Nov 10, 2010
‘Justice for Magdalenes’ Inches Closer?
Yesterday the Irish Human Rights Commission responded to a request for an enquiry from Justice for Magdalenes with a recommendation that the government would immediately establish a statutory enquiry to investigate the treatment experienced by women there, together with the state’s role in sending women to the Magdalene Laundries. Women who were abused in the Magdalene Laundries, including by being forced to engage in heavy labour, have been omitted from the statutory redress system since its establishment by the Residential Institutions Redress Act, 2002. The main findings of the IHRC were:
1. That for those girls and women who entered ‘Magdalen Laundries’ following a Court process, there was clear State involvement in their entry to the Laundries;
2. That questions arise as to whether the State’s obligations to guard against arbitrary detention were met in the absence of information on whether and how girls and women under Court-processes resided in and left the laundries.
3. That the State may have breached its obligations on forced or compulsory labour under the 1930 Forced Labour Convention in not suppressing/outlawing the practice in laundries and in actually engaging in trade with the convents running the Laundries for goods produced as a result of forced labour.
4. That the State may have breached its obligations to ensure that no one is held in servitude insofar as some women and girls in the Laundries may have been held in conditions of servitude after the State assumed obligations under Article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights in 1953.
5. That the burial, exhumation and cremation of known and unknown women from a ‘Magdalen Laundry’ in 1993 at High Park raises serious questions for the State in the absence of detailed legislation governing the area. That it is important to establish whether all bodies are identified and accounted for in such communal plots, whether there are death certificates for all those buried in those locations, and whether their remains were properly preserved and reinterred.
These conclusions should be of very little surprise to readers of HRinI where we have written about the Magdalen Laundries here and here and in guest posts from James Smith and from Maeve O’Rourke (second post). In fact, Maeve was one of the co-authors of the submission to the IHRC that resulted in this report and recommendation.
As we, as a country, continue to try to come to terms with our abysmal history of the treatment of the young and the vulnerable which constituted a social, and often State, collusion in gross patterns of abuse and exploitation of young people in this country, so too must we establish mechanisms to recognise and make some kinds of amends for our treatment of women, especially those who ‘dared’ to step outside of the repressive boundaries of social mores as they then were in Ireland.
In a press release yesterday, Justice for Magdalenes repeated its claim that (among other things) the State was aware of the nature and function of the Magdalene Laundries, that there was no statutory basis for the use of the laundries by the courts as an alternative to a prison sentence or as a means of probation, paid capitation grants to Magdalene Laundries and other religious convents for the confinement of young women who were considered to be ‘problematic’/on probation/on remand but never licences or inspected those Magdalene homes, refuses to acknowledge its complicity in referring women to those locations and thereby failing to protect their constitutional rights, refuses to apologise for its role in sending women to these locations or enter into any meaningful dialogue with religious orders (for the procurement of records) or redress-based dialogue with victims.
The conclusions of the IHRC and its recommendation yesterday cannot, I would think, be ignored by the State. Not only is the State under a moral obligation to establish (and, I would add, support and ensure the quick and comprehensive conclusion of the work of) a statutory enquiry, but it is also under a legal obligation to do so under Articles 2, 3 and 4 of the ECHR (right to life, right to be free from torture and inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment, right to be free from slavery or forced labour). We await further developments with keen anticipation.
Sadly, there are still similar institutions in other parts of the world. I’ll see if I can share a link with you regarding institutions for pregnant young girls in Malta. Their families are more concerned with secrecy than with the well-being of their own daughters or even grandchildren. It causes me to reflect on the politics of sexual control, authoritarianism, conformism and mysogyny implicit or explicit in all abrahamic religions. I think much of the treatment meted out (usually to women or young girls) is premised on both a desire for control/authoritarianism and a disgust of sex. I think it’s a particularly male construct. Men are disgusted by themselves sexually and they project that disgust on to women ‘she caused me to sin’ etc. Thus, their internal struggle for control of their own sexuality and disgust of their own sexual behaviours/desire is projected onto women, access to whom must be limited and constrained within acceptable social boundaries such as marriage. I find it particularly interesting in Islamic societies that the male relatives (often siblings) are so heavily invested in controlling their sister’s sexuality, ostensibly to protect the family honor. If all women are unavailable (absenting marriage) through this mechanism of social control then they will be in a position to control their own desires and to exercise them in a state/religion sanctioned manner.
My apologies for the rambling nature of the post. I realise now that there’s no delete/edit option on this page for published posts. Sigh, I must get more sleep.
I don’t think it’s rambling at all. In fact, I agree that much of this has always been about trying to control and stigmatise female sexuality.
I see the State has issued a mealy mouthed response, complaining that the Commission did not consult any Government Department in coming to it’s recommendations. I suppose the Government conveniently forget that they are INDEPENDANT and can form their own view without imput from the State. Additionally, it would appear that the Commission were already in posession of all documentation available from the State. Secondly, they complain that the Commission did not approach the Congregations. Presumably they saw little point given they had already rebuffed the Magdelene suppor group. Finally, they make the point, and invite reading into it, that the Commission decided not to conduct their own Statutory Enquiry. Of course they conveniently forget that the Commission enquiry function only has the power to make recommendations to Government, which would be back at square one, and does not either have the power to provide redress. Additionally, and the above and following is amply covered by the CEO of the Commission in his speech yesterday, the Commission, post two years of cuts, simply is hanging on by a shoe string and simply does not have the funds to mount ANY KIND of enquiry.