ON the evening of August 8, 1975 hundreds of people marched on Fort Pegasus on the Whiterock Road to protest at internment without trial, which had been introduced exactly four years earlier. The crowd was peaceful and in good spirits. Some women had brought along binlids and were rattling them on the ground. Cathy Toner was at the back of the march; her younger sister Carol, 14, had gone on ahead. Without warning the gates of Fort Pegasus were flung open and out charged British soldiers in full riot gear, scattering the crowd before them. “It wasn’t until the next day in the early hours of the morning that Carol was found,” says Cathy. “We were told that she had been hit by a car and when we got to the hospital the doctors told mummy that she had passed away three times but they had brought her back. “The whole side of her skull was smashed in, so she had to get an operation for steel plates to be put in her head. They had to tube feed her and she was unconscious for three weeks after it.” By then the truth had started to trickle out. Some of those who had been on the protest said that soldiers had grabbed a young girl and dragged her into the barracks where they could be seen beating her with batons. Cathy said that tests carried out in the hospital suggested that Carol may also have been sexually assaulted. The British Army claimed that they had picked up the St Louise's schoolgirl after she had been struck by a car. They later changed their story, saying that she had been trampled on by fleeing protestors.
