Londonderry: ‘Culture of silence’ two decades after son’s death

The father of a man who died nine years after a sectarian attack in Londonderry has said that 20 years on, a “culture of silence still exists” around what happened to his son.

Paul McCauley died nine years after he was attacked at a barbecue on Chapel Road in the Waterside in the early hours of 16 July 2006.

The father of one, who was 29 at the time, was left in a persistent vegetative state and died in a care facility in June 2015.

In 2018 two men from Derry were jailed after pleading guilty to killing McCauley, but it’s believed more people were involved in the assault.

Piper John McClements, previously known as Daryl Proctor, from the Fountain area, was sentenced to a minimum term of three years in jail for murder.

Matthew Brian Gillon, of Bonds Street, was sentenced to 10 years for manslaughter – five of those in prison.

At the time, police believed a gang of up to 15 people were involved in the attack.

Following Paul’s death in 2015, the PSNI upgraded their investigation to a murder inquiry.

Detectives arrested and questioned multiple individuals, but further prosecutions have not yet followed.

In the years following the attack, the lack of information coming forward to police was raised at Stormont.

The McCauley family called for a “wall of silence” within unionist communities in the city “to be broken”.