UN report criticises Magdalene laundries

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has strongly criticised the Church over Ireland’s Magdalene laundries, writes Sarah Mac Donald.
In a report published on Wednesday it warned that measures have not yet been taken to prevent a recurrence of the kinds of abuses that occurred in these institutions.

The hard-hitting criticism follows the committee’s investigation into the Vatican’s implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which the Holy See signed up to in 1990.

The report calls for an internal investigation of the laundries and similar institutions so that those responsible can be prosecuted and that “full compensation be paid to the victims and their families”.

The UN committee noted that the Vatican had failed to provide justice for the former residents of the church-run institutions, the majority of whom were unmarried girls, despite the “slavery like” conditions, degrading treatment, violence and sexual abuse.

The report also called for the archives of such institutions to be opened up in order that those responsible for abuse could be held responsible. Last month, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Holy See’s permanent observer at the UN, told the UN committee hearings in Geneva that the Vatican’s view was that the Irish state had taken full responsibility for the abuse scandal at the Magdalene laundries.

In February 2013, Taoiseach Enda Kenny branded the laundries as “the nation’s shame” and he apologised to those who suffered abuse in the institutions. His apology followed the publication of a report on the institutions, which found that approximately 11,000 women and girls had been put into the laundries.