From Netherlands Radioatelier documentary 'In My Father's Ireland', by journalist Ruth Hopkins

Brian, Ruth Hopkin's father, recounts his childhood visits to County Louth, Ireland to his daughter Ruth during a 2007 visit there, where during his holidays as a kid, he would run around in the countryside, ride horses etc.

RUTH: My father, Brian, grew up partly in Ireland. He was born at the beginning of the war in an Irish family in Manchester, an industrial town in the north of England. Second generation immigrants from Ireland, like my father, are often more Catholic than the Pope. More passionate than the Irish in Ireland, he loves Irish music, Irish football, Irish history, the drinking, the laughing and dancing. It is a country he loves but above all it is the people who make the country. Ireland is the country of his parents, grandparents and great-grandparents. Generations of my father's family as far back as the 12th century come from Ireland, County Louth. There is the farm where he spent his childhood every summer. Next to the family farm still live Joe and Ann, brother and sister, the children he grew up with. They are now in their late sixties, like my father.

BRIAN: Freedom, enormous freedom as a kid. I came from the middle of Manchester, a dirty industrial town and I came to the country in the summer holidays where I could run and run in the meadows and in the morning wake up, milk the cows and when a bit older I could use the tractor. A magical country for me, a fairyland.

RUTH: The strong bond my father has with Ireland he passed on to his children. I came for the first time when I was 19 and immediately understood what he felt. The lively music, the drinking and the dancing, the never ending chatter, the jokes rolling over the tongue: you can't help but fall in love I with the country and its people. They are soft and warm, hospitable and simple. But Ireland has an unexpected dark side. By chance I learned of a dark leaf in the Irish history. During the last century women were cast out and locked away in so-called Magdalene convents. These women were in Catholic eyes a moral danger, they were declared outlaws. In that gentle, hospitable country, are thousands, maybe hundred of thousands women and children made to disappear. Stupefied I learned of this; did such barbaric practices occur in Ireland so passionately loved by my father? I wanted to find out what these women had gone through and what role the church and the state had played.

BRIAN: Well, I didn't know anything about this. I had heard of something called the Industrial schools which in principle were orphanages and children who no longer had any parents went to these schools. In principle, I thought this was a good idea. I didn't know anything about the violence and certainly nothing about the Magdalene's asylums. I didn't know anything about that.

RUTH: I told my father about this and he did not turn away. He wanted to learn more about the underbelly of his beloved country because this so-called lost generation of women and children were people of his generation. He wondered whether he grew up in a parallel Ireland. We decided to explore together to get answers to our questions. End August we flew to Dublin, hired a car and drove from north to south to meet the women who could tell us about the other Ireland. But would he still be able to love his beloved country after this journey?

BRIAN: Good morning everybody. We are on our way to Limerick — today is August the 13th and we are in the middle of County Leix. In another hour we will be in Limerick. The sun is shining, I have my daughter next to me and she is very jolly today.

WOMAN: I was here for a while and thought I go down...

RUTH: How are you doing?

WOMAN: It's nice to see you.

RUTH: Nice to see you.

RUTH: When my father ran round in Irish meadows and gratefully inhaled the fresh air, Niamh was locked away in a convent in Dublin. Her parents, well to do Irish, had taken her to a Magdalene convent.

NIAMH: My sister arranged that I could have a night out and was with friends of my sister. I remember we went to a club in Dublin. At some point I became giggly and dizzy. Towards the end of the evening I was offered a lift by one of the men. I was to spend the night with a friend of my sister. In the car he tried to rape me. I pushed him off me at least that is what I remember. I managed to get out of the car and I found my way back to where I was going to stay. This guy was engaged: I couldn't believe he could do this sort of thing. I was furious. The next day I changed and my sister saw the bruises on my body. I became very sick in the following weeks. The hospital in Dublin where I worked sent me home. Before I left I had to take urine test. A few days later the phone went. I had to come to Dublin with my mother to speak to a doctor. The doctor was a friend of my parents. On entry I immediately felt there was a hostile atmosphere. He greeted my mother but ignored me. 'I have to tell you something terrible,' said the doctor, ‘your daughter is pregnant'. My mother went pale. I fell on knees in front of her and said 'Mother I am not pregnant, nothing has happened.' 'Your daughter IS heavily pregnant,' the doctor repeated. On the train back my mother refused to sit with me in the same carriage, she called me a slut and a whore. I was inundated with abuse the whole journey back.

