Widow tells of pain brought back by trial of garda’s killer
THE widow of a Garda sergeant killed by the INLA has said the recent trial of Aaron Brady brought back painful memories for her.
Bernie Morrissey also described the murder of Detective Garda Adrian Donohoe by Brady, 29, as ‘another cold, callous, brutal killing’, and said the guilty verdict in the case was very important for families of gardaí killed in the line of duty.
Ms Morrissey has joined other women left widowed due to the North’s troubled past in urging Stormont to reopen a compensation scheme for the bereaved.
A support scheme for the bereaved closed to new applications in March 2017. It included an annual payment made to a spouse or partner of someone who was killed, in recognition of their loss.
The South East Fermanagh Foundation (SEFF) victims’ group is calling for the new strategy being developed by the Executive Office to include ‘sustainable support for the bereaved’. It described the cutting off of the previous fund for new applicants as ‘morally indefensible’, adding those bereaved ‘remain bereaved and forever will be’.
Ms Morrissey from Drogheda, Co. Louth, told how her late husband, Garda Sergeant Patrick Morrissey, was shot dead after he tried to intervene during a robbery of IR£25,000 from the Labour Exchange in Ardee, also Co. Louth, on June 27, 1985.
Their four children were aged between 13 and 20 at the time of the killing.
She recalled: ‘The 1980s was a gloomy time in Ireland. Other tragedies took over and we kind of faded into the background because every week there was some other atrocity; that was how it was.’
She added that she wants to speak out on behalf of others in her position.
‘Nothing ever changes the past but making sure that people like my husband are never forgotten, that’s very important to me,’ she said.
‘I think to be forgotten is the greatest hurt of all – that it was just something that happened in the past.’
She said recognition ‘is very important from that point of view’, adding: ‘In terms of fair play, everybody is entitled to the same treatment.
‘I think the sacrifices made by those who died and those who were left have to be recognised because we live with an unquantified aspect in our lives; we never know what life would have been like.
‘That causes grief at times, wondering, when the retirement age came, when Paddy would have retired, what we would have been doing, and all the happy occasions we have had like graduations and weddings.
‘It is important that these people are never forgotten.’ Ms Morrissey sought and paid for counselling in the years after her husband’s murder. She went on to help set up a support group for the families of other members of the Garda who are bereaved.
She said the Aaron Brady trial was very important to the group’s members.
‘We text each other on occasions, anniversaries, and recently when the Garda trial was on,’ she said.
‘The outcome of that was very important.’
She added: ‘All that impacts on us because we relive the past; we can’t meet now but it’s very important that we are in touch.’
Mrs Morrissey extended her sympathy to the Donohoe family over their seven-year wait for a trial.
‘It was another cold, callous, brutal killing,’ she said.
‘The only difference was we were fortunate enough that the trial took place within a year – that family had to wait seven years.
‘They were in limbo all that time, it must have been very difficult for them.
‘I attended the court as well, because I wasn’t there when Paddy died.
‘I had to relive what it must have been like, otherwise I wouldn’t have known fully.’
‘To be forgotten is greatest hurt’