£270,000 paid to family of Bloody Sunday mum

THE family of the only woman shot on Bloody Sunday is to be awarded nearly £270,000 in damages, the High Court ruled yesterday.

Ajudgeheldthattheestateof Peggy Deery should receive the payout for the injuries sustained in Londonderry in January 1972 and subsequent years of mental distress.

Mr Justice Mcalinden described the behaviour of the British soldiers who wounded and verbally abused the widowed mother-of-14 as “imbued with a degree of malevolence and flagrancy which was truly exceptional”.

Aged 38 at the time, Mrs Deery was shot in the leg on Bloody Sunday. She died 16 years later ofaheartattack.

Thirteenotherunarmedpeople were killed when members of the Parachute Regiment opened fire on a civil rights march. Another of those wounded on the day died later.

In 2010 the Saville Inquiry into the shootings established the innocence of all the victims.

Relatives of Mrs Deery sued the Ministry of Defence (MOD) for the injuries they claim contributed to her death in 1988.

With liability accepted, the case centred on a dispute over the appropriate level of damages.

Counsel for the family argued that the paratrooper who shot her probably knew she posed no threat. Mrs Deery, who lost her husband to cancer months before Bloody Sunday, had been raising 14 children aged between eight months and 16 years old.

She spent four months in hospital, developed a chronic kidney disease and was effectively housebound for the rest of her life, Mr Justice Mcalinden was told. A barrister representing the MOD argued that her heart problems were probably due to a heavy smoking habit of 40 cigarettes a day.

In his judgment Mr Justice Mcalinden stressed Mrs Deery was a woman of good character who attended the civil rights march in support of a society based on fairness and equality.

“Any claim that she was anything other than an innocent demonstrator was a fabrication constructed and perpetuated by the perpetrator or perpetrators of a wrong in an attempt to avoid personal or collective responsibility for any wrongdoing,” he said.

But having died long before the Saville Inquiry was set up, “the cloud of imputed culpability would, at least to some extent, have cast an intermittent shadow over her”. Awarding £250,000 to Mrs Deery’s estate, the judge added a further £17,028 in special damages for the cost of care provided to her.