How Could You? Hall of Shame-Ireland-Kincora Boys Home UPDATED

This will be an archive of heinous actions by those involved in child welfare, foster care and adoption. We forewarn you that these are deeply disturbing stories that may involve sex abuse, murder, kidnapping and other horrendous actions.

From Belfast, Northern Ireland, police reopen a child sex abuse investigation at Kincora Boys Home.
“The probe will cover attacks on boys over two decades at the Kincora home in Northern Ireland – suspected to have been regularly visited by establishment figures.

Sources told the investigative ­website Exaro that the Police Service of Northern Ireland is ­asking to interview former residents. Kincora was home to 168 boys aged 15 to 18 between 1963 and 1968.

Three senior care staff were jailed in 1981 for abusing 11 boys.

But it is feared there were many more victims and abusers.

Since the case there have been suggestions that paedophilia at Kincora was linked to Anglo-Irish relations and British intelligence services. There are ­unsubstantiated claims that visitors to the home in East Belfast included military, ­politicians and civil servants.

The PSNI returned to the Kincora files as a result of information ­received by a public inquiry launched last May into “historical institutional abuse in Northern Ireland”.

Retired judge Sir Anthony Hart is chairing the inquiry. It is looking at abuse in residential institutions in the province between 1922 and 1995 and is due to report in 2016. The new probe comes 28 years after a public inquiry chaired by Judge William Hughes ruled there had been no extensive ring of abusers centred on Kincora.

Three years earlier, in 1982, local politician Joshua Cardwell had committed suicide after being questioned over Kincora.

He was an East Belfast ­councillor who had chaired the committee responsible for children’s homes in the city.

Concerns over Kincora were raised in a 1996 book, which claimed one of the convicted child abusers, William McGrath, was an MI5 agent. The Kincora Scandal, by ex-BBC journalist Chris Moore, alleged prominent unionist McGrath had sickening sex attacks on kids covered up. The book said two police probes were obstructed by “the establishment” in Britain.

McGrath, the housefather of Kincora, was dubbed “The Beast” by detectives. He was said to be leader of a shadowy paramilitary-style organisation of fanatical Protestants called Tara.

He was also said to be linked to senior unionist politicians, including Democratic Unionist Party leader Ian Paisley, who officiated at the weddings of two of McGrath’s children.

Police were ­anonymously tipped off about McGrath a decade before his ­arrest. The call is ­alleged to have been made by a man who was also involved in the Orange Order and the Tara movement.

He fell out with McGrath and later repeatedly attempted to ­expose his involvement in Kincora.

In 1990 the BBC programme Public Eye claimed the man made allegations about McGrath in 1975. Those claims were passed to MI5, according to a former Army ­intelligence officer who was said to have been blocked from doing ­anything with the information.

Former Army press officer Colin Wallace, who was based in Belfast, has insisted the authorities knew boys were being abused at Kincora six years before they acted.

The home was opened in 1958 and run by health authorities. It closed in 1980 and three senior members of staff were suspended. They were later convicted of 23 sexual offences against 11 boys in their care between 1960 and 1980.

Joseph Mains, the warden at Kincora, and his deputy Raymond Semple both admitted all charges. McGrath denied the allegations but changed his plea at Belfast Crown Court. It was claimed in court that abuse took place in bedrooms, while boys were watching ­television, in the toilets and on the first floor landing.

McGrath,and Semple got four years each and Mains got six. McGrath continued to be the ­subject of speculation because of his links to religion and a loyalist Orange lodge. He died in 1991.

In a statement to Exaro and the Sunday People, a PSNI spokesman said: “There is currently a public inquiry on-going in relation to ­historical abuse. Individuals are being encouraged to contact Judge Hart, who is heading the inquiry.

“Where appropriate, his inquiry team will pass this information to the PSNI. The PSNI has received a number of referrals.”

The reopened Kincora case underlines calls by people who suffered abuse as children for ­counselling and other support ­services to run alongside police investigations, as reported by the Sunday People and Exaro last week.

London’s Metropolitan Police paedophile unit has two ­investigations running into claims of child sex abuse allegedly involving VIPs ­including senior political figures.

Police interest in historical child abuse was heightened by the ­exposure of paedophile BBC star Jimmy Savile. Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions, has said: “We cannot afford another Savile moment in five or ten years.””

Police re-open child sex abuse investigation at Kincora boys home in Belfast

[Mirror 3/23/13 by Nick Dorman and Fiona O’Cleirigh]

 

REFORM Puzzle Piece

 

Update: “MI5 is facing allegations it was complicit in the sexual abuse of children, the high court in Northern Ireland will hear on Tuesday.

Victims of the abuse are taking legal action to force a full independent inquiry with the power to compel witnesses to testify and the security service to hand over documents.

The case, in Belfast, is the first in court over the alleged cover-up of British state involvement at the Kincora children’s home in Northern Ireland in the 1970s. It is also the first of the recent sex abuse cases allegedly tying in the British state directly. Victims allege that the cover-up over Kincora has lasted decades.

The victims want the claims of state collusion investigated by an inquiry with full powers, such as the one set up into other sex abuse scandals chaired by the New Zealand judge Lowell Goddard.

Amnesty International branded Kincora “one of the biggest scandals of our age” and backed the victims’ calls for an inquiry with full powers: “There are longstanding claims that MI5 blocked one or more police investigations into Kincora in the 1970s in order to protect its own intelligence-gathering operation, a terrible indictment which raises the spectre of countless vulnerable boys having faced further years of brutal abuse.

“It’s only Justice Goddard’s inquiry that will be able to ensure that evidence doesn’t remain hidden in Whitehall filing cabinets and that even senior politicians will have to attend the inquiry.”

