> 00:36:50,100
The McAleese Committee was set
up simply to investigate the question

617
00:36:50,180 --> 00:36:51,420
of State involvement.

618
00:36:52,940 --> 00:36:56,060
It conducted all of its
work in private.

619
00:36:56,140 --> 00:36:59,980
We did have discussions in JFM over
whether we would even take

620
00:37:00,060 --> 00:37:01,340
part in this process.

621
00:37:01,420 --> 00:37:04,660
But you can't criticise something
that you haven't participated in.

622
00:37:04,740 --> 00:37:07,500
JIM: We wanted to be part
of the solution.

623
00:37:07,580 --> 00:37:12,180
We wanted to genuinely contribute
because we saw that as a way to

624
00:37:12,260 --> 00:37:14,220
further the objectives.

625
00:37:17,420 --> 00:37:23,020
Maeve: In London in the autumn of
2011, I met Raymond Hill,

626
00:37:23,100 --> 00:37:25,740
the senior barrister who had
lots of experience

627
00:37:25,820 --> 00:37:29,340
of State inquiries in the UK.

628
00:37:29,420 --> 00:37:33,300
His recommendation was to undertake
a shadow investigation,

629
00:37:33,380 --> 00:37:36,660
that we would gather as much evidence
as we possibly could

630
00:37:36,740 --> 00:37:38,220
of State involvement.

631
00:37:38,300 --> 00:37:42,500
I remember him saying, "We actually
need to put this together as if we're

632
00:37:42,580 --> 00:37:46,740
going to the High Court, so
the State knows if it doesn't do the

633
00:37:46,820 --> 00:37:50,140
right thing, that there is a
case waiting in the wings."

634
00:37:50,220 --> 00:37:53,220
RAYMOND HILL: I'd worked on a
number of big cases,

635
00:37:53,300 --> 00:37:55,460
inquiries and multi-party actions

636
00:37:55,540 --> 00:37:58,540
involving the British government,
one of which was in the

637
00:37:58,620 --> 00:37:59,820
north of Ireland.

638
00:37:59,900 --> 00:38:04,540
No matter how sympathetic, perhaps
even tragic some of the stories are,

639
00:38:05,580 --> 00:38:11,580
there is a very high threshold to
getting recompense from the state.

640
00:38:11,660 --> 00:38:14,820
They know that what they're dealing
with is taxpayers money,

641
00:38:14,900 --> 00:38:17,540
and they've got to be
responsible for that.

642
00:38:17,620 --> 00:38:19,500
There is a very high bar.

643
00:38:20,980 --> 00:38:24,100
It turned into a very, very
extensive task,

644
00:38:24,180 --> 00:38:28,020
putting together a
coherent submission.

645
00:38:29,940 --> 00:38:33,540
KATHERINE: We had to provide all of
the evidence they needed,

646
00:38:33,620 --> 00:38:37,420
which we were able to get from
archives and from oral testimony.

647
00:38:37,500 --> 00:38:42,100
We also made legal arguments that
the Irish State had broken its own

648
00:38:42,180 --> 00:38:45,300
domestic law and international
treaties.

649
00:38:49,420 --> 00:38:53,380
RAYMOND: We ended up submitting
about 3400 pages

650
00:38:53,460 --> 00:38:58,180
of archival material,
in addition to 790 odd pages

651
00:38:58,260 --> 00:39:01,020
of fully transcribed
survivor testimony.

652
00:39:02,380 --> 00:39:05,900
Claire: We were encouraging Senator
McAleese from pretty much day one

653
00:39:05,980 --> 00:39:07,500
to meet with the women.

654
00:39:07,580 --> 00:39:11,100
It's unthinkable to mount an
investigation into what happened at

655
00:39:11,180 --> 00:39:14,740
the Laundries without talking to
a woman who was incarcerated.

656
00:39:16,460 --> 00:39:18,940
Ultimately, they agreed
to meet the women.

657
00:39:19,020 --> 00:39:23,460
It was an emotional day for them to
be there, at the seat of power,

658
00:39:23,540 --> 00:39:25,860
to tell what happened to them.

659
00:39:25,940 --> 00:39:28,900
It was a powerful moment.
I think they enjoyed it.

660
00:39:28,980 --> 00:39:32,860
That first meeting all around a big
table, and the women were telling

661
00:39:32,940 --> 00:39:35,620
their bits and bobs in
front of each other.

662
00:39:35,700 --> 00:39:37,780
They were all supporting each other.

663
00:39:37,860 --> 00:39:39,420
That's what they do.

664
00:39:41,020 --> 00:39:43,100
But then there was a second meeting

665
00:39:43,180 --> 00:39:45,420
and that was a completely
different experience.

666
00:39:48,460 --> 00:39:51,260
We were told we were going to bring
everybody

667
00:39:51,340 --> 00:39:53,180
in one by one, this time.

668
00:39:54,380 --> 00:39:57,780
We were not given any
warning whatsoever.

669
00:39:57,860 --> 00:40:00,540
If I'd been told, I would've
been telling them,

670
00:40:00,620 --> 00:40:03,620
it is okay to request another
person in the room.

671
00:40:05,580 --> 00:40:09,700
To take a vulnerable woman into
a room with the senator

672
00:40:09,780 --> 00:40:11,180
and his legal advisor,

673
00:40:12,740 --> 00:40:15,060
and to essentially have her
experiences challenged.

674
00:40:16,260 --> 00:40:18,260
It just was unsettling.

675
00:40:18,340 --> 00:40:21,900
It felt like a trust
was being betrayed.

676
00:40:23,820 --> 00:40:26,180
It didn't bode well, did it?

677
00:40:30,380 --> 00:40:35,180
My mom married my stepfather, and
shortly after he started abusing me.

678
00:40:38,180 --> 00:40:42,300
There was a big court case, and the
perpetrator was allowed to stay in

679
00:40:42,380 --> 00:40:45,900
the home, and the innocent person
had to be put away.

680
00:40:47,020 --> 00:40:51,180
The judge said that, "I was to go
into the care of the nuns

681
00:40:51,260 --> 00:40:55,420
and to stay in there until the
eve of my 16th birthday."

682
00:40:59,540 --> 00:41:04,100
At 14, the nuns, with the Education
Department's permission,

683
00:41:04,180 --> 00:41:07,340
decided that I was to go to
the Magdalenes.

684
00:41:07,420 --> 00:41:09,620
(Ominous music)

685
00:41:10,820 --> 00:41:13,340
It was slopping out,

686
00:41:13,420 --> 00:41:15,780
locked in a cell at night.

687
00:41:16,620 --> 00:41:17,900
Sheer hard work.

688
00:41:18,580 --> 00:41:20,740
I was in the actual wet part,

689
00:41:21,620 --> 00:41:24,700
not understanding why am I,
for years,

690
00:41:24,780 --> 00:41:27,220
daily sitting in that swamp of
water

691
00:41:27,300 --> 00:41:29,860
with wellingtons and wearing
a rubber apron.

692
00:41:29,940 --> 00:41:31,380
That was my life,

693
00:41:31,460 --> 00:41:33,380
and it was my teenage years.

694
00:41:34,780 --> 00:41:36,660
What were we doing it for?

695
00:41:36,740 --> 00:41:38,900
Were they sending money to the Pope?

696
00:41:38,980 --> 00:41:40,340
Were they,

697
00:41:41,500 --> 00:41:43,580
counting the money for themselves?

698
00:41:43,660 --> 00:41:47,540
And why did... did they get a kick
out of locking us up?

699
00:41:48,220 --> 00:41:50,580
(Dramatic music continues)

700
00:41:50,660 --> 00:41:54,620
I asked somebody, "Why are they all
whispering about this padded cell?

701
00:41:54,700 --> 00:41:58,660
What is it?" "You don't want to
know. We don't talk about it."

702
00:41:59,580 --> 00:42:00,580
One day,

703
00:42:00,620 --> 00:42:04,260
the nun, she said, "Where did you
put the sweets you took?

704
00:42:04,340 --> 00:42:06,780
What sweets?
I didn't eat anyone's sweets."

705
00:42:07,900 --> 00:42:09,380
(Doors banging)

706
00:42:11,140 --> 00:42:12,700
She was all prepared.

707
00:42:12,780 --> 00:42:17,660
There was a cup with water in it,
a tin plate with dry bread on it,

708
00:42:17,740 --> 00:42:18,860
and a pot.

709
00:42:18,940 --> 00:42:20,540
They loved their pots,

710
00:42:21,140 --> 00:42:22,660
and no bed.

711
00:42:22,740 --> 00:42:26,260
And I was there for three
days and three nights,

712
00:42:26,340 --> 00:42:27,820
and I was just...

713
00:42:28,940 --> 00:42:29,940
...in despair.

714
00:42:30,460 --> 00:42:33,020
You just could not...

715
00:42:33,100 --> 00:42:34,100
imagine it.

716
00:42:36,140 --> 00:42:38,020
I just, oh.

717
00:42:38,100 --> 00:42:40,940
Hang on. I don't want to stop.

718
00:42:43,780 --> 00:42:46,180
I could see the moon shining,

719
00:42:46,940 --> 00:42:51,780
and I thought, I'm going to be here
for the rest of my life and die.

720
00:42:51,860 --> 00:42:54,020
(Slow string music)

721
00:42:55,220 --> 00:43:00,380
And I'm gradually appreciating what
my mind is grasping about survival.

722
00:43:03,180 --> 00:43:05,260
I've got to get out of here.

723
00:43:05,340 --> 00:43:08,940
(Sad string music)

724
00:43:09,660 --> 00:43:11,380
I befriended another girl.

725
00:43:11,460 --> 00:43:12,940
I said, "Right, we're going."

726
00:43:13,020 --> 00:43:16,700
In the front, they had no bars
because it was facing out.

727
00:43:18,260 --> 00:43:22,420
They were all having lunch in the
convent and we jumped into

728
00:43:22,500 --> 00:43:24,100
their garden to get out.

729
00:43:25,140 --> 00:43:28,380
We walked down to Saint Finbar's
Hospital in Cork.

730
00:43:28,460 --> 00:43:32,020
The nun in charge, she got us
a job and accommodation.

731
00:43:34,940 --> 00:43:39,420
And three months later then,
to go into the parlour and see

732
00:43:39,500 --> 00:43:42,780
the Irish Society for Prevention
of Cruelty to Children.

733
00:43:44,380 --> 00:43:47,020
They're taking me from
a safe environment

734
00:43:47,620 --> 00:43:49,580
to Magdalen Laundry number two.

735
00:43:53,140 --> 00:43:54,980
I've been trafficked and kidnapped,

736
00:43:55,060 --> 00:43:56,860
yet I'm supposed to have rights.

