WEBVTT 00:00:03.810 --> 00:00:06.764 Emily, you're coming with me now. 00:00:06.805 --> 00:00:08.293 No, no! 00:00:08.412 --> 00:00:10.200 You don't have any choice! 00:00:10.203 --> 00:00:11.978 I haven't done anything wrong! 00:00:22.003 --> 00:00:26.389 Imagine if you were abducted and held prisoner against your will; 00:00:29.871 --> 00:00:31.630 if you had your possessions taken; 00:00:33.474 --> 00:00:35.261 your hair cut; 00:00:36.515 --> 00:00:38.251 your clothing removed. 00:00:39.344 --> 00:00:41.303 If you were forced to wear a a uniform; 00:00:42.707 --> 00:00:44.991 and answer to a new name ... 00:00:55.487 --> 00:00:58.930 For Gabrielle O' Gorman, and thousands of women in Ireland, 00:00:58.962 --> 00:01:00.510 this was a reality. 00:01:00.946 --> 00:01:05.155 At the age of 17, Gabrielle was working at a Roman Catholic convent, 00:01:05.296 --> 00:01:07.002 looking after young children. 00:01:07.237 --> 00:01:09.660 But the nuns disapproved of her behaviour. 00:01:10.068 --> 00:01:14.032 I was working with the children in the convent, probably there about 4 months, 00:01:14.071 --> 00:01:18.346 and I think they thought that I was getting a bit wild, 00:01:18.382 --> 00:01:20.398 and I was going out with boys, 00:01:20.427 --> 00:01:25.180 and I was going out with a particular man that they didn't really like. 00:01:25.438 --> 00:01:29.142 We had a date, we went out and I decided to stay the night. 00:01:29.933 --> 00:01:35.077 When I went to the convent the next day, they had my case ready, 00:01:35.147 --> 00:01:37.365 and with a policeman, and they said, 00:01:37.399 --> 00:01:40.321 'Gabrielle, we're taking you somewhere safe.' 00:01:41.342 --> 00:01:45.501 The 'safe' place was, in fact, one of the infamous Magdalene Laundries, 00:01:45.661 --> 00:01:49.029 which were run by Roman Catholic religious orders in Ireland. 00:01:49.499 --> 00:01:51.886 Here, women they deemed 'sinners' were sent, 00:01:51.911 --> 00:01:53.676 supposedly to earn forgiveness. 00:01:54.529 --> 00:01:57.997 It is estimated that at any one time during the 20th Century 00:01:58.005 --> 00:02:01.335 there were up to one thousand women locked up in these laundries. 00:02:05.001 --> 00:02:07.640 Now, Gabrielle is returning to the Dublin laundry 00:02:07.671 --> 00:02:10.482 for the first time since she was a teenager. 00:02:10.802 --> 00:02:13.381 It remained open until 1996, 00:02:13.444 --> 00:02:15.249 but is now derelict and hazardous, 00:02:15.264 --> 00:02:16.909 so she must wear safety gear. 00:02:29.564 --> 00:02:31.659 It feels really weird, 00:02:31.939 --> 00:02:35.024 it feels almost claustrophobic. 00:02:35.611 --> 00:02:40.871 You can hear the alarm thing going off. After all these years... 00:02:40.902 --> 00:02:42.666 ...just look at it ... 00:02:42.707 --> 00:02:44.815 ... dark, dingy ... 00:02:45.766 --> 00:02:46.650 ... horrible. 00:02:49.947 --> 00:02:54.259 This is the room where I first came, 00:02:55.389 --> 00:02:58.926 the day I came in with all my stuff in my case, 00:02:59.213 --> 00:03:00.634 and the nun said, 00:03:00.665 --> 00:03:03.339 'Take off all your clothes Gabrielle, 00:03:04.492 --> 00:03:05.996 you wear this uniform'. 00:03:06.012 --> 00:03:09.407 I said, 'No! I am not wearing that!' 00:03:09.850 --> 00:03:15.529 And I was screaming and saying, 'I am not staying here, I want to get out now!' 00:03:15.922 --> 00:03:18.049 But nobody listened. 