Taoiseach’s words aid healing process

MARGARET Joyce from Ballina, just across the Shannon from Killaloe, was in Dáil Éireann on Tuesday evening to hear Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s apology to the women who had been forced to spend many years in the Magdalene Laundries.

Margaret, who is 67 and now lives near Daly’s Cross in Castleconnell, spent much of her childhood in a Magdalene Laundry in Limerick City.

“I was in St Mary’s in Pennywell Road in Limerick. I was in the laundry part of it for five years. I was only a child. I was the youngest there. My mother didn’t want me and my grandmother didn’t want me either,” Margaret told The Clare Champion on Wednesday.

Sifting through memories of her childhood and teenage years, Margaret can’t remember many uplifting moments.

“I had an awful life. I was sexually abused and I’d say that’s why I was put in there. It was one of my own that did it and every old man in Ballina after that. He [her original abuser] had told everybody. But now I can look forward,” Margaret reflected.

“I can’t even remember what I ate for Christmas or anything. There’s a lot of things I can’t remember. When I was 16 or 17, I was moved straight across to St John’s to another bunch of nuns. They weren’t too bad. They were nice, I must say,” she acknowledged, adding that she had also worked in her new abode.

Margaret was allowed out in 1966. Six years later, she married.

“I got married in 1972. I met an older man and married him but I didn’t love him, I’ll be honest about it. I just married him to get away from the abuse,” she says.

Margaret had four children, three girls and a boy. “I had to give him up for adoption because nobody would help me with him,” she said.

Margaret regularly passes the buildings where she worked and was detained for her entire teenage years.

“When I’m going in and out to Limerick, it’s very hard to forget where you are. I had to pass that place a few times a week because I’m so near it. If I was miles away from it, I’d be better off,” she feels.

To this day, Margaret is not supported by some members of her family.

“I know my own family won’t like it [speaking publicly] because they’ll say I’m disgracing the family name. That’s what I was told before. They swept it under the carpet. They did nothing about it so it was time I spoke up for myself. We’ve nothing to regret. It wasn’t our fault we were in there,” she whispered.

The Taoiseach’s words in Dáil Éireann have helped Margaret and her Magdalene surviving colleagues to commence the healing process. At least now they feel included in mainstream Irish life.

“We all broke down last night. It was 11pm by the time I got home from Dublin. We were up in the gallery. It was very emotional. We can get on with our lives now and not look back. We can look forward,” Margaret said.

She broke her wrist last Wednesday week but her heart was broken many decades before that. Her wrist will take a few weeks to regain full mobility but her heart is already discernibly lighter.