Kathleen Elizabeth "Kathy" O'Beirne (18 October 1956 – 24 February 2019) was an Irish author, best known for a controversial memoir known as Kathy's Story in Ireland and as Don't Ever Tell elsewhere, the most successful non-fiction book published by an Irish author.
[1] According to journalist Hermann Kelly, O'Beirne was educated at Scoil Mhuire in Clondalkin from 1961 to 1969; in 1967, at the age of 11, she spent six weeks at St Anne's Reformatory School in Kilmacud.
[citation needed] Kathy's Story was co-written with Michael Sheridan, a journalist, and published in 2005.
In the book, she describes an abusive home life and subsequently being placed in a children's home where she was raped by a priest; she was then sent to a psychiatric facility and finally placed in a Magdalene laundry at High Park Convent in Drumcondra, where she was again raped, giving birth to a daughter who later died at the age of 10.
According to Hermann Kelly, her description of life in a Magdalene laundry is inconsistent with accounts given by former inmates of those facilities.