This book is another important testimony from a brave survivor of two kinds of abuse – familial child sexual abuse and incarceration, physical and emotional abuse in three religious institutions. I would have liked to have read more about her post-Magdalene life, in which she became an activist and advocate for her fellow sufferers. But what Maureen Sullivan gives us is essential reading: we are by no means done with what church and State did to vulnerable women and children in this country, and books like this one are a timely reminder of Ireland’s reprehensible past. Even at 12 I thought that my mother went down to the hospital and a nurse gave her a baby — Maureen Sullivan Weaving a tapestry of music and words in celebration of a bygone generation of Irish artists, My Father’s Kind is based on a suite of poems by Dermot Bolger. My Father’s Kind depicts many 20th century traditional Irish musicians, including Séamus Ennis, Mary Ann Carolan and Johnny Doherty, exploring not only the iconic music, but the real lives and humanity behind the loved and celebrated figures. The tunnel of the book title was where Sullivan was hidden if inspectors or outsiders arrived at the laundry and might ask questions. Once, when she was 14, she was forgotten about in that tunnel. She became hysterical. It took days for her to get over it. Marty, however, never went without. He was fed first and always had a supply of his two great loves, Erinmore tobacco and Irel coffee, which came in a bottle and was stirred into hot water. He took it with milk. Not having any milk when Marty wanted coffee was a sentence for punishment, so myself and my brothers pre-empted this and other things we would get in trouble for by taking preventative action. It’s something I still struggle with today, as I find myself fretting if I run out of milk, even though I’m the only one here.

I told on him, didn't I? That was the crime. That's what happened. I told the Church that my stepfather was molesting and raping me, and beating me and my brothers. When Maureen was just 12 years old, she confided in a teacher that she was being physically and sexually abused by her stepfather, but never, in her darkest imaginings, could she have dreamt that she would be the one who would face harrowing punishment. That a girl so young should have been in a Magdalene laundry at all later perplexed many – not least members of the interdepartmental committee set up in 2011 to investigate the laundries, chaired by then-senator Martin McAleese.The Laundry in Athy, it was up behind the Catholic Church, where I used to scrub the floors,” she said. London “was getting rough then, so I came home. I rang my husband – he was in Germany at the time – and I said to him I’m going to Ireland. He said he would be working in Germany for another year and I said, ‘That’s up to you. I’m putting the house up for sale and I’m going to Ireland’. I already had bought it off the council before I met him.” Recreation time was making Rosary beads or knitting Aran sweaters,” she said, “but the reward for speaking was imprisonment”. Maureen Sullivan (70) is a strong woman. She has had to be. Probably the youngest person to have been held in a Magdalene laundry in Ireland, she was just 12 when she arrived at the Good Shepherd-run establishment at New Ross, Co Wexford, in 1964. Over the following four years she was transferred to another such laundry in Athy, Co Kildare, and then to a home for the blind on Merrion Road in Dublin.

A nun got me talking, she noticed I wasn’t eating, wasn’t talking, she was way ahead of her time, but I was being abused for a few years at that stage,” said the Carlow native. My mother came once as Athy was close and she managed to get a lift. We talked for a while, very politely. Cover of Girl in the Tunnel: My Story of Love and Loss as a Survivor of the Magdalene Laundries, by Maureen Sullivan.

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She was taken from the family, not to be cared for or loved or given to a new family. No, she was sent to a Maggie. Why not the school next door to that very Magdalene Laundry? because (in the eyes of the church) she had been in the wrong. She had been the one to tempt a "good man" into sin. Personally I knew this from the moment she is put to work, but for Maureen Sullivan, it took decades and an admission from a Nun to put the pieces together. Sullivan had been so young when it happened, all of 12, that she grew up literally not understanding how the church could do that to a child. The church tried to deny that she was there, even all those years later. Not allowed to speak, barely fed and often going without water, the child was viciously beaten by the nuns for years and hidden away in an underground tunnel when government inspectors came. I just hope through my book people listen to little children, that’s the hope I have,” said Maureen. I told on him, didn’t I? That was the crime. That’s what happened. I told the Church that my stepfather was molesting and raping me, and beating me and my brothers. Day in, day out those nuns, those women and others like them, watched me at twelve, thirteen, fourteen and on until I was nearly an adult, work to the bone. They watched me, but not only that, they made it as hard for me as they could. They made me do hard time, hard penance, for a crime a man had committed against me. Something I had no control over. If I had taken a knife and gutted Marty Murphy like I had often dreamed about, at least prison would have let me go to school. (114)

When she is 12, she discloses her abuse, while being bribed with sweets, to her supposed ally, a nun in her school. The nun had two choices: go to the police and report the abuse; or go to the parish priest and set in train four more years of misery for Maureen, this time in two Magdalene laundries, where she experienced physical brutality, slave labour, denial of her education and cold unkindness from the nuns who must have known the reason why this child had arrived. There is a poignant description of a rare visit from her mother and her brother (who had ended up in an industrial school). A nun sits stiffly in the room throughout the visit. There is little communication. She describes her family and herself as “three worn-out animals in the same vicinity”. Most of the good moments in the book are when Sullivan is with her grandmother. I felt that too, how her grandmother was so kind and loving and caring. Though there was a situation where she planted Sullivan in a very perspicacious position. Where in, if Sullivan had been caught she would surly have paid with more than money. And that I felt made the granny more like the rest of Sullivan's family than I care to admit.The Catholic Church later denied that Maureen had ever been enslaved in the Magdalene Laundry at New Ross, insisting that she had attended the adjoining school. Finally, the Church admitted that this was not the case and a nun confirmed to Maureen that she had been held captive because as a sexually abused child, the Church feared that she would corrupt the other children. She was not allowed to speak, was barely fed, and often went without water, she was viciously beaten by the nuns for years, and hidden away in an underground tunnel when Government inspectors came. Instead, I was born into a life where my family was displaced, where my father was dead and unable to protect me, where I was placed in the care of monsters and stolen away to be neglected, abused and abandoned to evil. 1 MARTY Maureen has one person who provides her with unconditional love – her grandmother, who is powerless to help her in her appalling family situation but who alleviates it as much as she can, and gives the child the essential nurturing which stays with her through her later travails. It is some consolation to the reader to find this poor elderly woman shining like a beacon in the middle of this tale of horrors.