Shaped by Silence

The powerful and painful stories of five survivors of Magdalene Laundries in Canada, Ireland, and Australia.

Rie Croll is a professor of sociology in the social/ cultural studies programme at Memorial University, Grenfell Campus, and a former therapist who worked with abused girls and women.

“[Croll] interviewed survivors who entered institutions between the 1930s and 1960s, not long before they closed for good. Their accounts provide some of the most detailed information we have about Good Shepherd homes in Canada.”

Joan Sullivan, The Telegram:

“This volume consists of the stories of five women, from Canada and Ireland and Australia, whose lives were shaped by forced confinement in Magdalene laundries and related reform ‘schools’ operated by the Roman Catholic Order of Sisters of the Good Shepherd. “Shaped by Silence” gives such troubling and formerly hidden narratives a voice.”

Judy Donaldson, Atlantic Books Today:

"The poignancy of the title, Shaped by Silence, grows with each chapter in Rie Croll’s superbly written and important book, which seeks to correct the world’s ignorance about life for girls and women institutionalized in Magdalene laundries. The clever cruelty behind this system of oppression is shocking and frighteningly parallels the horrors of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.”