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

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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...

That a girl so young should have been in a Magdalene laundry at all later perplexed many – not least members of the interdepartmental committee set up in 2011 to investigate the laundries, chaired by then-senator Martin McAleese.Edited extract from Girl in the Tunnel, My Story of Love and Loss as a Survivor of the Magdalene Laundries by Maureen Sullivan.

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. Like most people in those days, we had an outhouse with our cottage, just your basic privy with no flush. Scraps of paper hung on a nail, which was also the norm in Irish houses at the time, that we had cut up from newspapers we found around the town. We could never have bought one. We barely had enough money to live.

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. The marriage did not work out. “Then I had to bring my daughter up on my own, try and get bits of jobs. It was very, very hard. You always had this past in your mind. You couldn’t say where you were, where your education finished.” The tunnel of the book title was where Sullivan was hidden if inspectors or outsiders arrived at the laundry and might ask questions. Once, when she was 14, she was forgotten about in that tunnel. She became hysterical. It took days for her to get over it. I changed most of the names in the book – my abuser, relatives, locals and the nuns, because I’m not out to hurt or for revenge. I wrote this book because I was silenced as a child when I was a victim of abuse, and I was silenced by society when I left the laundry. I want people to know what happened. This is my history, but it is also the history of this country,” said Maureen.

To get to Granny’s you went through two standing stones that opened the hedgerows and exposed a small two-storey cottage, with rooms in the attic and a huge hearth right in the middle. It was tiny and tumbledown and leaked rain in places, but to me it was a sanctuary from everything that was going on at home. It was a place where everything was warm, where everything was good and I was not hurt or afraid. Maureen was moved to The Magdeline Laundry in New Ross when she was twelve after she confessed to a nun that her stepfather had been abusing her physically and sexually. The book tells of how Sullivan and her brothers suffered years of neglect by both her mother and stepfather, how her stepfather beat her and her two brothers, while also raping Maureen in secret. So bad were the beatings that one cost Sullivan the last of her baby teeth. So bad were the rapes they caused her hip damage. We all slept in beds together. In Green Lane there were two rooms, with two double beds in each one. My mother and Marty were in the front room in a bed with a baby, across from a bed with the youngest ones. In the other room there was me, my brothers and the others. We didn’t have duvets or even blankets most of the time. It was coats on top of us and we would sleep close for the heat of each other to get through the night. Once “she asked the nuns in front of us all where we went on excursions” and was told by a nun that the laundry ran every day. “Mrs Ryan interrupted her. ‘Now please, Mother,’ she said, ‘everyone needs a day out from time to time.’” The result was a day at the seaside for the women. It was the first time Sullivan had seen the sea.As with even the best books, of course there were a few things that I didn't like about the writing. Most noticeably the "in those days" comment was extreamly over used. And a lot of the things that preceded that comment are still quiet common. For example, washing powder can still come in cardboard boxes, though electricity is widely available there are those who do not have it, particularly children of abuse, the same with phones. And during my time at school 90's - 00's we also wrapped our school books in wallpaper. I also had times where I had to eat goody (without the sugar) and other times when my sisters and I starved but had to hide it as it was also not considered normal in the 90's and 00's.

Granny was very poor, living in a little house that had no electricity or running water, and although she loved us very much, she could not support us. I imagine the reason my mother rushed to marry Marty Murphy, a gammy-footed pig dealer from Carlow town, was to save us from starvation. Girl in the tunnel was co-written by Liosa McNamara. For both women, recounting Maureen’s childhood was a difficult and incredibly painfully process. My older brother, Michael, is the only one with memories of him, but they are fleeting, nothing more than a shadow leaning over his cot. I told on him, didn't I? That was the crime. That's what happened. I told the Church that my stepfather was molesting and raping me, and beating me and my brothers. The Catholic Church later denied that Maureen had ever been enslaved in the Magdalene Laundry at New Ross, insisting that she had attended the adjoining school. Finally, the Church admitted that this was not the case and a nun confirmed to Maureen that she had been held captive because as a sexually abused child, the Church feared that she would corrupt the other children.Cover of Girl in the Tunnel: My Story of Love and Loss as a Survivor of the Magdalene Laundries, by Maureen Sullivan. This weekends Irish Times Eason offer is The Maid by Nita Prose, only €4.99 with your paper, a saving of €5. I still lie in bed trying to figure it out, what I did and why was I sent away to a prison to work as a slave? What was my crime?