“Stolen for Being Pretty: Ireland’s Hidden Prison for Women”
Dublin, 1963. A 16-year-old girl walks home from school when a van pulls up beside her. Two nuns step out. They grab her arms and force her inside. Her crime? She's pretty. Too pretty. "A temptation to men." She's taken to a large gray building with bars on the windows. The nuns cut her hair short. Take her clothes. Give her a uniform. Tell her she's a sinner. Tell her she'll work here now. To atone. She wouldn't leave for 14 years. Her name was Mary. And she was one of over 10,000 women imprisoned in Ireland's Magdalene Laundries church-run institutions that destroyed lives under the guise of saving souls. Ireland, 1922-1996. The Magdalene Laundries were institutions run by the Catholic Church, supposedly to "rehabilitate" fallen women. But "fallen" was defined however the Church wanted. You were sent there if you were: Pregnant and unmarried Pretty and "tempting men to sin" Raped (yes, r@pe victims were sent there for be...