The Troubles: 'I met my sister's killer to get the truth'

Kathleen, pictured on the right alongside her sister Mary, was killed in November 1973.

The brother of a teenager killed by the IRA 50 years ago has revealed he met her killer against the wishes of his family to learn the truth about her death.

Kathleen Feeney,14, was killed near her home in the Brandywell area of Londonderry on 14 November 1973.

The IRA blamed the Army for shooting the teenager and claimed later it had killed a soldier in retaliation.

But in 2005 the IRA admitted that one of its members shot the 14-year-old.

Harry Feeney said the bullet that killed his sister has "kept going and it just affected the whole family, even 50 years on".

He told BBC News NI that a few years after the 30th anniversary of his sister's death he came face to face with the man who killed her.

"Against my family's wishes I met the gunman a couple of years later and I got exactly what happened from him.

"It was a very poignant moment when I shook his hand that I realised that's the hand that he fired the Armalite from. But I got the truth."

Mr Feeney said the gunman told him that "you carry it all the time with you".

"At the time he didn't know he'd did it," Mr Feeney said.

"It was the next day he was told that what had happened and he went to his superiors and they more or less told him 'don't you be worrying about that and don't mention it again to anybody and to take your mind of it', this is his words not mine, 'go and plant that bomb up in the Diamond'."

On Tuesday, Kathleen's family attended an anniversary Mass in Derry to mark the 50th anniversary of Kathleen's killing.

Kathleen's sister Mary Morrison said it took a long time to forgive the man who killed her.

"I myself forgive him - that has healed me," she told BBC Radio Foyle's North West Today programme.

"I was only hurting myself.

"There were four people involved in it - two girls, two fellas - no-one has ever been convicted. It is their sin, not mine."

Kathleen's sister describes her as a "funny, bright, brilliant sister"

On the day Kathleen was killed, their older brother Danny had been told there was "a wee girl lying outside the shop".

The two sisters - Mary was one year older than Kathleen - had just got new coats.

"I think he recognised the coat," said Mary.

"He went over and turned her over. It was our Kathleen."

Danny went with Kathleen in an ambulance. She was alive but unconscious.

He talked to her, asked her to squeeze his hand, Mary said.

But by the time they had crossed the city, Kathleen was dead.

Kathleen's mother and father both died prior to the IRA's admission and apology

Mary says the days after her sister's death are a blur and the years since have been equally challenging.

"Even at the funeral and wake, there is very little memory of it for me," she said.

"When I look at the photos, everyone is just devastated."

The two sisters had come as "a duo".

"Kathleen was funny and bright, a brilliant sister," Mary said.

Mary Morrison says she looks back fondly on the happy times her sister and their family shared together

"Growing up with your sister, then not having her, and as you get older and have your own children and wondering about her, wondering if she would have had children.

"You don't move on, but you get on with your life, think of the happy times we had when we were all together."

Mary said the family had known the IRA was responsible for Kathleen's death "from three or four days" after the shooting.

Years later she saw former Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams on television and wrote to him to ask for help getting to the truth about her sister's death.

In 2005 the IRA admitted it had killed Kathleen.

In a statement in the Derry Journal newspaper, the IRA said it apologised unreservedly for what happened and admitted that its failure to admit killing Kathleen added to the family's hurt and pain.

A number of Kathleen's personal items are currently on display in the Museum of Free Derry.