Hollywood has long been a cost free publicity machine. Cost free in the sense that it sold its output and therefore required little or no financial input from those who wished to influence the minds of the general public.

Where government is concerned, there have been some costs attributable – the military personnel and awesome fighting machinery is always available to film makers; with the proviso that they show America as the benign victor over grateful populations. Why make a movie showing the ugly side of the American war machine, when you can have thousands of fit extras, air craft carriers galore, hawks, and hundreds of tanks rolling over your chosen hillside for free, merely by coming up with a script that pleases the Generals?

Between two and three million Soviet prisoners were executed by the Nazi’s, hundreds of thousands of Gypsies, the mentally ill and the disabled – yet for many of the younger generation, the horrors of the Nazi regime can be summed up by ‘they killed six million Jews, didn’t they?’ such is the power of the many Hollywood epics that have centered on the horrors suffered by the Jewish people.

Other organisations have sought to avail themselves of the hearts and mind campaign that can be won with the aid of Hollywood. I can remember watching the film ‘The Magdalene Sisters’ without ever querying whether it was a truthful portrayal of life in a Catholic run institution in the early part of the last century. Don’t we all know that every Catholic priest is a paedophile, that Nuns are routinely cruel and uncaring? Why should we be surprised that this is reflected in a Hollywood film?

Possibly because we haven’t gone to the trouble of reading the MacAleese report on the actual Magdalene Laundries. That might be because we picked up on its publication via the BBC,  which gave us a selection of quotes from the report that did nothing to disabuse us from our comfortable belief that we ‘knew’ – since it was a Catholic run institution – that it would be full of harrowing stories of abuse and sadism,  and we didn’t really need to wallow in all that, did we?

Quote: From the BBC website, from ‘Maureen Sullivan’ – described as ‘survivor’.

In the report I find that some people are still in denial and yet there are other parts that clearly state and people can see we were telling the truth all along.

I ask for an apology from the religious orders and I ask the Prime Minister of my country to give us an apology, they took my education and they took my identity.

The BBC don’t give a link to the full report, I have no idea why – but it is HERE for those who don’t want their prejudices ready-to-heat, but are prepared to create them from scratch.

Googling the MacAleese report comes up with another post entitled ‘How to read the MacAleese report’. Written by a solicitor, it purports to tell you what you should and shouldn’t understand from the report.  Fortunately I had already read the report before I read Simon McGarr’s resume of the 1000 page report. He tells me that Martin MacAleese’s introduction ‘runs for eleven pages of disingenuous waffle’ and ‘the Executive Summary is a shameful farrago of guesses, elisions and wilful ignorance’. What could have driven Simon McGarr to such fury against the inquiry into 50, 60 and 70 year old allegations of cruelty, abuse and perversion? Could it be the the final report didn’t quite match up to the Hollywood and media driven expectations?

Where was the evidence of paedophiliac Nuns? Nowhere to be seen. MacAleese could not find one single report of sexual abuse by a Nun. But the beatings and the shaven heads – we’d seen them on our television! Oops! MacAleese had neglected to screen those he interviewed and actually allowed an authentic dissenting voice of a Magdalene girl to appear in his report.

 ”It has shocked me to read in papers that we were beat and our heads shaved and that we were badly treated by the nuns… I was not touched by any nun and I never saw anyone touched. As long as I was there, I was not touched myself by any nun and I never saw anyone touched and there was never a finger put on them. … Now everything was not rosy in there because we were kept against our will … we worked very hard there … But in saying that we were treated good and well looked after”.

Send that woman to the back of the compensation queue, tar and feather her! None of the women told the Committee that their heads had been shaved, with one exception. The exception occurred where one woman had her head shaved because she had lice:

“When I said it was all itchy they shaved it … If you got lice your head was shaved”. In response to a question on whether hair was ever shaved as a punishment, she replied “Just for the lice”.

Not everyone was off message: Another woman who had been in two Magdalen Laundries reported that, in one of these Laundries, “there was a padded cell, I was put in there 3 times”. Ah the fabled padded cell, star of so many misery memoires. However such comments were a rarity in Chapter 19, which is overwhelmingly women saying ‘it was hard, it was tough, we didn’t enjoy it, but never saw anyone physically abused’.

Undoubtedly life was tough in the Magdalene Laundries, but it can only be truly compared to life in any other commercial laundry in the 1920s, whereas it currently finds itself compared to modern day expectations of employment.

“The floors of the laundry were constantly floating with water – often soapy dirty water streaming out. There was constant inhaling of steam from the large colander (large ironing board). Young women stood either side of the colander for up to two or three hours in the morning and again in the afternoon. Large buckets of boiling water were scattered around the floor used for starching and steaming. The light was poor and their only view from the windows was more iron bars. There was often a foul smell in the air from the extensive, industrial laundry of soiled sheets from hospitals, hotels, convents, farms and more”.

One of the main complaints is that the girls were paid no wages and never knew when they might be allowed to leave. The no wages bit is described as ‘modern day slavery’ (as is work experience in Poundland!) but reading the report I see that:

Chapter 10 of this Report sets out the circumstances in which some former young women were placed in a Magdalen Laundry during the period of their supervision after discharge from Industrial School. It appears to the Committee that, for many of the women it met, these were the circumstances in which they came to enter a Magdalen Laundry.

