Call for new law to help women

Wendy McAteer was brutally murdered in November 2007 by her boyfriend Terrence Whiting, who is now locked up. Whiting had a history of domestic abuse, something unbeknown to the McAteer family until after the horrific act.

An episode of BBC NI documentary ‘In Cold Blood’, screened again on Monday night after it aired for the first time in 2010, highlighted the case of Wendy’s violent and cruel murder at the hands of a man with a history of violence towards women.

Its screening coincided with the introduction on Monday of ‘Clares’ Law’ in a number of pilot schemes in England and Wales.

Clare’s Law is a ‘right-to-know’ system intended to protect men and women from abusive, and potentially deadly, partners by revealing their violent history.

The scheme is a tragic tribute to Clare Woods, a 36-year-old mother who was strangled and then set on fire by her ex-partner. A psychopath she had first met on Facebook.

George Appleton, a 40-year-old from Salford, had a trail of violence against women including repeated harassment, threats and kidnapping at knife point.

It has chilling echoes of the brutal murder of the Limavady teenager, Wendy McAteer.

Marie Brown of Foyle Women’s Aid is now calling for ‘Clare’s Law’ in England and Wales to be introduced in Northern Ireland to make it less likely that tragedies such as the 2007 murder of Wendy are repeated.

Currently being piloted in four areas of England and Wales, Clare’s Law allows people to find out from police if their partner has a history of domestic violence.

Marie Brown, whose Foyle Women’s Aid organisation is currently in contact with the Housing Executive to try and secure accommodation in Limavady for vulnerable women so that they do not have to go through the trauma of up-rooting to move to Londonderry, has said that if measures such as Clare’s Law were introduced here, it would help prevent cases such as the murder of Wendy McAteer.

Wendy was a gentle teenager from Limavady who had planned a career in hairdressing before becoming involved in a relationship with the much older Terence Philip Whiting from England, who was working around the neighbourhood. Her family were shocked when they discovered Wendy was seeing an older man.

They felt they were taking steps to protect her by inviting her new boyfriend to live in their family home, but sadly nothing prevented the chain of events which led to Wendy’s death at the hands of a violent opportunist criminal who ended her life when she decided to end their relationship. Her battered body was discovered by her family on the Backburn Path in Limavady.

Speaking on the BBC NI documentary ‘In Cold Blood’, Wendy’s mother Eileen said: “Wendy was a kind, kind person – very soft at heart.”

Marie Brown explained why Clare’s Law could be so important for protecting women in Limavady and elsewhere in Northern Ireland.

She said: “We would welcome that for here.

“Some women will ignore that kind of information quite often and dismiss it as hearsay, but it is another precaution we can take and at least people are going to be informed and the important thing is that it is going to be factual information.”

Asked whether that sort of information might have helped in the case of Wendy McAteer, she said: “Well, it can help in any case, any thing that can prevent crime - if we are really going to be serious about this there should be a range of sanctions to prevent this. It may make men think twice about carrying out this sort of crime.”