A family tells of its heartbroken quest

Coasts erode quicker than memory

Coasts erode quicker than memory. Since Jean McConville was killed by the IRA and buried in a secret grave in 1972, the wind and the Irish Sea may have shifted or washed away her grave in the dunes at Templetown strand near Carlingford. Even after heavy digging machinery was brought in to help the gardai who began the search for her grave with spades it was always going to be by chance that she was found. Fifty days later, with an estimated 60,000 tons of sand and stone excavated from a trench 240 metres long and 10 metres deep, the beach yielded nothing.

It was the longest of the digs for the IRA's "disappeared". Quiet, compassionate gardai from Dundalk determined they would do all possible to return Jean McConville's remains to the bewildered, lost family from Belfast that turned up each day at the beach to watch and wait. When the last of the beach was turned over they had to give up.

Throughout the excavation the nine McConvilles, orphaned and left to fend for themselves for five weeks over Christmas 1972 when the IRA took away their mother, attended at the beach every day as though at the side of a new grave.

The vigil and the story of their terrible plight from the time their mother was dragged from her screaming children from her home in Divis Flats is told in Disappeared, a Channel 4 documentary next Tuesday, the 27th anniversary of Jean McConville's disappearance.

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From the start of this year, the family of Helen, the eldest sister who kept the family together for the five weeks after the abduction, talked to the documentary-makers and kept a video diary of the quest for their mother's grave.

The children were left without money or food when Jean McConville was abducted. Their father, a local Catholic, had died earlier that year from cancer. The neighbours in Divis Flats were unwilling or afraid to give assistance to the orphans of a woman who was branded a "Brit lover" by the local IRA. Jean McConville's sin was that she was a Protestant married to a local Catholic and that she had allegedly given comfort to a British soldier who was shot outside her home.

The IRA in Belfast, then led by young zealots, embarked on a campaign to stamp out such behaviour. As many as 15 women, mostly young unmarried mothers, were subjected to beatings by IRA courts at the time. The surprisingly under-reported episode was effective. Three months after Mrs McConville disappeared a 19-year-old soldier became separated from his patrol and was surrounded by a hostile crowd of women. Local people said the soldier was crying before the IRA gunman came up to kill him.

Jean McConville was abducted from a bingo hall by IRA men on the night of December 6th, beaten and left to walk home bare-footed to her children in the early hours. The following evening, as she was running a bath to soothe her wounds, they broke into her home and took her away at gunpoint. She was never seen again.

The children stayed together as long as they could, foraging for food from school friends' houses until the social services found out about them five weeks' later. The family was separated and placed in orphanages.

Helen was 15 when the family was broken up. She was kept by nuns in an orphanage for a year and then given £1 and told to leave and make her own way in life. She married Seamus McKendry who has supported her in her quest to discover her mother's fate. Their campaign for the return of the remains led to intimidation by the IRA and they had to leave their home in west Belfast.

The family members recount their experiences of separation and later humiliation when they tried to re-assimilate into life in Catholic west Belfast, only to be known as orphans and children of a "Brit lover".

The story is part-narrated by Saskia Reeves and part told by the brothers and sisters themselves. The music of Arvo Part accompanies the images of the family's vigil at Templetown.

Contemplating the end of the search for her mother, Helen says: "At the beginning I thought she was (buried) in a housing estate in west Belfast. I would rather her remains be here than in west Belfast. It's so peaceful and beautiful here." The family finally found some solace at Templetown. At least they had somewhere they could consider her final resting place.

Cutting Edge: Disappeared is on Channel 4 at 9 p.m. on Tuesday