The past has all the clues to the present,” says Ruth Wilson, eyes roving around my computer screen over Zoom. “Women’s bodies have been controlled by political states or religions for time immemorial. The past is painful. But if we don’t revisit it, then we will make the same mistakes. And it’s bound to happen again.”
The “it” to which Wilson is referring is the Magdalene laundries scandal, which saw at least 30,000 women incarcerated in institutions run by the Catholic Church across Ireland between 1922 and 1996. With women and girls imprisoned on the basis of being unmarried or having children outside of marriage and their babies confiscated by nuns, it’s a story as horrifying as it is devastating. And yet, much of it remains shrouded in secrecy today.
