I know that I am searching for a first cousin,and I have rang several convents in the county where I was told the child was brought.All I get is a frosty reception or else there is someone passing the buck to the HSE. This is 2011,this child was born in the 1950s time is running out and her mother has now passed. Why the he’ll was there so much cruelty in this country.

how many people do we pass by who dont know who they are because of this ? how many woman never saw their families again because of this ? how many died with no one there but the bastards that did this to them ? how many cant function on a day to day basis ? we will never know.

It has to be a full enquiry and criminal investigation. What these women went through is just appalling. And in many cases, simply for having a baby. In many other cases these women were incarcerated because they had an intellectual disability or were simply seen as ‘too pretty’. Appalling working conditions, prison like institutions and for what? And when those poor women came to the end of their days, they were buried in unmarked graves, not even given a name. It’s sickening.

This establishment preach confession is good for the soul; let them confess to their sins, but as their sins were crimes against humanity, IE, living torture, let them be tried for their crimes! Time for Ireland to cleanse itself of the past misdeeds of religious and state abuse!

The Taoiseach should apologize on behalf of the state, his party and all parties that have served for years in Govt. They all turned a blind eye to this,same as they turned a blind eye to the child abuse. Unfortunately the Irish people will keep quiet, stay indoors and won;t even send an email to their local T.D. about any of this. We don’t do protests, don’t you know, emigration and knowing ones place are it seems the solution to everything.

These atrocities were perpetrated at the hands of the religious. The religious benefited from the service provided. Let not the state, or anyone acting on its behalf, stand between the victims and due recompense like previous governments did, or bully and threaten victims with the loss of their houses like previous governments did.

Not another inquiry. Just pay out money to anyone who was in one of these institutions, it’ll be cheaper than paying the barristers.

I lived in Ireland from 1960 – 1985 and I never knew these places existed until first the documentary then the film came out. Am I alone here? It was so shocking to see what these innocent girls went through for what?
Although, as a student nurse doing my psychiatry placement, I sat with a permanent patient who was dying of “old age”. As I sat with her, I pulled out her 20+ odd files and read them and this elderly lady was put in the psychiatric hospital as a teenager for having a child by her family. So, the fact that these places exist, should not have shocked me but they did. Was the Catholic Church behind all of these laundries?

Apology & compensation now, while these women are alive to benifit from it. State inquiry with a set timeline, led by an independent source, with lawyers etc on minimum wage to follow. We need answers so we can learn, but those who have suffered need support immediately not after an enquiry! I don’t know about the different groups involved in supporting the women – but I heard recently that the ‘Magdelene Landry Survivors’ group have issued a charity single ‘From a distance’ (haunting song when listened to over images of the girls and now older women) – see http://www.magdalenesurvivorstogether.com/ – ISTM to be a simple and effective way of keeping their story alive – a tiny step obviously, but prevents this from just being a media sound bite for a week.

With the last inquiry in to the industrial Schools we the tax payers paid 90%, the religious orders paid 10% of the costs, and the criminal charges handed down were ridiculious in comparison to the damage caused. We must learn from this and give these Women justice, not only for them but for us as a society. We can not continue to hide our social ills rather than face up to and deal with them. Real Criminal charges, and equal finiancial input from the Religious orders is not only an ideal it should be the reality.

Are we to have yet another enquiry into our horrible social history, which was shameful and cruel and deeply hyppocritical and even shamefully obsequious to so-called professionals, secular and “religious”, who are still grossly overpaid and respected despite all that has been discovered.
Why does our Government not just admit the gross failures of the time, apologise on behalf of the state and all of us who lived in those times and did nothing.
Then we should properly compensate these poor ladies and give up all the information they need to trace their stolen children.
Then all Judges, Lawyers, Teachers, Public/Civil Servants, Religious, Doctors and Police who took part in this obscenity should be prosecuted for the crimes of kidnap and torture!
Finally act now to cut the salaries, expenses and other “entitlements” of our present day elite who still act as leeches on the public purse and still think they are “worth it”. Just compare with counterparts in UK/NI and cut to match.

I believe the practice of institutionalising women for being women has not been only in Ireland, because I do remember seeing a documentary about women who had been sent to mental institutions in the UK, for falling pregnant before marriage in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Whether it be consential or not. Having been in an institution for so long and treated as if suffering from a mental disease they were unable to look after themselves when they were released in the 1990’s. Terrible really when you think they were healthy young girls when they were hidden from society.

Way to go, I think it’s time to forget about GULAGs and Gaddafi and other things happening in foreign contries and pay attention to what happened and continue to happend in this part of the world, agree?

‘When you find yourself in agreement with the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect’ – Mark Twain

The Celtic-Tigers sisters seemingly weren’t contented enough with burying’ penitents’ in unmarked graves and leaving them there, They simply had to follow the greedy gravy-train, just like the developer, and uproot the remains and cremate them elsewhere. They had no moral right whatsoever to mess around with the remains of the penitents – who would have slogged away to the bone during their sad lives in the *FOR-PROFIT Magdalen Laundries. They owed these women respect and dignity in their final resting place – that they probably never received whilst alive. I wonder would the religious nuns do the same thing to their own kith and kind and the nuns in their own order? I doubt it very much! It’s unfathomable! Shame on the religious sisters for the way they treated these women and shame on the developer who colluded with them in this diabolical action. The penitents are synonymous with Father Brendan Smyth in that the developer too wanted rid of the remains of paedophile from Kilnacrot Abbey. And the good sisters wanted rid the penitents at High Park. Wham a sham!

If McDonalds was molesting children at their restaurants and was caught covering it up, their entire Board of Directors would have been arrested as accessories to child rape and probably also charged with obstruction of justice.

Bloody Hell just get on with it and look after them now ,like you did’nt back then . With an apology and compensation!! Then when that is all settled and put in place .Go and chase up the criminals and charge them. Bring the whole sorry story into the light and give these’s women peace .The have suffered enough now ,why drag it out any longer . There for the grace of whoever go I .

Nuns willing to participate in Magdalene probe: The four congregations of nuns who ran the country’s Magdalene l… http://bit.ly/mdVxj This sounds like positive news! I hope the nuns don’t stall and play around with the lives of these defenseless people who have suffered enough in the past. There was a lot of that kind of thing going on with the Dept of Education and Christian Brothers at the commission to inquire into institutional child abuse; when they wouldn’t hand over documents on time to Judge Mary Laffoy and judge Sean Ryan respectively. I wish the Maggies all the best in their endeavour to seek the justice that they are so righteously deserve.

wasn’t it the women’s families that put them there in the first place?

The 93% of people in this poll need to tell us how we’re going fund all the legal fees here! We’re broke remember!!!