on our patch STEPHEN BARNES/RELIGION / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
Hell of the laundries
Journalists tell Ruth Addicott about covering the Magdalene Laundries scandal
I
t was the late 1990s when Irish journalist Lynne Kelleher first reported on the Magdalene Laundries. The suffering of more than 10,000 women and girls in the Catholic-run laundries
between 1922 and 1996 is one of the most harrowing stories in Irish history, leading to a long campaign and fight for justice and a state apology in 2013. Kelleher was a young reporter on the Irish Sunday Mirror
when she received a call from survivor Mary Norris, asking if she would accompany her to the convent in Cork where she had been held. The convent had closed and the land sold but the ‘long dark corridors’ remained. “I walked in with her and she was shaking,” recalls Kelleher. “Mary described a horrific situation. Some of the women
had their hair cut short, even shaved. They were given men’s names, they were completely de-feminised. She said she would never forget the cries of the mothers who had their babies taken away; it used to haunt her.” One of the most harrowing parts for Norris was the women
who were never granted a proper burial and, the following day, she asked Kelleher if she would accompany her back again.
Get personal and keep pushing
Sophie Warburton, features writer at The Sun, interviewed survivor Gabrielle O’Gorman in November 2025. Warburton says journalists should not be afraid to ask personal
20 | theJournalist
questions and says answers must be conveyed accurately. “The worst that can happen
is your interviewee says no, they don’t want to answer. The point is you’re there to
learn and inform your readers of exactly what went on.”
Details in podcasts Long-form podcasts offer a great platform for telling the
“Mary was determined to find the grave and suddenly she remembered it being on the other side of a wall,” recalls Kelleher. “I hopped up on the wall and I was walking around the field and I came across this stone. It said something like ‘Here lie the graves of the Magdalene women’. It was a mass grave.” The story prompted a huge response and ran in the UK as
well as Ireland. Kelleher has been covering the case for years, but that day with Mary Norris has never left her. Patsy McGarry was religious affairs correspondent of The
Irish Times (1997–2023) and says it was a challenge making sure he didn’t get overwhelmed or desensitised by the stories. “At times, restraint was a trial when dealing with representatives of the four religious congregations which ran the laundries and who have refused to contribute to a statutory compensation scheme for the surviving women. Sticking to the facts and reporting their positions fairly and accurately was probably the greatest difficulty of all.” The moment that stands out for McGarry was in October 2002 when he attended a preview of Peter Mullan’s film The Magdalene Sisters in Dublin and arranged for Norris and fellow survivor Sarah Williams to accompany him. They were re-traumatised and it is something he regrets to this day. In 2005 while at college, filmmaker Steven O’Riordan
watched The Magdalene Sisters. O’Riordan, then 22, had never heard of the Magdalene Laundries. It changed his life. “When the names came up at the end of all the women who
full story, says journalist Lynne Kelleher: “You can do more than with a two-page article – you can really dive into the nuts and bolts. “Nobody came back for
them – they were abandoned. It was such a heartbreaking and senseless waste of lives.”
Don’t give up A major barrier was that requests for interviews from the Church were repeatedly declined. Filmmaker Nuala Cunningham says it’s important not to give up: “If you believe in a story, keep pushing.”
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