Irish Women Enslaved for Decades, Government Finally Admits
Involvement - by Kristina Chew - February 8, 2013 The Irish
government has admitted that, for more than seven decades, it
was in collusion with laundries operated by religious
congregations which kept generations of women and girls (as
young as 12) in virtual enslavement. While some of the women
were unwed mothers, the majority were placed there due to mental
illness or physical disability, homelessness or petty offenses.
The Magdalene laundries took their name from Mary Magdalene, the
biblical figure who (at the time the workhouses were founded in
the mid-1800s) was thought to have been a prostitute. They were
run by religious congregations and the Irish government has long
claimed that the laundries were privately owned and controlled
by nuns. But according to a just-released 1,000-page government
report, the Irish state was responsible for sending over a
quarter of at least 10,000 young women to the laundries. In
addition, the state gave the laund