UVF linked to attack on Catholic woman (18) in Rangers supporters' club

» Peadar Whelan

The victims fled the drinking club, which was packed with people attending a fund-raising event for the a ‘Kick the Pope’ band, the South Belfast Protestant Boys

UNIONIST community worker May Blood was asked on BBC Radio Ulster’s Sunday Sequence show at the weekend about last week’s vicious attack suffered by a female Catholic teenager in a Glasgow Rangers supporters’ club in south Belfast.

She said it was, “disgraceful” and that the perpetrators “aren’t real men”.

Then came the but . . .

“But she went into a hornet’s nest . . . there are still places we have to avoid.”

It smacks of blaming the victim for being in the wrong place at the wrong time and provoking the perpetrators’ sectarian bloodlust.

As for the major unionist parties, Peter Robinson’s DUP and Mike Nesbitt’s UUP, their local representatives have so far yet to comment on the vicious assault carried out on Saturday 4 May. Their silence shows their lack of willingness to confront the issue of sectarian violence carried out by unionist paramilitaries.

It has been confirmed to An Phoblacht that the main instigators of the attack at the 1st Belfast Rangers Club are thought to be senior members of the UVF in south Belfast and are well-known in the community.

The UVF-aligned Progressive Unionist Party has denied Sunday newspaper reports that the men are members of the PUP.

The attack was carried out on Saturday 4 May in the Barrington Street club where the young woman went with her 21-year-old Protestant friend. Although she is Catholic and from the Falls Road area, she lived and socialised in the unionist Donegall Road district.

The frenzied assault started when a drunken mob turned on the teenager without provocation. Her friend went to defend her and was also beaten.

The Protestant girl’s 23-year-old sister, also in the drinking den at the time, intervened on seeing her sister being assaulted and was herself beaten unconscious. She sustained a broken nose as well as severe bruising to her body.

At the height of the attack on the young Catholic woman and her friend, as many as 15 people (including a pregnant woman) were involved.

The three victims fled the drinking club, which was packed with people attending a fund-raising event for the a ‘Kick the Pope’ band, the South Belfast Protestant Boys.

They sought safety in the flat they share. But the mob, armed with iron bars and baseball bats, pursued them and tried to force their way into the barricaded flat.

Both women believe they would have been beaten to death had the gang managed to break in. Their lives were saved by the arrival of the PSNI.

All three women have since fled their homes, having been threatened by the UVF.

❏  THE assaults meted out to these young women have echoes of the killing of 31-year-old Margaret Wright in 1994.

The young Protestant woman, mistaken for a Catholic, had gone to a party in a loyalist band hall and shebeen in Meridi Street off the Donegall Road.

She was savagely beaten in the hall before being shot dead and her body dumped in a wheelie bin.

Red Hand Commando leader and drug dealer Billy Elliot was subsequently shot dead by the UVF for his part in the beating and killing of Wright, which had caused revulsion even amongst some UVF supporters.

In January 2012, Catholic teenager James Turley suffered a severe beating in the area and was lucky to survive.

As with Margaret Wright. the loyalists responsible for the attack dumped his unconscious body in a wheelie bin.

The trainee chef was working as an extra on a film-set when the loyalist thugs attacked them.

In a sinister twist to the attack, the young man fled into a house seeking shelter but the householder called to the gang, who continued their assault in the very place the terrified victim hoped he would be safe.

After that attack, the UVF threatened community workers, warning them not to bring anyone into the area without permission from the UVF.