RUTH: Niamh walks with a stick; her movements are laboured and slow. She has good days and bad days she tells me. On bad days she can hardly move from pain. The physical pain reflects in her voice. The birth of her son happened in such primitive conditions that her spine was permanently damaged.

NIAMH: So Martin was born. I adored him; he was put in a little cot beside me, grubby clothes, as I had nothing. My son was with me 24 hours a day for 17 days and even until the very end I never thought for a moment he would be taken from me. So I was looking for a way to get out. So one day there was a commotion and these people just came through the door and one of them — I went to grab my son — and one of them held me back and my son was taken.

RUTH: Why does a mother call her daughter a whore when she has become pregnant though a rape? Why is a child torn away from the mother when she wants to keep it? Extra marital sex in Ireland was evidently so sinful that even a woman raped was a whore. The fallen women were literally put away and their existence denied.

Brian and I talk in the car about Niamh's past. He cannot imagine that her story took place in Ireland. We arrive at the end of the afternoon in Tralee, a village in the south of Ireland. Next day we visit Josie.

RUTH: Hello this is Ruth Hopkins. I was just phoning to confirm that I'm coming to see you.

JOSIE: That's right love.

RUTH: Tomorrow around 12 o'clock?

JOSIE: I'll be here love. Tea or coffee?

RUTH: Tea would be nice.

JOSIE: You take sugar?

RUTH: No I don't.

JOSIE: Milk?

RUTH: A bit of milk would be nice.

JOSIE: See you tomorrow Ruth.

RUTH: Bye.

RUTH: Hello.

JOSIE: Good morning Ruth. How're you doing?

When she opens the door, I see a fragile woman. She is short, skinny and has a stoop. She walks with difficulty but despite her visible physical problems she radiates happiness. She has dark brown nearly black eyes in a naughty creased face. Her electric wheel chair nearly fills her small warm living room where the television is on continually and where her parakeet Jackson twitters away.

Josie became pregnant whilst unmarried when she was 19 and was sent to a Magdalene convent in Cork where her daughter was born and she had to do unpaid work for the nuns.

JOSIE: The nuns received plenty of money and we were never paid. We had to work hard and I got so tired. Once we were allowed to go to bed I was so exhausted and when I was about to leave there, was working on a table cloth and the nuns said:' can't you take it with you and finish it? You can send it to us later.' What cheek! They earned money from my work but where did all that money go? We never received anything. And the next thing we heard the babies crying. We missed our babies. They were removed from their cots and we heard them crying at night: 'mummy, mummy!' The nuns went to the dormitory and prohibited us to talk and a bit later we heard our babies crying. I asked a nun could I see my baby, she is crying! And she just walked away and said nothing. They were so cruel. Of course I was with my mother for a while but to be honest I cannot remember at all. I went to school in a convent with nuns and that's all I remember. She abandoned me when I was a baby. When I think back I get very upset. I would have loved to meet my mum. Look, she is a beautiful woman; she really is a lovely looking woman, isn't she. I look like my mother a bit!

RUTH: At the end of our chat Josie told me that her mother gave her as a baby to the convent and a generation later, Josie on instructions of the nuns, had her daughter adopted. Like a red thread through the lives of the Irish women is the giving and being given. Josie and her mother never met.

Now, towards the end of her life she struggles with flashes of memories which appear and which confront her with her torn past.

As I take leave of Josie I promise to send her tulips from Amsterdam.

Brian and I drive to Moycullon, a picturesque village near a lake to meet Mary. In the car we talk about Niamh and Josie — was the fate of these women a hidden history or did people just not want to know?

BRIAN: Sometimes you heard that a woman was suddenly moving to England or somewhere else in Ireland and never saw them again. I never questioned, just thought it was just normal.

