European Remembrance Day for Victims of Terrorism: Ex-SDLP councillor says only victims group to accept her is SEFF
A former SDLP councillor whose father was murdered by the UVF says the only victims group that will accept her is SEFF.
Denise Mullen was just four when her father, Denis Mullen, was murdered by the UVF in Moy, Co Tyrone in 1975.
He had been an election agent for SDLP MP Austin Currie and a local SDLP councillor. Denise was previously a councillor with the SDLP and Aontú.
She was speaking at the European Remembrance Day for Victims of Terrorism event at Stormont on Monday.
Organised by Kenny Donaldson and victims’ group SEFF, it was chaired by TUV MLA Timothy Gaston, with MLAs from the DUP, SDLP, UUP and Alliance also taking part.
Denise noted that out of all the Troubles victims’ groups, SEFF was the only one that accepted her.
“There are victims’ services available,” she said.
“But SEFF is the only service that I am welcome in. I don't support Sinn Fein [and] I don't support independent republicanism.”
She added: “The only organisation that I am welcome in, as an innocent victim and survivor of the Troubles, is SEFF – and for that I thank you.”
She believes the four men who killed her father were also members of the RUC and Army.
“They were not sent out from those organisations [to kill her father] and I have no difficulty in saying that,” she said.
But the gun and ammunition used had been stolen from an Army camp in 1973 and used to kill 110 nationalists.
“So we are talking 52-53 years and to date there has been no investigation into the theft of that gun or the ammunition that was stolen.”
She believes her father was the first person to be killed by the Glenanne Gang.
A recent report from Operation Denton found that an “easily defined Glenanne Gang did not exist” and that it was “convenient shorthand” for a network including the UVF and corrupt members of the security forces.
Her mother was also shot at 13 times.
As a result, she said: “I am maxed out on medication to stop flashbacks.”
Just before speaking she had a panic attack when a SEFF volunteer offered her a cup of tea. He had a heavy white beard, just like her father's killer, who once stopped her in the street and later sent her a death threat.
The Operation Denton report into the Glenanne Gang is at “a standstill” because one family has taken legal action because a relative was named as being in the UVF, she said.
Looking at politicians in the room, she said they had “failed” victims because they had not secured publication of the report – and because applying for the Troubles victims pension was so retraumatising.
Her brother applied, recounting seeing his sister, aged nine, trying to peel potatoes because their mother was “maxed out in bed” on valium due to trauma.
But because he does not remember his father being murdered he was not eligible for it, she said.