The nuns at the Home of the Good Shepherd present a public front of selfless service to others: “[T]he clients were led to believe that [the] Good Shepherd provided moral education and job training for wayward girls, a worthy service to the community” (85). Behind closed doors, however, corruption, exploitation, and cruelty run rampant, which leaves a lasting impact on the “wayward” girls who pass through the Home. In examining the girls’ experience at the Home, the novel explores the legacy of institutionalized violence. 

The authority figures in the novel often hide behind their social status and supposed service to the community while inflicting harm on others. From the outside, Dr. Gilroy is a respectable married man with six children. He is supposed to offer medical care and guidance to the girls at the Home, but instead he uses his access to vulnerable girls to abuse them, culminating in his rape of Angela. The nuns behave in a less extreme, but still abusive manner. They present a hypocritical front of piety to the world while enacting harsh discipline and punishments against the girls, with abuse ranging from physical acts like hair-pulling, to denial of food, to confinement within small spaces for extended lengths of time. 

Instead of the schooling which they are legally supposed to receive, the girls are forced to work in the laundry facility, earning income for the diocese which purports to support them (and from which, as Mairin learns, the Mother Superior is stealing funds). It is also suggested that locking the girls in their dormitory behind the iron gate violates fire safety regulations, which the nuns dismiss, showing a further lack of concern for their general well-being. Worst of all, when Angela tries to report Dr. Gilroy’s rape, the nuns instead accuse Angela of having a secret affair with a boy from outside the Home. In choosing to automatically believe Dr. Gilroy over Angela, the nuns ensure that his sexual abuse of the Home’s inmates will continue unimpeded. The novel also suggests that the girls’ experiences in the 1960s are part of an ongoing form of institutional violence, as Deirdre reports a similar experience of oppression in the Magdalene laundry back in Ireland. 

Angela’s lawsuit in Book 2 suggests that one avenue to address this legacy of institutional violence is to pursue justice through the court system. As Angela reports, there is no winning when it comes to reparations for harm done, but the act of speaking out can begin new processes to address and root out the problems.