Bertha McDougall
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Bertha McDougall OBE is the interim Commissioner for Victims and Survivors of the Troubles. She was appointed in October 1999 by Peter Hain to look at key areas relating to services for victims, funding arrangements in relation to services and grants paid to victims and survivors groups and individual victims and survivors [1].
Mrs McDougall is a police widow who lives in Belfast. Her husband Lindsay a Civil Servant and Part Time Royal Ulster Constabulary Reservist was shot dead by the Irish National Liberation Army in January 1981 whilst on duty in Belfast [2].
She is chairman of the victims’ group Forgotten Families, which was set up to lobby on behalf of pre-1982 widows. She is also a member of the Phoenix Energy for Children Charitable Trust.
Mrs McDougall was educated at Methodist College Belfast and thereafter was a school teacher and taught in Fane Street Primary School, Belfast, for many years before a being seconded to the Education for Mutual Understanding initiative. Latterly she worked with the Council for the Curriculum Examinations and Assessment.
