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

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Oh!’ She said suddenly and rummaged in her bag, pulling out one of those thin, flat Dairy Milk bars you don’t see anymore. Once “she asked the nuns in front of us all where we went on excursions” and was told by a nun that the laundry ran every day. “Mrs Ryan interrupted her. ‘Now please, Mother,’ she said, ‘everyone needs a day out from time to time.’” The result was a day at the seaside for the women. It was the first time Sullivan had seen the sea.

Maureen Sullivan (70) is a strong woman. She has had to be. Probably the youngest person to have been held in a Magdalene laundry in Ireland, she was just 12 when she arrived at the Good Shepherd-run establishment at New Ross, Co Wexford, in 1964. Over the following four years she was transferred to another such laundry in Athy, Co Kildare, and then to a home for the blind on Merrion Road in Dublin. The floors in Green Lane were clay and sawdust, like most of the poor homes around us. The sawdust was there to soak up the Irish rain that came so often, and the spilled tea or bathwater that splashed out. Every now and again Marty and Shay would take up the floor coverings, digging out the old sawdust and clay to replace them with new. The smell of sour and must would be gone for a while when they did that. I just hope through my book people listen to little children, that’s the hope I have,” said Maureen. My mother was nineteen and pregnant with me when my father died suddenly. Michael was two and my other brother, Paddy, was only eight months. They all lived with my granny in her tiny two-storey cottage in the middle of the Irish countryside. That was where I was born a few months later, in the little parlour off the main room – the same room that my newly-wed parents had first slept in together.This was such a hard read and my heart broke at every sentence for this poor little girl who was so badly treated by most of the people in her life. It infuriated me at the number of people who lied, cheated and turned a blind eye to the horrific abuse that was going on around them. No one wanted to upset the catholic church to save this girl from the appalling and gruesome abuse she received from her stepfather and the nuns. I remember being hidden in a tunnel when the school inspectors came,” said the 60-year-old. “I can only assume that this was due to the fact that I should not have been working in the laundry.”

I was still Frances, and couldn’t have my own name, basically it was the same, just a smaller scale than New Ross,” she said. The Catholic Church later denied that Maureen had ever been enslaved in the Magdalene Laundry at New Ross, insisting that she had attended the adjoining school. Finally, the Church admitted that this was not the case and a nun confirmed to Maureen that she had been held captive because as a sexually abused child, the Church feared that she would corrupt the other children. 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.” 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.Maureen spent two years in New Ross and a further year in the House of Mercy laundry in Athy, and then two years at St Mary’s School for the Blind in Dublin. After leaving St Mary’s, she soon moved to England, but this was not the end of her hardship. It was very hard for Liosa and me, because this is very disturbing and very, very painfully to listen to and exhausting emotionally. We’d often have to take a break, maybe for a few months, because I’m still in recovery, I always will be, so I do have to mind myself,” explained Maureen.

Sincere and compelling, Maureen Sullivan's story (co-written with Liosa McNamara) of her incarceration in three of Ireland's Magdalene Laundries is an important addition to the bibliography of books on the subject. The day would start at 6am. After getting dressed, Maureen and the others would clean, go to Mass, have breakfast and then go to work in the laundry. The nun told me we couldn’t have you playing with other children in case you told them what happened to you, so I was ostracised for that,” she said. 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.”

Granny was very poor, living in a little house that had no electricity or running water, and although she loved us very much, she could not support us. I imagine the reason my mother rushed to marry Marty Murphy, a gammy-footed pig dealer from Carlow town, was to save us from starvation. You must remember beneath those habits were women who treated little girls appallingly, and I get in trouble when I say that,” she said. It was horrendous and cruel that I went from being abused, to more abuse,” says Sullivan. “What they did to me is pure evil. I can’t find any other word for it.” The work