‘I’m so afraid of another attack I avoid sleeping’ - Woman who witnessed IRA Hyde Park bombing which killed her father marks European Day of Remembrance of Victims of Terrorism

A Welsh woman who witnessed the bomb attack which killed her father when she was a child still avoids going to sleep 39 years later because she is petrified of another bombing.
By Philip Bradfield
Published 11th Mar 2021, 22:29 BST
Updated 12th Mar 2021, 10:52 BST
Sarah Jayne-Young describes the PTSD she still suffers after witnessing the aftermath of the IRA Hyde Park bombing which killed her father Lance Corporal Jeffery V Young in 1982. She was speaking at the 2021 virtual European Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Terrorism, at Stormont.Sarah Jayne-Young describes the PTSD she still suffers after witnessing the aftermath of the IRA Hyde Park bombing which killed her father Lance Corporal Jeffery V Young in 1982. She was speaking at the 2021 virtual European Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Terrorism, at Stormont.
Sarah Jayne-Young describes the PTSD she still suffers after witnessing the aftermath of the IRA Hyde Park bombing which killed her father Lance Corporal Jeffery V Young in 1982. She was speaking at the 2021 virtual European Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Terrorism, at Stormont.

Sarah-Jayne Young was speaking out to mark The European Day of Remembrance of Victims of Terrorism, with an NI wing of events hosted at Stormont by TUV leader Jim Allister.

Ms Young was only four-and-a-half-years of age when her father Lance Corporal Jeffery Young died in the IRA bomb attack on Hyde Park in London which killed four soldiers during a ceremonial horseback parade.

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Sarah-Jane was being cared for in the nursery above the stables where her father was based when the massive bomb nearby rocked the building she was in.

The horrified child then watched through the window as the maimed soldiers and horses limped back into their barracks – crying for her father who never returned.

Yesterday she told the European Day for Remembrance of Victims of Terrorism at Stormont of the impact the trauma still has on her daily life and constant battle with post traumatic stress disorder.

“I was only four-and-a-half when the bomb rocked my nursery,” she said, speaking haltingly and welling up emotion.

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“I still suffer nightmares about it. I am afraid of an attack on myself. I don’t trust anybody. I am very alert around other people.”

She questions everything and is very nervous about strange cars parked outside her home in Wales. “So I avoid sleep,” she said.

She has regular flashbacks and sees her father on horseback.

Her mother, Judith Jenkins-Young, said that only the South East Fermanagh Foundation had been able to provide effective counselling and support.

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