Examination of Witnesses (Questions 520-539)
WITNESS A, WITNESS
B, MRS MARIE
TERESE O'HAGAN
AND WITNESS
C
22 FEBRUARY 2005
Q520 Chairman: What about you Witness
C? Would it help you?
Witness C: There is nobody to
come to apologise to me. What would they apologise for? The people
who did it have not. I do not particularly blame just the people
who just pulled the trigger. I blame the people who bred hatred
into these people, "the men in suits". They or their
children will never do time, so I know that is part of the trouble
here as well.
Q521 Chairman: Do you know which organisation
it was?
Witness C: Yes, Red Hand Defenders.
They are all the same to me. They just have different titles.
* * * * was killed just because he was a Catholic.
When you go into a certain area and walk home they know what you
are, so he was just unlucky.
Q522 Chairman: It was a random killing?
Witness C: Yes, it was random.
Q523 Chairman: It was not because he
had been particularly targeted?
Witness C: They were looking for
someone; I knew they were looking for someone. We had heard that
somebody else had seen it and got away or somebody was going to
work and had seen a car. It seems like that was a bit of conscience
but he did not contact anybody. * * * * would be going
down his street. If you go into that street you are a Catholic.
Once they knew you were Catholic that was it really. Help for
me at the moment has been WAVE. My niece had lost her father when
she was a young girl and it was in her thirties that she fell
down and took a nervous breakdown. My sister could not talk about
it, never talked about it.
Q524 Chairman: Her father had been murdered
in the Troubles?
Witness C: Yes. They came to his
home and he was shot dead. She could not talk about it so my niece
had talked about it, and my niece went to a place called WAVE.
I did not know it was going to happen to me. WAVE helped her.
She used to talk about it. Shortly after * * * * died
I took a notion. I do not drive but I asked somebody would they
give me a lift and I went looking for WAVE. You do meet a cross-section
there. If you think about it, you are sitting with people from
the opposite side of the community, Protestants and Catholics,
and they have lost people. If you can sit together and laugh together
and cry together, that is a big achievement. It is the only place
I know it can be done, in WAVE.
Q525 Chairman: And that has helped you?
Witness C: That has helped me,
yes.
Q526 Chairman: And your niece?
Witness C: Because she went I
went. That helped her. Her son joined the youth in it. I am the
only one in my family that goes to it. You cannot get the men
to join things very easily. You would make a friend, you would
connect with somebody, not necessarily of your own religion, and
to me that says something for WAVE.
Q527 Chairman: When you say that you
cannot get men to join in it, is WAVE very largely a women's organisation?
Witness C: No, we have men. I
think women let their emotions out a lot more and the men kind
of bottle it in. My husband took very ill when my son died and
it was all his emotions going inside. My father used to say women
had well developed tongues. I do not know; maybe that is the truth.
We are not shy. You will find an awful lot of women coming to
these things while the men hold back. The women come and tell
the stories because the men will not come.
Witness B: I am a volunteer for
WAVE. I only got into WAVE about three years ago.
Q528 Chairman: How did you get to know
about it?
Witness B: Through another friend.
They were in WAVE.
Q529 Chairman: Another friend who had
lost someone and they went to WAVE?
Witness B: Yes. They said to me,
"Why don't you go to WAVE?". I said, "As long as
it is cross-community". I am very much cross-community. That
is the way I was brought up. I went in to see the girls in WAVE
and they could not have been more supportive of me. As they had
told me, I had to go and see a counsellor about what was happening.
I was being negative to it. I was re-living the whole thing and
it was all bottling up over the years. Because of this I was getting
no support. My sister would ring and tell me, "Would you
come and help with my kids?". I had two young children of
my own. Because my brother was not there and I felt I had to go
and support her. Whenever I got help myself I was sort of passing
that on. I was supporting her and I felt that was my job because
my brother was killed. She had four young children, I had two
young children, so I had to mind six children sometimes as well
as keeping a house of my own, because she had no back-up at all.
