Among the victims of the ongoing loyalist feud are the women and children who are left behind to cope with an intolerable burden, writes Susan McKay
Kathy Gibson and her children can't go home. Their house in north Belfast has been sealed off by the police as a crime scene. Her young boyfriend, Craig McCausland (20), was murdered there three weeks ago by loyalist paramilitaries. Kathy, her nine-year-old son and six-year-old daughter are sharing a single bed at her mother's house in east Belfast now - but no one is sleeping much.
"The kids saw Craig when he was lying bleeding and all," says Kathy. "They're having nightmares and wetting the bed. I'm cracking up all the time."
The couple were asleep when gunmen battered down the front door with a sledgehammer, before shooting McCausland repeatedly in the head. A bullet lodged in one of the children's bedrooms. It was the sort of murder loyalists carried out hundreds of times during the Troubles.
Then, the victims were mostly Catholics. McCausland was a Protestant, and he was murdered by the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) during the latest bloody loyalist feud. This round involves the UVF and the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF). McCausland's family, however, is adamant that he was not a paramilitary, and the PSNI says it has no evidence that he was involved.
McCausland was shot just hours after the LVF shot another young man, David Hanley. He was badly injured and is now blind. His family, too, says he was not involved in paramilitarism.
Two young men who did have paramilitary involvement have also been murdered in the past month: Jameson Lockhart and, just last week, Stephen Paul. Paul had served time in jail for serious assaults on his wife.
"These scumbags claim they are defending the Protestant community, but they are destroying it," says McCausland's cousin, Nichola McIlvenny. "The IRA has stopped, so whatever cause they ever claimed they had is finished. Two generations of our family have been devastated."
There is a photograph on the wall of McCausland's mother, Lorraine, when she was pregnant with him. Three years later, in 1987, UDA men beat her to death with a concrete block. Her partially clothed body was found in a stream near a loyalist club where she had been out for a drink. She was 23.
No one was convicted of her murder, and the older generation of the family couldn't bear to talk about it. Two years ago, after the death of the aunt who reared Craig and his brother, the family referred the case to the police ombudsman.
"We want justice for Lorraine, and we want justice for Craig," says Nichola. "Craig's son is one now.** In 18 or 20 years, is this going to strike another generation? I know how they rope young people into these organisations - it is over stupid things. They give out drugs on tick and then the kids can't pay them back, or they get caught for petty crime and these people say, 'join or get beaten'. It has to stop." She describes the Shankill riots on Thursday as disgusting. "The police were just trying to arrest murderers, law and order should prevail."
NICHOLA WORKS FOR a cross-community foundation set up to commemorate Terry Enright - a young Catholic man murdered by loyalists in 1998. She says the family has been inspired by the bravery of the family of Robert McCartney, murdered at the beginning of the year by members of the IRA.
Putting up with feuds has become a part of life for families living in areas dominated by loyalist paramilitary groups. On the Shankill Road, an organisation called Families of the Displaced, Dispersed and Distressed (FODDD), was set up in 2000 to look after the 300 or so families driven out of the Lower Shankill stronghold of the UDA leader, Johnny "Mad Dog" Adair, during a previous loyalist feud.
Many of the families have been re-housed further up the road, where murals, flags and bunting commemorate the UVF. A spokeswoman for FODDD gives a cautious interview but a member of the board of the organisation later phones to ask for it not to be used. "People are scared. This is a sensitive time," she says.
One woman living on the Shankill says that women who used to be neighbours and friends now pass each other on the road without speaking. This time, the dominant organisation in the feud is the UVF. A couple of weeks ago, hundreds of men gathered in Garnerville estate in east Belfast and waited until a number of families packed up their belongings and left.
"Some of the women up at this end of the Shankill know what women from LVF families are going through," the woman says. "But there is nothing they can do. If it was women, women would talk and sort this out. But it's men and that won't happen."
However, she says that she has heard other women, who were displaced in 2000, stating that the UVF should just "go in and wipe the LVF out". The present feud is mostly affecting families in LVF enclaves, including a couple of streets in Ballysillan, up the mountain, behind the Shankill, Garnerville in the east, and certain estates in Holywood, Co Down.
Leanne* lives in Holywood, but the harsh estate she lives on seems a million miles away from the bijou little Gold Coast town with its pretty coffee shops and interior design stores. She is currently staying with her mother in east Belfast.
"My partner is in the LVF," she says. "This has been going on for years, once or twice a year, and now that I have kids, every time it comes up, we have to up and go. He stays. He's been told by the police he is under a death threat. I just don't want the kids caught up in anything. There's gunfire at night and cars revving up and men roaring."
WITH A BABY, a two-year-old and a seven-year-old, moving isn't easy. "My wee seven-year-old is totally out of his routine and he's really acting up. He won't do anything he's told. He's really bad. There's times I could kill him. I'm seriously thinking of going home. I can't stick this and I know we're getting on my mummy's nerves, too."
Leanne does voluntary work with children in her area, and is determined her own children won't grow up and join the paramilitaries. "They sicken the life out of me," she says. "They should wise up, get a grip. This is just about power and control of areas. They should think about their families."
She says these things to her partner. "He lets me ramble on. He says nothing - I think it's because he knows I'm right."
The couple has been together since Leanne was 14. "He would have been a hood. He'd have been a joyrider, and he'd have hung about the streets drinking and that. There was always war between him and the UVF. Joining the LVF was some sort of protection. Now he's in something he can't get out of," she says.
Her mother, Pearl*, admires Leanne's loyalty, but says she is going out of her mind with worry.
"It is like a mother looking in at a daughter who is in a domestic violence situation. Part of you wants to say, 'Just leave him', but it isn't as simple as that. She loves him and he's not a bad fellow. It does make me angry though, that she is running around trying to sort everything out, and he's just lying low."
She isn't happy, either, that her daughter - clever, educated at a good school, and with a strong sense of community responsibility - "has ended up with a hood who's rumoured to be selling drugs".
Betty Carlisle, director of the Shankill Women's Centre, says the centre, which provides a safe place for women and children from all sides at such times, is still dealing with women traumatised in 2000.
"There is a lot of anxiety, a lot of dependence on prescribed drugs and alcohol," she says. "In these feud situations, it is men who are directly involved, but there is a ripple effect. Women live on eggshells. They can't speak freely. They feel they've to keep their heads down and say nothing. But they try desperately to keep things normal."
The centre is trying to give women more say in a male-dominated community. "Everything we do here is aimed at giving women confidence," says Betty. "We believe that if you educate a woman, you educate a family. That is the only way things are going to change."
* These two names have been changed
** This article was edited on July 8th, 2016