Ireland's Hidden Bodies, Hidden Secrets Our World

to the truth of what went on behind the convent walls, including the

notorious Magdalene Laundries. The discovery that some 800 babies had

died at a former mother and AB home run by the nuns in Ireland, and that

there were these had been put in unmarked and horribly inappropriate

graves, shocked the world. It is a sewage tank. Why are their children

buried in a sewerage area? The religious orders are back in the

spotlight. The government has called an enquiry, the sixth into what went

on behind content walls. They won't properly enquire, because I know

what the government alike. Report, into the Magdalene Laundries, run by

the nuns, is a whitewash, according to survivors. They took my life,

they took me there, they took my clothes, they took my name, and they

also took my daughter, which was the worst of all. The survivors want the

new enquiry to also look into the story, and for the nuns to be held

to account. All I wanted was, please, somebody to give me an

apology for what happened to me. Will this latest enquiry tell the

whole truth of the suffering of those put in the care of the nuns?

Survivors of a home run by the nuns for single mothers in this county

gather for a reunion. They are the lucky ones. They survived. There

were thousands of babies born here. There were hundreds of them died,

and I remembered the nuns coming down with little brown shoeboxes to

bury the children. And when the workmen buried those little babies

he put nails in the wall to represent each child he buried. Now

the government has announced yet another enquiry into the mother and

baby homes. These survivors say they won't he fobbed off. We will have

found a voice and will not be silent. They are angry because they

say earlier reports, like that into Magdalene Laundries, failed to tell

the whole truth of what really went on in Ireland's religious

institutions. Questions began to be asked when back in the early 1990s

the nuns who owned the vast content in Dublin wanted to sell the land

where now there is a car park. The problem was that the plot they

wanted to sell, which back in 1993 looked like an empty Greenfield, was

in fact filled with the bodies of former laundry workers. I tracked

down a gravedigger employed by the nuns to dig them up in Co. Mac

County Kildare. He agreed to give an interview. They didn't want anyone

to know what was going on. It was all hush`hush. We were supposed to

tell no one. Nuns told him there were 133 bodies buried in the plot.

I said there were more bodies buried there. They said no, there is 133.

