Meanwhile in Ireland…the nuns continue to refuse to help pay compensation to the women they held in slavery in the Magdalene laundries, because that’s how they roll.
Justice Minister Alan Shatter wrote to the Orders a number of weeks ago for the fourth time about contributing to the redress scheme and confirmed that two of the Orders had responded stating they would not contribute any money towards compensating the women. [Read more…]
The Sinn Féin website reports what its Deputy Leader said at the Glasnevin Flowers for Magdalene event. (Sinn Féin is, as I understand it, quite pro-church itself, so much of this may be political. That doesn’t make it untrue though.)
One year after Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s apology to the Magdalene survivors, Sinn Féin Deputy Leader Mary Lou McDonald TD has called on the government to introduce the long awaited Restorative Justice Bill. [Read more…]
A UN committee has come down on the Vatican like a ton of bricks over the Magdalene laundries, RTÉ reports.
The UN committee on the Rights of the Child said the Catholic Church had not yet taken measures to prevent a repeat of cases such as the Magdalene scandal, where girls were arbitrarily placed in conditions of forced labour.
In an unprecedented and scathing report, the UN also demanded the Vatican “immediately remove” all clergy who are known or suspected child abusers and turn them over to civil authorities. [Read more…]
Elizabeth Coppin is a survivor of both an Irish industrial “school” and a Magdalene laundry. She has taken her fight for justice to the UN.
Terrified Elizabeth Coppin was just 14 when she was taken out of the Co Kerry industrial school she had attended for 12 years and “locked up” in the Peacock Lane Laundry in Cork.
She was never told why she was hauled away from everything she knew and dumped in the hated institution with the chilling warning: “It will be a very long time before you get out.” [Read more…]