State must prove its innocence or own up

By Liam Clarke
Belfast Telegraph
February 17, 2015

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/northern-ireland/state-must-prove-its-innocence-or-own-up-30997738.html

He bears out the evidence of intelligence officers such as Colin Wallace and Brian Gemmell, who say that MI5 warned them not to investigate.

We knew this much when Mr Kerr gave a groundbreaking interview to Chris Moore of BBC Spotlight last year. Now his detailed interview and affidavit open up a more frightening vista.

It suggests that children's homes were used like honey traps to keep politicians and paramilitaries under control and boys who complained were threatened with violence or jail.

Kincora closed in 1980 when the story of the sex scandal broke in the Irish Independent. The paper's predictions of a child prostitution ring, dismissed by previous inquires, now seem all too credible.

This case must be considered in the context of UK-wide child abuse rings, often involving the rich or famous. A local inquiry would find it much harder to lay the ghosts of Kincora.

What must be remembered through all this is that Mr Kerr has come forward himself to tell his story.

The State, which had extensive dealings with him, said nothing and, by his own account, police in London warned him to say nothing and change his lifestyle.

Captain Colin Wallace was wrongly imprisoned after raising this issue and Captain Brian Gemmell was warned off by a senior MI5 officer. That looks like a cover-up and State obstruction of whistleblowers.

Now is the time for the State to do its bit by either proving its accusers wrong or owning up and putting things right.​