Torture of 17-year-old demands hearing in Supreme Court

A woman who was beaten as a teenage girl into making admissions about the IRA has been forced to bring a case to Britain’s highest court to clear her name.

In 1978, Patricia Wilson was convicted at a non-jury trial in relation to two attacks on shops in Belfast.

Her lawyers have argued that her ill-treatment and denial of proper access to legal representation mean her conviction is unsafe.

They are seeking permission to take the case to the Supreme Court in London on a point of law of general public importance.

In 1978 Ms Wilson, now aged 65, was handed a ten-year prison sentence at a non-jury trial on the arms charges and alleged membership of Cumann na mBan, the Irish Republican women’s Army.

She had been arrested as a 17-year-old minor, taken to the RUC’s Castlereagh interrogation centre and tortured over three days without a lawyer until admissions were made.

Two men at the RUC base tried to break her arms and said she would need a hospital when they had finished with her.

Although she made complaints to a doctor of being physically assaulted and mentally abused, the issue was now addressed at her trial.

Ms Wilson has now mounted a bid to overturn her convictions based on previously undisclosed evidence which back her case that her confession statement should not have been allowed.

In an account she descried how the two men tried to break her arms and said she would need a hospital when they had finished with her.

Further concerns centred around her access to a lawyer before making the disputed ‘confession’.

In 2022 the Court of Appeal dismissed her case by a majority verdict.

Defence lawyers went before the same three-judge panel today, requesting that they certify a legal question for consideration by the Supreme Court.

Frank O’Donoghue KC argued: “There are discreet issues which render this conviction unsafe (by today’s standards).”

Judgment was reserved in the application for leave to take the case to London.

Following the hearing Ms Wilson’s lawyer, Padraig O Muirigh, said issues of law which have divided the appeal panel need to be resolved by a higher court.

“By the standards of today our client was denied the important safeguards now thought necessary to avoid a miscarriage of justice,” Mr O Muirigh said.

“It is inconceivable that the confession of a juvenile, forming the sole basis of her prosecution and conviction, obtained in the notorious Castlereagh interrogation centre without any of the most basic safeguards, could be regarded as safe.”

Urgent Appeal