Young Irish filmmaker tackles plight of Magdalene Laundry victims in powerful documentary

Forgotten Maggies to be premiered in New York October 1

Recognition: Filmmaker Steven O'Riordan, seen here being interviewed by RTE, has drawn wide media attention with his documentary The Forgotten Maggies.

An estimated 30,000 women were forced to work in Magdalene Laundries across Ireland.

“These women couldn't see a television, read a newspaper, read a book or have a conversation with someone from the outside world,” Steven O'Riordan, filmmaker.

By Michael Norby

After watching Peter Mullan's 2002 movie The Magdalene Sisters, young Irish store clerk Steven O’Riordan felt unsatisfied. He already had some knowledge of the plight of an estimated 30,000 women ripped from their families and held in forced servitude in 13 brutal Magdalene Laundries across Ireland. He also disagreed with Mullan’s portrayal of what happened after the women were released from the laundries.

“[Mullan] painted a picture that they all left and lived happily ever after,” O’Riordan told the Irish Emigrant. “That’s how I picked it up anyway.”

The laundries, also known as Magdalene Asylums, were first opened in the 18th century with the goal of “rehabilitating” misguided women. Those who fell into prostitution, or became pregnant or were badly behaved in the eyes of the ultra-conservative Irish society were prime candidates for detention.

Under the watchful eyes of nuns, the penance for these girls was forced labor in what were essentially commercial laundries. These “fallen women” were strongly discouraged from leaving and, deprived of even basic contact with the outside world, they became forgotten women.

This practice may not sound overly shocking for the 18th century but the final Magdalene Laundry closed its doors in Waterford just 13 years ago.

“These women couldn't watch a television, read a newspaper, read a book or have a conversation with someone from the outside world,” said O’Riordan. “That was happening as late as 1996.”

Ignored by society and media for all those years, it was only when the remains of 155 anonymous inmates where discovered by developers at a Dublin convent that the curious and damning eyes of the world gazed upon the the issue of the laundries.

Denied Justice

O’Riordan, just 22-years-old at the time, decided to conduct his own research and what he uncovered was both shocking and inspiring. He developed a fuller, more stunning grasp of the shameful treatment these women endured inside the largely Catholic-run laundries.

More importantly, however, he also discovered that, branded largely as liars and gold-diggers, former captives and survivors were denied justice and left to fend for themselves once freed from the institutions. O’Riordan decided that he had to do something.

Unversed in any aspect of filmmaking, a determined O’Riordan realized that such a strong subject matter would trump his inexperience and he elected to make his own movie. He had the cutting and heart wrenching threads of an idea, but his efforts for support were unheeded initially.

He applied for grants and funding with the Irish Arts Council and other local authorities and, with each letter he sent, he received denials – his inexperience working frustratingly against him. Still, though, he battled on and with the haunting stories of thousands of silenced Irish women acting as petrol, he throttled up and decided to fund the project himself with whatever he could muster from his job at a supermarket.

Armed only with a mini Sony camcorder buckets full of tenacity, he went searching for material for his documentary.

“I discovered that no Irish person had ever documented what happened from an Irish point-of-view so I went off to do that,” he said. “Obviously I had to find [Magdalene] women to tell the story.”

Survivor

O’Riordan stumbled across an internet forum for survivors and connected with Maureen Sullivan, who was separated from her family at just 12 years of age and sent to live in an industrial school in Tipperary. During her time there, she was forced to work in a Magdalene Laundry where she endured hard labor and suffered years of mental and physical abuse instead of the primary education that she was promised.

“I told Maureen that I was doing a documentary and she began to tell me her story,” said O’Riordan. “She and I spent a further four months talking about her life, what she had struggled [through] and how she was fighting to become the first woman ever in the history of the Irish State to prove that the Magdalene Laundry, like the industrial schools, was state funded.”

Earlier attempts by Sullivan to secure justice proved to be fruitless. She had taken her case to the State’s redress board but was told that she was not entitled to any compensation because she could not prove that there was a definite link between the industrial school and the laundry. Sullivan also learned that a 1999 apology from then Taoiseach Bertie Ahern for victims of industrial school abuses did not extend to her.

Battle-worn from years of rejection - even her own solicitor eventually decided to throw in the towel and abandon her – Sullivan ha