737
00:43:56,940 --> 00:43:58,180
I'm an Irish citizen.

738
00:43:58,260 --> 00:44:01,380
I mean, the Constitution says
"Equal before the law."

739
00:44:01,460 --> 00:44:02,620
Who gets equal?

740
00:44:04,860 --> 00:44:08,580
"This incident, which I regard as a
public scandal,

741
00:44:08,660 --> 00:44:11,700
should be brought under your
Lordship's notice.

742
00:44:11,780 --> 00:44:15,620
The girl who told me she was
forbidden to speak to me,

743
00:44:15,700 --> 00:44:19,260
was beaten most unmercifully
on Wednesday last.

744
00:44:19,340 --> 00:44:23,780
She was in her bare feet with her
clothes all torn when I met her.

745
00:44:23,860 --> 00:44:29,060
Through the holes in her clothes,
I could see blue marks on her body.

746
00:44:29,140 --> 00:44:32,580
Sisters Margaret and Catherine
were present and helped some

747
00:44:32,660 --> 00:44:34,780
four women on the job.

748
00:44:34,860 --> 00:44:38,700
Three men working at the Magdalene
asylum heard the screams of the

749
00:44:38,780 --> 00:44:42,860
unfortunate girl, as well as the
people on the roadside houses.

750
00:44:42,940 --> 00:44:46,620
Stalin and Co could not do
much worse than that."

751
00:44:47,860 --> 00:44:52,060
(Ominous music continues)

752
00:44:58,540 --> 00:45:00,940
NEWS REPORT:
A report into State involvement in

753
00:45:01,020 --> 00:45:03,740
the Magdalene Laundries is to
be published later today.

754
00:45:03,820 --> 00:45:05,940
The report is due
out this afternoon.

755
00:45:06,020 --> 00:45:08,500
So just how involved was
the Irish State?

756
00:45:10,220 --> 00:45:12,300
KATHERINE: When I was a little girl,

757
00:45:12,380 --> 00:45:16,540
one of the things I wondered was,
how did all the people in Germany

758
00:45:16,620 --> 00:45:19,660
not realise what was happening
to the Jewish people during

759
00:45:19,740 --> 00:45:21,260
the Second World War?

760
00:45:21,340 --> 00:45:23,100
How could people not know?

761
00:45:23,660 --> 00:45:26,660
I didn't know that would be a
question I would

762
00:45:26,740 --> 00:45:29,140
ask about my own kind,
about Irish people.

763
00:45:29,220 --> 00:45:33,140
How could we not know that one in
every hundred was locked up?

764
00:45:33,220 --> 00:45:36,900
I found my answer in the kinds of
reports that the government

765
00:45:36,980 --> 00:45:43,220
commissions, where they actively
produce forms of inquiry that manage

766
00:45:43,300 --> 00:45:46,460
to copper-fasten an ignorance,
cloud over the facts,

767
00:45:46,540 --> 00:45:51,220
even as they're ostensibly working
to understand these institutions.

768
00:45:51,300 --> 00:45:55,420
After Senator McAleese briefed Irish
journalists, he allowed us the

769
00:45:55,500 --> 00:45:59,620
courtesy of giving us the report
and it was horrendous.

770
00:46:00,740 --> 00:46:05,220
He had investigated whether or not
there was punishment or physical

771
00:46:05,300 --> 00:46:06,740
abuse in the Magdalenes.

772
00:46:06,820 --> 00:46:07,940
I was saying,

773
00:46:08,420 --> 00:46:10,540
"The women and girls were locked up.

774
00:46:10,620 --> 00:46:13,340
What part of that isn't
physical abuse?

775
00:46:14,380 --> 00:46:16,300
Didn't you listen to
their testimony?"

776
00:46:16,380 --> 00:46:19,460
Maeve: I remember hearing there was
very little physical abuse.

777
00:46:19,540 --> 00:46:23,260
We had to understand, these religious
orders were enclosed.

778
00:46:23,340 --> 00:46:27,060
It's all explainable that
the women were locked in.

779
00:46:27,140 --> 00:46:29,380
But I remember having this panic,

780
00:46:30,180 --> 00:46:33,340
just this feeling like,
this is going horribly wrong.

781
00:46:33,980 --> 00:46:35,740
KATHERINE: It was really shocking,

782
00:46:35,820 --> 00:46:39,420
and we knew that this was the
message that journalists

783
00:46:39,500 --> 00:46:40,700
had already been given.

784
00:46:41,300 --> 00:46:43,980
Maeve: We staggered out of
the Department of Justice,

785
00:46:44,060 --> 00:46:46,860
rushed through Stephen's Green
to gather ourselves

786
00:46:46,940 --> 00:46:49,580
and get our media strategy underway.

787
00:46:49,660 --> 00:46:52,620
KATHERINE: Maybe it was because
I'd trained as a journalist.

788
00:46:52,700 --> 00:46:55,980
I was saying, "We've got the
line, we've got the line."

789
00:46:56,060 --> 00:46:59,580
All we need is the State
admits it was involved.

790
00:46:59,660 --> 00:47:04,540
Once we have that, we can just make
the context in which this report is

791
00:47:04,620 --> 00:47:08,980
going to drop so hot that that's
all the public want to hear.

792
00:47:09,060 --> 00:47:13,020
I stepped out into Marion Square
to an entire barrage

793
00:47:13,100 --> 00:47:16,540
of international cameras,
and I kept saying,

794
00:47:16,620 --> 00:47:18,260
"We are so, so happy."

795
00:47:18,340 --> 00:47:21,940
We're expecting that the Taoiseach,
when he comes into the Dail at

796
00:47:22,020 --> 00:47:24,260
3.00pm, will give an apology.

797
00:47:25,260 --> 00:47:28,020
I stepped into one of
the mobile vans

798
00:47:28,100 --> 00:47:32,540
the BBC had to watch the live feed
of Enda Kenny coming into the Dail,

799
00:47:32,620 --> 00:47:35,300
and I could see him with
his briefing note.

800
00:47:35,380 --> 00:47:36,740
His hand was shaking.

801
00:47:36,820 --> 00:47:41,740
I, I'd suggest that what we need
to do is to

802
00:47:41,820 --> 00:47:44,860
absorb this report and reflect
on its findings.

803
00:47:44,940 --> 00:47:46,660
It is 1000 pages long.

804
00:47:47,500 --> 00:47:49,060
I'd suggest that we, em

805
00:47:50,020 --> 00:47:53,300
take the opportunity
to have a, to have a

806
00:47:53,380 --> 00:47:56,660
Dail debate on this in two weeks
time in the House,

807
00:47:56,740 --> 00:48:00,740
when people can have had a time
and an opportunity to read it.

808
00:48:00,820 --> 00:48:02,820
Magdalene survivors groups have

809
00:48:02,900 --> 00:48:04,500
expressed disappointment at the

810
00:48:04,580 --> 00:48:06,140
Taoiseach's response to the report,

811
00:48:06,220 --> 00:48:07,340
saying they want

812
00:48:07,420 --> 00:48:09,260
a full official apology.

813
00:48:09,340 --> 00:48:12,340
Can I start by asking what
your general reaction is?

814
00:48:12,420 --> 00:48:16,180
Are you satisfied with the Taoiseach
and the Government's reaction to it?

815
00:48:16,260 --> 00:48:18,660
Um, well, I think the
last part first.

816
00:48:18,740 --> 00:48:21,260
No, we're not satisfied with
the Government's reaction.

817
00:48:21,340 --> 00:48:24,740
Um, because it was absolutely
irrefutable evidence of state

818
00:48:24,820 --> 00:48:26,420
involvement in the
Magdelene Laundries.

819
00:48:26,500 --> 00:48:31,100
So to get up in the Dail today
and refuse to apologise to a group

820
00:48:31,180 --> 00:48:34,780
of ageing and elderly and vulnerable
women is frankly cynical.

821
00:48:34,860 --> 00:48:38,140
What the report intended to do
was to prove State complicity,

822
00:48:38,220 --> 00:48:39,220
which it did.

823
00:48:39,300 --> 00:48:42,260
It says that physical abuse and
torture were not a

824
00:48:42,340 --> 00:48:43,580
feature of the Laundries.

825
00:48:43,660 --> 00:48:47,420
It has been accepted, and Senator
McAleese did not refute the fact

826
00:48:47,500 --> 00:48:51,140
that these women were not paid and
that the doors were locked.

827
00:48:51,220 --> 00:48:54,540
If that is not physical abuse,
I don't know what is.

828
00:48:54,620 --> 00:48:58,300
These women suffered THE most
serious violations of their civil

829
00:48:58,380 --> 00:49:02,220
and political human rights, and the
fact that they were women should

830
00:49:02,300 --> 00:49:06,860
not influence the Taoiseach's
perception of what that amounts to.

831
00:49:06,940 --> 00:49:09,060
It was abuse, plain and simple.

832
00:49:12,580 --> 00:49:14,380
Statutory based torture?

833
00:49:15,300 --> 00:49:18,340
Statutory based, arbitrary
incarceration.

834
00:49:18,420 --> 00:49:21,260
There's also significant
international interest in this now.

835
00:49:21,340 --> 00:49:22,620
A spotlight on Ireland,

836
00:49:22,700 --> 00:49:27,260
and the news today is that there is
absolute, irrefutable evidence of

837
00:49:27,340 --> 00:49:29,420
State involvement in the Magdalene
Laundry system,

838
00:49:29,500 --> 00:49:31,580
and the State has
refused to apologise.

839
00:49:31,660 --> 00:49:33,740
(News report): The justice for
Magdalenes campaign

840
00:49:33,820 --> 00:49:35,300
has called for an apology-

841
00:49:35,380 --> 00:49:38,340
Maeve: We did a good job
in a short time,

842
00:49:38,420 --> 00:49:41,540
of setting the agenda
and standing up for the women,

843
00:49:41,620 --> 00:49:44,580
saying, "This is going to be
the beginning of justice.

844
00:49:44,660 --> 00:49:46,460
This isn't where this is ends."

845
00:49:46,540 --> 00:49:49,220
(Magdalen Laundry by
Mary Coughlan)

846
00:49:49,300 --> 00:49:51,180

this washboard.

847
00:49:51,260 --> 00:49:55,420

in after me.

848
00:49:56,980 --> 00:49:59,940

didn't know what to do.

849
00:50:00,020 --> 00:50:03,940

there's a place for you."

850
00:50:04,020 --> 00:50:08,180

Magdalene Laundry.

851
00:50:09,260 --> 00:50:13,420

Magdalene Laundry.

