Another woman who suffered injuries in the Omagh bomb blast which killed 29 people and two unborn babies in August 1998, claimed yesterday she had been forced to undress to her underwear during her compensation hearing in a Belfast court.
Earlier this week, Mrs Rosemary Ingram said she had been humiliated at what she called the degrading manner in which she had to "strip to prove" her injuries to a group of six lawyers, three of them men and three women.
Yesterday, Mrs Mary Ellis Ellis, a grandmother of six, said she also had to strip to her underwear during her claim, which was heard by four men and two women last October. Mrs Ellis, who sustained multiple injuries to her body as well as a perforated eardrum in the explosion, said she lost four of her friends in the blast, one of whom was blown against her after the 500lb car bomb exploded in Omagh's crowded Market Street.
"I was in Omagh with one of my six children, Melanie, shopping for her birthday present," Mrs Ellis said at her home near Dromore, Co Tyrone, yesterday.
"I was speaking with Geraldine Breslin, Ann McCombe and Olive Hawkes, all of whom were killed. The body of another good friend of mine, Alan Radford, was blown against me. I remember laying on the street with a body beside me and the next thing I can remember is being in hospital," she said.
Mrs Ellis had to retire from working with disabled children because of her injuries.
"Melanie came with me to the hearing, along with my solicitor Adrian O'Kane. I had been told that I would be examined and that I would have to undress, but I honestly thought it would be done by doctors or nurses.
"After I'd taken off my clothes down to my bra and panties, these four men and a woman, all of them strangers, walked into the room and started looking down at me. One of the men came forward and pulled the right hand side of my bra strap down to look closely at my shoulder wound. All my medical records were in front of the assessors and why he had to do that I don't know. It would have been different if he was a doctor or a nurse, but he wasn't."
"I was totally humiliated and degraded," Mrs Ellis added.