Victoria Climbie was a child when she died in February 2000. A mere eight years and three months old. I was working in London at the time.
This child was systematically used, abused, starved and beaten. She was failed by the statutory agencies and her death led to a public inquiry.
I remember the media reports detailing her injuries and I was sick to the pit of my stomach.
She had a 128 separate injuries and scars on her little body. Victoria was made to sleep wrapped in a bin liner covered in her own excrement. She was frequently tied up and locked away alone. This child was burnt with cigarettes and beaten with bike chains, hammers and wires. At the time she was in the care of a great aunt and her partner. Care was not an adjective which could be ascribed to this couple. Thankfully the tormentors of Victoria Climbie got life sentences.
Back then I was convinced there could be no lower level of depravity that one human could inflict on another. But I was wrong.
Seven years later and much closer to home, a 21-year-old man was lured to an isolated farmyard. His friends were tied up and separated from him. He was dragged into a barn. Once in the darkness of the barn, the young man was subjected to a frenzied attack which lasted over thirty minutes. The group of men smashed his young body into a pulp with iron and nail studded bars. His pain must have been indescribable and to his friends, listening to his cries, must have been unbearable. That young man was Paul Quinn.
At the hospital Paul was nearly unrecognisable to his parents. Can you imagine your child being beaten so badly you cannot recognise him? Most likely not.
When doctors said there was nothing left to fix after every major bone in his body was broken, the hearts of his mother and father broke too.
Think about that. “Nothing left to fix”. It’s the moment hope dies.
Then imagine taking your child home. Placing him in a coffin with a body so broken that you could not place rosary beads in his hands. Heartbreaking.
The minimum one expects of local public representatives in the aftermath of such barbarity is that they pay their respects. That not a single public representative from Sinn Féin crossed the doors of the Quinn wake is nearly inconceivable.
It would appear these public representatives were also passing a form of judgment on the tragic victim by their absence.
Maybe appearing at the wake would have required a bravery or brass neck they were incapable of.
Breege and Stephen Quinn have battled for nearly thirteen years for justice. They are not being used. They will fight for their son until the last breath leaves their bodies. They will rightly use any platform to get justice. Who has the right to deny them? They want us to remember. They don’t want the barbarity to fade from memory. Paul Quinn is not a statistic.
Conor Murphy stigmatised a victim without providing any evidence. After thirteen years, he owes the family more than just an apology. But the narrative cannot be about him.
Paul Quinn’s murder isn’t a matter of history. It’s about law and order. It is about not allowing a culture of violence to leech on communities. It is about not letting fear create an omertà in the face of justice.
To the killers of Paul Quinn, one can only hope his bloodied face haunts your dreams. That as you hug your children, you remember the blows which brutalised his body.
But remember too, whilst you took a life, you didn’t kill the love of his parents or their quest for justice.
