Mover Mike

This is fascinating!

Do you remember the movie Magdalene Sisters

based on real events that took place in Ireland from the 1960s until 1996 when an estimated 30,000 young women, considered by their families to have committed sexual sins, were sent away from their homes to earn penitence working in profit-making laundries run by the Sisters of Magdalene Order.

Well, Grumpy Old Bookman wrote about a book titled Don't Ever Tell written by Kathy O'Beirne.

O'Beirne's book is an autobiography, and it describes how she was beaten by her father and sexually abused by two boys from the age of 5 before being sent away to an institution. She claims that at the age of 10 she was repeatedly raped by a priest and whipped by nuns. Later she was forced to take drugs in a mental institution.

Much like another book recommended by Oprah, James Frey's A Million Little Pieces, this author claims the book to be non-fiction. It was published in June of 2006, a month after Frey's, and the publisher Mainstream Publishing believes it to be a work of non-fiction. Only problem is, the girl's family says it's all a lie.

In the book, O’Beirne says that she suffered abuse during nearly 14 years spent in Magdalene laundries — institutions for 'fallen women' run by religious orders. Mary O’Beirne said: 'Our sister was not in a Magdalene laundry, or Magdalene home; she was in St Anne’s children’s home, Kilmacud, St Loman’s psychiatric hospital, Mountjoy prison and Sherrard House for homeless people. Our parents placed her in St Anne’s for a brief period when she was 11 because of ongoing behavioural difficulties.' She spent six weeks there.

She added that between 1968 and 1970, when O’Beirne claims to have suffered the worst of the abuse, she was in fact staying with them....

'Our sister, to our knowledge, was not raped by two priests, and did not receive an out-of-court settlement for the same. There is not a shred of evidence to support such outlandish claims.'

Now, Grumpy Old Bookman reports that O’Beirne's brothers and sisters took a lie-detector test and passed; Kathy refused to take it.

If it's too bad to be good, it probably isn't!