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

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Sullivan had been so young when it happened, all of 12, that she grew up literally not understanding how the church could do that to a child.

Like most people in those days, we had an outhouse with our cottage, just your basic privy with no flush.

The Girl in the Tunnel is the heart-breaking story of her agonising journey from a violent home to the brutal Magdalene laundry, and her desperate fight for freedom and for justice. 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. 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. The tunnel of the book title was where Sullivan was hidden if inspectors or outsiders arrived at the laundry and might ask questions.

I was trafficked through four institutions (she was moved to Dublin after Athy), and I got out at 16,” she said. But if they were shocked to find that a child had been put in a Magdalene laundry, the reason why Sullivan found herself in that situation was even more shocking. 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. Mercier challenged Catholic dogma, which dominated Irish society, as well as censorship in Ireland, publishing books such as Marriage Partnership (which had to be sold under the counter). When the nun got it out of me, I trusted her and I do think she thought what she was doing was the right thing, but I was punished for speaking out,” said Maureen.Maureen grew up in rural Co Carlow in the 1950s and 60s and was viciously beaten and raped by her stepfather from the age of 8. 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. Maybe I would have felt better if I’d known him, but I was just left to wonder if he would have loved me. I'm reminded, a little, of more and more horror stories coming out about residential schools in Canada—these are stories that need to be told while those who lived the stories are still around to tell them.

She said suddenly and rummaged in her bag, pulling out one of those thin, flat Dairy Milk bars you don’t see anymore.

They have very little to live on, despite the grandmother’s ingenuity in conjuring up food, and Maureen’s mother quickly marries a pig-jobber in Carlow, to provide for her children. She remembered seeing the documentary Dear Daughter in 1996 about abuse at the Goldenbridge orphanage in Dublin involving the late Christine Buckley. It really is a lovely book, which is strange to say considering the concept but I really enjoyed it and recommended it around to everyone I know already.