Bags of excrement, bags of urine, and condoms were thrown into St John's Catholic graveyard near the Garvaghy Road by loyalist youths last Sunday night. Among those buried in the graveyard is Robert Hamill, a 25-year-old Catholic kicked to death on a street in Portadown in May 1997.
The loyalists, who had crossed fields from the barricade near Drumcree Church, were later involved in clashes with police and soldiers along the Dungannon Road.
What they did amounted to desecration, said Father Joe Quinn, who also said it was decided to keep the matter quiet to avoid provoking anger in the Catholic community.
He described claims that the clashes between the loyalists and security forces that night followed provocation by republicans as "categorically a lie".
The only Catholics in the graveyard that night, along with soldiers and police, were stewards, including three priests, he said. They were there to ensure it was being protected.
The graveyard is surrounded by barbed wire fencing and is constantly patrolled by RUC officers and soldiers from the Argyll and Southern Highlanders regiment.
For the past three years Father Quinn has been acting as chaplain to the Garvaghy Road Residents' Coalition. He is also a curate in Dungannon.
The incident at St John's graveyard is just one of many endured by the people of the Garvaghy Road at the hands of loyalists, particularly in the past 10 months. Last Saturday night Mass at St John's Church, beside the graveyard, had to be stopped as an Apprentice Boys' band from Derry went around a roundabout opposite the church eight times playing The Sash. They were on their way to Drumcree.
Every Sunday this past year there have been Orange parades to the barricade at Drumcree, and parades there from Portadown accompanied by chants and insults to Catholics en route. There have been similar incidents almost nightly, he said.
And this past week pounding Lambeg drums have echoed through the estate from the barricade at Drumcree every night.
"They have been putting the (Garvaghy Road) community under severe threat by creating a spirit of intimidation," he said. The enclave community was literally living behind barricades and barbed wire, while people there had not got over their distrust of the ever-present security forces since they brutally forced down the Orange parade in 1997. Very few people from the Garvaghy Road now go into Portadown, he said. The town centre is within 300 yards of the estate. One middle-aged man told this reporter he had not been in Portadown after 6 p.m. for 25 years.
The effect on the community was beginning to tell, Father Quinn said. The area had its share of social problems. There is evidence of drug abuse. Unemployment is high, mainly because the people are Catholics, and recently three young people committed suicide. All were under 20. Given the increase in suicides among the young, this was still a high figure in a population of just 1,500.
But the people there remain adamant, Father Quinn said. Because of what they have been put through, even the most moderate people say they do not want to see an Orange parade going down the Garvaghy Road again. People are more educated now. They are not prepared any longer to put up with "kick-the-Pope" bands playing anti-Catholic tunes marching through Catholic areas. It was only in recent times Catholic communities had risen up against this. He doesn't know whether this was part of a Sinn Fein strategy but now it was how the vast majority of residents felt and most of those in the coalition were non-party political people, he said.
The Orange Order, in the view of people on the Garvaghy Road, is a sectarian, racist, primarily anti-Catholic organisation. "No one who has Catholic blood can be a member. They cannot marry Catholics, pray with priests, or attend Mass. The calls on David Trimble to resign by the Orange leadership after attending the funeral Mass of the two young Buncrana boys killed in the Omagh bomb opened a lot of eyes among Catholics," he said.
But people on the Garvaghy Road had no problem with the order marching in Protestant areas. It just was "not good enough that they should want to march over the Catholic community at every opportunity they get", with that attitude which seemed to say "you're scum, you're nothing, you're second class". Even at proximity talks involving the Portadown Orangemen and Garvaghy Road residents the Orangemen had refused to share the same toilet. A separate one had to be provided for them at an extra cost of £8,000. "The last time I heard of anything like that was in Alabama," Father Quinn said.
The community would be "devastated" if the parade was forced down again, "devastated to breaking point", he said.
He also disputed assertions by Orangemen that Protestant families had been forced out of the Garvaghy area. There may have been a few incidents, "we have extremists on both sides no one can control", but those that did move out did so at the urging of their Protestant brethern, while the reason it had become a Catholic enclave was because Catholics were burned out of other parts of Portadown, he said.
He was "disturbed deeply" at the presence of Ms Bernadette Sands McKevitt and Mr Francie Mackie at the residents' centre last Sunday.
So too were the residents. "It distressed a lot of people. They were not invited. They just arrived and we had no control over who arrived," he said.