It is 1985 in the run-up to Christmas in a small town in County Wexford, Ireland. Bill Furlong toils as a coal merchant to support himself, his wife and his five daughters. Early one morning while out delivering coal at the local convent, he makes a discovery that forces him to confront his past and the complicit silence of a town controlled by the Catholic Church.

For decades, Catholic Ireland locked its children into institutions if they were conceived out of wedlock - punishment for the sinning mothers. Revealing the children's perspectives, and including powerful archive, this documentary offers a painful yet cathartic insight into the cruel business of Mother and Baby Homes.

The tragic and shocking story of the notorious Magdalene Laundries, a shameful system, created by the Irish State but supported by all strata of Irish society, which enslaved more than ten thousand women between 1922 and 1996.