By Sarah E. Murphy

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view – until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

One of Harper Lee’s most quoted lines from “To Kill a Mockingbird,” spoken by Atticus Finch to his daughter, Scout, to illustrate the importance of empathy, isn’t just timeless, it’s universal.

There are people all over this world who have endured trauma that most of us can’t imagine. People who quietly go about their lives while harboring unthinkable pain as a result of childhood wounds, both emotional and physical.

Mary Teresa Collins is one of those brave and inspiring individuals.

Mary and I have never met, but I’m honored to call her a friend. We connected on social media as a result of my work with survivors of clergy sex abuse. We spoke for the first time last April, when I interviewed her over the phone. I couldn’t stay composed, and the ink on my notebook was smudged by my tears as I listened to the horrors inflicted by the Roman Catholic Church and the Irish State.

Today, I am thinking of her mother, Angelina, a woman she met on a few occasions during her imprisonment but never had the chance to know. Angelina died on this day in 1988 at the age of 57 – younger than my older sisters are now.

Angelina is buried in a mass grave in St. Finbarr’s Cemetery in Cork, Ireland, along with 72 other women.

That alone should be cause for public outrage and outcry. But her story doesn’t end there.

Angelina’s name was shortened to Angela when she was imprisoned in the St. Vincent Peacock Lane Magdalene Laundry in Cork, after escaping from a country home where she was sent when she was taken from her family, members of the Traveling community, because she was pregnant and unmarried.

She spent 27 years as an unpaid laborer, and for the last decade of her imprisonment, she was denied the hysterectomy she needed, eventually dying from ovarian cancer. At the time of her death, January 27, 1988, she was barely five years older than I am now.

Mary never knew her mother, like many children of the Laundries, and her childhood was also stolen as she suffered physical and mental abuse at the hands of the nuns at the Industrial School nearby, resulting in lifelong trauma and PTSD.

Mary left Ireland as a teenager and doesn’t consider it home. She now lives in London and works as a social worker, privately suffering from her own pain. She and her daughter, Laura are committed to fighting for justice in her memory, while also shining a light on the crimes committed against all Magdalene mothers and their children, many of whom were sold to American couples through illegal adoptions.

Someday, I hope to meet Mary and Laura, and someday, I will stand at Angelina’s grave and properly pay my respects. Until then, she remains in my thoughts and heart, and I’ll continue to tell her story.