Shaped by Silence

Five women's compelling accounts from Ireland, Canada, and Australia reveal life in Magdalene laundries and Good Shepherd institutions where forced labor, abuse, and isolation aimed to reshape them into an ideal of 'pure womanhood.' Their stories expose systemic cruelty and the courageous quest to rebuild their lives.

"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 ." - Judy Donaldson Atlantic Books Today

"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." - Joan Sullivan, The Telegram

"[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." - Genna Buck The National Post

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.