https://audioboo.fm/boos/2121046-i-know-who-killed-my-mother-says-jean-mcconville-s-son
This is pretty harrowing stuff.
[QUOTE=âTheUlteriorMotive, post: 939274, member: 2272â]If if happened to your mother and your family was broken up and put into social services it would be hard to âget over itâ but at this stage I donât think anything is gained by convicting one man who may have ordered the execution
Details are harrowing though
It is almost 38 years ago to the day that a gang of asked IRA men and women in West Belfast burst through Jean McConvilleâs door. Jean had been recently widowed and was alone in the house, along with seven of her 10 children. âThey came into the house and told my mother to put on her coat,â her son Archie, who was 16 then, recalled at the inquest many years later. âWe were all in a panic and the children were squealing everywhere. We were afraid of what they were going to do to our mother.â
They waited all night for her return. And the next. Helen, who was 15, tried to look after the younger children, which included her six-year-old twin brothers. There was no word the first week, nor the second. Finally, after three weeks, the now hungry and terrified family were visited by a stranger who gave them Jeanâs purse â with 52p still inside it â and her three rings.
Two months after Jeanâs disappearance, the family were split up by social services and sent down into the bowels of the system. These children, who had all witnessed their motherâs abduction, were told again and again that she had deserted them.
So what really happened to Jean McConville? Even now, three decades later, there are so many lies and gaps surrounding her story that the picture remains unclear. Her children are unsure about certain details, though not in the important one: âWe just waited and waited from that night, for years and years.â
This is what we do know. Jean was originally a Protestant from East Belfast who converted to Catholicism when she married Arthur McConville. The couple suffered sectarian persecution by both communities and they were forced to move around until they ended up in the Falls Road. Jeanâs ambiguous status in West Belfast turned ugly after Arthurâs death from cancer in 1971. Her fate was sealed when neighbours allegedly saw her give aid to a wounded British soldier. The bereaved family had only been in their new flat for a week when she was taken away, the day after being beaten up in a bingo hall.
We also now know that she was interrogated and tortured after the abduction; she was beaten with such force that her bones cracked and her hands were mutilated. The actual cause of death was a single shot to the back of the head. Jean was then taken across the border and secretly buried on Shelling Beach in County Louth. For over 27 years, the IRA maintained that it had no connection with her disappearance.
We also now know what happened next in the great catalogue of crimes committed against Jean McConville. Despite receiving two notifications of her abduction, the RUC failed even to record the complaint. CID inquiries in that area of Belfast, it was later explained, âwere restricted to the most serious casesâ in those days. Not only was nothing done to locate Jean, but the RUC refused to accept that she missing, preferring, instead, to believe the word of an anonymous tip-off that she had absconded with a British soldier.[/QUOTE]
From reading this, it points towards the interrogation of a suspected informant.
Why would they âinterrogate and tortureâ a 37 year old woman if she gave aid to a British soldier?
[QUOTE=âfarmerinthecity, post: 939368, member: 24â]From reading this, it points towards the interrogation of a suspected informant.
Why would they âinterrogate and tortureâ a 37 year old woman if she gave aid to a British soldier?[/QUOTE]
a) of course she was an informer
b) of course her family are going to say she wasnât
c) does it really matter in relation to how people feel about the moral right or wrong of this specific case?
The premise that the IRA abducted and murdered Jean McConville over aiding a British soldier is absolute horseshit, she was an informant who had previously been given a free pass due to her situation.
[QUOTE=âTabby, post: 939369, member: 2142â]a) of course she was an informer
b) of course her family are going to say she wasnât
c) does it really matter in relation to how people feel about the moral right or wrong of this specific case?[/QUOTE]
I think your points (a) and (b) answer question Š.
[QUOTE=âTabby, post: 939369, member: 2142â]
c) does it really matter in relation to how people feel about the moral right or wrong of this specific case?[/QUOTE]
Yes, it was not a discriminatory attack/murder/abduction.
[QUOTE=âfarmerinthecity, post: 939368, member: 24â]From reading this, it points towards the interrogation of a suspected informant.
Why would they âinterrogate and tortureâ a 37 year old woman if she gave aid to a British soldier?[/QUOTE]
Yes, why would murderous psychos do something like that?
Surely thatâs obvious to any of us with half a brain but understandable too why the family would peddle it. The shit that was made of those kids lives in this specific case is surely beyond the pale no matter how horrible a war was going on? I would presume even the hardest of hardliners would admit that at this stage.
Yeah - thatâs what they were.
I mean it is usual for a large bunch of psychopaths to exist in a small 6 counties area in the North of Ireland.
Do you even know what a pyschopath is?
[QUOTE=âfarmerinthecity, post: 939377, member: 24â]Yeah - thatâs what they were.
I mean it is usual for a large bunch of psychopaths to exist in a small 6 counties area in the North of Ireland.
Do you even know what a pyschopath is?[/QUOTE]
Oh my mistake. They were brave volunteers who bravely abducted a mother of 10 at gunpoint, then bravely tortured her and finally bravely executed her with a shot to the back of her head so she wpuldnt see the brave face of her brave executioners.
I note that you havent bravely voted in the poll either
War is horrible by its nature and due consideration is rarely given. It wasnât a discriminatory attack, her murder was sanctioned because she was a tout and she was even given added dispensation because she was a widow of 10 children but she continued to be an informant. She was made aware of the consequences of doing what she did, she obviously was not very concerned with what the impact these matters were having on her kids. Itâs not as if she was doing what she was doing what she was doing for any selfless reasons.
Ah I understand all that and certainly wouldnât be an art foley style condemner of the IRA. In every war in history both sides do things that are morally wrong though and this was surely one of the Provosâ. If it wasnât its hard to imagine what is. A widow surviving on the breadline with ten kids is almost like something youâd make up as an exaggeration for fucks sake.
[QUOTE=âartfoley, post: 939378, member: 179â]Oh my mistake. They were brave volunteers who bravely abducted a mother of 10 at gunpoint, then bravely tortured her and finally bravely executed her with a shot to the back of her head so she wpuldnt see the brave face of her brave executioners.
I note that you havent bravely voted in the poll either[/QUOTE]
Jesus - do you have to always see everything in black and white?
I never called them brave volunteers. I just pointed out that you calling them murderous psychos was factually wrong.
The Brits taking her on as an informer in her situation was also incredibly morally wrong by the way.
[QUOTE=âfarmerinthecity, post: 939383, member: 24â]Jesus - do you have to always see everything in black and white?
I never called them brave volunteers. I just pointed out that you calling them murderous psychos was factually wrong.[/QUOTE]
Its not factually wrong. They were murderous psychos. They murdered and showed psychopathic traits
I donât shed any sympathy for what happened to Jean McConville, itâs sad the way her children were affected by it but she brought it on herself. Kingsmill and Enniskillen were much bigger blots on the Provos moral rapsheet.
True, but her case is more easily used by the political opponents of Sinn Fein because they know with will garner more a public reaction. The majority of people donât know or care about the intricacies of what went on that time. They just see it as the âIRA took a woman and shot, isnât it terribleâ.
Jean McConville is Irelandâs Princess Diana.
What are âpsychopathic traitsâ?
You donât think it was wrong treaty?
Surely they could have done anything to avoid killing a woman in her situation. She was hardly some west Belfast rogue loyalist it was surely the unbelievable financial stress of being a working class widow with ten kids pushed her into the arms of the Brits. What level of informing could she have been doing anyway? Iâd say sheâd have been fairly busy with real life to be passing on much info of life or death value in fairness.