The women were either not told or didn’t remember that they were still on licence from those Industrial schools – I can relate to that, I doubt many of the Duncroft girls appreciated that they were still subject to recall to Duncroft until they were 21. I certainly didn’t. Since there is no such thing as a ‘fallen women’ these days, only proudly independent single mothers and young women expressing their individuality, it is difficult to compare the situation for someone leaving such an establishment with its inherent ‘stain on their character’ with modern life.  Where else would these women have been employed in rural Ireland in those times? Rage against the times by all means, rage against the prejudice, the injustice, be grateful it doesn’t exist today – but blame the Nuns who had set up a business that was prepared to employ these girls?

Chapter 20 examines the financial viability of the Magdalen Laundries, on the basis of the financial accounts or other financial records prepared contemporaneously by the relevant Religious Congregations.

The results of the financial analysis carried out tends to support a view that the Magdalen Laundries were operated on a subsistence or close to break-even basis rather than on a commercial or highly profitable basis.

You mean the dastardly Catholic church wasn’t making a thumping profit out of these unfortunate women? Is there to be no end to our disillusionment?

The report spoke to 118 women who had experienced the Magdalene Laundries, a small enough sample, but still the largest exercise in collating the authentic memories of those who had actual first hand experience – and it paints a very different picture from the accepted media view. Why could that be? I was sent an interesting link during the week.

Campaigners believe the role such movies (the Magdalen Sisters)played in highlighting the issue justified any artistic embellishment, and this view is shared by Louise Lowe, director of the award-winning play Laundry (another portrayal of the alleged horror), who says The Magdalene Sisters “served an important function at the time”.

This is dangerously close to the view taken by those in the child abuse industry – what does it matter if the original reports from Duncroft were exaggerated, embellished, and in some cases, outright lies? They served a greater purpose, allowing some 400 other individuals to come forward with tales of abuse at Savile’s hands…all grist to the mill.

The constant repetition of advertisements from the NSPCC showing highly vulnerable and obviously prepubescent and unhappy small girls in winsomely oversized nightgowns is drumming the message into our heads – ‘when we say child abuse, this is the picture we want you to hold in your head’ – and a disgusting abhorrent picture it is too, who could begin to defend sexual activity with such an innocent? Yet the reality is that action against child abusers currently comprises a series of arrests of geriatric entertainers who are alleged to have received oral sex from a groupie 30 years ago who now says she was 15 at the time, and her new ‘friend’ says that’s child abuse…

So successful has been the media campaign, that both the expensive reports recently published – Yewtree and the MacAleese report were greeted with howls of rage by the public. ‘Whitewash’, ‘Coverup’ – euphemisms for ‘Where’s our Paedophile Ring. We were promised a paedophile ring!’ Promised by whom? Those who were actually present, or the media?

Who is it that is so insistent that we should loose all faith in religious institutions of any variety and men in general (unless they are safely married to other men!)?

Mizz Mildred
February 18, 2013 at 11:11

When we took 11+ in the nineteen forties we were taught by a very gifted
woman teacher how to take the 11+ exams. At a large village primary school.
She did not shout, throw chalk or board dusters either. I remember the
problems put to us 10 and 11 years old kids as mind blowing. Probably because
I am not as brainy as the really lucky ones. Many people think the age of
criminality is too low, but those mental arithmetic problems were, to me,
horrendous, yet us little scraps were supposed to do them under time pressure
and strict invigilation at exams. Was it ‘cheating’ to stream pupils? For
pupils to have a gifted teacher to rehearse them, as an exclusive group for
months on end? Eventually the Crossmans of this world had their wicked way and
sunk the grammars. Now we ‘reap the whirl wind’ as a remote result. A decision
made politicians who had a good education themselves; then stole it from those
in education behind them. I struggled to grammar school without extra tuition.
By the way, thank you, Mr Wilson, for The Open university.

Jonathan Mason
February 16, 2013 at 14:35

Flip had heard everything. Instantly her voice came screaming after
me:

‘Come here! Come here this instant! What was that you said?’

‘I said it didn’t hurt,’ I faltered out.

‘How dare you say a thing like that? Do you think that is a proper thing to
say? Go in and REPORT YOURSELF AGAIN!’

This time Sambo laid on in real earnest. He continued for a length of time
that frightened and astonished me — about five minutes, it seemed — ending up
by breaking the riding-crop. The bone handle went flying across the room.

‘Look what you’ve made me do!’ he said furiously, holding the broken
crop.

I had fallen into a chair, weakly snivelling. I remember that this was the
only time throughout my boyhood when a beating actually reduced me to tears,
and curiously enough I was not even now crying because of the pain. The second
beating had not hurt very much either. Fright and shame seemed to have
anaesthetized me. I was crying partly because I felt that this was expected of
me, partly from genuine repentance, but partly also because of a deeper grief
which is peculiar to childhood and not easy to convey: a sense of desolate
loneliness and helplessness, of being locked up not only in a hostile world
but in a world of good and evil where the rules were such that it was actually
not possible for me to keep them.

I knew the bed-wetting was (a) wicked and (b) outside my control. The
second fact I was personally aware of, and the first I did not question. It
was possible, therefore, to commit a sin without knowing that you committed
it, without wanting to commit it, and without being able to avoid it. Sin was
not necessarily something that you did: it might be something that happened to
you. I do not want to claim that this idea flashed into my mind as a complete
novelty at this very moment, under the blows of Sambo’s cane: I must have had
glimpses of it even before I left home, for my early childhood had not been
altogether happy. But at any rate this was the great, abiding lesson of my
boyhood: that I was in a world where it was not possible for me to be good.
And the double beating was a turning-point, for it brought home to me for the
first time the harshness of the environment into which I had been flung. Life
was more terrible, and I was more wicked, than I had imagined. At any rate, as
I sat snivelling on the edge of a chair in Sambo’s study, with not even the
self-possession to stand up while he stormed at me, I had a conviction of sin
and folly and weakness, such as I do not remember to have felt before.

