Victim says she was ‘humiliated' having to strip for Omagh compensation claim
A traffic warden who was seriously injured in the Omagh bombing has told how she was 'humiliated' by having to take off her clothes so her scars could be examined in a compensation claim.
Rosemary Ingram said she was made to 'feel like a victim all over again' by the experience in 2002, four years after a Real IRA bomb devastated the centre of the town.
Ms Ingram's statement to the Omagh Bombing Inquiry was read on her behalf by a lawyer.
She told how on the day of the explosion, she had been asked to divert traffic in Omagh away from the courthouse following a bomb alert.
She said a photograph taken by a tourist shows her standing close to the red Vauxhall Cavalier on Market Street which contained the bomb.
I saw a cloud of debris and dust, all with the smell of burning flesh and I could hear people screaming.
Rosemary Ingram
Describing the moment the bomb exploded, her statement said: 'I suddenly felt a thud in my back and I first thought I had been struck by a car from behind.
'I saw a cloud of debris and dust, all with the smell of burning flesh and I could hear people screaming.'
She said she was taken to hospital which was 'full of injured people and in complete turmoil'.
Ms Ingram was treated for multiple injuries. She said she has been left with chronic debilitating pain as well as post-traumatic stress disorder and she had to take early retirement.
She said: 'Twenty-six years after the explosion I still have shrapnel coming out of my body, sometimes with ongoing bleeding.'
Ms Ingram added: 'We had to leave our home in Omagh because it was close to the hospital and each time I heard the sirens I had flashbacks and experienced PTSD symptoms.'
Ms Ingram then said she had suffered 'humiliating' treatment after claiming compensation from the government for her injuries in 2002.
She said: 'I was called to the High Court in order to assess my injury.
'The assessment took place in a small room with a plain window in front of six lawyers who arrived with their briefcases.
'They asked to see the scars on my body.
'I was told to strip to my underwear and to stand in the corner of the room, facing the wall, in front of the panel of lawyers so that the Northern Ireland Office's compensation agency could examine my scars to assess how much money I should be given.
' One of the lawyers even pulled with his pen at my underwear to see the extent of the scars.'
She added: 'The experience made me feel like a victim all over again.
'I was close to tears.
'Thankfully, my husband, who had been asked to leave the room, refused, and stayed with me.
'He took off his jacket and put it around my shoulders to give me some dignity and eventually said to the lawyers that that was enough.'
Ms Ingram said she had campaigned for other victims who claimed compensation to be assessed through medical reports and photographs of injuries.
Concluding her statement, she said: ' Justice would have been done by seeing that those responsible for this terrorist atrocity were convicted and bore the consequences of their heinous crime, but this has not happened.'
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