'Protestant abuse prompted suicide bid' says ex-soldier

A Catholic former soldier claims he attempted suicide after being subjected to a campaign of constant sectarian abuse, threats and harassment by Protestant colleagues, a Northern Fair Employment Tribunal heard today.

Patrick Murphy, 33, from the South Down area, but originally from Catholic west Belfast, claims that after he joined the Royal Irish Regiment in 1996 fellow soldiers left bullets and sectarian notes in his locker and made abusive telephone calls to his wife.

The British Ministry of Defence is denying unlawful discrimination on the grounds of religious belief or political opinion and claims Mr Murphy was unreliable.

Mr Murphy told the tribunal his life of hell started when he was posted to barracks in the mainly Protestant town of Portadown, Co Armagh and fellow squaddies discovered he was a Catholic despite an effort to cover up his religion.

Life was so bad that when he was on 24 hour fast response duty he ended up sleeping in the back of a Land Rover because of the abuse he endured in the bunk room.

He said that when he joined the regiment a recruiting sergeant told him to change his name to hide his religion.

Mr Murphy took the advice and became known as Paul Murphy, and his dog tags were stamped to indicate he was a member of the Protestant Church of Ireland.

“He said it was advisable and safer to change my name. He said it was in my own interests to change my name from Patrick because it would be known I was a Catholic and I would get a hard time,” he added.

The Portadown Army base had been the last place he had wanted to be posted after training because it was “renowned for its sectarianism,” he said.

For the first month or two he kept his head down and settled in.

Trouble started after a Colour Sergeant told him he had spoken to someone in recruitment who told him he was a Catholic from Andersonstown, he claimed.

“He said ‘I know you are a Taig’. I just laughed it off but he said he was going to tell everyone I was a Fenian.

“I tried to push it to one side, I didn’t want to draw attention to myself and hoped it would go away, but it didn’t,” he told the tribunal in Belfast.

Notes started to be pushed into his locker saying “Kill all Taigs” and “All Taigs are bastards”. The lock on the locker was smashed and his helmet stolen, he said.

Bullets were put in the locker, one with a white sticker saying “You are dead”, he alleged.

He reported the abuse and threats to his superiors but in his written statement to the tribunal Mr Murphy said he felt “my immediate superiors to be unsympathetic to my plight.”

In October 1998 he visited the army medical officer who prescribed tranquillisers. Later that day he tried to kill himself by running a hose from the exhaust of his car into the vehicle.

His suicide attempt failed when his wife found him in the vehicle in the drive of their home and smashed the window.

Mr Murphy’s GP, Dr Gerard Lundy, told the tribunal that he had recorded in his notes while treating Mr Murphy after his suicide attempt that he said the Army medical officer had been “dismissive” of his plight .

Mr Lundy added: “That is a fairly damning statement”.

“This was a significant suicide attempt. Patrick, if he had not been found, would have died.”

Dr Lundy said if he had seen a patient and they had gone off and attempted suicide the same day “I would feel that maybe I hadn’t helped that patient.”

There might be an issue of people not recognising stress in the Army, he said, but added that media reports showed “this is not an isolated case. There are a number of suicides in army camps”.

Consultant psychiatrist Dr Richard Ingram, who saw Mr Murphy after his suicide bid, told the tribunal it had been because of intimidation by colleagues who subjected him to “systematic mental and verbal abuse”.

The British Ministry of Defence, in its defence of the case, argues that after Mr Murphy made one complaint about sectarian remarks in 1998 he did not pursue the matter.

In its written statement the MoD said: “Mr Murphy has had a chequered past, he at times can be unreliable and his loyalty has fluctuated.”

The tribunal was told that when Mr Murphy took compassionate leave in 1996 because his wife had cancer, his record had been described as “exemplary.”

The hearing continues tomorrow.