Paige's+Reading

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Kathy's Story, by Kathy O'Beirne is a real life story about the childhood nightmare inside the Magdalen laundries. Full of heartbreaking events, Kathy is continuously abused by her father and her mother desperately pleads with him to stop, but he never does. He will batter, bruise and hurt, physically and emotionally. Her father is known as a holy man, that attends mass every night, and he is respected and not known to the public as an abusive alchohic that is always abusing his children. Kathy is kicked out of her own home and has to sleep in the garage with only the comfort of her dog, Teddy to help ease the pain and cold. Then when her dog passes away, Kathy's whole world has turned upside down and leads to a chain of events that would leave a normal eight - nine year old girl distraught, tormented and unruly. Kathy has always dreamed of going to the seaside, so when her father turns around, and says that her dream will come true, she is over the moon with happiness and forgives her father for everything he has ever done. A nun turned up, and then they drive and drive and drive. When the get to the seaside, the drive straight past it, and go into a metal gate, filled with gloom and sadness, but most of all, fear. Kathy is afraid, afraid of what is going to happen. This isn't the seaside, this isn't supposed to happen, she keeps thinking. She is made to go in, and she starts life in a school run by nuns, cruel evil nuns. She works all day, scrubbing, polishing, hurting inside. But she is afraid of the big leather strap that awaits her often in the office of the head nun. There she meets friends, and is told about the "loony bin" where they say that if you speak up about what happens in the walls of the building, you will be sent. But Kathy becomes a victim of the priest and doesn't like his actions, so she speaks up. And off she goes to the loony bin, the physiactrist hospital. There she is drugged up to the eyeballs, always feels dopey and can never think properly. But then she is sent to the magdalen laundries and is treated like a small child that has murdered someone, so she must pay for the pennance she hasn't done.

Heartbreaking story, but is truly amazing. Five stars (: