Poorer women and their children were often left near destitute as they appealed for some compensation in the early days of the conflict.
In one compensation hearing, a widowed mother of 12 was told that because her husband had been on sick benefit she was one shilling better off with her pension.
She was told there would be no compensation, Professor Luke Moffat details in his report on payments to the bereaved in the 1960s and 1970s.
In other example, Professor Moffat was told by an interviewee her mother was informed there was fewer mouths to feed so she was no worse in the eyes of the law.
This contrasts with the wife of a doctor killed in a IRA bomb attack who, after being awarded £40,000, told the court that, along with proceeds from the sale of her family home after downgrading, that her children’s financial future was secured.
The system was entirely based on income and dependency and, therefore, marked by huge differences in payments, including among those caught in the same deadly incident and even within families.
Under international human rights law, victims of extrajudicial killings have a right to both income loss and compensation for moral harm, which includes the emotional and other impacts of the death.
Courts often saw little reason to award any substantial compensation following the deaths of children, young people and, more generally, the poorer, all among those most affected by the rampant violence at that time. Many received nothing, amounts totalling less than £100 or just funeral costs.
In the case of the Maguire children, killed after a car containing two IRA men went out of control after the driver was shot by the British Army, the family was told they were entitled to funeral cost only.
The income-based system stretched to instances, including bombings, where multiple people were killing, In one bombing, one victim’s family received £90, another over £15,000. In another, one bereaved family was awarded £44.62, another £9,000 and an injured victim £35,000,
There were stark difference within the security forces, with the families of five of the 18 soldiers killed in the 1979 Narrow Water attack outside Warrenpoint receiving £250,000. The families of three non-commissioned officers killed just a couple of years earlier received £8,000 between them.
Families of often known members of paramilitary organisations were paid compensation, with Professor Moffat finding 61 examples, including two who received more than £20,000, though it was later their organisations claimed them as members.
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