Bomb victim had to strip during her application for compensation

A TRAFFIC warden on duty just yards from where the Omagh bomb exploded on the afternoon of August 15, 1998, was subsequently strip-searched to assess the injuries she sustained in the blast.

Rosemary Ingram was standing at the junction of Market Street and the Dublin Road when the blast occurred.

She told the public inquiry at the Strule Arts Centre today how she believed she was blown off her feet by the blast.

She sustained extensive injuries, and still suffers from shrapnel coming out of her body sometimes bleeding.

Mrs Ingram said she had sought compensation for the injuries that she had sustained, but was left ‘humiliated’ after the strip-search took place as part of an assessment of her injuries at the High Court in Belfast.

“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 by scars to assess how much money I should be given,” she added.

“One of the lawyers even pulled with his pen at my underwear to see the extent of the scars. The experience made me feel like a victim all over again. I was close to tears.

“No-one at my age should have been forced to take off their clothes like that.”

Mrs Ingram said her husband, who was a member of the RUC and died in 2018, had refused to leave the room.

“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.

“He was upset and indignant that I had been given this degrading treatment which added to the trauma.”