Magdalene Laundries
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DALLAS, February 9, 2013 – Courage has a name: It is Diana O’Hara. Diana is a survivor of the Magdalene Laundries operated in the United States by the Good Shepherd Sisters, a Roman Catholic religious institute for women.
The order is among those that are being charged with the enslavement and abuse of thousands of woman in what are called “Magdalene Laundries.”
Diana’s childhood slipped away while she was trapped by walls of stone and hearts of barbed wire.
In an exclusive interview, she shares her story with the Communities.
A self described “Big Mouthed Irish Girl,” Diana O’ Hara was born in Buffalo, New York, into a dysfunctional family with an alcoholic mother. At the age of four months, she was removed from her home for her own safety and placed into foster care, where she remained until the age of ten.
Foster care had given Diana two parents who loved her and some semblance of structure in her life.
When Diana heard her foster parents speak of having to return her to Social Services, she became possessed by fear and started running away until she was returned to Social Services and placed back into the foster care system.
Diana became caught in an endless cycle, shuffled in and out of Social Services from one foster home to the next.
Between the ages of ten and twelve, she passed through no fewer then 11 different foster homes.
At the age of 12, Diana was sent back to live with her alcoholic mother, a lounge singer who rarely came home and spent most of her time in nightclubs with different men.
During that time, Diana began receiving unwanted visits from a man in his twenties who had found out she was home alone. One day he forced his way into the apartment and molested her. Despite Diana’s efforts to stop him, he returned time after time. When she tried to tell her family, her grandmother punished her for having sex by hanging her out of a second story window by her ankles.
The stay with her mother was short-lived, and Diana returned to foster care, where she drifted from family to family. One overbearing set of older foster parents dismissed her as “difficult” and sent her to a “Protestant Home” which was ironically located across the street from the club where her mother was a singer.
One night, Diana decided to sneak out and confront her mother. Drunk and angry, Diana’s mother would have nothing to do with her. When Diana returned to the “Protestant Home” her mother followed her screaming that the Protestants were not monitoring Diana closely and demanded they send her to the “nuns.”
Read more: http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/heart-without-compromise-children-and-children-wit/2013/feb/9/magdalene-laundries-american-survivor-speaks-out/#ixzz2nxmMEThg
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