This is a documentary film about the what life was like for women in Ireland for much of the 20th century.
For a woman to be pregnant and unmarried , was a crime and how she was impregnated wasn't considered. Women were disappeared into institutions and often never seen again, or not even talked about by family. Children were born and they were also disappeared. The death rate for illegitimate children was much higher than for children cared for outside these institutions.
Like many crimes against women, they have catastrophic effects on a woman's life, for the rest of her life. To be a rape victim, imprisoned and punished for somebody's crime, for him to go on to have a positive life in the community, while his victim is imprisoned without a finite term. Even if she escaped or was eventually released, she was shunned by the only community she knew and left without resources, vulnerable, unskilled and alone.
This documentary looks at what it was like and then in recent years, how the establishment have continued, even after 2020 to silence the women. The recent horror that after all their stories were gathered and then to be denied any form of justice, was evidence to the women of Ireland that the establishment still wants to whitewash away their sins.
There is poetry, social and political analysis and the true accounting by these women and their children.
This is the true face of catholic Ireland.
For a woman to be pregnant and unmarried , was a crime and how she was impregnated wasn't considered. Women were disappeared into institutions and often never seen again, or not even talked about by family. Children were born and they were also disappeared. The death rate for illegitimate children was much higher than for children cared for outside these institutions.
Like many crimes against women, they have catastrophic effects on a woman's life, for the rest of her life. To be a rape victim, imprisoned and punished for somebody's crime, for him to go on to have a positive life in the community, while his victim is imprisoned without a finite term. Even if she escaped or was eventually released, she was shunned by the only community she knew and left without resources, vulnerable, unskilled and alone.
This documentary looks at what it was like and then in recent years, how the establishment have continued, even after 2020 to silence the women. The recent horror that after all their stories were gathered and then to be denied any form of justice, was evidence to the women of Ireland that the establishment still wants to whitewash away their sins.
There is poetry, social and political analysis and the true accounting by these women and their children.
This is the true face of catholic Ireland.