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Daragh Nolan, 19 Apr
A compelling new memoir by one of the youngest-known survivors of
Ireland’s infamous Magdalene laundries.
When Maureen Sullivan was just twelve years old, she confided in her
teacher that she was being physically and sexually abused by her
stepfather. Never, in her darkest imaginings, could she have dreamt
that she would be the one who would face harrowing punishment.
Within twenty-four hours, Maureen was taken from her home and her
beloved grandmother, and sent to the Magdalene Laundry in New Ross, Co.
Wexford, run by the Order of the Good Shepherd nuns. She was told that
she would receive an education there, but instead she was immediately
stripped of her meagre possessions and thrown into forced labour,
washing clothes and scrubbing floors in inhumane and unrelenting
conditions. Not allowed to speak, barely fed, and often going without
water, the child was viciously beaten by the nuns for years, and hidden
away in an underground tunnel when government inspectors came. No one
must see how cruelly the nuns were treating her.
In the heart-breaking Girl in the Tunnel, Maureen bravely recounts her
agonising journey from a monstrously violent home to the cold and
brutal Magdalene laundry, and her desperate, gruelling fight
for freedom and for justice.
Maureen Sullivan grew up in Carlow town. When she was just twelve years
old she was placed in the Magdalene Laundry at New Ross, County
Wexford, where she was forced to work long hours scrubbing floors and
washing clothes, and denied an education. After two years she
was transferred aged 13 to another laundry in St Michael's Convent,
Athy, County Kildare and then to a school for blind people in Dublin.
After she left the school, she returned to Carlow before moving to
England. She is now an advocate for other survivors.