….

So much for the episode of the bed-wetting. But there is one more thing to
be remarked. This is that I did not wet my bed again — at least, I did wet it
once again, and received another beating, after which the trouble stopped. So
perhaps this barbarous remedy does work, though at a heavy price, I have no
doubt.

[George Orwell: Such, Such Were The Joys.]

Jonathan Mason
February 16, 2013 at 15:29

The interesting thing about the above is that in the 1960′s when it was
first published after the death of the headmistress in 1967 made it possible
to safely publish, the word “abuse” had not yet been invented, at least not
in its ubiquitous sense as used today.

Other contemporaries of Orwell at the same school, such as golf writer
Henry Longhurst, an avid defender of St.Cyprian’s School brushed off the
whole thing as a gross exaggeration, yet scored something of an own goal
when he himself remembered the cold pewter bowls of porridge with the
thick slimy lumps, into which I was actually sick one day and made to stand
at a side-table and eat it up (!!!).

Of course these days the emphasis might be more on the pewter bowls
because low grade pewter used to contain lead, rather than on the ecological
implications of being forced to eat your own vomit.

Jonathan
Mason February 17, 2013 at 17:40

Here’s another example of historical crimes, although nothing to do
with sex.

I did A levels at school in the summer of 1968 in French, German, and
English Lit.

A week before the exam, we did our last test of interpreting a passage
from a French set book, Le Chef D’Oeuvre Inconnu by Honore de Balzac. The
passage was one that I confidently predicted would never come up in the
exam, because there were too many footnotes. But it did. What luck!

On the morning of the Shakespeare paper, the invigilator for the
morning exam accidentally distributed thirty or forty copies of the
afternoon exam paper, before the error was noticed and the papers were
collected up. But not before a number of people had identified the passage
from King Lear that was to be commented on in the afternoon. What
luck!

Because I implicitly trusted the teachers, thirty or forty went by
before I realised what you will already have spotted–that the school had a
pattern of organised cheating so as to get better exam results.

Maybe they all did back then, but the headmaster of my school was
selected in 1969 to take up one of the most prominent posts in the English
education system, no doubt based on his exceptional record and
achievements, and subsequently had a very distinguished career. He died in
2005.

Now imagine if I went public with these allegations at this late date.
It goes without saying that many distinguished people would come forward
to say that I was mistaken, and possibly a few of my contemporaries would
come forward with similar stories. What would the general public think (in
the unlikely event of the story hitting the Daily Mail or The
Guardian)?

Suppose it went to court (unlikely I know) and the surviving teachers
were placed in the dock. I would be accused of lying and I would probably
start to doubt myself, unless others had also come forward with similar
tales, in which case I would be patting myself on the back. Even now I
have a hard time believing that they cheated in this manner, but they must
have. Mustn’t they?

Moor Larkin February 17, 2013 at 18:49

The year I was due to take my Degree examinations we were all
instructed how to find “Past Paper” questions at the library. At least
three of the questions I used as a structure for some revision actually
came up on my papers that year. If it’s a crime, I’m struggling to see
who was “the victim”.

You might enjoy this story, to illustrate that the only thing new
under the sun is *outrage* …..
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/9672500/Superhead-knew-teachers-were-fiddling-registers-to-boost-school-results-tribunal-hears.html

Lucozade
February 17, 2013 at 19:24

Moor Larkin,

The ‘victims’ we’re the ones who never got the chance to see the
‘past papers’…

Moor Larkin February 17, 2013 at 22:11

@ The ‘victims’ we’re the ones who never got the chance to see the
‘past papers’ @

People in other institutions would have been the “victims” of a
bunch of instructors who failed to give them the best chance of
succeeding if they were never told. The past papers were openly
published and in the library. If our lecturer hadn’t bothered to tell
us, we would never have known they were there of course.
Notwithstanding the fact that we were told, more than one of my
contemporaries “couldn’t be bothered” to go the library. They might
have made victims of themselves I suppose.

When I learned to drive, the Instructor told me about the four
Testers in our area, and advised me about little *secrets* about each
one. He also gave me strong tips about the exact locations I would be
taken to, when the Test was for real. We spent extra training time
manouevering in those particular places. Was that *cheating*? Using
knowledge he had, that I did not have, so that I could do the best I
could? Isn’t this what we used called “Education”, rather than the
more modern pupil-centred edukayshun…. ?

Jonathan
Mason February 17, 2013 at
22:33

@Moor Larkin

I think the driving test is a bit different, because that is
competency based and the examiner has to determine whether you have
sufficient skill to go out on your own.

An exam like an A level is different, because, assuming that 100%
is impossible to achieve, you are competing against other candidates
to see who can get closest to the maximum. I have no doubt that in the
two subjects mentioned I and others at my school scored more points
that we would otherwise have done. Presumably this would have pushed
down the grades of some candidates from other schools.

Of course the other schools may have all cheated too.

It is interesting, all the same, because at the time I would never,
ever have queried the probity of the teachers at my school. It would
not have occurred to me that the teachers would look at the exam
papers when they arrived in the mail several days before the exams and
then fine tune their teaching to pinpoint anything that would have
thrown us for a loop.

