Australia At the request of the Melbourne bishop James Goold, four sisters, led by
Mary of St Joseph Doyle, arrived in Australia in 1863. They established the
Abbotsford Convent, and the first women's penitentiary and reform school for girls. The convent was established carry out the heart of the Good Shepherd mission, that of providing refuge for women deemed outcasts of society. From the early 1890s to the 1960s, most Australian state capitals had a
Magdalene asylum, also known as Magdalene laundry, a large convent where teenage girls were placed. According to James Franklin, the girls came from a variety of very disturbed and deprived backgrounds and were individually hard to deal with in many cases. The asylums were initially established as refuges, with the residents free to leave. In the early 1900s, they reluctantly began to accept court referrals. "They took in girls whom no-one else wanted and who were forcibly confined, contrary to the wishes of both the girls and the nuns." The state-run
Parramatta Girls Home, which also had a laundry, had similar harsh conditions but a worse record for assaults. In 2004 the Australian Parliament released a report that included Good Shepherd laundries in Australia for criticism. "We acknowledge" [writes the Australian Province Leader Sister Anne Manning] "that for numbers of women, memories of their time with Good Shepherd are painful. We are deeply sorry for acts of verbal or physical cruelty that occurred: such things should never have taken place in a Good Shepherd facility. The understanding that we have been the cause of suffering is our deep regret as we look back over our history."
United Kingdom The Congregation ran institutions which provided residential accommodation for children and adults in
Belfast,
Derry and
Newry in
Northern Ireland. These institutions were the subject of the two-week Module 12 of the
Northern Ireland Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry into sexual and physical abuse of children—not taking into account young women over the age of 18, the majority of residents—starting on 7 March 2016. The inquiry, under retired judge Sir Anthony Hart, published its report on 20 January 2017. In regard to the Good Shepherd Sisters facilities in Belfast, Derry and Newry, Hart said there had been "unacceptable practices" of young girls being forced to do industrial work in the laundries. He recommended state-backed compensation of
£7,500 to £100,000 per person for victims of historic child abuse in Northern Ireland, with the maximum for those who had experienced severe abuse or been transported to Australia in the controversial
Home Children migrant scheme. An apology on behalf of the Sisters said "we regret that some of our former residents have painful memories of the time spent in our care."
Ireland The Ireland branch of the congregation has been accused of labor abuse, with inmates forced by nuns to perform laborious work in laundries and factory-like setups for pocket-money pay for companies such as
Hasbro. In Dublin in 1993, the order sold land to property developers in High Park, Drumcondra, that partly included a graveyard containing the mass grave of former inmates of its
Magdalene Laundry. After seeking an exhumation order from the authorities to remove 133 bodies from the mass grave, it was found that the grave actually contained 155 bodies. They were eventually cremated and the ashes reinterred in
Glasnevin Cemetery. The resulting scandal caused a re-evaluation of the Order's work in Ireland, though the order still has to pay promised compensation to former inmates.
The Netherlands The Dutch branch of the congregation has been accused of labor abuse, with inmates forced by nuns to perform unpaid labor in laundries and sewing workshops between 1860 and 1973. Women were renamed and forced to work every day except Sunday. 'Rebellious' girls were sedated. Women who escaped despite the high walls were detained and returned by the police. Nutrition was poor, the regime was harsh, and medical care inadequate; hundreds of girls and women died. The 'Death List of the Special Cemetery' of the asylum in Velp has 214 names. The six institutions that apologised for carrying out abuse were De La Salle Brothers, represented by Francis Manning; the Sisters of Nazareth, represented by Cornelia Walsh; the Sisters of St Louis represented by Uainin Clarke; the Good Shepherd Sisters, represented by Cait O'Leary; Barnardo's in Northern Ireland, represented by Michele Janes; and Irish Church Missions, represented by Mark Jones. McCourt praised the government ministers' apologies; they had "sat and thought out and listened to what it was we said.", but said that the institutions had failed to do this, leading to some victims having to leave the room while they were speaking, "compound[ing] the hurt." Others angry at the institutions' apologies included Caroline Farry, who attended St Joseph's Training School in Middletown from 1978-1981, overseen by nuns from the Sisters of St Louis, Pádraigín Drinan from Survivors of Abuse, and Alice Harper, whose brother, a victim of the De La Salle Brothers, had since died. Peter Murdock, from campaign group Savia, was at Nazareth Lodge Orphanage with his brother (who had recently died); he likened the institution to an "SS camp". He said "It's shocking to hear a nun from the institution apologising ... it comes 30 years too late ... people need to realise that it has to come from the heart. They say it came from the heart but why did they not apologise 30 years ago?" ==Apostolate==