NI paramilitaries likened to 'Mafia' by Troubles victims' charity
"Intimidation basically follows them": WAVE Trauma Centre manager.
Last updated 10th Aug 2018
Paramilitaries across Northern Ireland, are building Mafia-like huge criminal empires, it was claimed today (Friday).
In an exclusive interview with Downtown & Cool FM Alan McBride, whose wife Sharon was killed in the Shankill bomb atrocity in 1993, said that paramilitary groupings had "thier tentacles in many areas."
Mr McBride, who is the manager of the WAVE Trauma Centre, a cross-community voluntary organisation set up to support victims and their families of the Troubles, revealed that around a third of referrals were for modern-day intimidation activities by the likes of the IRA and UDA.
"What has happened since the Troubles have ended is some of these people have just moved into amassing these huge criminal empires and it's now almost like the mafia," he said.
"When people move to a different area they find the paramilitaries have their tentacles in many areas.
"So for example if it's a loyalist moving to another loyalist estate, they're only there a matter of weeks before a knock comes to the door and the intimidation basically just follows them."
In one case, a woman and her family are afraid to even leave their home after being threatened.
"This is a family that we've been working with for a while and this person especially, is effectively under house arrest," he said.
"She can't go into the community, she's been told something will happen to her.
"She's frightened to leave her home and that's been going on for the best part of a year.
"The woman's obviously too frightened to go to the PSNI.
"If you put yourself in that situation, where you're scared to leave your home, it's not really the way to live and nobody should be living in today's society like that, nobody."
According to Alan, the Troubles is used as a crutch too often to lean on when accepting the presence of paramilitary activity.
"I often describe Northern Ireland, I love it and I would never leave it, but it's pretty much a basket case when it comes to society and there's things that happen here that would never happen anywhere else," he said.
"Over 30 years of conflict and we're coming out of that now, so there has to be a different way of working here than in England, Scotland or Wales.
"But how long can you continue to use that argument for?
"At the end of the day, we just need to be able to live our life in peace and paramilitaries, whatever side they come from, need to get off the people's backs."