852
00:50:14,500 --> 00:50:18,580


853
00:50:18,660 --> 00:50:20,340


854
00:50:20,420 --> 00:50:25,180

away the stain?

855
00:50:26,540 --> 00:50:34,940

please let me wash away the stain.

856
00:50:35,020 --> 00:50:37,060
(Applause)

857
00:50:37,140 --> 00:50:39,140
Thanks so much, Mary.

858
00:50:39,220 --> 00:50:41,260
(Applause continues)

859
00:50:41,340 --> 00:50:43,460
Thanks so much to
everybody for coming

860
00:50:43,540 --> 00:50:47,180
This evening we had a vigil for the
women who were incarcerated

861
00:50:47,260 --> 00:50:51,140
in the Magdalene Laundries. It was a
chance for the public to

862
00:50:51,220 --> 00:50:54,060
show their support for the women.
We wanted to-

863
00:50:54,140 --> 00:50:57,340
Two weeks is a very long
time in politics.

864
00:50:57,420 --> 00:51:01,660
We were hoping, of course, that what
was going to happen next was

865
00:51:01,740 --> 00:51:04,220
a historic State apology.

866
00:51:09,940 --> 00:51:11,620
We were in the gallery

867
00:51:11,700 --> 00:51:13,220
with many of the women

868
00:51:13,900 --> 00:51:15,460
and it was packed.

869
00:51:16,620 --> 00:51:18,540
We now move on to statements

870
00:51:18,620 --> 00:51:21,260
on the report of the
Inter-Departmental Committee to

871
00:51:21,340 --> 00:51:24,180
establish the facts of State
involvement with the

872
00:51:24,260 --> 00:51:27,420
Magdalene Laundries,
and I call on the Taoiseach

873
00:51:28,180 --> 00:51:29,460
to make a statement.

874
00:51:30,220 --> 00:51:32,060
20 minutes, thank you Taoiseach.

875
00:51:32,180 --> 00:51:33,500
Ceann Comhairle (Chair)

876
00:51:35,460 --> 00:51:39,660
The Magdalene Laundries have cast
a long shadow over Irish life,

877
00:51:40,260 --> 00:51:42,820
over our sense of who we are.

878
00:51:42,900 --> 00:51:45,020
The women are and always were

879
00:51:45,660 --> 00:51:47,020
wholly blameless.

880
00:51:48,340 --> 00:51:51,060
I, as Taoiseach, on behalf
of this State,

881
00:51:51,580 --> 00:51:53,340
the Government and our citizens

882
00:51:54,620 --> 00:51:58,340
deeply regret and apologise
unreservedly

883
00:51:58,420 --> 00:52:02,100
to all those women, for the hurt
that was done to them,

884
00:52:02,180 --> 00:52:06,340
for any stigma they suffered as a
result of the time they spent

885
00:52:06,420 --> 00:52:07,780
in a Magdalene Laundry.

886
00:52:08,460 --> 00:52:09,460
We failed you.

887
00:52:10,220 --> 00:52:11,220
We forgot you.

888
00:52:11,300 --> 00:52:13,660
Or if we thought of you at all,

889
00:52:13,740 --> 00:52:17,140
we did so in untrue and
offensive stereotypes.

890
00:52:17,900 --> 00:52:19,820
This is a national shame,

891
00:52:20,300 --> 00:52:23,540
for which I say again,
I'm deeply sorry

892
00:52:23,620 --> 00:52:26,020
and offer my full and
heartfelt apologies.

893
00:52:27,180 --> 00:52:28,380
Let me hope

894
00:52:29,020 --> 00:52:30,820
that this day
(he gets emotional)

895
00:52:31,300 --> 00:52:32,340
and this debate,

896
00:52:33,540 --> 00:52:34,540
excuse me,

897
00:52:34,620 --> 00:52:35,620
(Voice breaking) heralds

898
00:52:36,500 --> 00:52:40,140
a new dawn for all those
who feared that the

899
00:52:40,220 --> 00:52:42,100
dark midnight might never end.

900
00:52:43,060 --> 00:52:45,420
(Applause)

901
00:53:00,300 --> 00:53:03,940
Maeve: It was just an extremely
important moment in Irish history.

902
00:53:05,100 --> 00:53:07,820
MARI: It was meaningful and poignant.

903
00:53:07,900 --> 00:53:11,580
Kenny, you know, he went up to the
gallery, which was

904
00:53:11,660 --> 00:53:13,180
precedent breaking and shook hands,

905
00:53:13,260 --> 00:53:15,980
some of them,
that's all they were looking for.

906
00:53:16,060 --> 00:53:17,340
Just say you're sorry.

907
00:53:17,420 --> 00:53:18,780
I'll always carry it.

908
00:53:18,860 --> 00:53:21,900
I'll carry this abuse with me
to the grave because

909
00:53:21,980 --> 00:53:23,860
it was part of my life.

910
00:53:23,940 --> 00:53:29,700
but it has, tonight his apology
has made such a huge...

911
00:53:29,780 --> 00:53:32,860
...it's taken a load off my
shoulders, so to speak.

912
00:53:32,940 --> 00:53:34,820
These women, they're not
former residents.

913
00:53:34,900 --> 00:53:36,500
They're survivors. They're heroines.

914
00:53:36,580 --> 00:53:38,100
They worked for no pay.

915
00:53:38,180 --> 00:53:41,180
They deserve their justice, they
deserve their wages back.

916
00:53:41,260 --> 00:53:45,020
They deserve compensation for what
has been done to them and fast.

917
00:53:45,100 --> 00:53:49,620
(Emotive music)

918
00:53:52,300 --> 00:53:55,300
KATHERINE: Part of the scheme
require the Department of Justice

919
00:53:55,380 --> 00:53:59,180
to facilitate Magdalene women
meeting each other.

920
00:53:59,860 --> 00:54:04,900
Many of them had kept their time in
the Magdalene secret, and really

921
00:54:04,980 --> 00:54:08,300
needed to connect with others
who had the same experience.

922
00:54:09,220 --> 00:54:12,220
Maeve: We put together an event,
'Dublin honours Magdalenes',

923
00:54:12,300 --> 00:54:14,860
that brought together hundreds of

924
00:54:14,940 --> 00:54:17,340
survivors from all corners
of the world.

925
00:54:17,420 --> 00:54:18,860
(Tram bell ringing)

926
00:54:22,940 --> 00:54:25,900
I felt, oh my God, they've
done it for us.

927
00:54:26,620 --> 00:54:27,980
What will I wear?

928
00:54:28,060 --> 00:54:31,060
What's it going to be like
going to Ireland?

929
00:54:31,140 --> 00:54:33,540
Never expected what I saw there.

930
00:54:34,420 --> 00:54:36,300
(Police sirens)

931
00:54:37,060 --> 00:54:38,820
(Applause and cheering)

932
00:55:02,220 --> 00:55:04,140
(Uplifting music)

933
00:55:09,340 --> 00:55:15,100
(Gentle music and
cheering continues)

934
00:55:50,460 --> 00:55:53,180
GABRIELLE: That for me
was my healing,

935
00:55:53,260 --> 00:55:56,620
to see how people really,
really reacted to us.

936
00:55:57,580 --> 00:55:59,740
We felt valued.

937
00:55:59,820 --> 00:56:01,060
We'd never had that.

938
00:56:01,700 --> 00:56:05,580
And we felt believed.

939
00:56:05,660 --> 00:56:07,580
(Uplifting music, cheering,
clapping continues)

940
00:56:22,020 --> 00:56:24,540
ELIZABETH: That made me
glad to be Irish.

941
00:56:25,300 --> 00:56:27,020
I know it's so confusing.

942
00:56:27,820 --> 00:56:30,020
(Applause and cheering continue)

943
00:56:46,180 --> 00:56:49,660
Maeve: The redress scheme promised
lump sum payments,

944
00:56:49,740 --> 00:56:53,900
pension payments and also
comprehensive health and social care.

945
00:56:53,980 --> 00:56:56,300
(Ominous music)

946
00:57:01,660 --> 00:57:05,660
We have seen the letters back and
forth between the Minister for

947
00:57:05,740 --> 00:57:09,300
justice and the religious orders,
where he is kindly asking them to

948
00:57:09,380 --> 00:57:12,740
contribute and they are saying,
"We read the McAleese report.

949
00:57:13,500 --> 00:57:16,420
Essentially, we have nothing
to apologise for."

950
00:57:17,540 --> 00:57:20,660
(Ominous music continues)

951
00:57:22,100 --> 00:57:25,380
The religious orders have never
paid anything to survivors.

952
00:57:31,820 --> 00:57:34,820
The redress scheme
was really significant.

953
00:57:34,900 --> 00:57:38,260
I saw that up close and personal
again with Catherine Whelan.

954
00:57:38,340 --> 00:57:43,260
The quiet dignity that came with
having access to a pension and

955
00:57:43,340 --> 00:57:47,820
allowed her to bring her friend for
a cup of coffee and not worry about

956
00:57:47,900 --> 00:57:51,380
the expense, or get her
hair cut and coloured.

957
00:57:58,540 --> 00:58:02,180
CLAIRE: We tried to stop campaigning
once the apology and the redress

958
00:58:02,260 --> 00:58:03,940
scheme came into play.

959
00:58:04,020 --> 00:58:05,580
Those were our aims,

960
00:58:05,660 --> 00:58:08,820
but it wasn't long before
we were dragged back in.

961
00:58:10,460 --> 00:58:13,420
(Ominous music plays)

962
00:58:26,740 --> 00:58:29,420
KATHERINE: Mother and baby homes in
20th century Ireland

963
00:58:29,500 --> 00:58:33,220
were institutions that were designed
to help unmarried women

964
00:58:33,300 --> 00:58:35,660
give birth in secrecy.

965
00:58:36,380 --> 00:58:40,660
There was a was a huge cultural
pressure on these women to give

966
00:58:40,740 --> 00:58:45,460
up their babies into Ireland's
coercive, secret adoption system.

967
00:58:46,660 --> 00:58:49,380
Maeve: The Government had
known all along about the

968
00:58:49,460 --> 00:58:52,420
mother and baby homes, but in 2014

969
00:58:52,500 --> 00:58:55,180
this became an
international media story.

970
00:58:55,700 --> 00:58:58,980
(News report) The discovery of
remains of babies and children

971
00:58:59,060 --> 00:59:02,420
at the site of the former
Tuam mother and baby home.

972
00:59:02,500 --> 00:59:04,660
For a period of over 35 years,

973
00:59:04,740 --> 00:59:07,340
a child died there every two weeks.

974
00:59:07,420 --> 00:59:11,580
Nearly 800 children now discovered
in 20 underground chambers.