RUTH: How does this affect your view of Ireland?

BRIAN: It was a shock to me. I found it difficult to reconcile as it went against my image of Ireland. I used to come here as a child and I had a sense of freedom, everybody was pleasant, I could do more or less whatever I wanted and I had a feeling of enormous freedom, freedom for the people who lived here, the Irish and how great it was — but later I found that the parish priest had tremendous power and made all the decisions on everything and with me becoming aware about the Magdalene convents my the image I had was torn — this wasn't the Ireland that I knew. It was kept completely secret and only became known during the last decade.

RUTH: Your view of Ireland went to pieces?

BRIAN: Yes, but most people didn't realise what was going on and it was thought they went into these places to be helped and to get better. So most people were very passive and didn’t see any evil going on.

We are now in County Galway in a place called Moycullan, near Loch Corrib, a lake.

RUTH: Are we in a bed and breakfast?

BRIAN: Well, something more flash; it's a kind of fishing lodge where lots of fishermen stay and is quite popular with Dutch people, with views over the lake.

Woman's voice: All the way down and all the way back into the pump house and there was no water at all.

BRIAN: What is that building here?

WOMAN: Oh it was here but dilapidated.

RUTH: You had to start from scratch?

WOMAN: No, the roof and the walls were perfect but no doors and windows, no water, no toilet, no nothing. The first night we slept on a mattress in the kitchen.

RUTH: How romantic!

WOMAN: Romantic my arse — but it is a nice here, it's peaceful and a great place to live, great neighbours.

Mary Norris lives in a little house on a hill. All around her is country with not a house in sight. It is a typical Irish idyll. She returned from a stay in England to come to terms with the past in her motherland and to die on her beloved Irish earth. In her youth Mary and her mother were regarded by the priest as a moral danger. Mary was put in an industrial Factory and was passed on to a Magdalene convent.

MARY: That's my crutch; welcome to my home! Tea?

Mary is a chain-smoking 74 year chatterbox of a woman. Behind her glasses sparkle bright blue eyes, she wears make-up and her hair is dyed blonde. Her voice is hoarse and rough. One cigarette after another she stubs out in an ashtray in her room whist she tells us in bursts of speech about her past. The open fire crackles and we get hot tea and cake.

MARY: I was born in Niamh in South Kerry in 1933 the eldest of eight children. My father died of cancer in 1945 and the year after my mum formed a relationship with a local farmer who was helping and who cam to the house at night. I think he sometimes used to stay the night, I don't know. I was 12 and the parish priest came one day and said she must cease this relationship and she said 'no' as she was a free woman. A few weeks later a police car stopped outside and social services came out and we were taken away. We were placed in an industrial school. When I turned 16 I was made to work for nuns. Once I came back from a visit to the cinema. They immediately took me to a doctor to see if I was still a virgin. Two days later they sent me to a Magdalene convent in Cork. I was not given the opportunity to say goodbye to my brothers and sisters. My mother didn't know where I was. The nuns changed my name. You're called Myra they said, you shouldn't tell anyone why you are here. So they flattened my chest, cut my hair and for two years I was kept there. I kept asking if I could write to my mother but I wasn't allowed to. I was employed as a slave in the laundry. If I had to stay there one more day I would have committed suicide. I had to lie on the ground and kiss the floor as I refused to work. I was never beaten or physically abused, the nuns never touched me as I was unclean, and they wouldn't touch me. It was a psychological pain to me personally — physical hurt will go away, psychological hurt will go to the grave with you.

RUTH: Do you remember the first day you arrived?

MARY: Of course I do.

RUTH: Could you describe it to me what it was like?

(very long pause)

MARY: That's hard. It didn't hit me until I got inside the gate and stood by the door and I don't know it seems to have. It's very hard to remember it because it was so traumatic. I was crying, crying, crying and crying, breaking my heart crying and my lovely long hair cut and crying at night. Just tears and the thing that affected me most was the examination by the doctor, because he stuck two fingers inside me and I saw blood and thought now I have my first period. He said this girl is still intact. I didn't even know what it meant 'intact'. It has left a big mark in my life and all my relationships.

