FEB 6, 2013 – It turns out that activist-musician Sinead O'Connor, who tried to alert everyone to the Catholic sex abuse by tearing up a picture of the Pope on SNL and was attacked for it, also had another reason to tear the picture; Sinead O'Connor was a Magdalene Sister. For those of you who have not heard about them yet, "Magdalene Sisters" were poor, orphaned or otherwise vulnerable children that were forced by the Catholic Church in Ireland into child slave labor in laundries and other industries. There was rampant child sex abuse, mental abuse and physical abuse. The horrible practice was portrayed in the 2009 documentary, "The Forgotten Maggies", watch a clip below.
Sinead talked about her ordeal in an Op Ed in The Washington Post and calls the recent "apology" by both the Pope and the Prime Minister of Ireland "hollow". She remarked:
"I experienced this personally. When I was a young girl, my mother — an abusive, less-than-perfect parent — encouraged me to shoplift. After being caught once too often, I spent 18 months in An Grianán Training Centre, an institution in Dublin for girls with behavioral problems, at the recommendation of a social worker. An Grianán was one of the now-infamous church-sponsored "Magdalene laundries," which housed pregnant teenagers and uncooperative young women. We worked in the basement, washing priests' clothes in sinks with cold water and bars of soap. We studied math and typing. We had limited contact with our families. We earned no wages. One of the nuns, at least, was kind to me and gave me my first guitar." Read more on WashPo here. (Photo credits: CC/Eloquence – CC/Wiki)
