Stardust: 'It’s surreal for the families... Justice has been done. Finally'
Samantha Curran the daughter of Stardust fire victim Helena Mangan outside the Rounda last year. File photo: Leah Farrell / RollingNews.ie
Samantha Curran attended the Stardust inquests for so many days that, by the end, she had lost count.
It would turn out to be 122 days of evidence, but there would be many more days in court, including what would feel like an interminable wait for the verdicts across 11 days and some 40 hours of jury deliberations.
“I shouldn’t have had to do it, but I needed to do it for me,” she said. “So I could find out the truth of what happened that night because I’d listened to rumours over the years, ‘it was arson’. It was not. She hadn’t got a chance.”
The “she” that Ms Curran was referring to was her mother Helena Mangan. Helena was just 22 years old when she went to the Stardust for a night out with friends, including her boyfriend John Stout, on February 13, 1981. Neither she nor John came home again.
This left four-year-old Samantha without her mother, and it is an enduring and painful loss for her to deal with all these years later. Compounding this loss was the long-running fight for further inquiries into the Stardust fire, for answers families had long sought, that were frequently stymied or denied.
“She didn’t have a chance to get out to come home to me,” she said.
Thursday marked a landmark day in the long-running Stardust saga, as a jury returned majority verdicts of unlawful killing for all of the 48 young people who lost their lives in the nightclub fire.
The delivery of that two-word verdict sparked an incredible outpouring of emotion in the Pillar Room on the grounds of Dublin’s Rotunda Hospital, with the families and friends of victims vindicated in their long fight for the truth and justice for their loved ones at long last.
The jury found that the fire had started due to an electrical fault in the hot press of the main bar in the Stardust, which backed onto the west alcove area where the fire was first seen. This finding was crucially very different from the 1981 Tribunal of Inquiry which found the probable cause of the fire was that it was started deliberately.
The jury also found that factors such as carpet tiles on the walls, the polyurethane foam used in the seats, and the height of the ceiling in the alcove contributed to the spread of the fire.
Furthermore, they found that some of the exit doors were either locked, chained or obstructed during the time of the fire and this would have impeded the ability of those who died to get out these emergency doors.
These crucial findings then fed into the unlawful killing verdict long sought.
As they had for so many days in the courtroom, Samantha Curran sat next to Susan Behan for those verdicts. With their arms linked on Thursday, they rose as one when the verdicts were announced. It was in the same courtroom that, almost a year to the day prior, they had got up to speak so powerfully for their loved ones.
The Stardust inquests began with pen portraits, similar to how the Hillsborough inquests in England had run. The pen portraits were an opportunity for the families of the Stardust victims to talk about the people they were, the lives they had led, and the dreams they had.
In the morgue in 1981, parents were told the number their child had been assigned. This process of pen portraits at the Stardust inquests gave the victims their identity back and gave them the chance to explain the rich, full lives they had enjoyed before tragedy struck.
It was the third day of the inquests in April 2023 when Susan stood up to talk about her brother John Colgan.
She described Johnny as a “natural charmer” and a “truly special person”. His favourite song was Lovely Day by Bill Withers which summed up his outlook on life. His party piece was The Hucklebuck.
Ms Behan was pregnant at the time in 1981, and due to give birth in less than a month. Johnny couldn’t wait to be an uncle.
“Losing Johnny in the Stardust was indescribable,” she said.
Ms Curran also spoke of her mother at the pen portraits. Of Helena Mangan’s love of dancing and Rod Stewart. About how her job in Cadbury’s was helping her to make new friends and provide a better life for her and her daughter.
After the verdicts, she reflected on the little things that would have formed part of everyday life all these years on because her mother had been unlawfully killed in the Stardust. Going into the town for shopping on a Saturday, the chats and the advice she could have given her throughout her own life.
“Like even, I don’t know what time I was born,” Ms Curran said.
“I don’t know what weight I was. I don’t have her stories of being a single mam in the hospital on her own, how her pregnancy went. I don’t have any of those stories from her to fill me in. Even when I was pregnant to help me over mine and stuff like that.
“It’s just been lost. As I said before, part of me is broken and will never be fixed. It’s just devastated me that much. But hopefully, now, we can move on. For me, it was to be a better parent to my kids. Now I’ve got justice, I can focus on my own family and make sure my kids have the parents I never had.”
Speaking in the Garden of Remembrance following the verdicts on Thursday, Ms Behan said it was a vindication for Johnny and the other 47 victims of the Stardust fire.
She said: “I’m very emotional. I can’t actually believe it. It’s surreal for the families who’ve campaigned for so long. I’m pleased for my brother. For my mum and dad. It’s just, you know, justice has been done. Finally.
“It’s taken 43 years. From today, I just want all the families to maybe find some peace now from this. They’ve done everything they possibly can. And as I say, justice has been served. They [my parents] are here in spirit as is my brother and the 47. I know they’d be proud. And they’d be saying ‘well done’.”
