Vow of Silence

Suzanne Walsh's childhood became the ‘stuff of nightmares’ after her father passed away and her mother, unable to get a job in Ireland, had to seek work in London. So ‘Mammy’ was forced into the heartbreaking decision to put Suzanne and her five siblings into church-run orphanages in Dublin while she worked away. It was just meant to be temporary. Her life soon became a daily struggle to avoid beatings with canes and rosary beads. Suzanne and the other children worked from dawn until midnight, living on disgusting scraps of food, while the nuns dined on fresh fruit, meat and cakes that the ‘orphans’ had cooked for them. Suzanne tried her best to shield her younger sisters from the terror of these hateful ‘women of God’. But it was only the beginning of their troubles… Eventually, their mother returned from London, after four years, with enough money to take her children out and the family was reunited. However, too scared to speak out, the children vowed to take the horrors they had experienced at the orphanages to their graves. What really happened behind those church doors? This is Suzanne's heartbreaking and touching story.