The family of Jean McConville who was abducted and murdered by the IRA 30 years ago has again appealed to the IRA to help locate her remains.
Her son, Michael, with other members of the McConville family, attended a special Mass on Saturday in St Peter's cathedral in west Belfast in memory of Ms McConville, a mother of 10 children, who was taken from her home by the IRA on December 7th, 1972.
Despite extensive searches of a beach in Co Louth, her remains were never recovered. Mr McConville, who was 11 when his mother was abducted, appealed to anyone who knew where her body was located to help the family so they could "give her a Christian burial".
The IRA claimed that Ms McConville, a Protestant married to a Catholic and living in nationalist west Belfast, had spied for the British army. Mr McConville emphatically denied this allegation.
"They said she was an informer but I know and the rest of the family know that was untrue. My father had died 10 months earlier and my mother had a mental breakdown. She was in no fit state to gather information on anybody," he told yesterday's BBC Radio Ulster Sunday Sequence programme.
On the programme he described the last time he saw his mother. "The night before my mother was taken away, she was taken out of bingo and she was questioned for a lot of hours by the IRA and she was beaten. She was found walking about some streets and British soldiers found her and brought her to the police station."
He said the following day five women and six men dragged her from her home. "Me and the rest of the kids grabbed on to her and we were crying and squealing. It was all hell. My last memories of my mother was going out the door crying and very stressed out."
The family could never find peace until her body was found, added Mr McConville. He forgave her killers but could not forget what they had done.
The SDLP leader, Mr Mark Durkan, who also attended the Mass, said politicians must recognise the pain and hurt of victims and never patronise them.