975
00:59:12,660 --> 00:59:24,660
(News reports in various languages)

976
00:59:28,060 --> 00:59:30,140
Maeve: A local historian,
Catherine Corless,

977
00:59:30,220 --> 00:59:35,660
found 796 death certificates for
infants who had died at Tuam

978
00:59:35,740 --> 00:59:39,140
mother and baby institution,
but there were no burial records.

979
00:59:40,020 --> 00:59:43,660
Those infants were buried in
a disused septic tank.

980
00:59:45,460 --> 00:59:50,820
(Singing: 'Go dig my grave' by
Lankum)

981
00:59:50,900 --> 00:59:56,860


982
00:59:56,940 --> 01:00:01,780


983
01:00:01,860 --> 01:00:07,100


984
01:00:08,060 --> 01:00:13,100


985
01:00:13,180 --> 01:00:17,860


986
01:00:18,660 --> 01:00:23,820


987
01:00:23,900 --> 01:00:28,700


988
01:00:28,780 --> 01:00:31,700
Thomas Patrick Killoran,
9 weeks.

989
01:00:31,780 --> 01:00:34,340
Catherine deVere,
1 month.

990
01:00:34,420 --> 01:00:37,340
Mary Josephine Glynn,
1 day.

991
01:00:37,860 --> 01:00:40,020
Annie Connolly,
9 months.

992
01:00:40,100 --> 01:00:42,340
Patrick Hardiman,
6 months.

993
01:00:42,420 --> 01:00:45,060
Patrick Naughton,
12 days.

994
01:00:45,140 --> 01:00:47,980
Josephine T Staunton,
21 days.

995
01:00:48,060 --> 01:00:50,220
Evelyn Barrett,
4 months.

996
01:00:50,300 --> 01:00:54,940
Patrick Dervan,
age 5 months, died and disappeared.

997
01:00:55,020 --> 01:00:57,020
Bernard Lynch,
3 years.

998
01:00:57,100 --> 01:00:59,660
Maud McTighe,
6 years.

999
01:00:59,740 --> 01:01:02,420
Maureen Kenny,
8 years old.

1000
01:01:02,500 --> 01:01:05,100
Francis Coy,
6 months.

1001
01:01:05,180 --> 01:01:08,020
Rose Margaret McLaughlin,
4 months.

1002
01:01:08,100 --> 01:01:10,100
Baby Fallon,
4 days.

1003
01:01:10,180 --> 01:01:13,220
Bridget Walsh,
15 months.

1004
01:01:14,780 --> 01:01:16,620
(Applause)

1005
01:01:18,860 --> 01:01:21,860
Claire: There was a huge outcry,
and rightly so.

1006
01:01:21,940 --> 01:01:25,740
The notion that children could be
buried within a sewage system,

1007
01:01:25,820 --> 01:01:28,100
forgotten about completely.

1008
01:01:29,100 --> 01:01:31,820
The commission of investigation
was launched

1009
01:01:32,340 --> 01:01:36,300
looking at a 10th of the possible
entities involved in force

1010
01:01:36,380 --> 01:01:37,380
of family separation.

1011
01:01:38,220 --> 01:01:42,820
It was an effort to make Tuam go
away to stop the public outcry.

1012
01:01:42,900 --> 01:01:46,460
Such an investigation was never
going to get to the truth because

1013
01:01:46,540 --> 01:01:49,620
it was only looking at
a partial picture.

1014
01:01:50,460 --> 01:01:53,660
Maeve: Tuam is not the only
institution where there

1015
01:01:53,740 --> 01:01:58,580
are hundreds of deaths
with no identified burial place.

1016
01:01:59,300 --> 01:02:04,300
In Bessborough in Cork, over 900
babies are known to have died

1017
01:02:04,380 --> 01:02:06,460
and no burial records exist.

1018
01:02:10,780 --> 01:02:13,860
I had suspicions that
I was pregnant.

1019
01:02:14,500 --> 01:02:17,140
I knew that I had to quickly escape.

1020
01:02:17,220 --> 01:02:18,660
Literally escape.

1021
01:02:19,740 --> 01:02:21,140
So I came over

1022
01:02:21,660 --> 01:02:24,100
thinking that I'd have
my baby in England.

1023
01:02:25,420 --> 01:02:30,820
(Poignant music)

1024
01:02:31,660 --> 01:02:33,900
Out of desperation,
I went to confession.

1025
01:02:33,980 --> 01:02:34,980
And the priest...

1026
01:02:35,820 --> 01:02:40,540
He must have been used to having
Irish girls coming because they

1027
01:02:40,620 --> 01:02:42,180
planned it very quickly.

1028
01:02:42,260 --> 01:02:43,260
Very quickly.

1029
01:02:44,620 --> 01:02:46,420
Not in a million years did

1030
01:02:46,500 --> 01:02:49,860
I think that I would ever
be sent back to Ireland.

1031
01:02:58,140 --> 01:03:01,740
At the other end, there was a man
with a dark suit

1032
01:03:01,820 --> 01:03:05,420
and a black car, and he
collected me from Cork Harbour.

1033
01:03:06,220 --> 01:03:09,620
I still have the horrors
when I think about it.

1034
01:03:09,700 --> 01:03:15,340
He got out to open the gate and I
thought that this is my fate sealed.

1035
01:03:18,780 --> 01:03:21,340
I didn't know where
babies came from.

1036
01:03:21,420 --> 01:03:23,220
I didn't know how.

1037
01:03:23,780 --> 01:03:28,060
(Ominous music)

1038
01:03:29,140 --> 01:03:31,500
My waters broke

1039
01:03:31,580 --> 01:03:34,340
and I didn't know
what was happening.

1040
01:03:35,220 --> 01:03:37,420
I got very ill, very feverish.

1041
01:03:37,500 --> 01:03:39,060
I did have an injection,

1042
01:03:39,140 --> 01:03:41,580
I don't know what it was.

1043
01:03:41,660 --> 01:03:45,260
I was there for three days,
screaming and screaming

1044
01:03:45,340 --> 01:03:47,100
and her assaulting you.

1045
01:03:47,180 --> 01:03:50,380
Telling you all sorts
of awful things.

1046
01:03:51,180 --> 01:03:52,980
There were bars on the window,

1047
01:03:53,060 --> 01:03:54,940
so you, you were helpless.

1048
01:03:55,940 --> 01:03:56,980
William was born,

1049
01:03:57,620 --> 01:03:58,900
beautiful William.

1050
01:03:58,980 --> 01:04:00,860
He was absolutely beautiful.

1051
01:04:02,660 --> 01:04:05,940
William got ill, that second day,

1052
01:04:06,020 --> 01:04:08,460
I don't know how
he got the infection,

1053
01:04:08,540 --> 01:04:11,420
it's either through me
or through the needle.

1054
01:04:12,780 --> 01:04:15,380
(SOBBING) They took, they took
William away.

1055
01:04:19,660 --> 01:04:21,780
I don't know where he was kept.

1056
01:04:21,860 --> 01:04:26,620
I used to get up at night and go
around searching the doors and...

1057
01:04:28,740 --> 01:04:31,900
The last week,
I didn't see him at all.

1058
01:04:34,140 --> 01:04:36,700
(Echoes of a baby crying)

1059
01:04:40,740 --> 01:04:43,740
I cried every day for my baby.

1060
01:04:44,580 --> 01:04:47,700
They wouldn't, they wouldn't let
me have him.

1061
01:04:51,780 --> 01:04:55,540
The nun came and she said,
"William died."

1062
01:04:56,260 --> 01:04:58,380
And I said, "When did he die?"

1063
01:04:58,460 --> 01:05:00,820
She told me he was buried.

1064
01:05:00,900 --> 01:05:03,180
He was buried in Bessborough.

1065
01:05:03,940 --> 01:05:11,900
(Gentle music)

1066
01:05:13,660 --> 01:05:17,620
The arrangement was that I would
be sent back to England,

1067
01:05:18,740 --> 01:05:22,060
and of course, my life was nothing.

1068
01:05:22,140 --> 01:05:23,980
Absolutely useless.

1069
01:05:25,620 --> 01:05:27,420
Not a single soul knew.

1070
01:05:28,380 --> 01:05:30,340
My saviour was gone.

1071
01:05:32,260 --> 01:05:36,340
It was a miracle that they
ended up where they are.

1072
01:05:37,980 --> 01:05:40,100
It was during the crash in London.

1073
01:05:40,180 --> 01:05:43,500
We came back to Ireland thinking
we could just pick anywhere.

1074
01:05:43,580 --> 01:05:46,300
But in fact it was
difficult finding a place.

1075
01:05:46,380 --> 01:05:49,180
One requirement I gave
my husband was I wanted

1076
01:05:49,260 --> 01:05:51,260
a green hill as a view,

1077
01:05:51,340 --> 01:05:55,900
but what I didn't realise was that
the hill I'm looking at, is the hill

1078
01:05:55,980 --> 01:05:58,740
that overlooks the graveyard
in Bessborough.

1079
01:05:59,780 --> 01:06:01,900
It was like fate brought me here.

1080
01:06:02,660 --> 01:06:05,100
On one of my mum's first visits,

1081
01:06:05,180 --> 01:06:07,940
unbeknown to me,
she had gone down to Bessborough.

1082
01:06:08,020 --> 01:06:11,580
I saw her coming up the drive and
she was absolutely distraught.

1083
01:06:11,660 --> 01:06:15,260
She came in the door and she
actually, in this spot here,

1084
01:06:15,340 --> 01:06:16,340
she collapsed.

1085
01:06:16,420 --> 01:06:18,220
I helped her onto the chair.

1086
01:06:18,300 --> 01:06:20,780
I said, "What's wrong?
What's wrong, what's happened?"

1087
01:06:20,860 --> 01:06:22,260
She just was sobbing.

1088
01:06:22,340 --> 01:06:24,980
Couldn't, couldn't blurt it out.

1089
01:06:26,540 --> 01:06:29,740
After about ten minutes, she said,
"I've been to Bessborough

1090
01:06:29,820 --> 01:06:32,180
and I had a baby there."

1091
01:06:32,940 --> 01:06:37,220
Then she went on to tell me
about the baby dying.

1092
01:06:37,300 --> 01:06:41,620
This was the first time in 36 years,
probably at that time,

1093
01:06:41,700 --> 01:06:43,420
that she'd ever told anybody.

1094
01:06:43,500 --> 01:06:46,380
The first time she said it out loud.

1095
01:06:46,460 --> 01:06:48,580
(Bees buzzing)

1096
01:06:49,180 --> 01:06:53,260
It came out of the blue.
I had absolutely no idea growing up.

