Over a period of 150 years, an estimated 30,000 women were imprisoned by
the Catholic Church and forced to work without pay.
C O R K, Ireland, Jan. 26 - A sudden spate of TV exposés, docudramas and
a major motion picture have brought to light one of the most shocking episodes
in the history of the Catholic Church in Ireland - the existence of the now-
notorious "Magdalene laundries," a sanctified form of slavery.
Operated by the Sisters of the Magdalene Order, the laundries were virtual
slave labor camps for generations of young girls thought to be unfit to live in
Irish society. Girls who had become pregnant, even from rape, girls who were
illegitimate, or orphaned, or just plain simple-minded, girls who were too pretty
and therefore in "moral danger" all ran the risk of being locked up and put to
work, without pay, in profit-making, convent laundries, to "wash away their
sins." Full story