Many people nowadays have heard of the misconduct that went on for decades by the Sisters of the Good Shepard, mistreatment of vulnerable young girls and women who where locked up in the institutions that they ran, and that happened in many countries. This book tells about the Magdalene Loundries, runned by the same sisters in Ireland. In many villages they ran closed off asylums, Mother and Bany homes, industrial school and County Homes besides their laundries for ''fallen women''. Young women who where often abused at home and punished and send away by their families to be never heard of again, mostly forgotten and abandoned. and where the women where abused with endless crueling work under bad conditions and punishments by the Sisters. Nobody new the sisters run prisons for innocent women, who didn't have much luck in their lives.
In this book, the stories of several women who where locked up in the asylums of the Magdalene Laundries tell their stories. Their personal stories why they where sent away by their families to turn off shaming them because of abuse of someone in their family. (abusers who never got any punishment) . Because of a pregnancy out of wedlock in some cases, which then was a shame in the strict Catholic Ireland. The women where locked up in the asylum to be forgotten by their families and never to be spoken off again. These women had to forgot their own name and often where given a different name or just a numer, but in this book, their are named their own names by the author, who let them tell their personal stories; Eileen, Carmel and Brigid spent a huge part of their lives in the Magdalene Laundries, and the author tells their personal stories, and shines a light on one of the darkest secrets in Ireland's history.
If you have heard of this tragic history or not, the book is very informative and easy to follow, and as a reader you also learn a lot from it and the writing style is just perfect. The author did a great job in researching this sensitive topic that has long been hidden in secrecy and silence. The stories of the women who where kept at the laundries where heartbreaking. It is hard to imagine how the Sisters could be so cruel in treating these women and how they talked it right because of their faith. It truly was horrifying at some parts and it is sad that no one could speak out of this misconduct earlier and everything was covered under the blanket of the Catholic faith. We can only have deep sympathy and support for the victims. The author also did a great job explaining how the laundries and asylums and homes run by the Sisters where created and the overlap with the history of politics in Ireland which was also interesting to read, and how eventually the asylums, homes and laundries slowly ceased to excist and how the misconduct eventually reached the media because of the victims standing up and speaking out.
I found this a very eye-opening, interesting and perfectly written book that I recommend reading!
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