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a penny in compensation from the State. So I'm claiming it from Sinn Fein. I've told them that if Gerry Adams can claim £10000 for being held up for four hours by an RUC road block. Andrew's family should be entitled to an awful lot more."
Maureen will pursue her case through the civil courts and, if necessary, take it so Europe. "All those men who were away for 12 years and that, they're coming out now. 'They think they're going to clean up the republican movement. God help them. Because these ones, I don't call them republicans. I call them the Mafia. Gangsters. Scum. They're only in it for what they can get. And that is power." Sinn Fein, the PUP and the UDP don't see it that way, of course.
Since Maureen began to work with Vincent McKenna of Families Against Intimidation and Terror, she has bonded with Andrew Peden, who had nothing to do with paramilitaries but was caught in the middle of a UDA-UVF disagreement, and tortured for 12 hours by some UVF men, who then blew his legs off. "Having the same name as my son and being the same age and with young children, I feel really close to him. It's pitiable to see what they've done to him," says Maureen.
For Christmas, Andrew Peden's five-year-old daughter wants a pair of legs for her father. Andrew Kearney's seven-year-old daughter wants more: 'l don't want any presents from Santa, Mummy. Just bring me back my daddy."
The 13 month old boy whose parents were intimidated out of a three-bedroomed farmhouse in County Tyrone is too young to know what's happening to him, but he will notice a shortage of friends and family this Christmas in the tiny Scottish flat where he now lives..
It's just. three months since his Protestant father was held up by masked men claiming to be from the IRA. Holding a gun to his head, one of them said:
"What's a Protestant like you doing going out with a Catholic girl? You have seven days to leave Northern Ireland or else." Taking their baby. the young couple fled in the clothes they stood tip in.
Since the Good Friday Agreement, terrorist activities reported to FAIT have included 35 loyalist and 20 IRA beatings and 25 loyalist and 22 IRA shootings. The IRA lead on the exiling front, having expelled 41 men, 27 women and 43 children out of Northern Ireland to the loyalists' 29, 22 and 31.
They are also ahead (43 to 33) when it comes to general intimidation, which frequently involves driving people (usually whole families) out of particular places in
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