Kirsty Simpson
The Rangers club where the three girls were beaten up
A UVF mob launched a blood-spattered attack on two Protestant sisters and a Catholic friend. Because they claimed the girl was a ‘wee fenian’.
The savage assault on the Protestant and Catholic girls occurred in a Rangers Supporters Club in Belfast – and continued when a crazed lynch mob high on drink and hate tried to storm their home.
Now, after two of the victims – a Protestant and a Catholic – talked to the Sunday World, we name and shame the perpetrators of the depraved sectarian attack as Colin ‘Meerkat’ Fulton and sidekick Matthew McGrath.
The UVF is today unmasked as a sickening, sectarian, teen-bashing, women beating mob.Three young women, one a teenage Catholic, are lucky to be alive after police rescued them from a baying blood-thirsty loyalist mob high on drink, and drunk on sectarian hatred.
Incredibly, two of the mob’s battered victims were PROTESTANTS – the same religion as their attackers.
Today the Sunday World lifts the lid on an orgy of violence that could have left the innocent trio dead.
And we name and shame those who took part.
We reveal how a crazed mob involving south Belfast hood Colin ‘Meerkat’ Fulton, fellow PUP member Matthew McGrath and an eight months pregnant woman, battered their victims to within an inch of their lives.
We also reveal how a crazed crowd of up to 15 people armed with baseball bats and metal poles tried to force their way into an apartment shared by the 18-year-old Catholic and her 21-year-old Protestant flatmate.
Had they forced their way in, police believe they would have been battered to death.
The three victims were enjoying a night out at the south Belfast social club when all hell broke loose.
All three victims were in Barrington Street Rangers club at the same time – all three were assaulted by the UVF. The Sunday World can reveal that an 18-year-old Catholic girl was subjected to an unprovoked attack at the bar, when her Protestant friend and flatmate intervened she too was assaulted.
Subsequently, brave Kirsty Simpson stepped in to defend her sister only for the enraged attackers to turn on her. The 23-year-old has been left with a broken nose, and bruises all over her body after she was knocked unconscious during a bust-up at the Barrington Street Rangers Supporters Club on Belfast’s Donegall Road.
Kirsty was with friends when she became aware that her sister was being attacked. She has now been forced from her home, under fear of further reprisals.
“I came out of the toilet to see my sister being hit about the face, they had pulled her hearing aid out and they were just battering her,” she told us.
“I tried to intervene and they turned on me. He (McGrath) punched me in the face and I fell, but he just kept on hitting me. People were trying to get him to stop but he just kept hitting me.”
Speaking to the Sunday World at her mother’s home in the heart of loyalist Sandy Row Kirsty said such was the violence of the attack the walls of the club were splattered with her blood.
Dragged outside, the semi-conscious Kirsty continued to be beaten. Witnesses have told the Sunday World how McGrath and an unidentified woman were jumping on her chest.
“I have no memory of what happened outside, all I know is that I was beaten black and blue.” Kirsty has taken the courageous step of going public on the savage assault that left her needing hospital treatment and which has left her a virtual prisoner in her mother’s home.
“I’m homeless, I’ve had to leave my house and come back to my mum’s because I’m terrified they are going to come after me.
“It is crazy what is going on around here, we were minding out own business enjoying a night out and this happens.”
The 23-year-old is in constant pain. Curled up on her a settee in her mother’s house she can barely move without wincing in pain – the result of the relentless beating meted out by McGrath, Fulton and their bully boy pals.
The young woman’s mother Paula said she was shaken out of her bed only to rush to Barrington Street to find her daughter lying semi-conscious on the street.
“These people think they can just do what they want and get away with it. My daughter is too frightened to set foot out the door. Nobody does anything to stop these people.”
UVF chief Colin 'Meerkat' Fulton was behind the attacks
Kirtsy revealed it is not the first time McGrath has raised his hands to her. She was among a group of friends on holiday in Cyprus last year when the 21-year-old assaulted her and a friend, hitting one of them with a six pack of beer.
But this latest attack provoked memories of the infamous ‘Bad Bet’ Band Hall Murder of Margaret Wright in 1994.
Margaret 31, was savaged, murdered and her body dumped in a wheelie bin on the Donegall Road because she was mistakenly believed to be a Catholic after going to a party at the band hall less than a quarter of a mile from the scene of last Saturday’s disturbance.
In a week when the First and Deputy First Minister launched their blueprint for a Shared Future, a vision of Protestant and Catholic living together, the Sunday World reveals the deep rooted sectarian hatred that still plagues the community.
Sicko McGrath is a Fulton sycophant, and was a member of a UVF punishment squad which used taser guns on three teenagers accused of anti-social behaviour.
It is understood it was McGrath who used a Taser stun gun on the private parts of a 15-year-old boy.
The young women brutalised by the UVF last weekend are a symbol of hope of the future – a hope scattered by the hate filled south Belfast terror group.
The Sunday World has spoken to all three girls at the centre of the attack which happened last Saturday night after a fund raising parade for the South Belfast Protestant Boys band.
It is a tale of naked hatred, utter terror and threats of death.
Too frightened to reveal her identity, the 18-year-old Catholic girl revealed she had been living on the loyalist Donegall Road quite happily since January. She was known to the people who attacked her, now she is living in fear.
“I went to an integrated school and most of the friends I made are from the Donegall Road and Sandy Row,” she said.
“I loved living down there, we just lived our own lives. I had friends. The people who beat me are people I know.”
She recalled how a 27-year-old woman whose identity is known to the Sunday World launched an unprovoked attack on her, punching her repeatedly to the face.
South Belfast UVF goon Colin Fulton forced her to leave the club where she was assaulted again. Shaken, she made her way home to the flat she shared with her 21-year-old Protestant friend.
“We went home and locked the door, we were shaking,” she said. Around midnight a baying mob launched an attack on their home.
“There was at least 15 of them, one woman who is eight months pregnant was carrying an iron bar and was smashing at the front door.”
The pair locked themselves into the living room convinced they were about to die. A desperate call to the police saved their lives as a patrol car arrived to rescue them.
Now the pair, Protestant and Catholic, are in hiding on the Falls Road, terrified for their lives. Neither are sleeping, both admit they are wetting the bed, such is the state of fear in which they live.
“You cannot imagine what it was like to have those people beating down the door,” one of the girls told us.
“We believed we were dead.” The girls’ attackers boasted about their cowardly attacks on Facebook, with one woman openly bragging that her victim was “jus (sic) a wee fenian who needed sorted.”
The Sunday World understands Fulton and McGrath both attended a PUP meeting in the days after the assault, making a mockery of their leader Billy Hutchinson’s endorsement of the Shared Future initiative.
We contacted the party for comment on the Donegall Road incident but Director of Communications and UVF commander Winston ‘Winky’ Irvine failed to respond.
Police confirmed they are investigating a “serious incident.”
“Police in south Belfast are investigating the circumstances surrounding an assault in the Donegall Road area on Saturday 4th May in which two women were assaulted,” said a spokesman.
“Police received reports of the assaults at around midnight on Saturday and then a further report of damage being caused to the front door of a property nearby by a crowd shortly after.
“Enquiries are ongoing and police would ask anyone with any information to contact them at Musgrave on 0845 600 8000 or contact the independent charity Crimestoppers and speak to them anonymously on 0800 555 111.”