"Forced to Strip and Eat Off the Floor: My Harrowing Experience in Abusive Children's 'Asylums' Under Nuns"

WHEN 17-year-old Gabrielle O’Gorman set foot inside the Magdalene Laundry in Dublin and the big green door shut firmly behind her, she had no idea of the hell that lay ahead.

Ordered to strip, the terrified teen was forced to work, scrubbing clothes, for 10 hours a day, taunted by vicious nuns and deprived of food when she dared to complain.

Gabrielle O’Gorman is a survivor of Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries and Mother and Baby HomesCredit: Supplied The Magdalene Laundry on Sean McDermott Street in DublinCredit: Alamy Gabrielle was 19 when she managed to flee the laundriesCredit: Supplied The now 80-year-old revealed her story in a new documentary called TestimonyCredit: Supplied

But Gabrielle was just one of 10,000 who passed through the Magdalene Laundries between 1922 and 1996 – where they were used as slave labour to boost the bulging coffers of the Catholic church.

Their names were changed, ensuring they would ‘disappear’ to the authorities, their hair was brutally chopped and many were beaten, or locked in cells alone for days on end.

One survivor – who entered the laundries at 12 – told of being put on a string leash by a nun, who forced her to eat off the floor.

Like all the women locked away in the institutions, Gabrielle had committed no crime. Yet, if they tried to escape, they were swiftly returned by the police.

“Laundries were run like prisons and when I see prison programs, it takes me back,” she tells The Sun.

Now, a new documentary is highlighting the fight of Gabrielle and other survivors to hold the Irish government accountable for abuses in the , Mother and Baby Homes, and the forced separation of families.

Testimony, released in UK and Irish cinemas from November 21, reveals their chilling stories from behind the doors of the brutal institutions.

Before entering the laundries – also known as Magdalene Asylums – Gabrielle had already suffered at the hands of the state and the church.

Born inside Ireland’s largest home, , which housed 12,000 residents over its history, she was separated from her mum at a young age.

The Catholic-run homes were set up to take in women who became pregnant outside of marriage but, after the births, babies were taken from their mothers and were either adopted or fostered, sent to industrial institutions or tragically died due to

Like the laundries, Mother and Baby Homes were renown for having extremely poor conditions with limited medical support, and physical and mental abuse was rife.

Lily O’Gorman, Gabrielle’s mother, moved to when Gabrielle was just four years old.

She visited her daughter in the industrial home once a year, but Gabrielle didn’t really understand who she was.

Gabrielle lived in two different industrial institutions until she was 16 and then it was time for her to work. “They said, ‘Go out in the world and find a job or the nuns will find one for you’,” she told

After an attempt to live with her mother in England, which fell apart because of their failure to bond after so many years apart, Gabrielle was sent to the laundry at Sean McDermott Street in Dublin.

No sooner had the big door closed, than the nuns ordered her to remove her clothes and put on a uniform.

Gabrielle looked around to see women wearing black and brown mackintoshes scrubbing dirty clothing with carbolic soap. “It was like a prison,” she said.

“I kept my own clothes on. I did nothing for the nuns. I kept going on hunger strike to try and get out.”

Forced to join the other girls in back-breaking labour, for hours a day, Gabrielle says none of them could understand who was benefiting from their unpaid work. Was it the pope? Or the nuns themselves.

When Madeline Marver fell pregnant in Ireland she tried to flee for England, only to be returnedCredit: Underground Films Babies were also sent to the U.S in secretCredit: Underground Films

Escape plan

After seven weeks at Sean McDermott Street, Gabrielle hatched a plan to escape and another girl agreed to join her.

Men in a van collected the laundry each day at 2pm and when the big door opened, Gabrielle and her friend took their chance.

They made a B-line for an auntie’s house but the woman tipped off the police who showed up shortly after and returned them to the laundry.

Supporters greet the survivors in 2018Credit: © UNDERGROUND FILMS COMMISSIONING LIMITED 2025 Gabrielle pictured at the Mansion House in Dublin to attend a Gala dinner for survivors and their supportersCredit: Alamy Gabrielle speaking to Enda Kenny, the Irish prime minister who issued a formal apologyCredit: Supplied

Next morning, Gabrielle was driven to Good Shepherd Magdalene Laundry in Limerick, with tall, prison-like gates.

“I’ll never forget the trip down to Limerick. That might have taken three and a half hours.

“It was one of the worst days and all I kept thinking was, oh, I’ll be over the wall as soon as I get there. But that wasn’t so easy in that laundry.”

Upon arrival, Gabrielle was told to get on her knees as cruel nuns the words: “You are here because nobody wants you.”

It’s a phrase that has haunted her to this day.

Her name was also changed to Stella and she was put to work in the lace department.

Church and mass were held daily and, should you refuse, you were starved, and in some cases sent to the dormitory alone.

Public shaming was another punishment. Gabrielle was often made to sit at the ‘penance table’ for refusing to follow orders, while the nuns sat opposite her on their “thrones”.

Gabrielle said: “It was impossible to get out.

“I caused ructions with the nuns. I wouldn’t do the work for them. I wouldn’t go to bed and I wouldn’t eat sometimes.”

Gabrielle’s refusals to participate led the nuns to believe she would “corrupt an army of soldiers” and eventually, they let her go.

She was put on a train and made her way to England.

The Magdalene Laundry in Dublin had girls as young as 12 taking on backbreaking workCredit: News Dog Media Mother and baby homes were cruel institutions where many babies diedCredit: News Dog Media

Padded cell

Elizabeth Coppin, another Magdalene survivor, was sent to the Peacock Lane laundry in Cork at 14 years old and locked away in a cell each night.

