O’Loan had doubts after attacks on children
But the mother-of-five’s family insisted she press ahead with the ground-breaking job that has thrust her into the centre of a maelstrom of controversy over police reforms.
In a wide-ranging interview, to be broadcast today on RTÉ Radio 1, Mrs O’Loan speaks for the first time about how emotional strain almost forced her from the post.
“When your little boy is brought home, someone having stood on his head, and you can still see the footprint ... that’s very troubling,” she told broadcaster Eamon Dunphy.
“I remember when Kieran was attacked the second time saying to him ‘I can go back to the university, I don’t need to do this, you’re more important’ and he said ‘No ... what you’re doing is important’.”
Mrs O’Loan and her husband SDLP Ballymena councillor Declan O’Loan’s family have been subjected to violence and intimidation since she became the first official police watchdog in the North, in 1999.
Last year, her 23-year-old son Damian was knocked unconscious after being hit on the head with an iron bar on the Oldpark Road in north Belfast. He was left with serious head injuries, a broken arm and damage to his leg after being attacked by four youths.
Mrs O’Loan lost her unborn baby in 1977 after surviving an IRA bomb attack at the Ulster Polytechnic in Jordanstown, where she worked as a law lecturer.
“The fact that my child was deprived of life, because somebody decided that we were all dispensable in some cause, was enormously hard to deal with,” she said.
The English-born solicitor drew most controversy in her role as Ombudsman when her investigation into the police handling of the Omagh bombing found the security forces had two prior warnings — findings some feared might derail the peace process.
The convent-educated Catholic also revealed how her faith has helped her cope with extraordinary adversity in her life.
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