Magdalene laundries survivor recalls a childhood of relentless abuse and neglect

For her entire childhood, Kathleen King was known as “Satan, Red Boy or No.5.”

The “Satan or Red Boy” were because she was a spirited child. The “No.5″ was after her mother, who was known in the west of Ireland Mother and Baby Home where King was born as “Sow No.5″, because she served as a wet-nurse to other infants. “That was my name. The devil’s child. It didn’t bother me one iota what they called me,” she says.

Now 80, King has clear memories of her early years in Ballaghaderreen industrial school. She remembers mistaking the nuns in their habits for magpies, and being left to sit for so long on a potty that her skin stuck to the metal. From the age of five, children were put to work polishing floors and cleaning. Physical abuse in Ballagharderreen happened “all the time”. The only time she saw the inside of a classroom was when the inspector was coming.

After an incident when she was 11 and stood up to a nun, she was moved to a convent laundry in Athlone and later, when she was 12, Donnybrook Magdalene Laundry (DLM). She spent seven years in DML, and did not leave the care of the Religious Sisters of Charity (RSC) until she was 21.

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They never educated anybody. All they were interested in was to keep the money coming and keep the children working, working, working

—  Kathleen King

“They said they were keeping me in case anyone would do any harm to me.” She shakes her head. “It was for cleaning and sewing. We used to knit the big, thick socks for the army.” She can still describe how the socks were to be folded.

Some of the nuns were kind, but they all tended to mind their own business, which allowed others to do as they pleased. Beatings in the head with a bunch of keys were a regular occurrence. She remembers once a visiting priest asking her how she got the welt on her cheek, but she was afraid to say in case it got her another beating.

[ Nuns who ran Magdalene laundries have not contributed to redress for women ]

[ The truth about the Magdalene laundries was hiding in plain sight ]

She gave evidence to the Inter-Departmental Committee to establish the facts of the State involved with the Magdalene laundries, which was chaired by then-senator Martin McAleese. She didn’t get to speak until the end of the working day, and found the experience hurried and distressing. Her account of the physical abuse she experienced was not included in the committee report.

She is currently involved in the appeals process against the Magdalene redress scheme. She has been told that the written records of the RSC contradict her account of the years she was there, and they hold more weight than her own testimony. “They’re trying to tell me I wasn’t where I said I was,” she says.

‘Enough is enough’

Still, she refuses to be broken. “We have to say enough is enough… The system let me down. The Government let me down.”

Middle class society turned a blind eye. “Wealthier people knew. The poorer people didn’t know; they thought [the nuns] were helping us. But the middle class and the upper class knew about it. People were told that they would rear [the girls and women] and keep them and educate them. They never educated anybody. All they were interested in was to keep the money coming and keep the children working, working, working.”

The Religious Sisters of Charity declined to comment. Efforts to contact Dr Martin McAleese were not successful. In a statement, the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth said it was “committed to the development of a National Centre for Research and Remembrance at the site of the former Magdalen Laundry on Sean McDermott Street”.