http://www.miramax.com/the_magdalene_sisters/
I had heard about the story before and knew how angry the film would make me.
Here is a summary:
http://www.britfilms.com/britishfilms/c ... rnjqceed7c :
The Magdalene Sisters Brief synopsis:
The Magdalene Asylums in Ireland were run by the Sisters of Mercy on behalf of the Catholic Church. Young girls were sent there by families or orphanages and once there, were imprisoned and sent to work in the laundries where they could atone for their sins. Their sins varied from being unmarried mothers to being too pretty, too ugly, simple minded, too clever or being a victim of rape and talking about it. And for their sins they worked 364 days a year unpaid, they were half starved, beaten, humiliated, raped, their children forcibly removed from them. Their sentence was indefinite. Thousands of women lived and died there. The last Magdalene Asylum in Ireland closed in 1996, five years ago.
This film is from the point of view of four of these young women in the 1960s, an era mistakenly seen by some as a time of unchallenged female liberation. These young Catholic women find themselves in an almost medieval nightmare whilst the outside world tacitly (or in some cases actively) supports a theocratic state. It looks at how their personalities develop for better and for worse in an environment controlled and dominated by celibate women, servants of God, Brides of Christ. In their own ways the girls refuse to be beaten, but what victory is there if they remain imprisoned as little more than slaves? One gets out in a heartbreakingly banal fashion, one is imprisoned in a mental asylum, two finally rebel, run away, escape.
It is a fictional film that unfortunately happens to be true.
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The last house close in 1996!
Now if any other organization had been found to be running sweat shops where kidnapped slave labour was their work force they would have been thrown in jail.
This is similar to the horrific crimes committed in the Canadian Residential schools where Aboriginal children were taken from their homes to be beaten into good Christians. At one point the death rate in these “schools” was 75%.
Religion can be a comfort to many, but as organizations (we see this particularly today in other religions) they can be infected by those seeking power to do harm.
The perverts sought positions so that they could prey on the weak.
Why are they not answering for their crimes?