Children are alleged to have suffered sustained sexual abuse after being taken from the east Belfast children’s home, run by a member of a Protestant paramilitary organisation, to be offered to men.

Lawyers for the victims will argue in court that “there is credible evidence (and it is therefore arguable) that the security forces and security services were aware of the abuse, permitted it to continue and colluded in protecting the individuals involved from investigation or prosecution”, according to papers lodged with the Belfast high court.

One alleged victim, Gary Hoy, said in a sworn affidavit seen by the Guardian: “If we had had a proper inquiry in the 1980s then I wouldn’t have to relive this again today. MI5 and MI6 cannot be allowed to hide things, and I believe everything needs to be brought out into the open. I find it heart-wrenching that there were security men could have been behind the abuse or involved in it … Because they were in positions of authority or supposed to be protecting the state they get away with it.”

Hoy was placed in Kincora with his younger brother in the 1970s. He says the abuse left him broken as an adult.

At the court case this week, lawyers for Hoy will state that “he (and other individuals) suffered abuse whilst in the care of Kincora boys’ home which would come within the definition of torture, or inhuman or degrading treatment as defined under article 3 of the ECHR [European convention on human rights]”.

Two former British military officials say a full inquiry with proper powers should take place. One says MI5 was complicit in the abuses; another says he reported it to MI5 but no action was taken.

Colin Wallace, a former army information officer in Northern Ireland, said: “There is now irrefutable evidence that previous inquiries were deliberately engineered or manipulated to mislead parliament by concealing the role of government agencies in covering up the abuses.”

The demand for an inquiry with full powers was supported last week by parliament’s home affairs committee.

The government wants the allegations covered by a different inquiry which lacks the powers to compel MI5 to hand over documents and cannot compel witnesses to testify. The government’s preferred option will not fund lawyers for the victims.

Three men were jailed for their part in abuse at Kincora in 1981, but attempts to establish the truth about British state involvement have been blocked. It has persistently been alleged that William McGrath, Kincora’s housemaster and the leader of an extreme evangelical Protestant group called Tara, was an informant for British intelligence. McGrath was jailed for sexual offences in 1981 and is now dead.

There have been limited inquiries into Kincora, but officers of the former Royal Ulster Constabulary, army intelligence officers, a former Northern Ireland ombudsman, and the judges conducting those earlier inquiries all said the truth about what went on there – and why it was allowed to continue for so many years – had been suppressed.

RUC officers were repeatedly refused permission in the 1980s to interview a senior MI5 official about the affair.

The Home Office, the government department responsible for MI5, declined to say if any intelligence official had ever even been questioned about the claims. It also declined to confirm or deny if the allegations of MI5 complicity in the abuse of children were true or a maligning of the security service’s reputation.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “The government is cooperating fully with all investigations into allegations relating to the Kincora boys’ home. It is not appropriate to comment further while these investigations are under way.”

In his affidavit, Hoy said: “Joe Mains, who was jailed for offences in the 1980s, he had a room in a [portable building]. His door was always closed, and I remember well-dressed men used to go in with children and the door was locked. Joe Mains took me to a house in Four Winds and abused me, and a man called Semple [also convicted] took me to a house in the Fortwilliam area and abused me.”

Lawyers acting for Hoy and other alleged victims want judges to declare the government’s planned inquiry is inadequate. They are seeking leave to judicially review the government’s decision.

The allegations of security service complicity in the abuses at Kincora have been reported by news organisations in Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic for decades.

Kevin Winters, the solicitor for Hoy and other victims of Kincora, said they viewed the government’s proposed inquiry as offering little hope of delivering the justice they had waited so long for: “They see this as a continuation of the cover-up that has existed for decades. They deserve full closure and justice.”

The allegations of British state complicity in the abuse of children initially appeared to be a conspiracy theory. But detectives who investigated Kincora in the 1980s said at least one Tory MP visited the home at the time boys were being sexually abused there. Brian Gemmell, a former army intelligence officer, has said he was warned off his investigations into Kincora by an MI5 officer.

Among the first to accuse the Ministry of Defence and MI5 of a cover-up was the former army information officer Wallace, who was himself the victim of dirty tricks, and subsequently left the MoD.

In 1980, as more people began to take notice of his claims about Kincora, Wallace was arrested and convicted of manslaughter. He spent six years in jail amid suggestions he had been framed. His conviction for manslaughter was quashed in 1996 in the light of fresh forensic evidence and shortcomings at his trial. In 1990, Margaret Thatcher was forced to admit that her government had deceived parliament and the public about Wallace’s role.

An independent investigation by David Calcutt QC had found that members of MI5 had interfered with disciplinary proceedings against Wallace. As a result, Wallace was awarded £30,000 compensation.

He told the Guardian: “Surely some action must be taken against those whose actions deliberately perpetuated the cover-up of the abuses and thus prolonged the suffering of the victims unnecessarily.”

The chair of the current inquiry, Sir Anthony Hart, has asked all UK government departments and agencies to provide him with every file they held on Kincora. A spokesperson for the inquiry declined to elaborate when asked what response Hart had made to his demand.

However, Theresa May, the home secretary, has told Hart and the Northern Ireland secretary, Theresa Villiers, that “all officials, government departments and agencies will give their fullest cooperation”. This, she added in a letter seen by the Guardian, “includes the security service [MI5] and the Ministry of Defence”. May said that if necessary she would place the Kincora allegations into the hands of the England and Wales child sexual abuse panel inquiry under Judge Goddard.”

MI5 accused of covering up sexual abuse at boys’ home[The Guardian 2/15/15 by Vikram Dodd and Richard Norton-Taylor]