No damages paid to Hyde Park bomb relatives about 19 months after court held John Downey liable for sum of nearly £1m

John Downey has not paid any damages to the relatives of one of his Hyde Park bomb victims, about 19 months after a court ruled he was held liable for the best part of £1m.

Mr Downey – who had been convicted of IRA membership in Dublin in 1974 – was the subject of a civil lawsuit over the nail bomb attack, which happened exactly 40 years ago on Wednesday.

He was ordered to pay the best part of £1 million pounds as a result, but the money has not yet materialised.

One of those involved in the civil suit is Judith Jenkins-Young, whose husband was one of the four fatal casulaties of the attack.

Yesterday the News Letter asked the 60-year-old retired care home nurse and factory worker if dealing with the loss of her husband Jeffrey Young gets easier with time.

“Not really,” she said.

“You try to move on with your life but there’s days than when life stops, because it’s such a traumatic experience we all went through, and the way he died.

“I don’t think people can grasp the situation if they haven’t been there . They wouldn’t understand it.

“Of course, things come on the telly, which I find difficult. But I try to bear with it because of my girls...

“It affected me bad. But I’ve had to get on with it and look after the girls.”

She was referring to the two daughters she had with her husband – Sarahjane (who was aged four-and-a-half at the time of the murder) and Louise (aged about 16 months at the time).

She has since re-married and had another child, and says that it is likely some of the money her family is owed would end up being funnelled to charity.

The other soldiers killed in the Hyde Park explosion were Roy Bright, Dennis Daly, and Simon Tipper (and several horses also died).

Meanwhile in Regent’s Park, about a mile away in central London, seven other soldiers were killed while giving a public concert at a bandstand a couple of hours later.

They were: Graham Barker, John Heritage, Robert Livingstone, George Measure, John McKnight, Keith John Powell, and Laurence Smith.

No-one was ever convicted of the second bombing, and efforts to prosecute John Downey for the Hyde Park one failed in 2014 when it emerged he had been mistakenly given one of the now-infamous “on-the-run letters”, assuring him he was not wanted for the crime.

After the collapse of his trial, a civil case was taken by McCue Jury and Partners against Mr Downey in the name of Sarahjane Young.

The High Court in London ruled in December 2019 that Mr Downey “was an active participant in the Hyde Park bombing which caused the death of the claimant’s father and the other soldiers”.

And at a hearing one year later, the court ruled that £178,364 was owed to Sarahjane and £535,093 to her mother – a combined total of £713,457 (a sum which was subsequently revised upwards to roughly £900,000).

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