1097
01:06:53,340 --> 01:06:56,620
But in hindsight, I can see that
Mum could never be

1098
01:06:56,700 --> 01:06:58,780
left with her thoughts for too long.

1099
01:06:58,860 --> 01:07:01,060
She was always busy,
always doing something.

1100
01:07:02,140 --> 01:07:05,740
The nun decided to take her
down to the graveyard.

1101
01:07:06,540 --> 01:07:08,340
She wouldn't allow my mum inside.

1102
01:07:08,420 --> 01:07:10,820
My mum had to look over the wall,

1103
01:07:10,900 --> 01:07:15,020
the nun tapped her foot on a spot
and said, "Your baby's buried here."

1104
01:07:15,620 --> 01:07:18,260
We always questioned this
small little graveyard.

1105
01:07:18,340 --> 01:07:20,820
How could it hold so many children?

1106
01:07:21,380 --> 01:07:24,460
(Sad music continues)

1107
01:07:26,300 --> 01:07:30,420
Eventually we found out that he's
not buried there at all.

1108
01:07:31,940 --> 01:07:36,740
William was buried in All Saints
Cemetery, Carr's Hill,

1109
01:07:36,820 --> 01:07:40,180
a famine grave where 30,000
people are buried.

1110
01:07:41,660 --> 01:07:45,620
We have no idea on this five
acre site where he is.

1111
01:07:45,700 --> 01:07:48,860
We just go and lay flowers
at the gates.

1112
01:07:48,940 --> 01:07:51,660
The first time I took
my mother up there,

1113
01:07:51,740 --> 01:07:55,580
oh, it was pitiful because, she just
wandered through the whole site

1114
01:07:55,660 --> 01:07:58,740
trying to see any evidence
of a grave anywhere.

1115
01:07:59,340 --> 01:08:02,660
At 80 years old, with brambles,
scratching her legs,

1116
01:08:03,180 --> 01:08:04,620
searching a field.

1117
01:08:08,180 --> 01:08:12,100
MADELINE: 60 years we've missed not
not taking flowers

1118
01:08:12,180 --> 01:08:13,980
or telling him why.

1119
01:08:16,620 --> 01:08:20,140
You want to know where
your child is buried.

1120
01:08:22,260 --> 01:08:23,500
I'd like to go

1121
01:08:24,660 --> 01:08:25,700
and sit down,

1122
01:08:26,340 --> 01:08:28,300
sit down where he is buried.

1123
01:08:28,380 --> 01:08:32,820
Sit down for 2 or 3 hours with
him and talk to him.

1124
01:08:34,460 --> 01:08:35,620
He needs us.

1125
01:08:35,700 --> 01:08:38,340
He's been on his own all this time.

1126
01:08:41,100 --> 01:08:42,860
Really, they were monsters.

1127
01:08:42,940 --> 01:08:44,740
Absolute monsters.

1128
01:08:48,020 --> 01:08:55,140
(Sad music continues,
with a church bell)

1129
01:09:02,300 --> 01:09:04,380
Maeve: We knew from
previous experience

1130
01:09:04,460 --> 01:09:07,660
that you have to do a
shadow investigation.

1131
01:09:07,740 --> 01:09:11,380
After the shadow reporting that we
had done for the McAleese committee,

1132
01:09:11,460 --> 01:09:16,300
we were all completely spent,
and it wasn't feasible to do another

1133
01:09:16,380 --> 01:09:17,700
project on a shoestring.

1134
01:09:18,420 --> 01:09:22,380
What we really needed help with, was
this testimony gathering effort.

1135
01:09:22,980 --> 01:09:26,260
So Claire and I set up something
called the Clan Project.

1136
01:09:26,340 --> 01:09:29,860
We worked with Hogan Lovells,
an international law firm,

1137
01:09:29,940 --> 01:09:31,540
and specifically their London office.

1138
01:09:32,460 --> 01:09:36,500
The fact that Hogan Lovells were
available and willing to put

1139
01:09:36,580 --> 01:09:40,500
significant resources into it really
made all the difference.

1140
01:09:41,580 --> 01:09:44,540
ROD BAKER) Hello, come on in.
Nice to see you.

1141
01:09:44,620 --> 01:09:47,180
Hogan Lovells is a truly
international law firm.

1142
01:09:47,260 --> 01:09:50,620
One of the top ten by
size in the world.

1143
01:09:50,700 --> 01:09:54,580
The firm has got a very well
established reputation for dealing

1144
01:09:54,660 --> 01:09:56,020
with pro bono work.

1145
01:09:56,100 --> 01:10:01,140
And we made a decision that it was
going to focus its major efforts to

1146
01:10:01,220 --> 01:10:03,940
battle discrimination against
women and children.

1147
01:10:05,740 --> 01:10:10,380
We had a team of over 50 lawyers who
were speaking to witnesses on the

1148
01:10:10,460 --> 01:10:12,580
telephone, and sometimes in person.

1149
01:10:12,660 --> 01:10:15,740
I read every single witness
statement and went back with

1150
01:10:15,820 --> 01:10:18,060
comments and questions.

1151
01:10:18,140 --> 01:10:21,420
At times, the subject matter
could be pretty harrowing.

1152
01:10:21,500 --> 01:10:25,060
And, you know, personally,
I would often need to take a walk

1153
01:10:25,140 --> 01:10:28,820
around the block after I'd spoken to
somebody who might've been telling

1154
01:10:28,900 --> 01:10:32,180
me a story the first time in decades
that those words

1155
01:10:32,260 --> 01:10:33,460
had passed their lips.

1156
01:10:34,100 --> 01:10:36,780
The Clan Project was
not a rival report,

1157
01:10:36,860 --> 01:10:40,740
it was designed to help the
Commission and to let them know what

1158
01:10:40,820 --> 01:10:44,140
we had found, based on our
substantial exercise of

1159
01:10:44,220 --> 01:10:45,340
speaking to witnesses.

1160
01:10:46,660 --> 01:10:50,580
Maeve: The scale of the abuse was
what made Hogan Lovells so committed

1161
01:10:50,660 --> 01:10:52,260
to intervening.

1162
01:10:53,460 --> 01:10:57,900
Solicitors in Hogan Lovells office
spoke to more than 160 people,

1163
01:10:57,980 --> 01:11:01,420
and ultimately helped 82 people give
full witness statements to the

1164
01:11:01,500 --> 01:11:03,220
Mother and Baby Homes Commission.

1165
01:11:05,540 --> 01:11:08,900
(A crow caws loudly)

1166
01:11:10,300 --> 01:11:13,580
Katherine: Mother and baby homes
were a carceral for a certain

1167
01:11:13,660 --> 01:11:14,660
class of woman.

1168
01:11:14,740 --> 01:11:17,900
Those women stayed in the
institutions until

1169
01:11:17,980 --> 01:11:19,900
their babies were toddlers,

1170
01:11:19,980 --> 01:11:23,100
and could prove to the
adoptive American parents that they

1171
01:11:23,180 --> 01:11:25,060
were getting healthy children who

1172
01:11:25,140 --> 01:11:28,100
had no physical or cognitive
difficulties.

1173
01:11:30,060 --> 01:11:33,700
Those mothers would be
made to work to pay off the debt

1174
01:11:33,780 --> 01:11:37,300
for the care of this child that
would be trafficked.

1175
01:11:38,660 --> 01:11:42,420
(Tense music)

1176
01:11:44,940 --> 01:11:47,020
(Camera shutters click)

1177
01:11:48,900 --> 01:11:51,700
I went with Maeve to meet
with Philomena.

1178
01:11:51,780 --> 01:11:53,980
It's such a well-known story now.

1179
01:11:54,060 --> 01:11:58,100
But, you know, it's as if it was
fresh every single time.

1180
01:12:01,220 --> 01:12:04,340
At the age of six, my mother died.

1181
01:12:04,420 --> 01:12:06,580
The three boys stayed at home,

1182
01:12:06,660 --> 01:12:09,260
and us three girls went
into an orphanage.

1183
01:12:09,340 --> 01:12:12,060
There we stayed until we were 18.

1184
01:12:14,420 --> 01:12:16,780
I had an aunt living
in Limerick City

1185
01:12:16,860 --> 01:12:21,300
the next thing I knew she was
coming to take me to live with her.

1186
01:12:22,100 --> 01:12:24,820
"We are going to a carnival
tonight," she said.

1187
01:12:24,900 --> 01:12:27,500
Well, I couldn't believe my eyes.

1188
01:12:27,580 --> 01:12:29,220
The lights, everything.

1189
01:12:29,300 --> 01:12:31,380
I thought I was in seventh heaven.

1190
01:12:32,300 --> 01:12:35,140
And that's when I met Anthony's dad.

1191
01:12:35,860 --> 01:12:38,940
We just walked around and then
we started making love.

1192
01:12:39,020 --> 01:12:41,420
I didn't know what the
heck was happening.

1193
01:12:41,500 --> 01:12:43,300
(Carnival music)

1194
01:12:43,380 --> 01:12:46,620
He just said, "Cheerio,"
and he was gone, you know.

1195
01:12:46,700 --> 01:12:48,140
(Fireworks explode)

1196
01:12:48,220 --> 01:12:50,900
I still didn't really
know what I'd done.

1197
01:12:54,020 --> 01:12:57,300
Then about five months later,
my aunt, she said to me,

1198
01:12:57,380 --> 01:12:58,380
"Are you pregnant?"

1199
01:12:58,460 --> 01:13:02,940
And I said, "What do you mean, am I
pregnant? What does that mean?"

1200
01:13:03,020 --> 01:13:04,500
(Birdsong)

1201
01:13:05,580 --> 01:13:08,220
And that's where my life
started in Roscrea.

1202
01:13:09,220 --> 01:13:11,540
(Gentle piano music)

1203
01:13:12,020 --> 01:13:16,220
All they said to me was, "You're not
going to be Philomena Lee anymore.

1204
01:13:16,300 --> 01:13:18,820
Your name is going to be Marcella."

1205
01:13:20,100 --> 01:13:25,540
You couldn't use your own name in
case we let anything out the bag.

1206
01:13:25,620 --> 01:13:28,500
It was hard. It was very, very hard.

1207
01:13:28,580 --> 01:13:30,460
A lot of it I've forgotten,

1208
01:13:30,540 --> 01:13:33,340
some of it I think
I purposely forgot.

1209
01:13:35,380 --> 01:13:38,380
Having a baby out of wedlock
was a mortal sin

1210
01:13:38,460 --> 01:13:40,900
and we had to suffer for your sins.

