Jean and Joan. The similarities are striking. Two women rearing big families in west Belfast brutally taken from their loved ones by armed men. Little children left heartbroken, and today still struggling for justice, for the mothers who never came home.
And yet, in our sick society, we're told to pick a victim, Jean or Joan, because you're not allowed to rage about what happened to both.
Last week, when Gerry Adams was under media pressure about the IRA's 1972 murder of Jean McConville, Sinn Féin apologists raised the British Army's 1971 murder of Joan Connolly.
Many who hate republicans champion the cause of Jean but don't give a thought to the death of Joan. There's nothing in it for them. Indeed, it raises uncomfortable questions that the state perhaps wasn't the honest broker that they like to make out.
And some of those demanding the truth about Joan sit on a cess-pit of lies about what happened to Jean.
Yet these two women's lives were so alike. Jean married at 17 and raised her ten children in Divis Flats. Up the road in Ballymurphy, Joan – married at 18 – brought up eight youngsters.
Both women struggled against poverty. The only 'luxury' either enjoyed was a night out at the bingo, according to their children.
And who knows, Joan and Jean may have briefly crossed into each other's lives in a bingo hall, exchanging congratulations on a win or commiserating about a run of bad luck.
It was December 1972, when the IRA burst into Jean's flat, snatching her from her screaming children. And when weeks later the McConvilles lined up on their threadbare sofa for the media, begging for information about their missing mum, they had no idea she was already dead, shot in the head and buried like a dog on a Co Louth beach.
We're not so acquainted with the details of Joan's murder but we should be. In August 1971 after the introduction of internment, the Parachute Regiment entered Ballymurphy and, over three days, shot dead 11 unarmed civilians including a priest.
Joan went to help a neighbour who had been shot when soldiers opened fire on her. Half her face was blown away. So horrific were her injuries that it took three attempts in the morgue before her husband could identify her.
It was 31 years before the McConvilles could bury Jean with the dignity she deserved. The Connolly children watched their mother's funeral on TV from the refugee camp in Cork where they were evacuated after the shooting.
Three-year-old Irene cried her eyes out at the pictures. "Mummy's gone to heaven to get you sweets," was all her big sister could think of saying to comfort her.
And just as the IRA spread lies about Jean in an effort to disappear the story, so the state tried to kill the truth about Joan, claiming she'd fired at a soldier with a machine gun.
Both women's murders destroyed their children's lives. The McConvilles were split into different orphanages from which they repeatedly ran away. Some were treated cruelly in care.
Joan's husband couldn't cope after her death and family life disintegrated. Daughter Denise made several suicide attempts. Son Patrick turned to drink and died an alcoholic.
Nobody has ever been convicted of either woman's murder. And, over four decades later, it's despicable that we're pitting them against each other. Instead, our voices should be raised in unison, 'Justice for Joan and Jean'.
