A number of priests in the Down and Connor diocese contacted by the Irish Times yesterday believed the deaths of the Quinn children in Ballymoney were something which could have been repeated many times over the Drumcree crisis period.
There has been a wave of sectarian attacks on isolated Catholic families in the diocese, which covers Co Antrim and parts of Co Down, over the past week.
Probably the worst concentration of attacks has been around Carrickfergus, Co Antrim, an area which has the lowest ratio of Catholic residents of any electoral ward in the North, with only about 2,000 families, or 8 per cent of the local population, being Catholic.
Fourteen Catholic families, about half of them young couples with children, have had their homes petrol-bombed in the past week and have left. Most are in temporary accommodation with relatives while they try to find new homes. Some of the older Catholics intimidated out of Carrickfergus had been living in the town for decades and were owner-occupiers, having bought their homes from the housing authority. Houses in the Glenfield and Sunnylands estates have been petrol-bombed in a concerted campaign against Catholics. The Catholic proprietors of the Marina guest house on the promenade have left after running their business for 10 years after being attacked with petrol-bombs on two consecutive nights.
Two couples living in the Greenisland area, on the outskirts of Carrickfergus, have left homes they had lived in for up to 30 years after being petrol-bombed. On Saturday night a loyalist mob threw 10 petrol bombs at a small religiously-integrated primary school at Islandmagee, near Whitehead, just north of Carrickfergus.
The attacks on the Catholics in Carrickfergus took place against a background of quite intense loyalist rioting and assaults on police. The homes of at least two RUC officers were also attacked in the area. The loyalists in Carrickfergus also tried to burn down the local Catholic primary school, St Nicholas's, at the start of the week. According to a local Catholic most parishioners have spent every night sitting up into the early hours in fear of attack. After a relatively quiet start to the week, loyalists in Ballymena, who had carried out the picket of the Harryville parish church for 20 months until last autumn, petrol-bombed three families out of their homes. Five families have quit their homes in Antrim town during a week of sustained attacks in the Parkhall estate. One family of eight on Birch Hill Park was petrol-bombed and then attacked by a mob as a furniture van arrived to move its belongings on Thursday night. On Saturday night a loyalist band parade made its way to St Comgall's church in Antrim and played loudly outside while evening Mass was taking place. They moved on as the congregation left.
One Catholic family had a narrow escape in the Ballysally estate, in Coleraine, Co Derry, at the start of the week. A petrol-bomb was thrown into the front living room of the house on Ballygallon Park, engulfing the room in flames as the family was going to bed. The family has left the estate.
Another loyalist band parade stopped outside St Macnissi's parish church in Larne, Co Antrim, on Saturday night, but moved off without interfering with the congregation. Stones have been thrown through windows of Catholic homes in Larne, but there have been no reports of petrol-bomb attacks in the past week. There were very serious arson attacks on Catholic homes in Larne earlier in the year.
A number of parishes, particularly in the south Antrim and north Down area, where there have been very serious sectarian attacks in the past, reported very little intimidation of parishioners. Two of the priests surmised that many of the local loyalists in their areas who had carried out attacks on Catholic homes and church properties in the past had probably spent the week in the field at Drumcree.
One priest in a parish which had very serious assaults on the Catholic congregation during the early 1980s noted that there had been a marked drop-off in attacks over the past three years when local loyalists appeared to divert their attentions to the rioting in Drumcree.
Priests serving in areas where the Catholic congregations live in predominantly Protestant areas report parishioners suffering from nightly anxiety and having to sit up late in case of attacks.