1211
01:13:40,980 --> 01:13:42,620
(A baby cries)

1212
01:13:42,700 --> 01:13:45,700
We moved over to the other side of
the convent,

1213
01:13:45,780 --> 01:13:48,180
and your babies went
into the nursery,

1214
01:13:48,780 --> 01:13:51,140
and you went off to work.

1215
01:13:54,380 --> 01:13:56,780
In the evening, we were
allowed to go

1216
01:13:56,860 --> 01:13:59,260
and pick your baby up
and cuddle him.

1217
01:14:00,540 --> 01:14:02,500
Three and a half years.

1218
01:14:07,740 --> 01:14:09,860
What can I tell you about Anthony?

1219
01:14:09,940 --> 01:14:13,940
Every time he seen me he always
hugged the life out of me

1220
01:14:14,020 --> 01:14:18,020
and I used to hug the
life out of him. (Chuckles)

1221
01:14:18,100 --> 01:14:19,260
(A child laughing)

1222
01:14:19,340 --> 01:14:22,540
We just did laundry, laundry,
laundry all the time

1223
01:14:22,620 --> 01:14:26,060
until he was gone, you know.

1224
01:14:27,100 --> 01:14:29,660
(Sad music continues)

1225
01:14:31,540 --> 01:14:34,260
Oh, what I can say about that day?

1226
01:14:34,340 --> 01:14:37,820
I still weep sometimes when I
think about it, you know.

1227
01:14:37,900 --> 01:14:41,940
Another girl, she said, "Come quick.
I think your Anthony's going away."

1228
01:14:43,620 --> 01:14:44,620
Up the stairs,

1229
01:14:45,180 --> 01:14:48,420
and there he was,
getting into the back of a car.

1230
01:14:48,940 --> 01:14:51,740
Going to America,
no discussion, you know.

1231
01:14:54,420 --> 01:14:57,420
He was straining to
see if I could see him,

1232
01:14:57,500 --> 01:15:00,340
looking out the back of the car.

1233
01:15:00,420 --> 01:15:03,380
That was the very last
I ever saw of him.

1234
01:15:05,780 --> 01:15:09,260
(Car engine starts, and pulls away)

1235
01:15:12,740 --> 01:15:15,380
I cried and I cried and I cried.

1236
01:15:15,940 --> 01:15:19,620
They said, "Oh, will you stop it?
You ought to be grateful.

1237
01:15:19,700 --> 01:15:22,460
He's gone to a good Catholic
home in America."

1238
01:15:24,820 --> 01:15:27,100
50 years I never told anybody.

1239
01:15:27,660 --> 01:15:29,740
I was too frightened to tell them.

1240
01:15:31,700 --> 01:15:36,500
Coming to the age of 70,
I kept saying, "I have GOT to find

1241
01:15:36,580 --> 01:15:38,140
him before I die."

1242
01:15:38,620 --> 01:15:41,580
(Traditional Irish music)

1243
01:15:42,540 --> 01:15:46,860
My daughter Jane, she often wondered
because I had photographs of him.

1244
01:15:46,940 --> 01:15:49,660
Little photographs that
the nun got me.

1245
01:15:49,740 --> 01:15:53,940
When I did tell her, she said,
"Do you want me to find him?"

1246
01:15:54,020 --> 01:15:55,780
I said, "Oh, yes, please."

1247
01:15:56,940 --> 01:15:59,300
She worked on it for years.

1248
01:15:59,820 --> 01:16:03,140
They did send us full circle
all over looking for him.

1249
01:16:04,900 --> 01:16:07,180
Then we got word from the nuns.

1250
01:16:07,260 --> 01:16:11,820
She said, "We've got news, but I'm
very sorry to tell you he's dead."

1251
01:16:13,020 --> 01:16:14,780
Well, I couldn't believe it.

1252
01:16:14,860 --> 01:16:17,860
I just couldn't believe it.
I just went to tears.

1253
01:16:17,940 --> 01:16:22,780
She said, "But there is a gravestone
in Roscrea" where I had him.

1254
01:16:23,420 --> 01:16:26,460
Nine years previous, he'd
been buried there.

1255
01:16:27,500 --> 01:16:32,100
Nine years. All the while
we were trying to find him.

1256
01:16:34,540 --> 01:16:38,380
He went into all the homes in
Ireland looking for me, you know.

1257
01:16:40,340 --> 01:16:41,660
He became Michael Hess,

1258
01:16:41,740 --> 01:16:45,500
and written on the headstone was
"Michael Anthony Hess,

1259
01:16:45,580 --> 01:16:48,580
a man of two nations
and many talents."

1260
01:16:48,660 --> 01:16:50,820
(Music continues)

1261
01:16:51,900 --> 01:16:55,500
I have forgiven a lot of it,
because it's no good being

1262
01:16:55,580 --> 01:16:57,700
so sour, you know, and

1263
01:16:59,300 --> 01:17:01,900
carrying on grief
and carrying on, no.

1264
01:17:03,380 --> 01:17:05,380
Never return anger with anger.

1265
01:17:13,100 --> 01:17:17,980
(Melancholy music continues,
and a tree rustles in the wind)

1266
01:17:20,180 --> 01:17:22,380
(News report):
The Commission of Investigation into

1267
01:17:22,460 --> 01:17:25,460
Mother and Baby Homes,
has submitted its final report to

1268
01:17:25,540 --> 01:17:26,860
the Minister for Children.

1269
01:17:26,940 --> 01:17:30,580
Taoiseach Micheal Martin has
described the long awaited final

1270
01:17:30,660 --> 01:17:34,140
report as a dark, difficult and
shameful chapter

1271
01:17:34,220 --> 01:17:35,500
of our recent history.

1272
01:17:36,500 --> 01:17:40,580
Maeve: The Mother and Baby Homes
Commission Report was like deja vu.

1273
01:17:40,660 --> 01:17:43,820
Yet again, the report essentially
finding that there was very

1274
01:17:43,900 --> 01:17:47,900
little abuse and that what people
believed had been the nature of

1275
01:17:47,980 --> 01:17:50,860
these institutions was not
actually the case.

1276
01:17:52,220 --> 01:17:56,380
ROD BAKER: The Commission took the
view that it could only really

1277
01:17:56,460 --> 01:18:00,860
rely on evidence that had been
given directly to them,

1278
01:18:01,380 --> 01:18:05,660
on oath, and that was subject to
questioning and challenge.

1279
01:18:07,260 --> 01:18:10,540
KATHERINE: Most people who gave their
testimony, ended up speaking to

1280
01:18:10,620 --> 01:18:12,700
a so-called confidential committee,

1281
01:18:12,780 --> 01:18:15,220
and that confidential committee
wasn't going

1282
01:18:15,300 --> 01:18:19,180
to take seriously their testimony,
as a matter of fact.

1283
01:18:21,020 --> 01:18:26,300
They state some of the people gave
evidence that was "contaminated"

1284
01:18:26,380 --> 01:18:30,020
because they had spoken
with other residents.

1285
01:18:30,100 --> 01:18:31,780
(Tense music)

1286
01:18:31,860 --> 01:18:34,900
Maeve: Yet again, we have a situation
where women's testimony

1287
01:18:34,980 --> 01:18:39,340
has no evidentiary value according to
the institutions of the Irish State.

1288
01:18:39,420 --> 01:18:43,900
ROD BAKER: It's undoubtedly true that
recollections can differ and that

1289
01:18:43,980 --> 01:18:48,420
recollections can be genuinely held,
but they can be incorrect,

1290
01:18:48,500 --> 01:18:51,780
and so that's why lawyers always
try to corroborate things.

1291
01:18:52,260 --> 01:18:56,580
But in something like this, where
it's the experience of people,

1292
01:18:56,660 --> 01:19:00,540
what actually happened in a room
when giving birth, what actually

1293
01:19:00,620 --> 01:19:04,660
happened when a consent form was
put in front of somebody.

1294
01:19:04,740 --> 01:19:08,220
A consent form can have
a signature on it,

1295
01:19:08,300 --> 01:19:12,580
but the circumstances in which that
signature was written,

1296
01:19:12,660 --> 01:19:15,500
can only ever be described by
personal testimony.

1297
01:19:15,580 --> 01:19:19,980
When you have a lot of people who
have no connection with each other,

1298
01:19:20,060 --> 01:19:25,460
all saying the same, exactly the
same thing, then that seems to me to

1299
01:19:25,540 --> 01:19:30,060
independently corroborate each
individual piece of evidence.

1300
01:19:30,140 --> 01:19:33,500
This report finds there is no
evidence of incarceration

1301
01:19:33,580 --> 01:19:34,660
in the institutions.

1302
01:19:34,740 --> 01:19:37,060
No evidence of forced adoption.

1303
01:19:37,140 --> 01:19:39,300
No evidence of medical neglect.

1304
01:19:39,380 --> 01:19:42,340
No evidence of forced labour
in mother and baby homes.

1305
01:19:42,420 --> 01:19:44,580
If we want to have a republic,

1306
01:19:44,660 --> 01:19:47,020
we're going to have
to exercise our democracy.

1307
01:19:47,100 --> 01:19:50,940
We're going to have to make our
politicians hear and act.

1308
01:19:51,020 --> 01:19:55,180
The State has worked for the last 95
years with the Catholic Church...

1309
01:19:55,260 --> 01:19:58,060
Maeve: A huge concern following the
report's publication was

1310
01:19:58,140 --> 01:20:01,780
that the Commission's unsubstantiated
findings would then form

1311
01:20:01,860 --> 01:20:04,140
the basis for the Government's
redress scheme.

1312
01:20:04,220 --> 01:20:06,380
And that is exactly
what has happened.

1313
01:20:06,460 --> 01:20:10,020
They have left us with an ongoing
legacy of trauma that hasn't

1314
01:20:10,100 --> 01:20:11,380
been properly addressed.

1315
01:20:11,460 --> 01:20:15,180
Maeve: The redress scheme only
provides payments to people who are

1316
01:20:15,260 --> 01:20:19,220
institutionalised as children for
more than six months, seemingly

1317
01:20:19,300 --> 01:20:23,100
based on the notion that it's
institutionalisation and extended

1318
01:20:23,180 --> 01:20:26,140
institutionalisation that
is the key harm.

1319
01:20:27,060 --> 01:20:29,460
Absolutely failing to recognise that
the key harm

1320
01:20:29,540 --> 01:20:33,100
was the unlawful separation
of mother and child.

1321
01:20:34,380 --> 01:20:37,620
(News report): With many survivors
claiming the report does not do

1322
01:20:37,700 --> 01:20:41,460
justice to their experiences and
those who wrote it standing over

1323
01:20:41,540 --> 01:20:44,300
their work, it's still
far from clear

1324
01:20:44,380 --> 01:20:46,900
how the issue will be
resolved from here.

