The daughter of an Official IRA commander shot dead in the early 1970s who was sexually abused by a relative in the Republic said she would would have been safer on the streets of Belfast.
Áine and Nuala McCann were abused after fleeing the city for Galway following the 1972 killing by the British Army of their father, Joe.
Francis McCann (79), who was married to the sisters' aunt but was not related to their father, although they shared the same surname, pleaded guilty in Galway Circuit Criminal Court to indecently assaulting the two girls after the family relocated to the west of Ireland in 1981.
On Thursday, Francis McCann, of Lough Cultra Drive, Inchaboy, Gort, was sentenced to 14 months imprisonment for one of the indecent assault charges and eight months for the other, to run concurrently.
“It is an awful thing to say that we would have been safer on the streets of Belfast where children were getting shot dead every other day, than to have lived in the perpetrator’s home in Lough Cutra Drive,” Áine McCann said in a victim impact statement.
“We were meant to be in a safer place away from tragic events befalling children on the streets of Belfast at that time. I should have had an opportunity to decompress from the war zone that was Belfast in 1981.
“Instead, I was taken advantage of and my burden added to. I have had to carry this burden and its negative effects my entire life, to date that is some 43 years,”
The sisters' father Joe, aged 24, was shot dead on Joy Street in the Market area as he ran from a police officer attempting to arrest him.
Two former British soldiers went on trial for his murder but were acquitted in 2021. The case collapsed after statements made by the soldiers to the PSNI’s Historical Enquiries Team (HET) were ruled inadmissible.
The court heard their mother Anne with her six children moved to Gort in Co Galway after years of harassment from the British Army, RUC and Provisional IRA. The sisters were both born in 1969.
Following the hearing, the McCann sisters said they were pleased it was all over and now want to get on with their lives. They waived their right to anonymity.
