‘The Legacy Act, do you know what is for? To keep us all quiet and hope we go away’

HELEN Whitters has never forgotten the evening her son Paul was killed.

He was just 15 when a police officer shot him in the head with a plastic bullet during a minor disturbance in Derry in April 1981, at the height of the Hunger Strike.

Ms Whitters said a 10-year-old boy knocked on her door to say her son had been injured.

Paul died in hospital ten days later.

“At 15 his life was brutally taken away by a policeman,” she said.

“It’s just so wrong, and so unnecessary.

“This happened in a residential street, houses on either side, a shop where people were going out for their milk and their bread.

“And (he) could have so easily been taken down (without being shot) by those in riot gear.

"Because he was shot from a very, very close range.”

Ms Whitters, who lives in Scotland, travelled to Belfast yesterday for the launch of a report by international human rights experts into the British state's actions during the Troubles.

The report - Bitter Legacy: State Impunity in the Northern Ireland Conflict - found that the government operated a “widespread, systematic, and systemic” practice of protecting the security forces from justice.

The panel of experts also found the government showed an "extraordinary level of institutional failure" over killings linked to the state, collusion and torture.

The report was published just days before the Legacy Act, due to come into force tomorrow, which will stop all civil cases and inquests linked to the Troubles.

Ms Whitters said the act is an attempt to silence victims’ families.

“The Legacy Act, do you know what it is for? To keep us all quiet and hope we go away. But we won’t go away,” she said.

“There’s too many of us, too many people who have suffered over the years.”

She said she takes strength from memories of Paul.

“Because he was such a wonderful child,” she said.

“He had such a personality, he was loved by all. A fundamentally good being. So that is what keeps me going.”

On April 1, 1975, Dessie Trainor’s mother, Dorothy, was walking home with his father, Malachy, in Portadown, Co Armagh, when they were targeted by members of the loyalist Glennane Gang.

Dorothy, who was a Protestant, was shot dead. Malachy, a Catholic, was seriously injured.

Mr Trainor was just 13 at the time.

Two of his brothers - Ronald and Thomas - were also later killed.

“So as a family growing up, our whole unit was completely destroyed,” he said.

Mr Trainor said he suffered with alcoholism and was sent to Crumlin Road Gaol in Belfast when he was 13-and-a-half.

“All because of that night, that of April 1. Everything was ruined,” he said.

He said he is pleased the report highlighted widespread failings.

“I always use the metaphor of the brick wall, the British establishment put a brick wall in front of us,” he said.

“And we have to get to the other side of it. Whether they open the door and let us through, or we have to chip away at it.

“Behind that (wall) is the truth. Not just for me, but for thousands of people.”

He said he is more interested in the truth than in prosecutions.

“Never mind reconciliation, I can’t reconcile it. (But) If they came to me and said ‘Mr Trainor, we are going to give you the truth about the murders of your family to the best of our ability’, that would be it for me," he said.

“I’m not really into convictions or taking people to courts. I just want to know why they killed my mum.

“My mum was a Protestant, and a Protestant organisation murdered her.”

Mr Trainor has taken part in a play, Blood Red Lines, which features people affected by the Troubles, including a former British soldier and survivors of the 1974 Dublin and Monaghan bombings.

The play will be performed again at Stranmillis University College in Belfast next month, before a tour of the United States.

Gisle Kvanvig, from the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights, convened the panel of human rights experts which wrote the report.

He said he was gratified by how families of victims had received the report’s findings.

“And I’m very pleased by that because of course it’s one of the key things was to do something for the families and relatives,” he said.

He said many legacy cases can still be investigated, even if there is not enough evidence for a prosecution.

“It is fully possible to investigate these cases today,” he said.

“And you will discover many truths about what actually happened. And some of that will go some way towards helping families and relatives.”