She’s now a tireless and vocal advocate for justice for those affected – and at 70 years’ old, she now feels ready to publish her story. Although I hold the Roman Catholic Church responsible for what happened to this child, along with her stepfather who was a cruel evil brute, I cannot find her mother without sin. What Sullivan has done for me personally is change my perspective to help me recognize the joy and comforts I live with daily. This is the exact opposite of what she has been told for four years and what she witnessed when fellow inmates tried to escape, and emblematic of the vast hypocrisy at the heart of the Magdalene enterprise. Maybe he was scared of losing my mother, scared of not having control over the world around him … or maybe he was jealous, in some twisted way, of my father and the real love my mother had before she met Marty; he was second in line after all.

I just hope through my book people listen to little children, that’s the hope I have,” said Maureen. She always had an apron on, in the pocket of which she kept things in the way another woman might use a handbag. It was very hard for Liosa and me, because this is very disturbing and very, very painfully to listen to and exhausting emotionally.

Finally, the Church admitted that this was not the case and a nun confirmed to Maureen that she had been held captive because as a sexually abused child, the Church feared that she would corrupt the other children. It is the story of the author’s life in three different Magdalene Laundries - New Ross, Athy, and Dublin.

The card gives holders access on a statutory basis to a wide range of primary care and hospital-based services. It was difficult for me to avoid the steam as I held the corners of the clothes to get the right fold without making dents in the fabric.Now as 36 year old woman who was never abducted into a religious institution, I was surprised that I felt Sullivan and I had so much in common.

Over the following four years she was transferred to another such laundry in Athy, Co Kildare, and then to a home for the blind on Merrion Road in Dublin. Leading figures from the fields of literature, history, politics, journalism, comedy and science, including Brian Cox, Dylan Moran, Roddy Doyle, U2 guitarist The Edge and Roddy Collins, will be taking part in this year’s Dalkey Book Festival, which runs in the Co Dublin seaside village from June 15th to 18th.Hearing that snarl as he drew back his fists to land them on the bodies of the people I loved was harder than taking it myself. He didn’t restrain himself and lost his temper in a second, sometimes for nothing you could place, and he would go for you, even in his boots, and his kicks would hurt for days.

The Girl in the Tunnel is the heart-breaking story of her agonising journey from a violent home to the brutal Magdalene laundry, and her desperate fight for freedom and for justice. It was tiny and tumbledown and leaked rain in places, but to me it was a sanctuary from everything that was going on at home.I still lie in bed trying to figure it out, what I did and why was I sent away to a prison to work as a slave? The determined words of Carlow’s Maureen Sullivan, one of the youngest survivors of Ireland’s infamous Magdalene laundries.