Crucified

Belfast, May 1996.

A 17 year-old boy is bundled into a car by four masked men.

A sock is shoved inside his mouth to dull his screams. He is beaten before being driven at speed to an alleyway in the nearby republican heartland of Ballymurphy. He is removed from the car; his arms and legs are bound with tape and rope. His attackers hang him upside down on a wooden fence. It was like being crucified.

What happens next is what's known as a 'punishment' beating. Attacks regularly carried out in Northern Ireland by paramilitaries, supposedly, to keep their communities in order.

That teenager survived, though he was unable to walk for many months. Today, he is a father in his mid 40s who almost three decades after the attack, has received vindication. Paul Reid was handed an apology from the IRA for the brutal and cold attack he received as a teenager.

Born into a staunch republican family, Paul's father Patsy was a renowned IRA man who was jailed for the attempted murder of two judges. His uncle, Billy Reid, is described in the press as 'republican royalty' after becoming the first IRA man to have shot dead a British soldier.

His story is as far away from violence as it gets, it's about forgiveness. not only forgiving those who harmed him, but forgiving himself and asking forgiveness from God.

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