I wrote to you regarding my nan and mothers case regarding the magdalene laundries. Like I said in my previous letter, I expected for you to ignore me like you have ignored my mother and ignored the dead women who entered and never left the magdalene laundries.
My nan Angela Collins worked 27 years of her life within the nun run hell hole. My aunt, Angela Collins, daughter of Angela Collins was taken to work within the laundries who later sadly committed suicide after not being able to find her mum and sisters and not being able to deal with the past she was put through. Teresa Collins who is also a daughter of Angela, was adopted. While Mary Collins my mother was taken from a good mother which social services stated to be put into an abusive industrial school. She would also enter the dangerous laundries as a child at a tender age of just 7, as part of a horrible deal the nuns made with Angela, so she could see her mother who was highly drugged with medication to keep her calm.
I am disgusted with the way you have ignored my mothers case and have not provided a full apology for all the women. Four women within my family have experienced loss of life and lack of family because of the government and churches mistakes! We have and still are having our human rights and freedom withheld! Your country is also withholding mine and my family rights and still holding Angela's rights as we cannot processed to bury her in a dignified way which all humans deserve - but then you never saw the magdalene women as human and still do not as you couldn't apology for Ireland's wrongs.
Angela worked 27 years unpaid as a Slave! In 2015 if Angela did 10 hours work a day on Ireland's minimum wage, which is €8.65, she would have earned for herself and family €784,728. This does not include any form of compensation to Angela's children that had to enter the magdalene laundries and experience extreme abuse regarding the status you branded her mother with or the fact they had they mother taken with no right behind it other then her being pregnant out of marriage!
Your country and the church has not just affected my mum physically but also mentally. It has been a long fighting battle for my mother ever since she was taken from her mother.
She left the children's home by finding a job which saved her fate regarding following in Angela's footsteps which was planned for her but sadly the job she thought could be a taste of freedom turned into another prison where she had to call the police because she was also treated like a slave due to her lack of family she was treated terribly by both the wife and husband while Mary was caring for their children. I believe all the circumstances my mum has experienced is due to the government and church denying her of her family and denying her the right to be brought up within her actual community.
For all my mums life she has been carrying and living with Ireland's mistakes and has been dealing and facing with the pain that is easy for your country to ignore. I understand to you she is just another number, another old mistake. Her mother don't matter because she is dead, which you made clear this is how you feel but you don't see what your mistakes caused because your not dealing with them.
You just see the number, not the face. Not the women who was homeless on London streets, not the women that feared social services her whole life because she viewed them to all be the same. Not the women living in fear that one day what happened to her mother would have happened to her and her children. Not the women the had three children which one child came down with two terminal illness and had to spend two years in hospital, while she had to deal with it all by herself with no family support.
She escaped Ireland because she was never part of it. Irish blood runs in her veins, yet like her mother, she is a forgotten women. A forgotten part of Ireland, along with her mother and sister Angela. All theses women had life's, your mistakes and the church's mistakes took their life's from them and you even refused to give a full apology. I have a life and at 22 I'm saddened that for over ten years of my life we have been campaigning for Angela's rights and for her to be noticed as a human! Yet in your eyes and the church she is not, like my family is not.
When will you face up to your wrongs? Stop seeing my mother as a number and notice her for the women for what she has been though, like her mother! Why are you letting the Catholic Church still hold control over situations they caused? Why are you not making them respond on behalf of what's right for Angela and her family and what is right, if you believe in humanity!
I wished to move to Ireland as I got older but now I spit on the ground you walk on. Along with my religion. Any nation that can harm children, take life's, and steal and think it's okay to not fully apologise for the lives they in slaved, the families they had broken, they children they harmed. Yet you don't try to right your wrongs and see justice on behalf of your Irish people! I cannot respect or even call myself Irish! Although proud of my nan I'm ashamed with the state. I'm not Irish although my routes say different! I refuse to be proud of a shameful country.
Kind regards,
Laura Collins.
https://m.facebook.com/Justice4AllWomen
