Disappeared

In 1972, a young widow dragged from her bath screaming and bundled into a waiting van while her children looked on in horror. Although accused of many things, Jean McConville’s only ‘crime’ was to be a Protestant who had married a Catholic in a bitter sectarian society. Her fifteen-year-old daughter, Helen, was left to take care of her younger siblings and ask in vain what had become of her mother. She received little help in the years that followed and grew tired of defending her mother and waiting for her to come home.

When Helen married Séamus McKendry in 1976 he made her a promise to seek out the truth. This promise took them on a journey which lasted almost thirty years and during which they suffered endless threats and abuse from a hostile community which resented Séamus and Helen’s condemnation of the ‘People’s Army.’

In 1994, Hellen and Séamus started the Families of the Disappeared organization to provide help and support to other families in the same situation. Putting their own lives at risk, they spoke to senior members of the IRA and had meetings with Sinn Féin representatives in an effort to secure the truth about Jean and other people who had been ‘disappeared.’ This is their courageous story.