HIA Inquiry: School told abducted boy's sister to call back

Bernard Teggart, 15, was abducted from St Patrick's Training School in west Belfast in 1973

A sister of a boy abducted from school and shot by the IRA has said his school told her to call back the next day when she asked about his 1973 disappearance.

Bernard Teggart was 15 when he and his identical twin brother Gerard were abducted by from St Patrick's Training School in west Belfast by an IRA gang.

Gerard was freed but Bernard, with a mental age of about eight, was killed.

It was described as the "most horrific" case of child abuse to come before the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry.

Although the IRA was responsible for the killing, the HIA Inquiry is examining potential child care failures by the school, which did not report the twins' abduction to the police.

'Cries'

The twins' sister, Alice Harper, told the BBC's Good Morning Ulster programme that it was "very hard" to hear details of the murder discussed by the inquiry 42 years on.

"When the murdered Bernard, they shot him in the back of the head and put a card on him that said 'tout'," Ms Harper said.

"What could a 15-year-old child who was in St Pat's home tell about anything, anything at all?"

The IRA gang had taken the boys to separate houses in the city.

Gerard was later released and sent home on a bus, and Ms Harper said his last memory of his twin was overhearing his cries as he was beaten by the gang.

'Bad men'

Ms Harper, who was 25 at the time of the murder, described how Gerard arrived home in a distressed state.

"My mummy couldn't make sense of what he was saying. He just kept saying 'bad men, bad men took me and Bernard'," she recalled.

At that stage, Bernard was missing so she phoned the boys' Catholic training school to report the incident and try to find out where he was.

"They told me to phone back the next day," Ms Harper said.

"Unfortunately, my brother was dead."

Bernard Teggart's young brothers were filmed walking behind his funeral cortege in 1973

The family found out about the murder when a young Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) soldier called to their door to tell them Bernard's body had been found.

"When we brought him in he was crying telling my mummy - because he was a young lad in his late teens, early 20s - telling my mummy that he was sorry to have to come and give her the news, because she had been through enough with losing my daddy."

Ms Harper's father had been shot dead by the Army in Ballymurphy, west Belfast, in 1971, leaving 13 children.

IRA apology

Ms Harper described it as a "terrible time" which had a particularly bad effect on Bernard's surviving twin.

Years later when their mother was dying, the family contacted the IRA in a bid to get answers about Bernard's murder.

Ms Harper described how the IRA "owned up" to murdering Bernard, and admitted that it was wrong to kill an innocent child and said they were "sorry".

However, she said she still has questions about the case and is haunted by the vision of her young brother being dumped on the side of a road to die alone.

"I'm hoping and I'm praying that we get the truth, we need the truth," she said.