ABCNEWS.com : Thousands Enslaved by Ireland's Catholic Church: "Girls who had become pregnant, even from rape, girls who were illegitimate, or orphaned, or just plain simple-minded, girls who were too pretty and therefore in 'moral danger' all ran the risk of being locked up and put to work, without pay, in profit-making, convent laundries, to 'wash away their sins.'
They were completely cut off from their families, and many lost touch with them forever.
Stripped of their identities, the girls were given numbers instead of names. They were forbidden to speak, except to pray. If they broke any rule or tried to escape, the nuns beat them over the head with heavy iron keys, put them into solitary confinement or shipped them off to a mental hospital.
Over a period of 150 years, an estimated 30,000 women were forced into this brutal penance, carried out in secret, behind high convent walls. "