Lisa Dorrian's family isn't rich but they've managed to raise a five figure sum which they will this week offer as a reward for information leading to the discovery of the body of their beautiful young daughter. Their anguish is almost unimaginable. Lisa has disappeared.
They need help to find her.
It is eight weeks since 25-year-old Lisa set off for a party on the Ards peninsula. She never came back and, within a matter of days, the PSNI announced that this was a murder inquiry. It would appear that Lisa, a Catholic, had got tangled up – in all innocence – with men connected with the Loyalist Volunteer Force. Men who deal drugs and have no qualms about using violence to control those around them.
We don't know why they murdered Lisa – but killing comes easy to the LVF.
This is the organisation founded by Billy 'King Rat' Wright as a breakaway from the Ulster Volunteer Force. It was set up supposedly to oppose the peace process and to support the Orange Order at Drumcree.
It likes a soft target. Its first act was to murder a Catholic taxi driver. Everything it has done since has been similarly depraved. The Orange Order has never recovered from – and never deserves to recover from – the shame of accepting the support of these brutal thugs.
Lisa Dorrian just loved to party. She cut a dash in her furry white moon boots, her miniskirts and her long, shiny blonde hair. In all of her photographs though, what is most striking of all is her big, wide, dazzling smile.
This was a young woman who loved life. She was much loved and she was generous, loyal and loving to her friends and family. According to those who knew her she thought the best of everyone. She didn't know she was among wolves.
Lisa's family won't join in the speculation about who killed their daughter. For them, now, what is most important is to get her body back so they can honour her with a funeral and give her body a final resting place at which they can grieve for her.
This is a fundamental human need – everyone remembers the terrible pain of the McConville family and the sweet relief they experienced when, finally, 20 years after she disappeared, their mother's remains were found. They buried her with the dignity she deserved. Lisa Dorrian, like all of the other disappeared who have not yet been found, deserves the same.
The PSNI mounted a huge search operation involving sniffer dogs, air and sea search crews, divers and a large team of police officers. They've taken hundreds of statements. They appear to have got 'intelligence' – but little in the way of hard evidence from those in a position to
supply it. Lisa was meant to be at a party in a caravan in Ballyhalbert. Some of those who were told her family that Lisa left at about five in the morning and 'got lost in the dark'.
Why the silence? There is, the family acknowledges, clearly a 'fear factor'.
There are similarities between this and the situation faced by the family of Robert McCartney. He was murdered by IRA men after a fight in a small bar inside which 70 or so drinkers managed to see and hear nothing of significance. His killers are brazening out the storm of publicity the case has attracted and it is obvious they are being protected by those around them.
The LVF has no politics and therefore no political wing on which pressure can be put. (God and Ulster? God help God. God help Ulster.) David Ervine, leader of the Progressive Unionist Party, which emerged from the UVF, has urged anyone who knows anything about this murder to tell it to the police. He believes "even the LVF" wouldn't condone these killers. Sylvia Hermon, the Dorrian's MP, has also called for those who can to come forward and help a family in agony.
Someone knows exactly where Lisa's body is. Others must have their suspicions. Anyone who has a heart or a conscience is bound to respond to the Dorrian family's anguish. As Lisa's sister, Joanne, puts it: "Try to imagine, just for a moment, what this is like."
If that doesn't work, try imagining what it is like to wake up with this every morning, live with it through the day and go to sleep with it every night. Then pick up a phone.
