Girl in the Tunnel: My Story of Love and Loss as a Survivor of the Magdalene Laundries

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Oh!’ She said suddenly and rummaged in her bag, pulling out one of those thin, flat Dairy Milk bars you don’t see anymore. My shoes got too small and when I asked to be paid so I could get new ones, they just brought me down to Heuston or whatever it was called then, and put me on a train to Carlow,” said Maureen. Granny told us that my father was out riding one day and got caught in the rain. A few days later he fell gravely ill. He died three days after that. That’s how the story was told to me anyway. I feel really sad, a truly great and deep sorrow, when I think about my young mother at his bedside, with him slipping away so fast, and then at his graveside with a toddler, a baby in her arms and another on the way. The laureate will be announced at the World Expression Forum (WEXFO) in Lillehammer, Norway on Monday, May 22nd. The determined words of Carlow’s Maureen Sullivan, one of the youngest survivors of Ireland’s infamous Magdalene laundries. Maureen has just published her memoir Girl in the tunnel – my story of love and loss as a survivor of the Magdalene Laundries, where she bravely recounts her agonising journey from a monstrously violent home in Carlow town to the cold and brutal Magdalene laundry system and her desperate, gruelling fight for freedom and for justice.

The tunnel of the book title was where Sullivan was hidden if inspectors or outsiders arrived at the laundry and might ask questions. Once, when she was 14, she was forgotten about in that tunnel. She became hysterical. It took days for her to get over it.After my father died that room was left empty, except for a small table in the corner on which his billhook lay.

Recreation time was making Rosary beads or knitting Aran sweaters,” she said, “but the reward for speaking was imprisonment”. In time she remarried, this time to a man from Westmeath, and they had a son. In 1988, matters came to a head. “I couldn’t get a decent job because I didn’t have the education and it just all hit me one day.” She took an overdose. “I was taken into hospital. I was got in time and was pumped out, and the rules there was if you try anything like that you have to go for counselling. I didn’t know what counselling was.” Like most people in those days, we had an outhouse with our cottage, just your basic privy with no flush. Scraps of paper hung on a nail, which was also the norm in Irish houses at the time, that we had cut up from newspapers we found around the town. We could never have bought one. We barely had enough money to live.Maureen Sullivan (70) is a strong woman. She has had to be. Probably the youngest person to have been held in a Magdalene laundry in Ireland, she was just 12 when she arrived at the Good Shepherd-run establishment at New Ross, Co Wexford, in 1964. Over the following four years she was transferred to another such laundry in Athy, Co Kildare, and then to a home for the blind on Merrion Road in Dublin. I spoke to a person about it recently, and she said ‘well, Maureen, there’s a lot more crime nowadays’, and I said I’d prefer a little more crime than knowing about little children getting abused behind high walls,” she said.

Granny was very poor, living in a little house that had no electricity or running water, and although she loved us very much, she could not support us. I imagine the reason my mother rushed to marry Marty Murphy, a gammy-footed pig dealer from Carlow town, was to save us from starvation. When I started publicising my case my boss was a lovely man, and said ‘you go ahead and tell your truth, and anything I can do to help you, I will’. A man for justice,” said Maureen. Day in, day out those nuns, those women and others like them, watched me at twelve, thirteen, fourteen and on until I was nearly an adult, work to the bone. They watched me, but not only that, they made it as hard for me as they could. They made me do hard time, hard penance, for a crime a man had committed against me. Something I had no control over. If I had taken a knife and gutted Marty Murphy like I had often dreamed about, at least prison would have let me go to school. (114) Marty, however, never went without. He was fed first and always had a supply of his two great loves, Erinmore tobacco and Irel coffee, which came in a bottle and was stirred into hot water. He took it with milk. Not having any milk when Marty wanted coffee was a sentence for punishment, so myself and my brothers pre-empted this and other things we would get in trouble for by taking preventative action. It’s something I still struggle with today, as I find myself fretting if I run out of milk, even though I’m the only one here. Sincere and compelling, Maureen Sullivan's story (co-written with Liosa McNamara) of her incarceration in three of Ireland's Magdalene Laundries is an important addition to the bibliography of books on the subject.

Girl in the Tunnel

Not allowed to speak, barely fed and often going without water, the child was viciously beaten by the nuns for years and hidden away in an underground tunnel when government inspectors came. I changed most of the names in the book – my abuser, relatives, locals and the nuns, because I’m not out to hurt or for revenge. I wrote this book because I was silenced as a child when I was a victim of abuse, and I was silenced by society when I left the laundry. I want people to know what happened. This is my history, but it is also the history of this country,” said Maureen. You must remember beneath those habits were women who treated little girls appallingly, and I get in trouble when I say that,” she said. No one could see how cruelly the nuns were treating her, and she would later be moved to the laundry at St Michael’s Convent in Athy, when she was only 13 in 1966.

As with even the best books, of course there were a few things that I didn't like about the writing. Most noticeably the "in those days" comment was extreamly over used. And a lot of the things that preceded that comment are still quiet common. For example, washing powder can still come in cardboard boxes, though electricity is widely available there are those who do not have it, particularly children of abuse, the same with phones. And during my time at school 90's - 00's we also wrapped our school books in wallpaper. I also had times where I had to eat goody (without the sugar) and other times when my sisters and I starved but had to hide it as it was also not considered normal in the 90's and 00's.My mother was nineteen and pregnant with me when my father died suddenly. Michael was two and my other brother, Paddy, was only eight months. They all lived with my granny in her tiny two-storey cottage in the middle of the Irish countryside. That was where I was born a few months later, in the little parlour off the main room – the same room that my newly-wed parents had first slept in together. Kristenn Einarsson, Chair of the IPA’s Freedom to Publish Committee said: “Publishers play a vital role in guaranteeing the freedom of expression of authors. This year’s 2023 IPA Prix Voltaire shortlist is a testament to publishers who put themselves at risk to publish the works of others and contribute to our societies by ensuring readers have access to multiple voices and perspectives.”