A bygone era?

It is therefore useful to be reminded that even in European countries where the rights of women have more recognition today, horrendous crimes were committed in the name of public morality until not long ago.

Unlike cases of child abuse by pedophile priests, well publicized in recent years, the enslavement, by the Catholic Church in Ireland, of young women deemed a threat to the moral order of the society, was, until recently, less commonly known.

The young girls and women sent to "wash away their sins" in institutions known as the Magdalene Laundries, run by nuns, were usually from poor families and therefore vulnerable. Many of them were teenagers when they were locked up. Some were seen as too feisty, others were labeled "fallen women" and many were simply orphans. Pregnant unmarried women, sometimes as a result of abuse by relatives, had their babies forcibly taken away and sent off for adoption.

On Feb. 5, the publication of a detailed report into these institutions, which were run under the guise of charities, found that the Irish government had colluded with the church, sending tens of thousands of girls and women into what was in effect a carceral system, where they were held for indefinite periods and forced to carry out unpaid labor in violation of their most basic rights. The Irish government handed over lucrative contracts to the Magdalene Laundries. The report underlined the importance of keeping state and church matters separate.

The living conditions described by survivors sound Dickensian, but the last Magdalene Laundry closed down in 1996. These asylums were run by religious orders like the Sisters of Mercy or the Sisters of Charity, but the nuns were neither merciful nor charitable. They inflicted humiliation and at times beatings, constantly reminding the "penitents" of their "shame"; girls were stripped of their names and had their hair cut short. Fed a meager diet of bread and dripping, they worked long hours without pay in silence, not knowing if or when they would be let out. Hundreds who never did were found buried in graveyards.

Survivors have been demanding official action from the Irish government, which had hitherto denied responsibility. Prime Minister Enda Kenny's half-hearted apology, issued after the publication of the report, will not satisfy them. But now that official wrongs have been acknowledged, campaigners can press for compensation. Religious orders have yet to release full records, but some estimates suggest 30,000 women passed through the Magdalene asylums between 1922 and 1996.

I got interested in the "Maggies," whose stories were powerfully depicted in a film by director Peter Mullan, a decade ago while I was conducting research on honor-based violence and the culture that surrounds it. Unlike girls murdered by relatives in Turkey allegedly to redeem the family "honor," Magdalene victims weren't killed. But, labeled wayward, they were sentenced to social death and isolation by the community they lived in.

Ireland, by the way, is not the only country where the existence of terrible practices has emerged in recent years. In my native Switzerland, some pregnant or rebellious teenagers were held in arbitrary administrative detention for "re-education" until the late 1970s simply upon the request of local officials who found them too unruly. Like in Ireland, unwed mothers carried social stigma and many were pressured into giving up their babies, passing on their trauma to the next generation.

These stories now appear to belong to a bygone era, even if some of the victims are merely middle aged. In many ways they do. That these horrendous practices are now met with public outrage and shocked disbelief demonstrates that the sustained efforts of activists and survivors demanding justice can succeed in changing popular perceptions.