1325
01:20:47,460 --> 01:20:50,260
(Echoes of a baby crying)

1326
01:20:51,060 --> 01:20:53,220
(Music continues)

1327
01:20:55,180 --> 01:20:59,220
They get it wrong over and
over and over again.

1328
01:20:59,820 --> 01:21:02,060
For example, the vaccine trials.

1329
01:21:05,620 --> 01:21:10,780
(Tense music)

1330
01:21:17,860 --> 01:21:21,060
Maeve: Incredibly, the Commission
finds that although

1331
01:21:21,140 --> 01:21:24,900
vaccine trials were not legally
authorised and consent does not

1332
01:21:24,980 --> 01:21:27,980
appear to be given,
there is no evidence of injury

1333
01:21:28,060 --> 01:21:30,740
to children as a result of
vaccine trials.

1334
01:21:30,820 --> 01:21:32,140
(A baby cries)

1335
01:21:32,780 --> 01:21:38,060
On my medical records were notations
that I had been given this

1336
01:21:38,140 --> 01:21:39,460
series of vaccines.

1337
01:21:40,780 --> 01:21:44,220
I filed a request with
GlaxoSmith, and then they sent

1338
01:21:44,300 --> 01:21:48,260
back reams of documentation that
showed I was part of the trial.

1339
01:21:49,300 --> 01:21:53,380
And interestingly, also provided
copies of news articles that they

1340
01:21:53,460 --> 01:21:57,340
had obviously been keeping track of
where I had been interviewed or

1341
01:21:57,420 --> 01:22:00,940
asked about my participation
in the trials.

1342
01:22:01,660 --> 01:22:05,660
They don't know if we suffered
ill effects because nobody

1343
01:22:05,740 --> 01:22:09,580
followed up, at least those
of us that were sent to the US.

1344
01:22:09,660 --> 01:22:13,340
I've never had any, you know, full
screenings or anything like that

1345
01:22:13,420 --> 01:22:16,340
to determine were there
any lasting effects.

1346
01:22:17,060 --> 01:22:18,580
(News report): In a statement,

1347
01:22:18,660 --> 01:22:21,140
GlaxoSmithKline says the report
makes for difficult

1348
01:22:21,220 --> 01:22:24,260
reading and our thoughts are
with the families involved.

1349
01:22:25,300 --> 01:22:29,260
GSK did not say if it would
contribute to any redress scheme.

1350
01:22:32,580 --> 01:22:36,540
If we're going to go after players
like GlaxoSmithKline or

1351
01:22:36,620 --> 01:22:40,140
the Sacred Heart Order,
they're both based in the UK.

1352
01:22:40,220 --> 01:22:43,180
If it's a gross human rights
violation,

1353
01:22:43,260 --> 01:22:47,020
the UK, they're willing to disregard
statute of limitations.

1354
01:22:47,100 --> 01:22:49,020
You can file class action there.

1355
01:22:49,100 --> 01:22:51,860
So I'm happy to go down that road.

1356
01:22:51,940 --> 01:22:57,300
Okay, as long as I've got time on
this earth, we can play the game or

1357
01:22:57,940 --> 01:23:02,100
you can do the right thing and offer
a decent settlement to these people.

1358
01:23:07,020 --> 01:23:10,900
(Sad music and bird calls)

1359
01:23:19,340 --> 01:23:23,940
I was born in Bessborough
Mother and Baby Institution.

1360
01:23:25,220 --> 01:23:28,740
Apparently the nuns didn't think
I'd make it through the night.

1361
01:23:30,180 --> 01:23:34,940
I screamed and I bawled
and resisted dying.

1362
01:23:35,020 --> 01:23:37,300
And I'm resisting to this day.

1363
01:23:40,460 --> 01:23:42,940
I was two and a half years there.

1364
01:23:43,620 --> 01:23:47,140
What would happen was children
would be dressed up and

1365
01:23:47,220 --> 01:23:50,660
paraded before couples that
were looking for children.

1366
01:23:51,460 --> 01:23:55,620
My mother knitted me my 'going out
things,' as she called them.

1367
01:23:55,700 --> 01:24:01,140
And one day she was called up to the
nun and told that she was to have

1368
01:24:01,220 --> 01:24:03,420
me ready within a half an hour.

1369
01:24:03,500 --> 01:24:05,900
My mother didn't know
where I was going,

1370
01:24:05,980 --> 01:24:08,340
who I was going with,
or anything else.

1371
01:24:09,260 --> 01:24:13,620
She dressed me in the clothes that
she made me and handed me over,

1372
01:24:13,700 --> 01:24:19,820
and I was walked down the corridor
to this strange woman.

1373
01:24:19,900 --> 01:24:22,140
(Child babbling)

1374
01:24:22,220 --> 01:24:24,020
My mother with the other women,

1375
01:24:24,100 --> 01:24:27,700
they all ran up the stairs to
a window where they could

1376
01:24:27,780 --> 01:24:29,300
see children leaving.

1377
01:24:29,780 --> 01:24:32,420
There was the final glimpse
of their children.

1378
01:24:36,580 --> 01:24:40,060
The nun came back and threw
the clothes that my mother

1379
01:24:40,140 --> 01:24:42,220
had made, back at her

1380
01:24:43,500 --> 01:24:46,900
and just said, "Mary won't
be needing these."

1381
01:24:50,420 --> 01:24:55,140
To do that to a woman who's
losing her child forever.

1382
01:25:04,140 --> 01:25:05,140
Sorry.

1383
01:25:08,980 --> 01:25:10,940
And that was me.
Gone.

1384
01:25:13,980 --> 01:25:17,820
I was fostered and then

1385
01:25:17,900 --> 01:25:20,860
incarcerated in an
industrial school.

1386
01:25:22,140 --> 01:25:25,140
They told me that my
mother was dead.

1387
01:25:28,300 --> 01:25:31,860
At 16 and a half,
homeless in London.

1388
01:25:31,940 --> 01:25:36,300
I found out from the nuns that
my mother isn't dead,

1389
01:25:36,380 --> 01:25:37,980
she's living in the UK.

1390
01:25:40,940 --> 01:25:43,940
To find out that your
mother's alive.

1391
01:25:44,020 --> 01:25:45,740
It was shocking.

1392
01:25:47,980 --> 01:25:52,780
Unbeknown to me, my mother, she had
told her husband all about me.

1393
01:25:52,860 --> 01:25:55,300
And he said, "Let's go and get her."

1394
01:25:55,380 --> 01:25:58,660
And they were told that
I was happily adopted.

1395
01:25:59,780 --> 01:26:04,980
Meanwhile, I was in the tender,
loving mercies of the Irish State.

1396
01:26:05,540 --> 01:26:09,980
I went up to the Good Shepherds and
I asked to see the head nun.

1397
01:26:10,060 --> 01:26:14,660
And I said, "You can stick your
religion up your arse.

1398
01:26:14,740 --> 01:26:16,940
I am going to find my mother."

1399
01:26:17,020 --> 01:26:18,500
(Telephone ringing)

1400
01:26:18,580 --> 01:26:20,060
And that's what I did.

1401
01:26:23,900 --> 01:26:26,220
I get a phone call one night,

1402
01:26:26,700 --> 01:26:29,740
and my mother's voice came
on and said, "Hello, love,

1403
01:26:30,260 --> 01:26:31,260
it's your Mammy."

1404
01:26:31,340 --> 01:26:34,020
And I said... you know,

1405
01:26:34,100 --> 01:26:36,260
bawl, bawl, bawl.

1406
01:26:36,340 --> 01:26:37,340
"Hello, Mammy."

1407
01:26:40,140 --> 01:26:42,460
That was our first conversation.

1408
01:26:46,140 --> 01:26:50,820
But the bond had been broken when
I had been taken away from

1409
01:26:50,900 --> 01:26:52,740
her at two and a half,

1410
01:26:52,820 --> 01:26:57,100
and then when I found her,
it was very difficult to connect.

1411
01:27:00,260 --> 01:27:04,940
It is the separation of families
that's the damage

1412
01:27:05,020 --> 01:27:07,540
to thousands of Irish citizens.

1413
01:27:08,660 --> 01:27:11,220
(Melancholic music continues)

1414
01:27:18,740 --> 01:27:21,380
United Nations Office
of Human Rights.

1415
01:27:23,060 --> 01:27:24,460
I am Mary Harney,

1416
01:27:24,540 --> 01:27:28,540
and I speak to you today from my
lived experience as a survivor

1417
01:27:28,620 --> 01:27:30,300
of Ireland's institutions.

1418
01:27:30,380 --> 01:27:34,620
I am one of the eight women who
sought a judicial review against the

1419
01:27:34,700 --> 01:27:38,540
Commission of Investigation in
Ireland's High Court last year.

1420
01:27:38,620 --> 01:27:43,020
Even though the court agreed with me
and others that our statutory rights

1421
01:27:43,100 --> 01:27:46,700
were violated, the Government,
nevertheless, ignores the court's

1422
01:27:46,780 --> 01:27:50,940
declaration and relies on its faulty
report as a foundation for

1423
01:27:51,020 --> 01:27:52,540
its own redress scheme.

1424
01:27:53,180 --> 01:27:56,820
The Government failed to listen to
us then, and it continues to

1425
01:27:56,900 --> 01:27:58,940
discriminate against us today.

1426
01:28:00,260 --> 01:28:02,660
Fantastic. It's 11 seconds over.

1427
01:28:04,060 --> 01:28:05,060
Phew!

1428
01:28:05,860 --> 01:28:06,860
Nerves.

1429
01:28:10,580 --> 01:28:14,820
(Tense music)

1430
01:28:53,380 --> 01:28:56,740
I'm going to ask James to come in on
some questions

1431
01:28:56,820 --> 01:28:59,260
on mother and baby homes.

1432
01:28:59,340 --> 01:29:00,420
Thank you Minister.

1433
01:29:00,500 --> 01:29:03,980
In the particular respect of
children in the institutions,

1434
01:29:04,060 --> 01:29:05,060
the Taoiseach said,

1435
01:29:05,140 --> 01:29:09,260
"I share deeply the Commission's
unequivocal view that the existence

1436
01:29:09,340 --> 01:29:13,300
of the status of illegitimacy until
1987, in this country,

1437
01:29:13,380 --> 01:29:16,060
was an egregious breach
of human rights.

1438
01:29:16,140 --> 01:29:19,940
This was a huge injustice and
blighted the lives of many.

1439
01:29:20,020 --> 01:29:21,020
Thank you.

1440
01:29:21,100 --> 01:29:23,220
I now adjourn this meeting.

