#tuam

I wouldn't refer to an ask about this subject as a sore tooth. This is not a controversial ask, this is an important topic. This question does not elicit shame. These places were not secrets as some media and organisations would allow you to believe and the discovery of the mass grave. The thing you need to understand is that these weren't secrets, they were institutions that people used to clean their laundry and discard their daughters. People knew. Everybody knew and they thought the girls deserved the punishment because they had sinned.

The Magdalene Laundries were institutions which took in unmarried women, so they could give birth to avoid public shame. These girls - for many of them were teenagers and young women - were subjected to systemic abuse at the hands of the nuns that ran the laundries, shamed for falling pregnant no matter the circumstances, and were physically and emotionally abused by both the nuns and sometimes the priests. These girls were cast out of society for falling pregnant, often sent their by their own families. Their children either died of neglect or abuse or were sent off to be adopted in England or America. Their mothers had no rights, they could not access records to find their children. The mothers and their children who died in those places were put into mass graves to be forgotten. Some women did not leave these places, some women had no lives outside of them, abandoned by their families. And they stayed.

These places are not ancient history. The last laundry closed in Ireland on 25 October 1996 - that is three years before I was born. This is not ancient history, this is our history. The university I attend lies next to a convent-run school and the convent itself, that was once attended by my mother who often tells me stories about the orphaned children who attended school with her. Everybody knew the nuns were abusive toward them. Nobody stopped them. Nobody spoke out. The power of shame ran deep and it was easier to side with the Church in this matter. It was shame that killed Ann Lovett, a teenage girl who in fear of the public scrutiny and the laundries gave birth alone under a statue of the Virgin Mary. My aunt used to work at a laundry which was once ran by the Sisters, alongside seven women who had entered the laundry in the 1970s and felt they should not leave the laundry, despite it changing hands. They came to work every day, until that same place closed a year ago - still ashamed.

The excavation of the graves at Tuam is long overdue. I doubt they will learn much, the Church never answers these sort of charges. I hope families can find their children, their sisters, their aunts, their cousins. I hope that they can be buried with the love they were denied, the respected they were deprived of and the care they so needed in this life. Every body they find in that grave, every soul lost should be remembered and is being remembered. We no longer turn a blind eye to these things. We no longer flinch at the shame of it. We remember those times, we listen to the survivors and we remind ourselves every day of what was taken from the most vulnerable in our society.

The Catholic Church will have to crawl on its knees to beg the forgiveness of the women of Ireland and I doubt, in all the years left of the existence of heaven and earth they will ever receive it.

Below are books I recommend reading:

"Ireland and the Magdalene Laundries: A Campaign for Justice" by Claire McGettrick, Katherine O’Donnell, Maeve O’Rourke

"Girl in the Tunnel: My Story of Love and Loss as a Survivor of the Magdalene Laundries" by Maureen Sullivan

A further 36 sets of infant remains have been found as part of the ongoing excavation of the site of the former Mother and Baby Institution in Tuam. The latest update from the Office of the Director of Authorised Intervention (ODAIT) brings the total number of infant remains recovered from the site to 69. Evidence from the excavation suggests that in a small number of cases, two or three infants were buried in the same coffin. The infants were buried in coffins which have since decayed. The majority of coffins were single shouldered with mounts and had been painted white. The excavation is being carried out manually under the cover of a tented enclosure in an area of the site which was identified in historical documents as a “burial ground”. ODAIT said that although there are no surface markers indicating the presence of burials at this location, evidence recovered during the excavation is consistent with it being a burial ground from the time of the operation of the Mother and Baby Institution.

Cnoc Meadha is a hill west of Tuam, Co Galway. It is said in legend to be the residence of Finnbheara, the king of the Connacht fairies. Of two large cairns on the hill, one was thought to be the burial-place of Finnbheara and the other of (the other) Queen Medb, whose name may be transformed in the name Cnoc Meadha. Knockma Hill is topped with prehistoric cairns. G. H. Kinahan wrote of the…

Klaus is not to be messed with

Hozier performing Take Me To Church today at the Stand4Truth gathering in solidarity with the victims of the Catholic church in Ireland.

The card reading “796″ that is briefly raised refers to the 796 babies whose bodies were dumped in a septic tank in Tuam, Co Galway, unmarked and unreported, by the nuns whose “care” they were in.