Earlier this year, ABC Radio National broadcast in its ‘The History Listen’ series a program called ‘The Missing Magdalens’ about Australia’s Magdalen laundries.  The program focussed on St Magdalen’s Retreat, Tempe, which the Sisters of the Good Samaritan ran from 1888 to 1980. In describing life at St Magdalen’s in the early twentieth century, the program relied on an article in the Watchman newspaper. That article included a statement by a former inmate, May Gould. Ms Gould claimed she had escaped from the retreat and described her mistreatment there.

It was bad enough that the program makers should have used the Watchman as its source. Historian Richard Broome once described the Watchman as ‘filled with anti-Catholic fanaticism’. But, worse still, the program failed to inform listeners that the Watchman later admitted that its informant had lied. It confessed she had lied ‘in a most unblushing manner’ and had made a statutory declaration that was ‘false in several particulars’. Furthermore, the program did not tell listeners that Ms Gould’s claims had been refuted point by point in the Catholic and secular press.

A complaint by me to the ABC ombudsman led to changes to the program. But the revised version continues to rely on Ms Gould’s story. And it still does not inform listeners she was denounced as a liar by the Watchman.

In the latest issue of the Journal of the Australian Catholic Historical Society, I canvass the affair in detail. The article is entitled “‘The Missing Magdalens’: the ABC resurrects a ‘hidden story’ discredited more than a century ago“. That same issue also includes an article by Mary Barthelemy who gives background information and her personal reminiscences of St Magdalen’s, Tempe.