Family forced to flee to Scotland

A CATHOLIC family has been forced to flee to Scotland after painting over a republican mural on their Co Antrim home, it emerged yesterday.

Gemma Dollery, 22, a mother of four, needed a police escort as a mob ordered her to quit the Rathenraw estate in Antrim Town, she revealed.

Ms Dollery, who has taken her children - aged between ten weeks and four years - and partner to stay with her parents in Kirkcudbright, near Dumfries, claimed she was too terrified to return to Northern Ireland.

She said: "If they know we are back they will come after us and I don’t want to go through that again.

"We have been here five days and my eldest boy still won’t sleep at night because he says the bad men are coming."

Trouble flared over Easter when Ms Dollery discovered a mural declaring "Welcome to Rathenraw" in Irish daubed on the side of her end-terrace house in Antrim town’s staunchly Catholic estate.

Angered by the inscription on the house, where she has lived for more than three years, she painted over it with black emulsion. A Sinn Fein representative in the area warned her of the consequences, she claimed.

"He told me, ‘That’s trouble started now’," Ms Dollery said.

A crowd gathered and threw stones at the house, she claimed, forcing her to call the police. The officers allegedly negotiated with the Sinn Fein man’s wife in a bid to restore order.

"She told the police they would let us get out unharmed but we would not be allowed to stay there," Ms Dollery said.

Ms Dollery and her partner have applied for a council property in Scotland.