Portadown man launches proceedings against Orde

A Portadown man who was almost kicked to death by loyalists on 24 March 2002 has launched legal proceedings against PSNI supremo Hugh Orde for negligence and breach of duty.

Solicitors acting for 48-year-old Brian Rouse lodged legal papers at Belfast's High Court last week.

The father of four was set upon and viciously beaten by a group of loyalists within yards of two CCTV cameras operated by the PSNI close to the Garvaghy Road and several hundred metres from where loyalists launched their savage and fatal attack on nationalist Robert Hamill in April 1997.

Rouse suffered brain damage in the sectarian attack and was left with a wound that required 27 staples.

Rouse said a PSNI control room had been understaffed and so a series of incidents leading up to and including the attack on him had gone unnoticed.

In 2003, the Compensation Agency refused damages for criminal injury because he had been convicted of carrying out a minor offence as an 18-year-old in 1975.

Since the sectarian attack, Rouse has been unable to work and after undergoing three years of intensive physiotherapy, speech and language therapy, he still suffers from paralysis on his right side.

Rouse survived a loyalist murder bid in the early 1990s and his father was killed by the UVF in November 1983.