Hello and good evening everybody. I am delighted to be co-hosting with Bev on an interview of Marine Sullivan.

And if you're not familiar with her story, it is absolutely mind-blowing.

A book, Girl in the Tunnel, My Story of Love and Loss as a Survivor of the Magdalene Laundries.

It only came out in April 2023, and it's already got over a thousand reviews on Amazon,

4.6 stars average, which is absolutely phenomenal.

And, you know, the description of the book is a great introduction because it's so well

written.

So I will read you guys this and then we'll hand it over to Maureen.

So when Maureen was just 12, she confided in her teacher that she was being physically

an essayed by her stepfather, never in her teacher that she was being physically an essayed by her stepfather.

Never in her darkest imaginings could she have dreamt that she would be the one who would face a harrowing punishment.

Within 24 hours, Maureen was taken from her home and her beloved grandmother and sent to the Magdalene Laundry in New Ross County Wexford, run by the Order of the Good Shepherd nuns.

Oh dear. She was told that she would receive an education there but instead was immediately stripped of her meagre possessions

and thrown into forced labour washing clothes scrubbing floors in humane and unrelenting conditions

not allowed to speak,

burly fed, often going without water.

The child was viciously beaten by the nuns for years

and hidden away in an underground tunnel.

This just gets more insane, the more you look at it.

When government inspectors came,

no one would see how cruelly the nuns were treating her

so in the book as in this interview marines going to bravely recount her agonizing journey

...