Controversies
On May 20, 2009, the institute was condemned in an Irish government report known as the Ryan Report, the work of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse. The Sisters of Mercy were named as the chief among the institutes under whose care girls "endured frequent assaults and humiliation designed to make them feel worthless ... personal and family denigration was widespread".
Investigation into the conduct of so-called Magdalene Laundries, some of which were run as commercial laundry businesses by the Sisters of Mercy, found that many girls died and were buried in the grounds of other laundry business premises as run by the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity, without any reporting or accountability to proper legal authorities, and that many were buried in unmarked graves or given a generic Magdalene derived name. The widespread public outrage arising after this scandal came to light resulted in the Sisters of Mercy being thereafter referred to by some of their most ardent critics as the Sisters of Cruelty.
Read more about this topic: Sisters Of Mercy