RUTH: The internal examination which Mary describes is known in many other culture and times. The Romany society wants to see, after the honeymoon, a bloody sheet as proof of virginity, or Islamic women who have their maidenhead repaired for fear of being outlawed by society. The social obsession with the virginity of women applies to many culture and times. The idea of a free feminine sexuality seems to touch deep-seated fear out of which aggression develops. Is that the reason why abuse and suppression of women is so persistent? Mary knows who is guilty: that bunch of misogynists in Dublin, the women haters in Dublin, the Catholic Church and the Irish state. But the Magdalene convents were not just there to remove the morally dangerous women of society. The church and the state also had commercial interest. It was an industry which made them money. It was a big commercial laundry, steam, water, dirty. All the hospital sheets with blood on them, horrific! I was in the washers part, a very large space. There was also a huge ironing room and a workshop where they made communion and wedding dresses. I embroidered linen which went to Harrods in London. The lorry driver who delivered the linen to Harrods has confirmed this once in a radio programme. We didn't receive a penny, the nuns had a lucrative business and they earned a fortune. It was big business.

RUTH: Brian and I say goodbye to Mary — she waves farewell in the garden. Joe, Brian's childhood friend collects us from Mary and takes us to my father's family farm in Dunleary.

JOE: As if they were criminals.

RUTH: And they were in a convent in Dundork?

JOE: No, in County Meath. I took them to Dumline.

RUTH: And you took them there?

JOE: I did! Not often but it did happen.

RUTH: And where did you pick them up then?

JOE: To be taken to the orphanage.

On the way we talk about Mary. To our amazement we learn that Joe was closely aware of the case of the fallen women. In the sixties he worked as ambulance driver and had to collect pregnant woman and take them to Magdalene convents. He told us that the girls were beside themselves, very scared, they cried — he will never forget them. They were treated as criminals. Joe still doesn't understand why the men were never made responsible.

JOE: Where did the fathers of the children go to? They were the ones who should have been held responsible. The fathers, why did they get away?

RUTH: One girl he particularly remembers. He recalls that on one winter's night he had to collect a girl by her mother. She was on the verge of giving birth. She was a mentally retarded, weak girl and ended up in a Magdalene convent. Joe later heard in the village that she was made pregnant by a policeman. Why did he not receive punishment?

BRIAN: It is not my image of Ireland. What I recall is a mixture of pleasure, lovely memories, but meeting these women and to learn a bit more of the Magdalene asylums and industrial schools was really shocking. As I said before I have to come to terms with this all.

RUTH: Brian's relationship with Ireland is full of unfulfilled desire and nostalgia. He made Ireland his sanctuary, his idyll, a fairyland where he was free. The women we met were caught in the underbelly of this idyll in a nightmare of religious morality. They were abandoned by family, church and state. Meeting these women has deeply affected him but despite the painful stories he is still filled with the beauty of the country and here the nightmare and dream converge as all the women we met have the same great love for this beautiful, gentle and hospitable Ireland.

Voice of MARY: Holy Catholic Ireland. I've always loved Ireland, I have always loved Ireland. There are some very good people out there. Unfortunately, I didn't come across them.

RUTH: People can humiliate and take advantage of each other in the name of God but with these women it doesn't break the tie with the country of their birth, the smell, the sounds — these feelings no one can take away.

BRIAN: Ok here's the gate.

RUTH: So now we walk towards the farm?

BRIAN: Yes, it is a farm, all in white outside, and a 'haggard' — in the north of Ireland that's a farm yard. And opposite the house are a number of sheds formerly used for pigs, chickens and the tractor in the large barn. And food for the winter, for the cattle. In the extension of the house is the cowshed and it kept about ten cows that needed milking every day and I did it myself: you grab the udders and it is quite difficult, you have to learn how to do it.

(Dog barking)

Ok guys, ok, quiet now, quiet, good boy, good boy!

MUSIC — fades at end of programme.