Over the years, as I say, it just built up and built up and I
went to WAVE and they have been supporting and helping me. I asked
them in the office could I be a volunteer. They said, "You
have to go through the whole procedure and get checked out",
and I said, "That is no problem". I go out with befrienders
and the satisfaction I get is unbelievable.
Q530 Chairman: It has helped you?
Witness B: It has really helped
me.
Q531 Chairman: Are you Protestant or
Catholic?
Witness B: Protestant. I go out
to see people who have been affected like myself. The way I look
at it is that I have my own hurt and my own grief that I went
through and I can relate in a different way to somebody else's
pain. Everybody has the same veins at the end of it. I am still
a volunteer and I get so much satisfaction from it.
Chairman: I am very glad to hear that.
Q532 Mr Pound: Can I ask a quick question
on * * * * comments earlier on? One of the things
that we are trying to do is work our way through the idea of a
victim-centred approach to reconciliation. You used two very dramatic
expressions earlier on. One was about the book on the shelf but
the second thing you said was that you felt used. Could you possibly
say how we could approach this issue from the perspective of the
victim without falling into that trap? Is there any category of
person or organisation you feel could raise the issue of the victim
without, in your expression, using you?
Witness C: I think you should
definitely look into compensation. My son was worth nothing, like
the dirt on the earth. When my son was buried and I was at his
grave for many weeks I saw the body rotting there in that grave.
When it happened to me I also thought, "Not me. I am a good
woman". I was a good woman; I had good children. In our areas
we are used. We are quite used to being used. As a Catholic I
am quite used to being used. Maybe the ordinary people in the
Protestant areas are used to being used.
Q533 Mr Pound: Could I ask by whom?
Witness C: By paramilitaries.
I have no contact with them but I lost my voice. I came from a
family where there boys and girls. My father was a working labourer
and we sat round the table and talked. My mother would have said,
"Ireland should be free", and my father would have said,
"It is too small". That is how I was raised. I found
it very strange when the Troubles started that when I went out
socially I whispered. I was not a confident person because in
my view I was not for the Troubles, I was not for taking a life
and that is why I just say you have to understand where I come
from. My church taught me you cannot take a life, right? That
is where I stand. You cannot raise a gun to anybody. I have lost
your question a bit along the way.
Q534 Chairman: Who had been using you
was Mr Pound's question.
Witness C: I wrote a poem one
time when I was in the Waterfront or somewhere, and everybody
came round with their cups of tea or their small drinks and it
was a tête-a-tête. It was lovely and we were
there and "Here are the victims" and that is what they
do with us.
Q535 Chairman: Who are "they"?
Witness C: The Prime Minister
was coming from Northern Ireland. My brain loses names. The Northern
Ireland Minister.
Q536 Mr Pound: Paul Murphy.
Witness C: It was not him at the
time. I just thought, "We are working class. This is not
our scene". These are working class people that died. This
is not our scene when we come for cups of tea and you just say
hello and he forgets you as soon as he has passed you. Can you
tell me—you are the brains—what can you do? How do
you do it? Maybe this is a start. I do not know.
Q537 Mr Pound: Thank you for saying we
are the brains. It is not a description that most of us would
recognise. There have been cases where people have been killed
in the same way that your son was killed where that person has
been made a hero by a group of people who want to argue that case.
The face appears on the gable ends, the name appears on the posters.
Witness C: No, they do not, no
when they are not part of an organisation.
Q538 Mr Pound: I just wanted to make
absolutely clear that this was not the case.
Witness C: No, not with the ordinary
person.
Q539 Mr Pound: So it was not that you
were specifically used in connection with that but you feel perhaps
more patronised.
Witness C: My husband feels now,
if anybody says anything to us, "We have the right to speak
now". I went and spoke in my own community. I feel now we
have earned that right. We lost a son. I am still not very brave.
I am brave here but I am not that brave really.
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