For years she couldn’t understand why she was working all hours, up to her elbows in soapy water. “That was my life and it was my teenage years.”

One day, Elizabeth was accused of stealing sweets. In punishment, she was sent to the notorious padded cell where a cup of water and dried bread lay waiting on the floor, no bed in sight.

“I could see the moon shining and thought, I’m going to be here for the rest of my life and die,” she said.

Marina Gambold was taken to a laundry aged 16 by a priest and was forced to work in the laundry from eight in the morning until six in the evening, with just bread and dripping for breakfast.

“We had to scrub corridors, I used to cry with sore knees, housemaids’ knees, I used to work all day in the laundry, doing the white coats and the pleating,” she told the BBC.

“One day I broke a cup and the nun said, ‘I will teach you to be careful’.

“She got a thick string and she tied it round my neck for three days and three nights and I had to eat off the floor every morning.”

On another occasion she was punished for going out on a balcony on a freezing winter.

“She locked me out there for two nights, me and two other girls, and I nearly died of the cold.”

Gabrielle now has two grown up daughtersCredit: Supplied Gabrielle was born in St Patrick’s Mother and Baby HomeCredit: Adoption Rights Alliance Gabrielle’s rebellious behaviour got her out of the laundriesCredit: Supplied

Stripped of dignity

Now 80, Gabrielle has lived in England for around 60 years and has two grown up daughters.

However, the past still troubles her.

She said: “I was brought up in a convent with hundreds of children where we didn’t have hugging or any kind of affection. But you don’t realise that until you’re much older, until you meet the wrong people.

“We were just brought up with little education, cleaning the Convent, and made to feel worthless.

“So, of course, when you go out into the world, most of us made very bad choices with men. But thankfully, I’ve learned my lesson.”

Gabrielle’s mother shared very little about her past with her but they frequently visited one another when she moved back to England.

“At the time, I couldn’t understand her. But now looking back on my life, I understand her fully.

“She [Lily] was made to feel dirty because she’d had sex out of marriage. Ireland was a terrible place then.”

Laundries were run like prisons

Gabrielle O'Gorman

Angela Fahy was born in Tuam Mother and Baby Home and sent to the Galway Magdalene Laundry when she was 13 after her foster mother died.

When she asked the nuns why she was here and when she would be going back to school, they told her this was the finishing school.

There she was punched in the face and had her hair cut off for answering back to the nuns.

Madeline Marven recalled falling pregnant and attempting to escape Ireland in fear of being locked away in a Mother and Baby home.

She fled to England only to be swiftly returned to Bessborough Mother and baby Home in Cork.

“My water broke and I didn’t know what was happening. I got very ill, very feverish. I had an injection but I didn’t know what it was.

“I was there for three days screaming and screaming.”

Her baby son William was born but after one day he fell gravely ill.

Madeline recalled searching for him at night, but a week went by and she couldn’t find him.

“I cried everyday for my baby and no one let me have him.”

A nun then came to her and informed her William had died and been buried.

Infant deaths were rarely registered at the homes. In June 2014, reports of a mass grave containing the remains of up to 800 infants at Tuam led to an enquiry, and human remains are still being excavated at the site.

Justice for the living and the dead

A Dublin City Council worker shines a torch over debris on the floor of the corridor in the now derelict Sisters of Our Lady of Charity Magdalene LaundryCredit: Alamy The Irish Government has apologised to the thousands of women locked up in Catholic-run workhouses known as Magdalene laundriesCredit: Alamy

Catherine Whelan, another Magdalene survivor, sparked the campaign for the Justice for Magdalene’s Research’s political campaign.

When she was 14 her father took her to the Good Shepherd Magdalene Laundry and abandoned her.

The nuns punished her by taking scissors to her hair and chopping it all off.

She stayed until her 18th birthday and in later life, shared her story with author, James Smith.

Sadly, Catherine passed away in 2013 and never received justice for the horrors she endured.

‘Stolen names and identities’

Gabrielle often thinks about the women who never managed to escape the Magdalene Laundries.

She said: “They [nuns] took their names away, their identities away. They gave them a uniform and they were supposed to be grateful for somewhere to sleep and eat.”

Most of the women had been born into Mother and Baby homes but some stayed for 30 to 40 years and never left, Gabrielle explained.

“It was a bit like Stockholm Syndrome when you’re held against your will but you’re trying to be good because you want them to let you go.

“But they [nuns] lie to you and they want you there. A lot of the women that were there for maybe 20, 30, 40 years, would have gone into that thing where they didn’t want to go in the end because they had a regular job, they went to bed at a certain time, and it [laundries] only really closed down because everybody in the early 60s were buying their own washing machines.

“So they weren’t needed as much, but they still would have had big contracts with the church, the colleges, and they were making a lot of money. The Catholic Church was very rich.”

But even after such a life, a lot of women were buried in the laundry grounds and had paupers’ funerals. Meanwhile the nuns had a special graveyard.

They really punished women

Gabrielle

“They really punished women,” said Gabrielle.

The multi-award winning Testimony is directed by filmmaker Aoife KelleherCredit: Underground Films

The last closed down in Dublin in 1996 as a result of a shift in societal attitudes towards sex, a decline in the Catholic Church, and the invention of washing machines.

In 2013, the Irish government issued a formal apology for the state’s role in the running of the institutions.

Nevertheless, the call for truth continues along with the mission to ensure such abuses are never repeated again.

Claire McGettrick, who was born into a Mother and Baby home and had her name changed after being adopted said: “The Irish state is guilty of torture.

“I don’t know what part of incarcerating women and children against their will is not torture. I don’t know what part of separating women and children from each other is not torture.”

Uncover the buried truth of the Magdalene Laundries in the multi-award-winning Testimony in UK and Irish cinemas from November 21.