Rap trio Kneecap may be subverting word, but the psychological wounds are still raw for victims of shootings and their families
For Jeanitta McCabe, the word kneecap conjures not a rap trio on stage but a memory that plays in her head, unspooling again and again in a loop.
It is the night of 13 September 1990 and she is a 10-year-old at home in bed in Newry, County Down, when Northern Ireland’s Troubles come barrelling through the family’s front door.
Six to eight men in masks storm into the two-storey council house and march her father, Peter, into the kitchen. One places a pistol against his leg, just above the knee.
Jeanitta remains in her darkened bedroom upstairs with siblings – her mother is on the landing holding the door, corralling the children for their own safety – but she can hear the shrieks of a sister who is downstairs and the shouts of the IRA intruders.