It took 35 or 40 years before the penny eventually dropped (not
that I spent a lot of time thinking about the matter in the interim).
It’s interesting to compare this to the sex abuse cases where the
girls concerned may at the time have been rather proud of the fact
that they were having sex with glamorous teachers who were musical
maestros rather than grubby teenage boys from their cohort, because it
would not have occurred to them to be critical of the teachers. Only
in much longer term retrospect, perhaps when they had teenage children
of their own, did they see what seemed like a mark of high status at
the time as something much shabbier and venal.

Moor Larkin February 17, 2013 at 22:51

@ Jonathan Mason

It’s a bit of a leap to go from philosophising about how teachers
did their best for their own pupils to pass their exams, to comparing
it on some kind of moral equivalence basis to the morality of other
teachers engaging in sexual foreplay with their pupils. I think you’re
beating yourself up unecessarily about this….

Insofar as coaching goes – no matter how much extra French revision
you gained from a teacher on the QT, YOU still had to write the essay.
Don’t put yourself down.

Lucozade February 16, 2013 at 20:15

Jonathan Mason,

I wonder how on earth they thought that belting him would have any effect
on his bed wetting?

Surely some advice on not drinking and making sure you go to the toilet
before bed might have been more useful/helpful…? lol

Jonathan
Mason February 17, 2013 at 16:50

@Lucozade

Well, this was before World War 1, so God knows what they thought.
Actually the text is quite controversial and other contemporaries of
Orwell have denied that this happened to Orwell. (For example, they don’t
think it is possible that a riding crop was used.)

Possibly the anecdote came from another source and was retooled to fit
Orwell’s agenda. He wrote this around the same time he was writing
Nineteen Eighty Four and one can readily detect thematic overlaps.

Written about 30 years after the events described ostensibly took
place, it is yet another example of the dangers of establishing the truth
about what happened 30 or more years earlier, especially when the memories
of the young person may have been distorted by subsequent life experiences
and ambient political attitudes, influence of others, etc.

I think it is entirely possible that Orwell was not telling the truth,
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about this particular episode,
but that doesn’t necessarily invalidate other parts of the essay.

This is the trouble with all this historical rape that is coming to
court now. The testimony that we hear may be partly true, or things may
have happened, but not necessarily in quite the same way that they are
related, and there is really no way to test the truth. We see this, for
example in the Savile/Duncroft allegations where one could perceive Savile
as a sexual predator, but other contemporaries think that some of the
girls were the predators who would all too readily exchange sex for
cigarettes or cash.

The issue of cigarettes at Duncroft is an interesting one. Did Savile
see that the girls smoked and decide that he could use gifts of cigarettes
to influence the behavior of the girls (he was a non smoker), or did the
girls suggest to him that he should bring cigarettes next time he
came?

Lucozade
February 17, 2013 at 20:00

Jonathan Mason,

“Did Savile see that the girls smoked and decide that he could use
gifts of cigarettes to influence the behavior of the girls (he was a non
smoker), or did the girls suggest to him that he should bring cigarettes
next time he came?”

Has anyone else other than the accusers themselves said they remember
Jimmy Savile bringing the girls cigarettes? E.g a former member of the
staff or a former resident who has made no actual allegations of abuse
or having witnessed any abuse?

Personally I haven’t ruled out the possibility of him being
completely innocent, at least as far as the Duncroft accusations go, and
probably the vast majority of the other’s too, if not all of them,
especially the worst ones…

Moor
Larkin February 16, 2013 at 13:25

There’s an interesting cache of documents attached to this NYT article from
2010.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/25/world/europe/25vatican.html

One thing I found especially interesting is that one aspect of this case
was the claim that one reason the old priest was not pursued more in the
Nineties because he was old and infirm, just what the purported letter from
the CPS, that cropped up in the abortive Newsnight show, was to say about why
Jimmy Savile was not pursued in 2007.

One thing that struck me was that browsing the documents left me feeling
the NYT report interpretations of what it all meant was more a matter of their
reporter’s opinion, than it was irrefutable *fact*. There is a “victim’s
letter” from 1974 that has some intriguing aspects – especially that it is
strongly suggested the boys were interfering with one another…. I have
wondered that the past problems of child abuse in childrens homes might have
had as much to do with other inmates as the staff, but the staff would be
*blamed* for not preventing it. One of the eventual five convictions directly
linked to Haut de la Garenne was actually a man who was 15 at the time of his
crime, and he was basically convicted of abusing fellow *children*.

belinus February
17, 2013 at 13:59

Quote
One thing that struck me was that browsing the documents left me
feeling the NYT report interpretations of what it all meant was more a
matter of their reporter’s opinion, than it was irrefutable *fact*. There is
a “victim’s letter” from 1974 that has some intriguing aspects – especially
that it is strongly suggested the boys were interfering with one another…. I
have wondered that the past problems of child abuse in childrens homes might
have had as much to do with other inmates as the staff, but the staff would
be *blamed* for not preventing it. One of the eventual five convictions
directly linked to Haut de la Garenne was actually a man who was 15 at the
time of his crime, and he was basically convicted of abusing fellow
*children*.

I agree I believe a lot more of this kind of behaviour came from the
inmates, (if that is the correct term) with perhaps only a small number of
staff allowing it to keep order and perhaps to procure the best ones
probably based on their silence.

