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

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As a young woman, Maureen tried to take her own life. In her 30s, she talked to a counsellor, who helped Maureen immensely and made her realise that she was an innocent child who had been abused and wronged. “I got a sentence for what my stepfather did with me. I did the time. He got away scot-free.” She was taken from the family, not to be cared for or loved or given to a new family. No, she was sent to a Maggie. Why not the school next door to that very Magdalene Laundry? because (in the eyes of the church) she had been in the wrong. She had been the one to tempt a "good man" into sin. Personally I knew this from the moment she is put to work, but for Maureen Sullivan, it took decades and an admission from a Nun to put the pieces together. Sullivan had been so young when it happened, all of 12, that she grew up literally not understanding how the church could do that to a child. The church tried to deny that she was there, even all those years later. I have no regrets about telling my story,” she says. “I no longer have shame. My father had died, my mother was too weak from having 13 children to speak up. I don’t blame her for it, as she was oppressed by the system, too. Our Government, and the Church possessed far too much power, and it completely took over our country, and caused such cruelty. The immense damage done to all of us girls and women is still rippling through Ireland, today.” I was given the never-ending job of pressing the starched clothes. Starch isn’t common these days, but it was normal then to mix starch powder with water to form a loose jelly that you would dip clothes into, then wring the mixture out and hang them up to dry. Just before they were fully dry you would press them, almost to set the starch into the cloth. Mary Smith, Maureen Sullivan and Geraldine Coll Cronin, former residents of Magdalene laundries, lay a wreath on the mass unmarked graves of residents of Magdalene laundries in Glasnevin Cemetery on the first anniversary of former taoiseach Enda Kenny's apology to survivors of the institutions. Photograph: Alan Betson

We all slept in beds together. In Green Lane there were two rooms, with two double beds in each one. My mother and Marty were in the front room in a bed with a baby, across from a bed with the youngest ones. In the other room there was me, my brothers and the others. We didn’t have duvets or even blankets most of the time. It was coats on top of us and we would sleep close for the heat of each other to get through the night. Maureen Sullivan was 12 years old when she was taken from her school in Carlow to the Magdalene laundry in New Ross, in the mid-1960s. She was incarcerated because she told an allegedly sympathetic nun at her school that she had been physically and sexually abused by her stepfather for years. Nothing happened to the stepfather; her mother appeared powerless to prevent her removal. She was effectively punished for the crimes of her guardian and the compliance of her mother. Far from being a threat to the innocence of other children, Sullivan was so ignorant of the basic facts of life that she thought babies came from the hospital. “Even at 12 I thought that my mother went down to the hospital and a nurse gave her a baby.” And her mother went to that hospital many times – 13 to be accurate. Three of those times were before Sullivan’s father died. Her mother was then 19 and pregnant with her. Her mother then married a second time.

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His speech received a standing ovation from members of the Irish parliament, who then directed their applause towards a group of Magdalene survivors – including Sullivan – gathered in the gallery. Sullivan, who has now written a memoir, says that “there are still people in Ireland who’d rather she stayed silent, those who want to defend the Catholic Church.” In recent years, films such as The Magdalene Sisters (2002) and Philomena (2013) have also explored this part of history, as does the new BBC series The Woman in the Wall, starring Ruth Wilson. Maureen said: “When they came out, they had no education, nowhere to turn to and the majority of us went to England. All we wanted to do was run away from the way we had been treated in Ireland.” The marriage did not work out. “Then I had to bring my daughter up on my own, try and get bits of jobs. It was very, very hard. You always had this past in your mind. You couldn’t say where you were, where your education finished.” After my father died that room was left empty, except for a small table in the corner on which his billhook lay. Even at the weekends, the youngster was forced to clean the floors of the local church when she should have been out playing, enjoying life and meeting other children.

Maureen asks the fundamental question that occurs to everyone who knows about Ireland’s carceral institutions: “Why were they so cruel to me? Why were they so hard? I was a little kid, yet they never let me have a minute to look at a book or sing a song... I was made into a miniature robot for the church to profit from.” The descriptions of the nuns are perhaps telling. Obviously I do not sympathise for a second with the choice to effect such terrible and ongoing punishment on an abused child, but Sullivan also makes a point about the nuns having in many ways dreadful lives of their own—more comfortable than the life they afforded Sullivan in the Laundries, certainly, but not happy ones. Not happy creatures. Sullivan does not sympathise, exactly (how could she, when neither did they?), but it's a fascinating perspective. The tunnel of the book title was where Sullivan was hidden if inspectors or outsiders arrived at the laundry and might ask questions. Once, when she was 14, she was forgotten about in that tunnel. She became hysterical. It took days for her to get over it. I told on him, didn’t I? That was the crime. That’s what happened. I told the Church that my stepfather was molesting and raping me, and beating me and my brothers. When I started publicising my case my boss was a lovely man, and said ‘you go ahead and tell your truth, and anything I can do to help you, I will’. A man for justice,” said Maureen.As with even the best books, of course there were a few things that I didn't like about the writing. Most noticeably the "in those days" comment was extreamly over used. And a lot of the things that preceded that comment are still quiet common. For example, washing powder can still come in cardboard boxes, though electricity is widely available there are those who do not have it, particularly children of abuse, the same with phones. And during my time at school 90's - 00's we also wrapped our school books in wallpaper. I also had times where I had to eat goody (without the sugar) and other times when my sisters and I starved but had to hide it as it was also not considered normal in the 90's and 00's. My older brother, Michael, is the only one with memories of him, but they are fleeting, nothing more than a shadow leaning over his cot. This book is another important testimony from a brave survivor of two kinds of abuse – familial child sexual abuse and incarceration, physical and emotional abuse in three religious institutions. I would have liked to have read more about her post-Magdalene life, in which she became an activist and advocate for her fellow sufferers. But what Maureen Sullivan gives us is essential reading: we are by no means done with what church and State did to vulnerable women and children in this country, and books like this one are a timely reminder of Ireland’s reprehensible past. No one could see how cruelly the nuns were treating her, and she would later be moved to the laundry at St Michael’s Convent in Athy, when she was only 13 in 1966.