Three little boys were dead
by Laura Friel
Rain poured down as the three small coffins were lowered gently
side by side into a single grave. Richard (10), Mark (9) and
Jason (8) Quinn were buried in St Mary's Cemetery, Rasharkin as
they died, together.
At Requiem Mass at The Church of Our Lady and St Patrick in
Ballymoney, Bishop of Down and Connor Patrick Walsh said the
blame for the boys' murders lay not only with the killers, but
also with those who had incited violence with their words. ``For
all too long the airways and the printed page have been saturated
with noises, strident, harsh, discordant noises, carrying words
of hatred, of incitement, of recrimination....The weapons of hate
filled words inevitably fuel weapons of murderous destruction.''
said the Bishop.
The children's mother, Chrissie Quinn, their father John Dillon,
grandmother Irene Quinn and surviving brother Lee, were comforted
by family and friends as they made their way from the chapel to
the graveyard. The silence was broken only by outbreaks of
sobbing.
Chrissie Quinn, a Catholic from a mixed background living in the
predominantly loyalist Carnany Estate, Ballymoney, had feared her
home would come under attack. In the days running up to the 11th
night bonfires, Catholic families on the estate had received
sectarian threats and bullets through the post, telling them to
get out. Chrissie had told her three sons, Richard, Mark and
Jason to come back from the bonfire early because she was
expecting trouble. Her eldest son Lee was staying the night at
his grandmother's home in Rasharkin.
After separating from her estranged husband, also a Catholic,
Chrissie had reared her sons as Protestants, simply ``to avoid the
hassle''. The three boys attended the local Protestant school.
Just hours before their deaths, they had helped other children in
the estate build the 11th bonfire, but their attempts to
assimilate were meaningless to the bigots who singled them out
for attack.
Fearing for her family's safety, Chrissie had stayed awake until
3.30am but death came less than an hour later.
A petrol bomb
thrown through a downstairs window set the house ablaze. In the
smoke filled building, Chrissy had struggled to the children's
bedroom but finding the beds empty believed they had escaped. A
neighbour heard one child shout ``I'm in a corner,'' another child
cried out that his feet were burning. There was a loud bang and
the house was engulfed in flames. Three little boys were dead.
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