Turbulent 30 years for family since IRA took away mother

EIGHT of Jean McConville’s children, from twins aged six and 16, were in the house in the dismal, trouble-torn Divis area of west Belfast when their mother was abducted in early December 1972.

The eldest sister, 19-year-old Anne was in hospital, the eldest brother Robert, 17, interned.

The eight in the house on that fateful night, Arthur, Helen, Agnes, Michael, Thomas, Suzanne, James and Billy, gathered at Louth County Hospital yesterday. Anne is dead, while Robert, while not at the hospital, was down at Shelling Hill for the removal of the remains.

It's been a turbulent 30 years for the family since that dismal night in

December. Michael, aged 11 at the time, describes it as the beginning of a nightmare and remembers the seconds before she was taken.

"Me and the rest of the kids grabbed on to her and we were crying and squealing. It was all hell. My last memories of my mother was her going out the door crying and very stressed out."

The IRA members, including four women, told the children they were only going to take her for a few hours. She never came back.

The family initially did not report the abduction to the RUC and young Helen, just 15, took over the running of the house while their paternal grandmother Mary stopped by from time to time to check on them. They spent their last Christmas as a family in the small house, huddled together for comfort and protection from the cold.

They waited for their mother's return, but she had already been taken over the Border, shot once in the back of the head and buried in a shallow grave in the Carlingford area of Co Louth.

After Christmas, a man called to the house and handed over their mother's purse and three rings but told them he did not know what happened to her.

The family went public in January, pleading for information about the whereabouts of their mother.

It signalled the beginning of the break-up of the McConville family. They had no family to stay with as Jean McConville's family were east Belfast Protestants, while her husband Arthur who died of cancer 10 months prior to the abduction was an only son.

The children were placed in separate foster homes and gradually drifted apart. Some have coped better than others. Helen married in 1976 and she and her husband Seamus McKendry helped drive the campaign on behalf of the "disappeared" in recent years.

Others have coped less well. James McConville, aged six when his mother disappeared is charged with kidnapping for ransom and is currently out on bail.