Thousands sacrificed on ‘altar of reputation’

Dr Donal McKeown was speaking following the publication of reports into mother and baby homes across the country.

These institutions housed women and girls who became pregnant outside marriage and the laundries were Catholic-run workhouses that operated right across the island of Ireland.

Speaking at Mass in Derry, Bishop McKeown said the reports revealed “how the lives of vulnerable women were blighted in order to maintain the reputation for respectability in families and communities.”

He added: “Potential crimes against girls and young women may have been passed over without investigation by statutory authorities in order to preserve reputations. Guilt was dumped on the vulnerable. And their problem was dumped on somebody else to be sorted out. Thousands of lives were sacrificed on the altar of reputation.”

It was recently revealed that 10,500 women went through mother-and-baby homes in Northern Ireland and 3,000 were admitted into Magdalene laundries.

The Stormont-commissioned report examined the period between 1922 and 1990.

The last mother-and-baby institution closed in 1990; the last Magdalene laundry in 1984.

The report examined eight mother-and-baby homes, a number of workhouses and four Magdalene laundries - including one in Derry run by the Good Shepherd Sisters.