We started digging, and kept digging until we had dug out the whole, and

we had 22 more, that we didn't even know was there. So there were 22

that never know was there. Didn't even know were there. And he found

something else inside grave. There were marks on their wrist is, feet,

ankles, broken arms and broken legs. It seemed to me like. The women were

too small, too frail for that kind of work. There was shock at the

story of unrecorded burials and corpses with broken limbs. People

began to ask what had been going on in the laundry is? The few pictures

that exist give a rose tinted view. No sign here of the crippling work

described by survivors. Thousands of women and girls were sent to work

unpaid to a network of laundry is all over Ireland. They were sent by

the State, by their parents, by local priest, and if they were

orphans, by the nuns. Mary Merrett was born of a single mother at a

mother and baby home and was sent to an orphanage run by nuns in Ireland

for most of the last century. One day when she was 11 she was so

hungry she took an Apple from an orchard. She was sent to work in a

laundry in Dublin. They took me to Hyde Park content, and they left me

there and they said now you stay there until you learn to stop

stealing. And how long did that take? I was 14 years there. I went

there on the 7th of January 1947, and they came out of their in

September 1960. Did you ever ask why you were therefore 14 years for

stealing an Apple? Yes, I did ask them. And I asked was ever going to

get out of here? Am I going to die here? Because some of the women had

been there for so 56 or 57 years. I thought I going to be the same and

am I going to have to die in this place? One of my jobs was to help to

lay out the women when they died. I was happy to do it. Because it

leaves these women were getting out of the laundry and their suffering

was over. So that was my friend, Mary. She worked for the Magdalen

laundry for 56 years. I moved on to Waterford, where I learned you

didn't have to steal an Apple to get sent to a laundry. So what do you

remember as you walk down these corridors? Elisabeth had been abused

by her step`father and was sent to took out when she was or team, and

put her to work in a laundry. `` when she was 14. The first laundry I

was in was a nightmare. I worked from eight in the morning to six at

night. Every day except for Sunday and bank holidays. By my God. You

know what? This brings back so much memories. It has changed, and yet it

is the same. We used to have to go to confession once a week here. The

priest would sit in here, and we would go

would you commit any way? You didn't have time. We didn't have time to

send. If anything, they were committing a sin against,

torturing us. They were the centres, not us. This is where we came every

single day for mass. The Magdalene women and girls. We had to come here

even if we were sick or not. You just had to. As more such stories

come to light, the more the Irish public demand to know how this

catalogue of slave Labour was allowed to go on until the last of

the laundry is closed in the 1990s. After all, the government was paying

for women and children to be cared for in these institutions. It was

when the United Nations commission on torture called for an

investigation that the government here agreed to an enquiry. But with

a narrow remit of looking into state involvement into the running of the

Magdalene Laundries. When the senator brought out his report at

the end of last year there was widespread criticism. Survivors were

astounded to read that the report decided to not make specific

findings on the issue of living and working conditions, in light of the

small sample of women available. Despite the harrowing testimony of

many women who complain of ill treatment. Elisabeth told the

enquiry she was put into a punishment cell at a laundry in

Cork, after wrongly being accused of stealing sweets. I was in there for

three days and three nights, until they decided I'd learnt my lesson

for something I didn't do. But that was, again, it was all about mind

games. It was just controlling you. When Elisabeth tried to run away,

she was sent to another laundry, with an even stricter regime. They

shaved my head. And I had to wear a uniform. So straightaway, your

identity is taken, because my name was changed, my hair was cut, and

I'm not wearing my own clothes. And I'm stuck in there and I have to

answer to the name Enda, which is a man's name. So how do you cope

without? Why do you think they did that? Just to dehumanise me. To make

me feel nothing in society. Mary also tried to escape. She broke a

window and ran into the town, where she begged a priest to help her. He

raped her. I'd never been out in the world in my life. And I had no idea

what was going on. I was crying my eyes out, and they said you're

hurting me. Then when he was finished he said now, this is

between us. I'm going to give you six pints, and this is between us,

the set. Don't tell anybody, he said. Only trained to help you. He

said. The police took a back to the laundry. Mary says she also told the

commission how the nuns didn't believe she had been raped. They put

her in the punishment cell for running away. One of the nuns came

down and cut my head to the bone. And then I was taken up and I was in

a room with all the women there, kneel down, kiss the floor, and say

I'm sorry for what I did. And promised not to do it again, which I

didn't promise, of course. I said no, I'm not promising you anything.

Because I want to get out of here. And I will do it again.

Many girls and women tried to run away. I went to Limerick to meet

Gabrielle. This is the more I tried to escape from many times but in

those days they had glass all along the top, so there was no chance.

Then, in the end, I remember falling off and I still actually got the

scars to prove it. Gabrielle was 17 when she was sent to the laundry

here. Her mother asked the nuns to stop running away with her boyfriend

and be obliged by imprisoning her. This was the yard. It was kind of

like an exercise yard. You would walk around. That was the only

exercise you got, really. You would just walk around I do know how long.

Same as a prison. We worked the same system. Gabrielle didn't do the

laundry. She was put to unpaid work, making the famous Limerick lace now

on display in the city Museum. We would be making lace from 9am until

6pm. And they would have the American market, holidaymakers, if

you like, coming over, coming into the convent, looking at what we were

doing and they would place orders and they would buy stuff. We mainly

were selling collars, lace collars, handkerchiefs, all little things

like that. It was big business? It was and they were making money on

it. They say it wasn't commercial but it was. But it was a very secret

thing. Which is odd because the report says that the date and made

available by the nuns suggested that the Magdalene laundries were

operated on close to breakeven basis, rather than on a commercial

or highly profitable basis. The nuns are famously secretive

about money but their old ledges can turn up in the strangest places. A

public and in Limerick bought all the furniture from the laundry when

it closed and found four ledges dating back to the 1950s. Do you get

many people asking to look at them? I don't. Pages and pages of private

individuals. Hundreds of these. Here, the bigger clients. Colleges,

churches, restaurants. The hotel, the railway hotel. Here, the

Limerick lawn tennis club. There wasn't much going on in Limerick

where the nuns weren't doing the washing for them. I found a more

recent letter from 1980 in a museum in Dublin. It's from the Hyde Park

laundry, where Mary worked. It reveals even bigger clients,

including government contracts. We have the airport. One of the

country's main train stations. Airlines, government departments

like the department of fisheries. Hotels, private individuals.

Confidence and others. `` convents. No wonder trade unions and

commercial laundries complained at the time. They were competing

against the nuns, whose overheads didn't include wages. They had free

and forced labour. And for how long were the women forced to work?

According to the report, the average or median duration of stay in the

laundries was approximately seven months.

