Peter Mullan's THE MAGDALENE SISTERS
is based on the shocking true story of thousands of women who were rejected by their families and abandoned to the mercy of the Catholic Church.
Dismissed as 'fallen', these women were institutionalised often having committed no crime other than being poor, orphaned, victims of rape, having a child out of wedlock, or deemed to be in 'moral danger.'
The Magdalene homes were set up in nineteenth century Ireland as a place of refuge for prostitutes and 'fallen' women. They were named after the biblical Mary Magdalene, a former prostitute who repented before Christ and was given the honour of washing his feet.
As the twentieth century loomed in Ireland the homes were taken over by the Catholic Church, who brought in a much stricter regime.
Run by the Sisters of Mercy, women were forced into unpaid labour 8-10 hours a day, 7 days a week, cleaning the laundry of local hotels, universities and institutions. This was seen as penance for their sins by the society that deemed them unfit or 'unsafe' for normal life.
At the turn of the century, Ireland was a nation crippled with poverty and an overburdened social welfare system. Families were under great pressure to institutionalise children that brought shame on the family, often handing them over to the local priest. The Church would then encourage their illegal incarceration in the Magdalene Laundries.
The strict dogma of the Catholic Church ruled with an iron fist over Irish society allowing these institutions to exist well into the 1970's. Within the Magdalene homes a life with no hope, strict punishment and emotional and physical abuse was standard.
On arrival the girls had their clothes and belongings taken away from them, had their heads shaved and had their real names taken from them and replaced by the names of Catholic saints.
A strict regime of work, prayer and sleep was enforced with no contact with the outside world in the form of books, newspapers, or personal contact with their families. Locked in the homes, many previous inmates described their existence as worse than prison. They claimed that in prison you had some rights, whereas in The Magdalene Laundries you had none.
Held against their will, some women lived an entire life behind the walls of the Magdalene Convents, living and dying in exile from the outside world.
The nuns did not prepare the girls for outside life, so that on leaving the Magdalene Laundries many had a daily struggle coping with their new lives.
The stigma attached to being a former inmate of the homes was such that many never mentioned their incarceration or left Ireland altogether to hide the shame. Young mothers giving birth to children outside of marriage had their babies forcibly adopted and were made to sign documents preventing them from tracing their children at a later date. The sisters running the homes colluded with a system already in place, a society that saw young women as a danger to the strict moral codes of the church and family.
They justified this incarceration as being for the girl's own protection, believing them to be in moral danger outside the home's walls. In addition to this the conspiracy of silence and shame that surrounded the inmate's family meant that many girls did not have a home or community to return to.
Pregnancy outside marriage was seen as falling away from Christ and children of such penitents were thought to be in danger of being led astray for 7 generations.
Children of unwed mothers were often placed in orphanages only to be sent to the Magdalene at 17 for the sins of their mother.
Dickensian standards of starvation, beatings and abuse led to runaways and later riots in Scotland Magdalene homes in the 1950's and 1960's.
Some of the ten homes existing in Ireland were phased out in the 1970's, with the consumer boom encouraging washing machines in the home and loosening of the Catholic Church's power over Irish society.
In 1996 the last Magdalene home was closed, with 40-50 women still in residence unable to cope with life outside the institution.
To this day the Catholic Church has not formally apologised or paid compensation to the Magdalene women.
Many of the women left Ireland on release to rebuild new lives in England or further a field. It has been estimated that 30,000 women and girls lived and died in The Magdalene Laundries.
The plight of the Magdalene women was initially brought to the attention of the media in 1992, with the award winning play Eclipsed by Patricia Burke Brogan.
Brogan had worked in one of the homes during the 1960s, and sought to break the stigma surrounding the homes. She has commented that the women were, " innocent victims of a Puritanical Irish society, locked up for life, condemned to oblivion, anonymous even in death." Singer/songwriter Joni Mitchell later wrote the powerful song The Magdalene Laundries in 1997, which became an unofficial protest song for the survivors on the laundries.
Acclaimed Director Peter Mullan wrote THE MAGDALENE SISTERS after being inspired by the Channel 4 documentary Sex In A Cold Climate which highlighted the plight of the Magdalene women.
Peter was drawn to the project on several levels.
He was appalled by the hidden suffering of the Magdalene women. Having been deeply moved by documentary footage he saw, Mullan was incensed by the level of injustice these women suffered and wanted to bring their story to a wider audience. He decided to base the film on four distinct stories and used video evidence as his main source of research. Having seen several documentaries about the Magdalene women, Mullan allowed their testimonials to speak for themselves, taking the essence of these to make a feature length film. "It's a drama, it's a fiction, but is inspired by their stories", he says.
Mullan was fascinated by the absolute power the church held over Irish society stating,
" A woman once said to me when I asked what it was like to be a young woman in Ireland in the 1960's-' think KGB'.
She was right; it was tantamount to the KGB.
If a priest said he wanted your child then you gave him your child and never asked questions. So you have this weird combination where the people don't ask questions of the Church and the Church asks no questions of itself."
The longevity of the Magdalene homes also intrigued Mullan who comments, "I think the state, the church and the family conspired against young women who they deemed to be morally irresponsible. Theocracy, particularly the Catholic Church, sees itself as the moral guardian of young women."
Mullan set THE MAGDALENE SISTERS on the outskirts of Dublin, Ireland in 1964.
In a time when many women were experiencing new found cultural freedom, four young women struggle in the Magdalene Laundries to survive incarceration in 'god's sweatshop'.
The narrative is centred on their lives during incarceration and their difficult relationships with the nuns who act as their jailers.