It’s like a little safe haven here, somewhere you can come and cry and not get judged

It’s like a little safe haven here, somewhere you can come and cry and not get judged

2 February 2022

TEARS still spring easily to the eyes of Dympna Kerr, the sister of Columba McVeigh, one of the ‘Disappeared’ victims.

Once she begins to talk about her 17 year-old brother, whose body has never been recovered after he was abducted and murdered by the IRA in 1975,  after nearly 50 years of dealing with his loss the pain remains. 

Last weekend, the Donaghmore woman left her home in St Helen’s in Merseyside to travel to a welcoming building in the coastal village of Killough.

At the newly named Wave By The Sea centre in Castle Street, Dympna spent precious time speaking with longstanding friends who are also relatives of the Disappeared. The main difference is that they have been fortunate to locate the bodies of their loved one. Several searches have yet to return her brother’s remains to the family but they remain hopeful.

“It’s like a little safe haven here, somewhere you can come and cry and not get judged. The people you are crying to know why you are crying as they understand,” explained Dympna about her lasting need to connect with people with shared experience.

“Going to the Wave house in Belfast is like going home. It’s like getting a hug as soon as you go across the door. And it’s the same here as I’ve already been several times.”

The help and support of the individuals who make up the Wave Trauma Centre quietly helps thousands of people like Dympna who have been bereaved, injured and or traumatised by the decades of conflict in Northern Ireland.

The building has been provided by the local trustees of The Kinder Project, a charitable Dutch organisation that began its association with Northern Ireland in the 1970s for the education and social welfare of disadvantaged children and young adults.

The hostel now provides residential breaks for a maximum of 15 people, providing rooms for families and individuals, who use the time to break away from their lives still traumatised and dealing with the physical and emotional aftermath. 

Counselling and complimentary therapy sessions are offered and other courses are provided by Wave to help those who come, many of whom have never sought help before.

It’s the sixth centre around the province that Wave has established, along with r15 satellite projects, with support funding from the Victims and Support Service, NI Executive, Special EU Programmes Body and charitable donations. 

One of the Troubles survivors who wished the service had been available locally for him and his family is Killough man Peter Heathwood.

Peter knows the benefit of support from Wave. In September 1979 he was left paralysed after a Loyalist gun attack in his Belfast home as he played with his youngest daughter in his living room — bullets missing the baby by inches.

His attack was witnessed by his late wife and two eldest children. His father Hubert died from a heart attack at the scene when he saw his apparently dead son.

As a member of the Wave Injured Group, he has campaigned for years for a state pension for people left physically or psychologically injured from the conflict.He has yet to receive his pension, even though he applied for it last autumn.

“I had to travel to Belfast night and day and only discovered Wave when I went on to the Victims’ Forum years after my shooting,” said Peter.

“My wife died at 51 with a diagnosis of PTSD and suffered with flashbacks. If I had found Wave earlier, I reckon it could have saved her as she could have met other women and shared stories and experiences. 

“When I was shot, I passed out but she saw me lying there with blood pumping out of me, children screaming and my father dying. She could never deal with the fact that she opened the door to the gunmen. But I told her that if she hadn’t have shouted a warning to me, I would have been dead as I was able to get up and slam the door. 

“Even in this village, there are people who moved from Belfast and a lot of them lost relatives in the Troubles, uncles, fathers, grandfathers and many of them never speak about it. I didn’t really talk about it to my own children as you didn’t want them to be filled with hate.”

Peter said that even on holiday when people asked what happened to him, he  would say he was injured skiing in the French Alps, a more sanitised version of his attack — purportedly in mistake for another man — as he enjoyed an evening at home with his family.

“Wave is a fantastic organisation. We are completely cross-community. Everyone has been hurt by all groups and that’s the great strength of it,” said Peter.

“I would really encourage anyone who has affected by the Troubles and has never sought help to come along to Wave. It’s never too late to talk.”

Wave’s chief executive officer, Sandra Peake, says that the new centre will help 220 people in the immediate area and around 600 from the district, in addition to providing weekend residential breaks from families across Northern Ireland, Britain and the Irish Republic. 

“This wouldn’t have been possible without the generosity of the Kinder Project,” explained Sandra, who said that the building has been fitted out to reflect a more comfortable family style accommodation.

“We had initially done some work in Downpatrick about 10 years ago to see what we could have provided but have always been keen to provide a local base, which Kinder has now provided to us. 

“The welcome from the people and the shopkeepers of Killough has been brilliant. They seem to know why our visitors are staying here and give them a respectful place and go beyond and above to help them. 

“Some of the families have enjoyed paddle boarding lessons on the water with children experiencing this type of activity for the first time. One grandmother got to sleep in a bed for the first time in years as she normally sleeps on the couch to let her grandchildren have the bed.”

Wave By The Sea is much more than a weekend or holiday break.

“We aim to provide a holistic service here for people. It will start with an outreach case worker working with you to establish what your needs are and then that moves us into seeing what we can provide, whether its counselling, physiotherapy, group support and so on,” Sandra continued.

“Seventy per cent of Wave’s work is service provision, the remainder is trauma education. We have a whole range of short trauma courses now and we hope to run courses her.

“They deal with how trauma affects families, recognising the impact of trauma and how to build resilience, the intergenerational impact and issues such as trauma addiction as we would see people with issues. We also provide trauma education for healthcare professionals and student doctors, nurses, and social workers.”

She predicts an increase of demand for services as new referrals increased last year in part due to interest in the Injured Pension scheme and the proposed Legacy proposals.

“The majority of people coming to us now have never gone anyway for help. But different things are stirring memories. We hope to provide counselling and complementary therapy sessions in Newcastle within a few months.”

Sandra is recruiting a Health and Wellbeing caseworker who would be based in Killough but would also work in the Newcastle area and stressed that all services were provided on a confidential basis.

One of the trustees of the Kinder Project, local man Dr Finbar McCormick, is delighted that the building is being used by Wave.

“Kinder was a Dutch charity that took children from troubled areas to Holland in the 1970s and then established a local centre in Killough for breaks,” he explained. “Children from other troubled spots like Kosovo and the Balkans were also taken for holidays here over the years.

“With the peace process, the need for the Kinder House just fell away and we were looking for another group to pass it onto so that they could make good use of it. 

“I happened to meet Peter, who I know, one day while out for a walk and I said to him that we really needed to find another group to use the hostel. Peter said that he would mention it to Wave and that was about 18 months and Wave has been using it for the last six months.

“It was an excellent choice for us as we really wanted to keep the place going and Wave will continue the same aims that Kinder had.”

To apply for the caseworker position or to access services, visit Wave www.wavetraumacentre.org.uk or ring 028 9077 9922.