By comparing headstones with electoral rolls, Clare discovered

that four on ten year period most women at the Hyde Park laundry were

therefore a minimum of eight years. We've looked at electoral registers

for example from 1954 on till 64 and looking at Hyde Park in particular

we have been able to show that at least 46% of these women from 1954

on till 64 never got out. Also, you've got a woman in memory can be

spent 74 years. In 1911 we have had their at 18. So, again, it tells a

completely different story to that of the report and the figures are

presented is frankly misleading and is not respectful of the lived

experience of these women. And, as if to confirm her point, I stumble

across a newly dug grave for a former laundry worker due to be

buried the next day. Like these women, she went from working in the

laundry to living in the convent. Another example of how the enquiry

was less than thorough with the figures, they counted as workers in

the Magdalene laundries only those who were there when they shut down.

Forgetting that hundreds had become so institutionalised that they never

left. They were there, still, under the care of the nuns were they died.

`` when they died. I wanted to talk to the nuns about this and other

matters. I asked the four main orders involved about the

allegations made by Mary and other women but they all refused to be

interviewed. So, Mary and I called on the headquarters of the sisters

of our Lady of charity in Dublin, where an administrator came to the

gate. Good morning. I'm here from the BBC and this is Mary, a former

Magdalene laundry worker. You have already sent in a request and you've

had your answer to that request. No, we have been refused an

interview but we still have some important questions to ask. All I

wanted was for somebody to give me an apology for what happened to me.

That's all I wanted! Have you been in touch with our PR people? We

have. This is not my job. We were clearly not going to be invited in.

Goodbye. Mary and other survivors are getting

compensation from the government for time served in the Magdalene

laundries but they feel betrayed by the report. The senator turned down

my request for an interview, however the government has apologised and I

was invited to meet Ireland's Deputy Prime Minister, who was herself born

to a single mother and put up for adoption by the nuns. Her mother

died before she managed to find her. I recall sitting in kitchens in

rural areas of Ireland and women crying and just saying to me, and

they had known my birth mother and my birth father, that things were so

different now and it was so difficult, it was impossible. When

mostly to these women, what they want is for the truth to be told. We

now have the process for preparing a full official report by very

experienced judge who has been involved. Do you admit the McAleese

enquiry was less than thorough? It was an enquiry at a point in time.

The critical thing that it achieved was recognition for what women had

experienced and what women had gone through. At the women themselves say

it didn't. For example, the glossing over of the abuse, the duration of

stay. I have met personally a huge number of women, through my own

personal knowledge, and I do know that what is important for a lot of

the women is that they would receive redress payment and as I said that's

one of the critical things to happen. The cost of paying

compensation, or redress as it's called in Ireland, is expected to

run into tens of millions of euros. For those responsible for running

the laundries, the nuns are not being asked to pay. `` those

responsible. Not only were they making money from the laundries, but

after they closed the nuns made even more from property sales. They now

have assets estimated at over 1.5 million euros. `` million. What

about the nuns? They have the money. Why aren't a made to pay? Over the

years, property has been forthcoming but nothing like the amounts of

funding and compensation and partaking in the rigourous scheme to

the tune that we would like. `` redress scheme. That's a continuing

conversation. That's you, when you were a baby. When they took you away

from me. After Mary was raped, she gave birth to a daughter. The baby

was taken by the nuns and put up for adoption and Mary was sent back to

work in the laundry. For 40 years is she only had a photo. You have to

keep them forever now. I will. I will treasure them. Mary now lives

in the UK. A few years ago, with the help of British social workers, she

found her. Mary is desperate to assure her daughter that she didn't

give her away willingly. You don't blame me for anything? No, God, no.

It wasn't my fault. Know one has ever been prosecuted.

The nuns haven't paid up and they've been reluctant to find the records

which could unite survivors of the mother and baby homes with their

families. Now these people await an enquiry into their past. Justice for

mothers and for the babies. But the indications are that the new

government enquiry will not look again at the laundries. I would love

to get to the route but they won't. They won't enquire a properly. I

know what the government is like. They cover up. The church and state

work together. I want somebody to apologise to me. The nuns, the

church, the priest, somebody to apologise to me before I die.

This very dry September continues. Very little rain this weekend. A few

light showers but most places will be dry. There will be a lot of

cloud. Where the sun pops out it will be warm. The main issues will

be thick morning fog patches. Quite dense and thickening up further in

the south, especially south`west