An estimated 30,000 women were confined in Irish asylums. The first asylum in Ireland opened on
Leeson Street in Dublin in 1765, founded by
Lady Arabella Denny. The last Irish asylum closed in 1996. In Belfast, in Northern Ireland, the
Church of Ireland-run
Ulster Magdalene Asylum was founded in 1839, while parallel institutions were run by Catholics and Presbyterians.
[8][9]
A
mass grave containing 155 corpses was discovered in 1993 at the grounds of a former convent in
Dublin.
[10] This eventually led to media revelations about the operations of the secretive institutions. A formal state apology was issued in 2013, and a €60 million compensation scheme was set up. The Vatican and the four religious institutes that ran the Irish asylums have refused to compensate the survivors of abuse, despite demands from the Irish government, the
UN Committee on the Rights of the Child and the UN
Committee Against Torture.
[11][12][13][14]
The Magdalene Sisters, a 2002 film by Peter Mullan, is based on historical facts about four young women incarcerated in a Dublin Magdalene Laundry from 1964 to 1968.
Senator Martin McAleese's report on the Laundries glossed over[
according to whom?] details of the abuse.
[15] In 2013 the BBC did a special investigation, Sue Lloyd Roberts "Demanding justice for women and children abused by Irish nuns."
[16] The
Sisters of Mercy,
Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd, and
Sisters of Charity, have ignored requests by the
UN Committee on the Rights of the Child and the UN
Committee Against Torture to contribute to the compensation fund for victims including 600 still alive in March 2014.
[17]