00:03:18.489 --> 00:03:23.180 Kind of the feeling is really still there now and I... 00:03:27.761 --> 00:03:30.489 Eventually they took me out into the laundry 00:03:30.489 --> 00:03:35.190 and that's where I saw all the women working with the steam and the rollers, 00:03:35.237 --> 00:03:40.466 and I can feel the smell, the carbolic soap in particular. 00:03:40.997 --> 00:03:43.700 I immediately sat there and I was crying. 00:03:43.762 --> 00:03:47.205 I thought, 'Where am I, what am I doing here?' 00:03:50.323 --> 00:03:53.612 There were girls in there as young as 9, 00:03:53.659 --> 00:03:55.823 that maybe were attractive, 00:03:55.847 --> 00:03:58.228 and they didn't want them to have boyfriends, 00:03:58.256 --> 00:04:05.037 or they needed them to be part of the laundry to work in as slaves. 00:04:11.654 --> 00:04:14.907 Most of the laundry was delivered by vans, 00:04:14.946 --> 00:04:20.632 and it was usually from the local colleges, schools, hospitals. 00:04:20.671 --> 00:04:25.004 I remember seeing some of blood and that on the sheets. 00:04:28.553 --> 00:04:33.417 The women, they worked from six in the morning all day, just doing the laundry, 00:04:33.577 --> 00:04:36.927 and they sang hymns as well while they worked. 00:04:37.307 --> 00:04:39.624 They never would be allowed to talk, 00:04:40.189 --> 00:04:42.528 and you'd always find the nuns walking about, 00:04:42.552 --> 00:04:45.091 making sure everybody was doing the work. 00:04:45.337 --> 00:04:48.513 It probably was 12, 13 hours a day. 00:04:48.552 --> 00:04:51.649 Then they'd have their meal and they would go to bed. 00:04:55.612 --> 00:04:58.049 The nuns were very cruel, 00:04:58.112 --> 00:05:03.352 and a lot of the women also became very aggressive towards each other, 00:05:03.375 --> 00:05:05.791 because that was the environment. 00:05:05.875 --> 00:05:09.516 If you didn't do what you were told, you were punished. 00:05:09.771 --> 00:05:14.529 You'd have to do a public apology and you'd have to kiss the floor. 00:05:16.687 --> 00:05:21.513 The only time the nun would speak to us, she'd say, 'Kneel down.' 00:05:30.281 --> 00:05:36.639 If you didn't toe the line, then they would really break your spirit 00:05:37.566 --> 00:05:39.529 and they wouldn't let up. 00:05:44.715 --> 00:05:47.504 They used to get us women to write, 00:05:47.512 --> 00:05:50.396 maybe to your mother or a relative. 00:05:51.831 --> 00:05:55.984 I now know that those letters never went to the families. 00:05:56.143 --> 00:05:59.468 So you'd think, 'I haven't had a reply.' 00:05:59.703 --> 00:06:03.974 You got that feeling of nobody wants you anyhow. 00:06:06.307 --> 00:06:08.005 Being here now, 00:06:08.036 --> 00:06:15.024 it gives me that real feeling of total isolation, abandonment. 00:06:15.501 --> 00:06:21.102 It's never actually left me because I've had always those nightmares, 00:06:21.250 --> 00:06:25.144 going back and waking up thinking, 'I'm there'. 00:06:27.684 --> 00:06:31.736 All I wanted to do was get out, but there was no way out. 00:06:32.039 --> 00:06:35.268 It was high walls, glass on the walls ... 00:06:35.524 --> 00:06:38.942 ...it really was run like a prison. 00:06:39.293 --> 00:06:40.931 This here, 00:06:41.374 --> 00:06:45.169 that's what they would do if anybody came to the door, 00:06:46.009 --> 00:06:49.615 because they'd never open the door unless they knew who it was, 00:06:49.658 --> 00:06:54.876 and if they went through a door, it was always locked. 00:06:55.082 --> 00:06:58.648 You really got that feeling of being locked in. 00:07:02.178 --> 00:07:05.356 I had been planning to get away for six weeks. 