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

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Bestselling author Cathy Kelly is returning to HarperFiction in a three-book deal, negotiated by Lynne Drew, publisher, general fiction, with Jonathan Lloyd at Curtis Brown, for UK and Commonwealth rights. That starch and me, we were not friends. My skin reacted to the mix by breaking out in dermatitis, small splits in my over-dried skin that left my hands raw every day. And there was no break from the work to let it heal, so I lived with that every day. I was in constant pain. On top of that, working the press meant I burned myself regularly. The machines were designed to be used by fully-grown adults, not small-sized children. 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. 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. Cover of Girl in the Tunnel: My Story of Love and Loss as a Survivor of the Magdalene Laundries, by Maureen Sullivan.

At twelve years of age, Maureen Sullivan was taken from her home in Carlow and sent to a Magdalene Laundry in New Ross, Co Wexford. She is now an advocate for other survivors. This is her story. She was not allowed to speak, was barely fed, and often went without water, she was viciously beaten by the nuns for years, and hidden away in an underground tunnel when Government inspectors came. However, if you would like to share the information in this article, you may use the headline, summary and link below:I didn’t rebel there at all, I asked nothing, I kept my head down and got on with it. I had given up. I did my work, ate and went to bed. I abandoned all ideas I had of who I was or what I thought. I said nothing.

About an hour’s walk from Green Lane is the small village of Bennekerry, where my father’s people were all from, and where my brother still lives in my granny’s cottage, on a bend in the road near the river. Even at 12 I thought that my mother went down to the hospital and a nurse gave her a baby — Maureen Sullivan I was fortunate to meet Maureen while in hospital recently and I feel very fortunate to have met a woman so strong even after being through so much in life. The Magdalene laundries was one of the disgraces run by the churches in Ireland and it will forever be a part of Irish history, something the Catholic religion in Ireland should always be ashamed of. I truly hope each and every individual affected by the priests and nuns will get their apologies and explanation as to why...

After my struggles to find a printer for The God Squad in 1988, it is refreshing to see how receptive readers are to this brave memoir by Maureen Sullivan, subtitled “ My Story of Love and Loss as a Survivor of the Magdalene Laundries”. I read this over a few days. It is the story of the author’s life in three different Magdalene Laundries - New Ross, Athy, and Dublin. It is a distressing story and I believe it needed to be better told than the co-writer (Liosa McNamara) produced. I saw something cross my mother’s face, regret perhaps that it was my grandmother I missed that much and not her. I did miss my mother, but there was never time for love or affection in her home – she had too much to do and too many of us. MyHome.ie (Opens in new window) • Top 1000 • The Gloss (Opens in new window) • Recruit Ireland (Opens in new window) • Irish Times Training (Opens in new window)

I then took it up that when the nuns hid her in the tunnel it was for her safety ie to keep her away form her stepfather. Another misconception.

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.