Shaped by silence : stories from the inmates of the Good Shepherd laundries and reformatories

"We were like human animals in one of the old-style zoos." Shaped by Silence brings together the powerful stories of five women from Ireland, Canada, and Australia whose lives were shaped by forced confinement in Magdalene laundries and other institutions operated by the Roman Catholic Order of Sisters of the Good Shepherd. Their narratives include one teenager's experience in a Good Shepherd training school in Canada; another story of a child who was born in a Canadian Good Shepherd laundry; and three accounts of adolescent girls held in Good Shepherd Magdalene laundries in Ireland and Australia. In these institutions, women and girls became a coerced workforce. Hard, unpaid and relentless physical toil, isolation, enforced silence, and prayer constituted the nuns' strategy for converting their "fallen" charges into the Christian image of pure womanhood. Within this regime, girls and women suffered physical, psychological, and emotional abuse. While intimately capturing the dark and enduring after-effects of ill-treatment, the stories recounted in Shaped by Silence also describe survivors' efforts to heal and rebuild their lives. This important book shines a light on a pervasive and systemic pattern of cruelty and exploitation. It reveals the unwarranted confinement of generations of girls and women in Good Shepherd institutions around the world and constitutes a call for full acknowledgement of their suffering. RIE CROLL is an associate professor of sociology in the social/ cultural studies programme at Memorial University, Grenfell Campus, and a former therapist who worked with abused girls and women. "Shaped by Silence brings together the powerful and devastating stories of five women from Ireland, Canada, and Australia whose lives were shaped by forced confinement in Magdalene laundries and related reform "schools" operated by the Roman Catholic Order of Sisters of the Good Shepherd. Their narratives include one teenager's experience in a Good Shepherd training school in Toronto, Canada; one story of a child born into a Canadian Good Shepherd laundry; and three accounts of adolescent girls incarcerated in Good Shepherd Magdalene laundries in Ireland and Australia. In the Good Shepherd reform institutions, supposedly convertible souls became a coerced workforce. Hard, unpaid, and relentless physical toil, isolation from unseemly forces, and prayer were a large part of the nuns' strategy for converting their charges into the Christian image of pure womanhood. Girls and women suffered unspeakable physical, psychological, and emotional abuse. While intimately capturing dark journeys, these stories also offer hope. They represent pathways for re-envisioning our cultural practices and creating space for important alternative narratives. "-- Provided by publisher