Kathy O'Beirne's memoir is an account of a cruel childhood and her experience in a Magdalene Laundry.
Throughout the twentieth century, thousands of young Irish women were incarcerated in religious run homes that became known as the Magdalene Laundries.
Kathy O'Beirne was one of the those women who lived in a Magdalene Laundry and she tells her story in a new book 'Kathy’s Story’.
Every week, Kathy O'Beirne remembers the women who lost their lives in Magdalene Laundries at a mass grave in Glasnevin Cemetery. Many of these women continue to be buried in mass graves today and Kathy O'Beirne says the last burial took place about three months ago.
For her, it’s not just a place of remembrance, it’s a battleground.
Magdalene Laundries Grave, Glasnevin Cemetery
The experience of these women living in the laundries as been immortalised on film in ‘The Magdalene Sisters’. However, Kathy O'Beirne believes that much of the truth about what went on is still unknown describing life in the laundries as,
Hell on earth
She describes a daily life of cleaning and scrubbing and being battered for her sins. Kathy O'Beirne says she was sexually abused, became pregnant and had a baby girl a month before her fourteenth birthday. Her baby lived for ten years.
'Katy's Story' is the first book from a survivor of the Magdalene. Kathy O'Beirne says she wrote the book to tell her own story and the story of thousands of women. She hope to give a voice to the many who are still living in institutions.
An RTÉ News report broadcast on 10 June 2005. The reporter is Jennifer O’Connell.
