Religion
Related: About this forumIreland sent girls, women to Catholic workhouses until 1996, report finds
Some had committed minor crimes, others were simply homeless or poor. Women with mental or physical disabilities and some people with psychiatric illness also found themselves in the laundries. Their average age, the report found, was 23, but the youngest child was just nine and the oldest known entrant was 89.
Activists called on the government to issue a formal apology and pay compensation, with one group saying those affected had been "treated like slaves."
Their plight came to greater public attention when it was the subject of a 2002 film called The Magdalene Sisters, which used a different spelling. And in June 2011, the United Nations Committee on Torture highlighted allegations of "physical, emotional abuses and other ill-treatment" and said it was "gravely concerned" at Irelands failure to "protect girls and women who were involuntarily confined."
http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/05/16854772-ireland-sent-girls-women-to-catholic-workhouses-until-1996-report-finds
Is the reality of the situation starting to sink in yet, folks? How much more will it take?
hollysmom
(5,946 posts)cleanhippie
(19,705 posts)Skittles
(153,169 posts)but they get the vapors over contraception - how can ANYONE take them seriously?
yellowcanine
(35,699 posts)All H will break loose.
Skittles
(153,169 posts)who exactly are the sinners here?
hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)I hope that these victims get money from the church and the state.
yellowcanine
(35,699 posts)If you are working involuntarily you are a slave.
Dawson Leery
(19,348 posts)The world is advancing, whatever power they have left over the lives of others is fading.
Cerberus Ratzinger ordered his consiglieres to interfere with the politics of foreign countries to as a last ditch effort to maintain the chruch's anti-democratic influence over the world.
Warpy
(111,270 posts)Pregnancy outside of wedlock was the usual reason to be sent there, even pregnancy resulting from rape or incest. Women were allowed to nurse their babies for a period and then the babies they'd bonded with would suddenly disappear. It's where a lot of white infants adopted in the US came from during those years.
You could even be sent there for how you looked, especially if you were poor, if you were judged to be a temptress. Poor weak men had to be protected from girls who were uncommonly pretty, I guess.
Once you were sent there, only a male family member could sign you out. If you didn't have a father or brother willing and able to spring you, you were stuck there for life, performing slave labor with the money all going to the church.
It was quite a scam. Pile abuse on top of it and you have a terrible scandal that Ireland is just starting to wake up to.
cleanhippie
(19,705 posts)And to think it was still happening less than 20 years ago!