Man meets soldier who blinded him 34 years ago

The founder of an international children's charity has met a British army officer who shot and blinded him almost 35 years ago…

The founder of an international children's charity has met a British army officer who shot and blinded him almost 35 years ago.

The emotional meeting between Richard Moore and the now retired Royal Anglian Regiment major, known only as Charles, was filmed for a BBC documentary to be screened on Sunday night.

Mr Moore, founder of the Children In Crossfire charity, was struck on the head by a rubber bullet fired by Charles, who was then a captain, during disturbances outside the Rosemount police station in Derry on May 4th, 1972.

Mr Moore was then a 10-year-old boy returning home from school.

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"I put my head out of a window in a burnt-out building beside the police station. That's all I remember about the incident. It happened just four months after my uncle Gerald McKinney was one of the 13 people shot dead on Bloody Sunday and my family was still grieving for him," said Mr Moore.

"The meeting with Charles was the end of a long personal journey for me. It took place in an Edinburgh hotel, close to where he lives.

"Charles, who is a 64-year-old grandfather, was a mystery man in my life. He changed my life's circumstances for life and I always wanted to meet him, not to criticise him or to rebuke him, but to build up a relationship with a stranger who was, and who remains, one of the most important people in my life.

" I told him I have forgiven him and moved on. We got on very well. He told me he felt justified in firing the rubber bullet but he said he was sorry for the damage it caused and that if he'd known what was going to happen to me he said he would never have fired it", said Mr Moore.

"When the documentary team informed me that they had tracked him down, I wrote to Charles telling him who I was and telling him that I wanted to meet him.

"He wrote back agreeing to the meeting and things just moved on from that.

"It was a fantastic meeting. We got to know each other very well and I felt like hugging him. We were both in an unusual set of circumstances in 1972, he did something wrong and it impacted on me for the rest of my life.

"I had no expectations about how the meeting would go, I just wanted to let him know how I felt. I would have liked him to say he was sorry but I've no hang-ups about it.

"We discussed why he did not say he was sorry and at the end of the day he had his own logic for not doing so. I still have the rubber bullet which Charles fired at me. I thought about showing it to him but I don't think that's appropriate yet. I don't think he needs my forgiveness, but that forgiveness is more of a gift to myself," he added.

The Blind Visiondocumentary on Mr Moore, who is married with two daughters, will be shown on BBC 1 at 10.20pm on Sunday.