Is this not a little like the public school fag system?

belinus February 17, 2013 at 14:00

Typo…private

Mizz Mildred
February 16, 2013 at 12:46

Most women when young or as children had various ‘uncomfortable’
experiences of one kind or another. I had to give up a nice well behaved
boyfriend because I was not safe on the way home after I had seen him in
Liverpool. I was prodded by roving fingers on tube trains. Naughty words
whispered in my ear on the underground escalators. Rude words used to me at a
Christmas dance when in earshot of matron!! So I am sure lovely girls trying
to be film stars ran the gauntlet of lascivious, advantage taking males in the
film industry. You have to tell yourself not all men are like that, and get on
with it or get away from it. Mostly you couldn’t make a fuss, as they were so
clever at choosing their moment. Or you wait till years later, then disgrace
them when they are older by telling the truth; not lying about incidents that
never happened.

corevalue February 16, 2013 at 18:06

I had a girlfriend years in the late 60′s, who looked younger than her
years, she was in fact 20. This was the time of miniskirts, and apart from
her boss giving her a very suspect nickname (he never went further), her
most troubling time was being assaulted on the escalator of a tube station,
by another woman. It certainly went beyond the “inappropiate touching” we
are hearing about nowadays.

No, she didn’t report it.

As for stars and the film industry, I have to tell you that a high
proportion of impressarios and people in the film industry are gay. Girls
are not the only ones preyed upon. Example below (not mine, and
redacted)

“I used to watch J B from the ******* fawn over my then boyfriend…many
years ago…as a then up and coming singer, my then bf put up and shut up for
a headline slot….he would then drink himself into oblivion with self
loathing and drive us both home at 4am

Moor
Larkin February 16, 2013 at 10:52

Also looks like the biter’s going to get bit……………

@ In an interview on CNN Thursday, actress Thandie Newton spoke out about
an abusive casting director who exploited her when she was just 18….. The
British actress, then at the beginning of her career, was at a screen test for
a project when the casting director began acting inappropriately. Because of
the professional environment and her inexperience in the industry, Newton
said, she was confused about how to respond…… Though Newton declined to name
the director, she noted that it was only the most explicit incident in a long
chain of uncomfortable situations. @
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gossip/thandie-newton-abused-casting-director-article-1.1265472#ixzz2L3fZo3v9

Mizz Mildred
February 16, 2013 at 09:56

We saw a very cruel film about Irish nuns running a laundry. We had the
chance to see a DVD of it again, but politely declined the offer. We felt that
either it was too cruel to watch, plus I have my doubts the full veracity of
it’s relentless cruelty. The Irish girls I did my training with said nuns were
‘hard’ women. Everything was hard in those far off days. The nuns and their
charges came from a hard place. They did not bang on about cruelty, as far as
I recall. A staunchly Catholic close friend, at mass thrice weekly, told me
the reason she left Ireland to train as a nurse in England, was that it was
‘priest ridden’. Everyone knew and wanted to know your business. Your life was
not your own and so on. It can be so easy to put propaganda into some people’s
heads and manipulate opinion to some kind of covert agenda. Hugely wealthy men
of power run the media. It dances to their tune. I personally value the BBC.
It has been there all my longish life. Like a cosy cushion against all those
silly adverts. Isn’t a lot of management currently unable to cope with fast
moving news spillage, and knees jerking in all directions???? Horse DNA
anyone?

Moor
Larkin February 16, 2013 at 10:25

Just heard on the radio that the Irish Prez is apologising to all the old
people today. Sounds better than the UK at least. Over here, we’re arresting
them all….

JohnS February 16, 2013 at 07:58

Anna, unfortunately you’ve made the usual mistake of assuming that a)
“Hollywood” is a monolith with a single brain and b) equating “Hollywood” with
every English language film produced.

Here’s the list of financial backers/Production Companies for The
Magdelanie Sisters:
Scottish Screen
Film Council (as The Film
Council)
Bórd Scannán na hÉireann
Momentum Pictures (in association
with)
PFP Films (as PFP Films)
Temple Films (in association
with)
Dumfries & Galloway Council (with the support of)
South West
Scotland Screen Commission (with the support of)
Scottish Enterprise
Dumfries & Galloway (with the support of)
UK Film Council’s New Cinema
Fund (with the support of)
Element Films (uncredited)
Irish Film Board
(funding)

None of them were even US companies, let alone “Hollywood”. (Momentum is a
UK company whose parent company has since been bought by a part-US company but
at the time the parent company was Canadian).

None of this of course has any bearing on how accurate or otherwise the
film is but all the creative and financial impetus behind the making of the
film was UK/Irish.

Anna
Raccoon February 16, 2013 at
08:09

Most interesting John,

I was referring to Hollywood as a generic term, but I am more than
grateful for your input as to who precisely was interested in seeing this
vision of 1920s Ireland brought to a wider audience. Fascinating.

JohnS February 16, 2013 at 12:45

Peter Mullen (writer/director) says that he wanted to give the “victims
a voice”. I suspect that he heard the stories, they fitted into his
worldview and he swallowed them whole.
As for the money; Momentum and
anyone else who put in commercial equity probably just thought there was a
lowish-budget compelling story in what was then becoming, after Angela’s
Ashes, a mini-genre. It wouldn’t be that much of a financial risk and it
would have looked like an award-worthy proposition which will get
sympathetic reviews and lots of free editorial coverage in the press. It
would have been obvious to do the rounds of the “usual suspects” for such
a semi-arthouse subject, like the assorted Arts funds. With an up and
coming Scottish writer/director who was already an established actor the
Scottish Funds would be likely to kick in a few quid, especially with a
bit of shooting in Scotland. Shoot the rest in Ireland and hoover up some
soft money from there. It really isn’t unusual for this type of patchwork
quilt of financing to come together.for non-major studio pictures and it’s
becoming more common even for them.
I doubt that most of the funders
thought much further than here’s a worthy project we should be backing.
I’d be surprised if any thought to seriously question whether the whole
story was true or not.

