Testimony (12A)
Directed by Aoife Kelleher
★★★★★

IRELAND has its own Epstein sex scandal, its very own set of damning files which the Irish state still refuses to release: the Magdalene files. In this devastating  documentary the slow progression towards justice for the women of Magdalene Laundries and of the Mother and Baby Homes is laid bare.

“From 1922 to 1996 the Irish state, in collusion with the Catholic Church, imprisoned its people in institutions all over the country.”

These words are set out, white against black, in this no-holds-barred, excoriating examination of the power system in Ireland and its contempt for its female citizens, as well as boys in industrial schools. Dragged out by a group of magnificent activist women, the secrets and lies are reluctantly, sulkily, resentfully, acknowledged by politicians – the clergy having nothing to say, and definitely nothing to pay in redress.

The Justice for Magdalenes (JFM) campaign, established in 2003, sought a state apology and financial redress for women confined in Magdalene Laundries in Ireland (1922–1996), employing domestic and international human rights law, mobilising thousands of pages of evidence, and ultimately contributing to a state apology and a redress scheme. Campaigners are shown using the basic principles of the Irish constitution to bring the state to account.

Against this, torturous experiences of survivors are recounted, stories from the secretive, brutish hinterland of ultra-conservative Catholic Ireland.

This is a masterful film which takes the viewer through the struggle and the gains made in the justice campaigns to date. It focuses unrelentingly on the Irish government’s ongoing attempts to evade its responsibilities in relation to its citizens – those who “suffered the most serious violations of their civil and political human rights.”

Some of the footage is almost unbearable to watch – a bewildered and eerily subdued toddler, Mari Steed, wanders into her new life, fresh off a plane just landed in the US, separated unwillingly from her mother, trafficked into adoption for cash. An elderly man, Michael O’Brien, in a TV audience, following yet another whitewashing commission, recounting publicly his rapes and beatings by clergy as a child at an industrial school. He begs the gormless-looking ministers in front of him “not to continue hurting us.” Which of course they continue to do.

Because the story continues. The documentary concludes with unfinished business: having duped many victims of Mother and Baby Homes through the redress scheme, still the Irish state impedes unfettered access to the records from these institutions.

Formidable advocate Maeve O’Rourke calls on the Irish government to publish the archival records of the church and state, and the testimony of willing survivors and individuals in positions of responsibility. Such a move, ultimately, could open the way for survivors to sue the Catholic Church in court.

And what a great day that would be for Ireland’s citizens.

In UK and Irish cinemas November 21