00:07:05.493 --> 00:07:08.364 I watched when the drivers would come in every day, 00:07:08.443 --> 00:07:10.997 and I know it was about 2 o' clock, 00:07:11.028 --> 00:07:13.586 and I said to my friend Joan, 00:07:13.617 --> 00:07:15.576 'Right, be ready 2 o' clock!' 00:07:15.649 --> 00:07:18.262 And we saw the door open, 00:07:18.302 --> 00:07:20.002 and I said, 'Come on, charge!' 00:07:20.033 --> 00:07:23.276 We ran and we ran and all the women were stopping me, 00:07:23.287 --> 00:07:27.108 but I just pushed anybody away, out of my way. 00:07:27.194 --> 00:07:30.008 Joan was behind me, I was saying, 'Come on, come on, come on!' 00:07:39.993 --> 00:07:43.262 My friend said, 'We'll go to my auntie', 00:07:43.309 --> 00:07:46.529 so we go to her auntie who lived nearby. 00:07:46.956 --> 00:07:51.162 As soon as her auntie saw us, she gave us something to eat, 00:07:51.598 --> 00:07:53.529 and then she rang the police. 00:07:53.793 --> 00:07:56.443 The police came along, picked us up 00:07:56.513 --> 00:07:58.812 and took us straight back to the Magdalenes. 00:08:02.154 --> 00:08:06.165 Gabrielle was woken early the next morning and taken by two nuns 00:08:06.180 --> 00:08:08.901 to the much larger Good Shepherd Laundry in Limerick. 00:08:10.984 --> 00:08:14.729 Here they left her, promising she would only be there for a week. 00:08:15.769 --> 00:08:17.776 My first impressions of Limerick... 00:08:17.815 --> 00:08:19.619 ...truly awful. 00:08:19.960 --> 00:08:21.833 I had to wear the uniform then, 00:08:21.927 --> 00:08:25.867 and they said, 'You will no longer be called Gabrielle,' 00:08:25.890 --> 00:08:27.728 'you will now be called Stella.' 00:08:35.453 --> 00:08:38.982 I think you can become institutionalised very quickly 00:08:39.014 --> 00:08:40.857 when your control is taken away, 00:08:40.873 --> 00:08:44.550 you've been given a different name, you're made to wear a uniform. 00:08:44.697 --> 00:08:47.890 They kept tricking, they would trick you. 00:08:48.235 --> 00:08:52.549 'Well, if you do this, then after that, we'll let you go on Monday.' 00:08:52.961 --> 00:08:55.293 Two and a half years later - still there 00:08:55.295 --> 00:08:58.522 and always on the promise that they'd let me go. 00:09:01.516 --> 00:09:04.002 A lot of the women died in there. 00:09:04.158 --> 00:09:06.893 I know there was times where you'd see somebody 00:09:06.913 --> 00:09:09.860 and then you'd never see them again. 00:09:09.880 --> 00:09:13.915 You'd say,'Ooh, where is' say, 'Margaret, or Mary?' 00:09:14.163 --> 00:09:18.333 They'd say, 'Oh, she's very ill, she's in the infirmary', 00:09:18.675 --> 00:09:21.538 but it turns out now, that they were just buried ... 00:09:21.552 --> 00:09:25.740 ... they were just buried without a funeral or anything. 00:09:26.771 --> 00:09:30.004 After two and a half years, locked up against her will, 00:09:30.415 --> 00:09:32.679 Gabrielle was finally released. 00:09:34.744 --> 00:09:38.385 I really feel that Ireland and the Church 00:09:38.592 --> 00:09:40.699 should hang their heads in shame. 00:09:44.685 --> 00:09:48.347 I hope now that the dreams that I used to have, 00:09:48.379 --> 00:09:53.148 not being able to get out, that now hopefully will go. 00:09:55.288 --> 00:10:00.691 If I was now 17 again, my advice would be 00:10:00.746 --> 00:10:03.513 don't let anybody take that control from you, 00:10:03.539 --> 00:10:06.045 because it can affect your life.