Saul February 16, 2013 at 14:23

“The epilogue to the film gives a brief description of the lives of
four of the inmates after the girls leave the asylum by the late 1960s
but according to one source these “biographical details” are fictitious.
They are actually details of real women interviewed who “inspired” the
characters in the film, even though the stories in the film were
fictionalized and varied substantially from the true stories (for
example, the real women did not all know each other, and one, not
herself a Magdalene, was raised in an orphanage associated with an
adjoining Magdalene laundry). It is noted that the last Magdalene asylum
closed in 1996.”

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0318411/synopsis?ref_=tt_stry_pl

Bill
Sticker February 16, 2013 at 01:00

Damn Anna, how could you let all these inconvenient facts get in the way of
yet another media witch hunt? It’s jolly inconsiderate of you.

JOHYN MALPAS
February 16, 2013 at 00:12

I still think sarcasm was the most dreaded teacher weapon against
recalcitrant young male students. – 1950 era.
Whats more the rest of the
class weould join in on the side of ‘sir’.
We were rather proud of the
accurancy of the teacher who was a chalk hurler.

Lucozade February 16, 2013 at 18:39

JOHYN MALPAS,

“the teacher who was a chalk hurler”

I’m starting to think these things were taught at teacher training
college throughout the country.

One of my primary teachers was a ‘chalk hurler’ too, the same one as I
was talking about above…

Mina Field February 15, 2013 at 22:49

I went to a catholic nursery run by nuns for a short time when I was four.
They held me down and force fed me sponge pudding with currants and made me
violently sick. Come to think of it, it might not be too late to sue.

Michael February 15, 2013 at 21:34

I went to two Catholic boarding schools. The first, in the late 1970s, was
my prep school. It was housed in an Arts and Crafts country house which has
left me with an abiding love of the style. The education was superb and led to
me gaining common entrance to a major public school with ease. My history and
English teacher was Wing Commander Ashcroft, who had flown Shackletons out of
RAF Kinloss. He and his wife had no children and they treated us like we were
their own. The housemaster, Mr Collins, was an ex-army NCO who came across as
a gruff disciplinarian. Twice a term we had “EXEAT” weekends, where we were
expected to go home to our families. A bit of a problem for us expat kids. He
would take us under his wing; a lie-in at the weekend, made sure the cook
served up something special, ice-cream, air rifle shooting on the lawn, stay
up watching telly till late at night, and so on. Heaven for 10 year olds.

The public school I went to never rates highly in academic terms but
regularly receives plaudits from Ofsted for its pastoral care and sense of
close community.

Mike February 15, 2013 at 19:32

Anna

have you seen this?

Mike
http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2013/02/bbc-chief-mark-thompson-jimmy-savile-scandal?mbid=social_twitter

Anna
Raccoon February 15, 2013 at
20:23

No, just read it thanks to your link.
I nearly gave up after the first
paragraph – so Duncroft had bars on the windows did it? They just can’t help
themselves embellishing the story can they?

“We are all going to have to be very careful now about what we all
publish and air,” says Vanity Fair’s London libel attorney. I wonder if we
can sue them for insinuating that we lived in a building with bars on the
windows?

Anyway, minor gripes over, all in all, a reasonably balanced version of
events, not too many examples of hyperbole, and a damn sight better than
most of the British media have managed.

Dave February 16, 2013 at 15:22

Maybe suing would be a wake up call…

m.barnes February 15, 2013 at 13:40

*sigh* I wish you wouldn’t do this to me y’know. I really don’t like the
catholic church and nuns in particular and now I’m going to have to go off and
bloomin’ read this report and possibly – possibly, mind, not definitely – be
fairer to them….. dammit all!

Mudplugger
February 15, 2013 at 16:32

And the other question to ask is, even though those laundries may not
have been havens of pleasantry, what would have been the quality of life
out-turn for many of those girls elsewhere at the time ?

Jonathan Mason
February 15, 2013 at 13:13

Part of the problem is that when there are real issues, such as Mid
Stafford hospital having a higher mortality rate than surrounding hospitals,
this is a serious enough issue, but not very “sexy” so media like to give the
impression that had you visited the hospital, you would immediately have been
greeted by a stench of urine, the odor of unwashed bodies, and the screams of
the damned. The reality is that most likely it would have seemed just like any
other hospital on any given day and only an analysis of statistics on death
rates for people admitted with various conditions at various ages would show
that the hospital was underperforming.

Mudplugger
February 15, 2013 at 16:29

It’s interesting how the non-fatal ‘horse-meat scandal’ is being
bigged-up in the media to divert attention from the emerging, very fatal,
NHS truths.

Jonathan Mason
February 15, 2013 at 13:02

The BBC don’t give a link to the full report, I have no idea
why…

I find this also to be a common phenomenon in UK newspaper sites like the
Daily Mail and The Guardian and The Telegraph. The reason is presumably that
they don’t want to help readers to challenge the propaganda line that the
publication has chosen. A possible secondary reason is that the reporters who
summarize the reports have only read executive summaries and do not have the
link to the full publication.