1441
01:29:23,860 --> 01:29:25,420
Thank you. Thank you.

1442
01:29:26,460 --> 01:29:28,340
I can't see the little rascal.

1443
01:29:31,460 --> 01:29:33,100
I can't see him.

1444
01:29:36,380 --> 01:29:40,900
(Music continues
with general room noise and chatter)

1445
01:29:47,380 --> 01:29:48,380
James?

1446
01:29:49,020 --> 01:29:50,820
I can't believe you said that.

1447
01:29:53,140 --> 01:29:57,460
The Irish government apologised
for illegitimacy

1448
01:29:57,540 --> 01:29:59,420
as a human right.

1449
01:29:59,500 --> 01:30:01,740
I do not mind being illegitimate,

1450
01:30:01,820 --> 01:30:04,860
I mind my mother was forced labour.

1451
01:30:04,940 --> 01:30:07,580
I mind I was incarcerated.

1452
01:30:07,660 --> 01:30:13,820
When will this government say
we violated your human rights

1453
01:30:13,900 --> 01:30:15,460
and we are sorry.

1454
01:30:15,540 --> 01:30:18,340
(Dramatic music)

1455
01:30:27,980 --> 01:30:30,620
Maeve: The inquiries have operated
in secret.

1456
01:30:31,380 --> 01:30:35,780
There's a massive need for people
affected to be able to access every

1457
01:30:35,860 --> 01:30:39,460
single document that the religious
and the State hold.

1458
01:30:43,740 --> 01:30:48,700
We're at a point now where the State
feels that it's put somewhat

1459
01:30:48,780 --> 01:30:50,260
of a lid on things.

1460
01:30:51,540 --> 01:30:52,900
To make this right,

1461
01:30:52,980 --> 01:30:56,620
you need the truth because you can't
have justice without the truth.

1462
01:30:56,700 --> 01:30:59,420
You can't have the truth without
access to records.

1463
01:30:59,500 --> 01:31:02,940
And I mean all records,
unfettered access.

1464
01:31:03,940 --> 01:31:07,940
We have to remember that we're not
just trying to achieve transitional

1465
01:31:08,020 --> 01:31:11,100
justice for survivors
who are alive now.

1466
01:31:11,620 --> 01:31:14,700
We have a responsibility
to those from the past.

1467
01:31:15,300 --> 01:31:17,300
(Music fades out)

1468
01:31:20,260 --> 01:31:22,420
(No sound other than
shuffling footsteps)

1469
01:31:25,700 --> 01:31:28,260
(Gentle music plays quietly)

1470
01:31:42,220 --> 01:31:45,620
We're gathered here on Sean
McDermott Street today,

1471
01:31:45,700 --> 01:31:47,820
that holds this building behind me.

1472
01:31:48,540 --> 01:31:54,780
The last Magdalene Laundry to cease
its operation in Ireland in 1996.

1473
01:31:56,340 --> 01:31:59,140
And we stand here to bear witness,

1474
01:32:01,220 --> 01:32:02,460
and to remember

1475
01:32:03,700 --> 01:32:05,020
all of the pain

1476
01:32:05,660 --> 01:32:06,660
and suffering

1477
01:32:07,580 --> 01:32:09,060
that was experienced.

1478
01:32:10,460 --> 01:32:16,540
May all of our stories rise now and
be illuminated by the truth,

1479
01:32:16,620 --> 01:32:19,020
by our love, by justice.

1480
01:32:21,100 --> 01:32:26,700
(Singing) 'Granite Gaze' by Lankum:


1481
01:32:26,780 --> 01:32:30,860


1482
01:32:30,940 --> 01:32:35,860


1483
01:32:35,940 --> 01:32:40,140


1484
01:32:40,220 --> 01:32:44,700


1485
01:32:44,780 --> 01:32:49,300


1486
01:32:49,380 --> 01:32:51,620


1487
01:32:53,980 --> 01:32:59,580
Turned on our own.

1488
01:33:00,940 --> 01:33:02,060
Thank you.

1489
01:33:02,140 --> 01:33:05,300
(Applause)

1490
01:33:09,220 --> 01:33:12,620
(Traditional Irish music)

1491
01:33:31,140 --> 01:33:34,980
Maeve: How law operates is so
much about who is in power

1492
01:33:35,060 --> 01:33:38,380
and who is heard in the
corridors of power,

1493
01:33:38,460 --> 01:33:42,380
and who matters to the people
who are in charge of the country.

1494
01:33:42,460 --> 01:33:47,580
But there IS a way of using the law
for the benefit of people

1495
01:33:47,660 --> 01:33:49,180
who have been disenfranchised.

1496
01:33:49,260 --> 01:33:54,740
And what we have done in the Justice
for Magdalenes campaign is use the

1497
01:33:54,820 --> 01:33:58,820
most basic principles of the Irish
Constitution to say,

1498
01:33:58,900 --> 01:34:05,580
"Hold on, the way that this system
operated is fundamentally contrary

1499
01:34:05,660 --> 01:34:07,300
to basic human rights."

1500
01:34:08,580 --> 01:34:12,460
If I was Taoiseach tomorrow, I would
establish a human rights compliant

1501
01:34:12,540 --> 01:34:17,060
State investigation mandated to
publish, to the maximum extent,

1502
01:34:17,140 --> 01:34:20,380
the archival records of
the church and state,

1503
01:34:20,460 --> 01:34:23,820
and the testimony of willing
survivors and individuals

1504
01:34:23,900 --> 01:34:25,700
in positions of responsibility.

1505
01:34:25,780 --> 01:34:29,380
Claire: We would love to be the
victims of our own success,

1506
01:34:29,460 --> 01:34:31,940
for the hard campaigning to be over,

1507
01:34:32,020 --> 01:34:36,660
but unfortunately, half measures
have been implemented to try and

1508
01:34:36,740 --> 01:34:38,460
draw a line prematurely.

1509
01:34:38,540 --> 01:34:41,500
You have to try and see
it to its conclusion.

1510
01:34:41,580 --> 01:34:43,140
What else can you do?

1511
01:34:43,220 --> 01:34:47,380
If I was Taoiseach in the morning,
I would amend the rules of civil

1512
01:34:47,460 --> 01:34:49,980
procedure to allow survivors of
Magdalene Laundries,

1513
01:34:50,060 --> 01:34:52,780
mother and baby homes and forced
adoption to sue

1514
01:34:52,860 --> 01:34:54,420
the Catholic Church in court.

1515
01:34:54,500 --> 01:34:58,500
You study history to learn the
lessons so that you can do

1516
01:34:58,580 --> 01:34:59,780
better in the future.

1517
01:34:59,860 --> 01:35:02,820
How do we ensure that we
do not repeat this?

1518
01:35:02,900 --> 01:35:05,260
The women wanted it
taught in schools.

1519
01:35:05,340 --> 01:35:07,860
They want it in the history books.

1520
01:35:07,940 --> 01:35:09,420
This can never be forgotten.

1521
01:35:09,500 --> 01:35:13,060
Maeve: If I were Taoiseach in the
morning, I'd change the legal

1522
01:35:13,140 --> 01:35:16,460
status of religious orders, so
it'd actually be possible to sue

1523
01:35:16,540 --> 01:35:18,900
a religious order as an entity
in itself.

1524
01:35:18,980 --> 01:35:22,060
You may not believe it,
but currently it's not possible

1525
01:35:22,140 --> 01:35:23,660
to sue the religious sisters.

1526
01:35:23,740 --> 01:35:26,780
Instead, a person bringing
a case needs to track down

1527
01:35:26,860 --> 01:35:30,420
every living member of the
Religious order from the time of the

1528
01:35:30,500 --> 01:35:33,420
abuse they complain of,
and sue them all together.

1529
01:35:33,500 --> 01:35:37,380
There's a constant forgetting about
these institutions because

1530
01:35:37,460 --> 01:35:40,260
it's not visible still,
in our culture,

1531
01:35:40,340 --> 01:35:43,780
there's no place where you can
go to discover this history.

1532
01:35:43,860 --> 01:35:46,220
We need to get hold of this history.

1533
01:35:46,300 --> 01:35:50,460
We need to reflect on it and also
see the ways in which people

1534
01:35:50,540 --> 01:35:54,220
resisted, and hold those people
up as the heroes to guide

1535
01:35:54,300 --> 01:35:55,780
us into a better future.

1536
01:35:55,860 --> 01:35:57,980
If I was Taoiseach in the morning,

1537
01:35:58,060 --> 01:36:00,180
I would bring in class
action legislation.

1538
01:36:00,260 --> 01:36:03,540
I would also change the rules
on legal standing so that

1539
01:36:03,620 --> 01:36:04,940
representative organisations.

1540
01:36:05,020 --> 01:36:08,300
Could bring cases without needing to
demonstrate that there is literally

1541
01:36:08,380 --> 01:36:11,180
no individual alive who could
take the case instead.

1542
01:36:11,260 --> 01:36:14,580
Mari: I used to call us the
little NGO that could,

1543
01:36:14,660 --> 01:36:17,060
a very small group
of people just learning

1544
01:36:17,180 --> 01:36:20,860
how to navigate to get what
you need or want.

1545
01:36:20,940 --> 01:36:22,420
Thank you Mari. All right.

1546
01:36:22,500 --> 01:36:23,700
Thank you. Thanks, gang.

1547
01:36:23,780 --> 01:36:25,740
Talk to you soon, bye.

1548
01:36:25,820 --> 01:36:29,980
I could happily go to my grave
and say I did what I could.

1549
01:36:30,060 --> 01:36:33,300
I didn't sit back and
let others do it for me.

1550
01:36:33,380 --> 01:36:36,020
You got to stand up and shout.

1551
01:36:38,340 --> 01:36:41,580
Maeve: It's time to accept that
the Irish State is

1552
01:36:41,660 --> 01:36:45,380
actively impeding access to
information and access

1553
01:36:45,460 --> 01:36:49,860
to justice, documents, the very ones
that the

1554
01:36:49,940 --> 01:36:51,500
State and church are currently

1555
01:36:51,580 --> 01:36:55,900
holding secret can paint a very
detailed picture indeed.

1556
01:36:55,980 --> 01:36:58,500
(Applause)

1557
01:37:00,140 --> 01:37:04,260
There are countries all over the
world that have tortured their

1558
01:37:04,340 --> 01:37:09,340
citizens and engaged in
reconciliation processes.

1559
01:37:09,980 --> 01:37:11,380
Why can't Ireland?

1560
01:37:11,420 --> 01:37:12,740
(Music fades)

1561
01:37:15,460 --> 01:37:19,380
(Haunting Irish music)