Abuse by Irish nuns examined by the UN

For years it was Ireland's hidden scandal: an estimated 30,000 women were sent to church-run laundries, where they were abused and worked for years with no pay.

Their offence, in the eyes of society, was to break the strict sexual rules of Catholic Ireland, having children outside wedlock.

Although it has been more than a decade since their story came to light, the women are still waiting for an apology.

 

Now an advocacy group, Justice for Magdalenes, which has spent the past two years lobbying the Irish government to investigate the laundries, is taking the case to the United Nations, alleging the abuse amounted to human rights violations and hoping that an official rebuke will shame the government into action.

''We don't take any pleasure in embarrassing the government in this way but we have worked the domestic structure as far as we can and still the government has done nothing,'' said James Smith, a spokesman for Justice for Magdalenes.

The UN is examining Ireland's human rights record this week as part of its review of the human rights records of all 192 member states. 

The UN Committee Against Torture has invited Justice for Magdalenes to make a statement in Geneva.

Maeve O'Rourke, a Harvard Law School human rights fellow, presented the Magdalenes' case last Friday.

She told the committee that the Irish government's failure to deal with the abuse was a violation of the Convention Against Torture and the state had failed to investigate promptly. .

The story of the laundries was uncovered in 1993 when a religious order sold a part of its land.

The bodies of 155 women who had died in the laundry were exhumed and the media began to ask questions.

Until recently, the shame of giving birth to an illegitimate child in Ireland was so great that many unmarried mothers were rejected.

They were put into Magdalene laundries by members of the clergy, government institutions and their families.

The laundries were profit-making workhouses run by four religious communities - the Sisters of Mercy, the Sisters of Charity, the Good Shepherd Sisters and the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity, initially for prostitutes. 

By the 1940s the laundry's residents were young women who had sex outside of marriage (or were raped), unmarried mothers, women deemed flirtatious and women with mental disabilities.

Many died behind convent walls until the last laundry closed in 1996.

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