You would expect better of the BBC, but the BBC these days is not the BBC
of yore.

belinus February
15, 2013 at 12:51

Good read

Noise February 15, 2013 at 12:47

I do find that certain media groups do love Christian bashing in
particular, I grew up mostly atheist (there was a lot of propaganda and it is
quite dull to be honest).

But in a darker sense, the atheist awakening and anti-religious fervour has
to some extent caused a cultural massacre. Within one generation entire
religions have been decimated.

Now personally I believe religions are just social engineering based on
relevant social issues. Which can easily be replaced by sensible ethical media
perhaps. But it is noticeable how the Christians are being ethnically cleansed
(mentally). The big question is, who is driving it and are their intentions
honourable (remove superstition) or dishonourable (ensuring an idiot race of
materialistic slaves who choose to be slaves).

Andy February 15, 2013 at 11:55

>> So successful has been the media campaign, that both the expensive
reports recently published – Yewtree and the MacAleese report were greeted
with howls of rage by the public. ‘Whitewash’, ‘Coverup’ – euphemisms for
‘Where’s our Paedophile Ring. We were promised a paedophile ring!’ Promised by
whom? Those who were actually present, or the media? <<

The same is true of our much loved institution the NHS. Suddenly every
other nurse is a vicious bitch looking to murder their patients; not something
that I recognise when in the care of the NHS.

As far as the extermination of jews is concerned, I once met a jew who got
through a whole sentence without mentioning the holocaust.

My ex-partner was schooled by nuns and she said that they were the most
vicious bunch of women that she has ever come across. She hates catholicism
and all that it stands for now.

Moor
Larkin February 15, 2013 at 11:40

There was an interesting documentary on Ch4 (I think) quite a few years
ago. It concerned an Irish woman who claimed nun-abuse and before that,
father-abuse. She was published author of Mis-Lit. The structure of the
programme was that we were presented with her story and it all seemed utterly
convincing. Then, for the last third, her family were introduced. None of them
accepted her story about their father. The sisters were at the same
Institution and denied they had seen or heard of anything like what their
sister described. The authoress said they were all in denial. Her siblings
said she was not just delusional but actually making a living from lying. The
crunch was that the programme-makers offered a Jeremy-Kyle-style Lie detector
test. her older brother agreed to take it and did so. The authoress said she
would, but the programme ended with the commentary that she had phoned at the
last minute and cancelled.

Anyhow, I could find no reference for that show and it was probably a good
ten years ago, but I did find this – which might be referring to the same
woman.
http://www.irishsalem.com/irish-controversies/the-magdalene-laundries/kathy-dailytelegraph-08mar08.php

Rocky Raccoon (no
relation) February 18, 2013 at 16:59

The Channel 4 programme was Lie Lab which was broadcast in June 2007.

In late 2007 Hermann Kelly produced a book “Kathy’s Real Story: a culture
of false allegations exposed” in which he exposed Kathy O’Brien’s story as
fiction. But apparently that didn’t stop Hodders publishing further
editions.

When Kelly & O’Briene appeared on a TV show Kelly produced O’Briene’s
birth and education records which were at odds with the account given by
Kathy O’Briene in her book.

Coming up to date: with relevence to allegations relating to Duncroft
scholars, you’d think a producer of a programme would wonder how someone
could be 14 if an alledged incident took place 16 years after they were
born.

Going through certain birth & marriage registrations make interesting
reading but in the present climate the media won’t go there.

http://www.irishsalem.com/irish-controversies/the-magdalene-laundries/kathy-dailytelegraph-08mar08.php

http://www.alliancesupport.org/news/archives/002466.html

Lucozade
February 19, 2013 at 03:39

Rocky Raccoon,

It’s utterly ubsurd that the people in television and newspapers don’t
think to check people’s birth certificates and when the allegation is
meant to have taken place (i.e when a certain show was filmed) before
repeating, and allowing someone else to repeat on their show, allegations
that could land people in a lot of trouble. Very stupid.

I also think people like Kathy O’Briene are immoral and perhaps even
mentally ill to spread false and harmful accusations like that…

The Jannie February 15, 2013 at 11:15

Rule number one – Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

Engineer February 15, 2013 at 22:16

Hollywood’s only motto!

Joe
Public February 15, 2013 at 10:39

Of the truism “there’s always two sides to every story”, I can depend upon
Madame Raccoon to present a version that balances the ‘populist’ MSM
version.

Moor
Larkin February 15, 2013 at 10:29

I had a nun teacher at my Catholic primary school. It was common practice
then for errant pupils to be rapped across the palm of the hand with the flat
of a thin and bendy 12-inch ruler. This fearsome old lady would rap you across
the knuckles of the back of your fingers with a thick, wooden and very unbendy
six-inch ruler. I’ll tell you what – she only did it to me once because after
that, I never misbehaved in her lessons again……..

@ Who is it that is so insistent that we should lose all faith in religious
institutions… @
On a movie-related theme I would venture Ken Russell and
Vanessa Redgrave were the devils in some of the detail…….

