Fact1: film criticises hypocrisy and corruption within staff of laundries, Fact2: women are forced to stand naked after taking communal shower, Fact3: corruption of resident priest is made clear through sexual abuse of Crispina, Fact4: Margaret is allowed to leave by intervention of younger brother, Fact5: Bernadette and Rose decide to escape finally together trashing Bridget 's study in search for key to asylum door and engaging her in suspenseful confrontation
Output: Set in Ireland, beginning in 1964, socalled fallen women were considered sinners who needed to be redeemed. The film follows the stories of four young women  Margaret raped by her cousin, Bernadette too beautiful and coquettish, Rose an unmarried mother and Crispina an intellectually disabled unmarried mother  who are all forced by their families or caretakers into the Magdalene Asylum. The film details the disastrous lives of the four girls whilst they are inmates, portraying their harsh daily regimen and their squalid living conditions put on at the laundries. Each woman suffers unspeakable cruelty and violence from the Mother Superior, Sister Bridget, despite her gentlefaced appearance and outwardly softspoken demeanour. She is characterised as sadistic and almost inhuman at times, as conveyed through her merciless beating of Rose in full view of Bernadette, or when she mockingly laughs at Una as she hopelessly clutches at her fallen hair locks. The film also criticises the hypocrisy and corruption within the staff of the laundries. Sister Bridget relishes the money the business receives and it is suggested that little of it is distributed appropriately. Those who liken themselves to Mary Magdalene, who deprived herself of all pleasures of the flesh including food and drink, eat hearty breakfasts of buttered toast and bacon while the working women subsist on oatmeal. In one particularly humiliating scene, the women are forced to stand naked in a line after taking a communal shower. The nuns then hold a contest on who has the most pubic hair, biggest bottom, biggest breasts and smallest breasts. The corruption of the resident priest, Father Fitzroy, is made very clear through his sexual abuse of Crispina. Three of the girls are shown, to some extent, to triumph over their situation and their captors. Margaret, although she is allowed to leave by the intervention of her younger brother, does not leave the asylum without leaving her mark. When she deliberately asks Sister Bridget to step aside for her to freely pass and is sharply shot down, Margaret falls to her knees in prayer. The Mother Superior is so surprised, she only moves past her after the Bishop tells her to come along. Bernadette and Rose finally decide to escape together, trashing Sister Bridgets study in search for the key to the asylum door and engaging her in a suspenseful confrontation. The two girls escape her clutches and are helped to return to the real world by a sympathetic relative, their story optimistically ending when Rose boards a coach bound for the ferry to Liverpool and Bernadette becomes an apprentice hairdresser. Crispinas end, however, is not a happy one; she spends the rest of her days in a mental institution where she was sent to silence her from revealing the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of Father Fitzroy and dies of anorexia at age 24. The epilogue to the film gives a brief description of the lives of four of the inmates after the girls leave the asylum by the late 1960s. It is noted that the last Magdalene asylum closed in 1996.