For Jeanitta McCabe, the violence of the Troubles began at just 10 years old. This mayhem started in Newry, County Down, Northern Ireland on September 13, 1990. On that day, six to eight masked soldiers stormed the McCabe family’s two-storey council house. They destroyed the family’s freedom from fear for all time. They pulled her father, Peter McCabe, into the kitchen. There, they executed him in a sadistic “punishment shooting,” an ironic method of terrorization and subjugation that defined such chaotic times. The attackers shot him just above the knee, leaving Peter with a permanent limp. This trauma carved deep psychological scars that continue to plague both him and his daughter to this day.
The violence did not stop with the horrific attack. It forced the McCabe family into a itinerant lifestyle for five years. And she and her family toured from B& Bs across England and Scotland, making return trips to Northern Ireland within a few days. Finally, when Jeanitta was fifteen, they moved back down and settled in Newry. Going home didn’t mean that boomeranging back to normal life was possible.
Jeanitta’s experience when returning to school was met with stigma, as she was a pariah among peers. On her first day back, she encountered hostility from a classmate who called her father a “tout,” a term for an informer in the context of the conflict. This painful reminder of their trauma served to highlight the profound loneliness that marked their existence in their rural community.
Nearly four years later, Peter and Jeanitta McCabe have continued to fight a ruling in their case by the Victims’ Payment Board. This decision classified them as unfit for the TPDP scheme. This program is intended to provide support to people who have been permanently disabled—both physically and psychologically—due to the war. Their attorney, Kevin Winters, pointed to the precedent-setting scope of this ruling.
“They cannot be written out of history as if they never happened. We couldn’t possibly begin to quantify the volume of affected cases. They are in the thousands and therein may lie the real reason why these cases have been deemed out of scope – money.” – Kevin Winters
As historian Liam Kennedy of Queen’s University Belfast has written, punishment shootings were “an epidemic and widespread social control mechanism” during the Troubles. 1973 over 6,000 cases have been documented. That, he feels, barely scratches the surface, placing the real figure somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000. He made a point to highlight how little recognition there has been around these events.
“The astonishing thing, apart from the silence round these practices, is that this was green-on-green and orange-on-orange violence, perpetrated by those who had set themselves up as defenders of their community.” – Liam Kennedy
Kennedy opened the door to the stigma that is placed on the victims of these attacks. This stigma contributes to the need for many of them to become outsiders in their own communities.
“There is stigma attached to victims of these attacks, some of whom become outsiders and are shunned in their home localities,” – Liam Kennedy
This social isolation has deeply affected Jeanitta. Looking back on her journey, she talked about her bout with depression and sense of being trapped.
“I don’t watch the news or go out of the house a lot. I have isolated myself. I don’t know how to live in that world out there. This is my world, within my own walls.” – Jeanitta McCabe
She shared with us a profound sense of having been frozen out of history. Yet inside, she remained that scared ten year-old girl from decades past.
“What happened to daddy is still alive to this day. I feel trapped inside my own mind, of still being that 10-year-old child.” – Jeanitta McCabe
The impact of her father’s shooting continues to shape their lives today. Even the cultural representations of violence in contemporary times take their toll on her. Jeanitta explained why she was disturbed by the Northern Irish rap collective Kneecap’s use of balaclavas—a symbol that she connects to her father’s violent assault.
The psychological toll it has taken on Peter McCabe has been just as drastic. Decades after the shooting, he is still confronted by the physical barriers created by his injury. While the wounds may have healed on the surface from that violent outburst, the scars of that emotional trauma continue to sting.
As they navigate their appeal for compensation and attempt to reclaim their lives from the grip of past violence, both Jeanitta and Peter McCabe face a society that often overlooks their suffering. Their story is a powerful testament to the profound legacies of war. These scars remain long after the conflict has returned to silence.
“The key is in the label ‘punishment’. This suggests that victims somehow ‘deserved’ what they got.” – Liam Kennedy