Ho Hum February 15, 2013 at 11:20

Also in response to the Cat that is Jabba

In my very secular, council run school, in Primary 6 and 7, we had a book
from which, every night, we had to learn the correct spelling of 10 words
(having already been through the complete book once in Primaries 3 to 5).
Next day, first thing, we wrote those down as prompted by our lovely lady
teacher, late 50s, at whose feet most of us would have happily worshipped.
We were then belted – with a proper leather tawse – by this angel, if we
made an error. The lady teachers at our school were all very accomplished
with their belts. And all with not a Catholic in sight. Looking back, of
course, the same two or three kids who got belted just about every day were
almost certainly dyslexic, but who knew that then….

A nice blog post though, and I concur fully with the comments about the
worst elements of the ‘child abuse industry’ The consequences of some of
what they are doing now are going to be very sad

Anna
Raccoon February 15, 2013 at
11:32

You beat me to it Ho Hum. PNEU School Christchurch New Zealand, circa
1959 – not a Catholic in sight, but the memory of that cane flattening my
knuckles has enabled me to remember that 9 times 8 = 72 each and every
time I have needed that information…..

Duncan
Disorderly February 15, 2013 at 11:34

My mum (aged about 70) says that teachers at her state, secular, primary
school would throw wooden blackboard dusters at talking pupils. I’m not
saying this was a good thing, but if you go back in time everything was
cruel and unjust. Why single out some nuns for running an institution that,
we now see, was no worse than any other institution of the day?

Moor Larkin February 15, 2013 at 11:45

We had a teacher who did that. Some of us at the back would
deliberately do things in the hope that he WOULD throw the blackboard
duster at us…..

Childish amusements akin to “Knick-Knock” wherein we would ring
people’s doorbells, or rattle their knockers, and then hide round the
corner. Sometimes an irate man might suss us out and then chase us. We
were good runners back then… I never got caught……

Dave February 15, 2013 at 13:53

During my time at an excellent grammar school in West London if any of
us dared to nod off or look out of the window in one teacher’s class, he’d
lob a wooden board rubber at us. After years of practise he was deadly
accurate. Another would spend most of the lesson sharpening his chalk into
a point. If any of us fell foul of him he’d playfully grind the point into
our scalps. It was an excellent school with very attentive pupils!

Mudplugger
February 15, 2013 at 16:25

Is this a game of top-trumps ?
At my independent grammar school, the
wild-haired art/woodwork master, of pre-war Austrian origin, had spent
some previous time as a circus performer, developing unusual skills, to
wit knife-throwing. If he spotted you committing any ‘joinery sin’, you
could expect a flying chisel to thud into your precious work-piece from
many feet away – I still recall once being observed using a file, when a
spokeshave had been specified….. thud !

Duncan
Disorderly February 15, 2013 at
20:31

“Is this a game of top trumps?”

When I were a lad, if you as much as looked out the window in school
our teacher would gouge your eyes out with a spoon he had hand crafted
from old brillo-pads then squirt TCP ointment into the sockets. One boy
who cheeked the teacher was ordered to the headmaster’s office and was
never seen again. It was a great school and I have many happy
memories!

Moor Larkin February 16, 2013 at 10:24

Sounds like a movie adaptattion of that true story would make a
good double-header alongside “Hostel”.

Lucozade
February 16, 2013 at 12:36

Duncan Disorderly and Moor Larkin,

“My mum (aged about 70) says that teachers at her state, secular,
primary school would throw wooden blackboard dusters at talking
pupils”

Lol, i’m 28 and there was a teacher at our primary school who did that
(perhaps a few, though I think they were usually only one off events due
to them being really angry), and yes, we found it hilarious too.

Though there was one, an old man, who would actually deliberately hit
and man handle some of the children, he asked me to put my hand out and
hit it with a ruler for speaking out of turn when we were gathered round
his desk getting ready for him to hear our reading and he’d told us to be
quiet. He finally got the sack/dismissed, whatever, for man handling a boy
out the room and (apparently) throwing him so hard he hit his head on the
rather large and hard coat hangers outside the classroom.

The class was mostly between the ages of 8 and 9 at the time and he was
only a supply teacher filling in for a teacher who was off with back
problems (another duster thrower), but I have to admit that some of us,
including myself, loved getting him as a teacher specifically because of
his little out bursts (the more outrageous the better) and were usually
more cheeky to him than any other teacher because we knew there was a
chance he would kick off and we found the whole thing hilarious, and a
great distraction from maths (which I never done).

Sad, I know… :/ :/ :/

Sam Smith February 15, 2013 at 10:27

I am all in favour of protecting the vulnerable. However, the overzealous
machinations of vested interests have gone well beyond necessary protection
even if you agree with my robust views of what is necessary. We now put 10
year olds on the Sex Offenders register for playing doctors and nurses. The
Register was intended for dangerous repeat offenders. Those responsible for
excessive laws are themselves abusers. They must be dealt with.

Exuro masculorum concubitores. Emundabo illos in Ignis.

JuliaM February
16, 2013 at 07:04

“We now put 10 year olds on the Sex Offenders register for playing
doctors and nurses. “

They don’t even have to play that – a simple game of ‘tag’ is enough to
cause a fit of the vapours merely through its name
alone…

JuliaM February 16, 2013 at 07:05

Oh, and that story prompted my favourite nionsensical statement of the
week:

“The parent added she did not blame the school, saying it is almost
impossible to stop children bringing words into the playground.”

*boggle*

Jabba the Cat February 15, 2013 at 10:18

I had the misfortune to go to a primary school run by nuns of the Sisters
of Magdalene order. Hanging with piano wire would be too good for those Irish
bitches, whose primary mission was to beat God into every child that had the
misfortune to pass through their hands…