Home Secretary Must Include Kincora Abuse in Inquiry, Says Belfast Mp
By Henry McDonald
The next home secretary must include the Kincora boys’ home scandal in the Westminster paedophile inquiry, according to a leading politician in east Belfast, where the abuse took place. Naomi Long, who is deputy leader of the Alliance party and battling to retain her Belfast East seat in the general election, also called on Tuesday for victims of the Ulster loyalist paedophile ring to report their claims that Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) officers threatened boys for speaking out about the abuse to Northern Ireland’s police ombudsman. There have been persistent claims from boys abused at Kincora and human rights organisations that military intelligence and the RUC knew about the rape of children in care but used the information to blackmail the paedophiles, forcing them to spy on fellow loyalists. The Alliance MP’s call comes as a victim of abuse at Kincora speaks out on Tuesday night’s Channel 4 News alleging that he was taken from the east Belfast home to London where he was molested by members of a VIP paedophile ring. Richard Kerr will tell the programme that he was abused at Dolphin Square and the Elm Guest House in Barnes, south-west London – two locations that are at the centre of allegations about an elite paedophile ring involving politicians, senior military officers and, in his words, “men who had control and power over others”. Kerr also claims that “two plainclothes policemen” visited him in 1981 just before the trial of Joseph Mains, Raymond Semple and William McGrath – the three senior Kincora care staff who were later jailed for abusing 11 boys. He said the two RUC officers intimidated him into silence over Kincora. “They came to my home and they removed stuff from my drawers, and they put me in a car and they took me to the police station and they interrogated me, put me in a cell for seven hours and as they removed me from my cell, they made it clear to me that I’m not to talk about this and that I’m lying and not to tell lies, and I felt they were giving me a warning. Advertisement “The case was coming up ... and they didn’t want me to come to the trial,” he says. “First of all, they intimidated me by bringing me to a station and putting me in a cell. They wanted to make it clear that I’m not to say anything. They also said to me that if you tell any lies, if you talk about this, that we can put you away. So at that moment I stopped wanting to volunteer what my experience was in Kincora,” Kerr recalled. His claims about RUC pressure on Kincora victims is similar to allegations another former Kincora inmate relayed to the Guardian last year. Clint Massey said that he tried to report the abuse to an RUC station in east Belfast in 1973 but detectives turned him away, warning him never to repeat his claims again. Naomi Long said victims of abuse at the children’s home should consider lodging formal complaints to the police ombudsman’s office in Belfast. The independent investigator has the power to reopen any investigation or complaint about the police during the Troubles. “If people tried to report what was going on to the police and the police did nothing back then I would encourage them to report this to the police ombudsman and have him properly investigate,” the MP said. “Ultimately, I think that what happened at Kincora was not only shameful in terms of young people abused in care but also because there was a cover-up. It was not just an accidental lack of interest in what was going on at Kincora but it was a deliberate cover-up,” Long said. “There is still a real reluctance at Westminster to turn the full glare of scrutiny on to the national paedophile inquiry at Kincora. I have to ask myself why is that the case? Why would we not want to know what happened? Why would we not want to give the victims full closure by getting at all of the truth?” she added. “I believe a new home secretary after the general election should even now include the Kincora scandal into the wider Westminster paedophile inquiry.” So far the current home secretary, Theresa May, has refused to incorporate Kincora into the wider national inquiry into alleged VIP paedophile rings. Northern Ireland’s historical institutional abuse inquiry, chaired by Sir Anthony Hart and sitting at Banbridge courthouse, is investigating the Kincora allegations. However, this locally based inquiry does not have the same powers as the inquiry team chaired by the New Zealand judge Dame Lowell Goddard. Amnesty International and other human rights organisations point out that the Banbridge-based inquiry would not have access to confidential intelligence documents lodged in the archives of the security services and the Ministry of Defence in London from the 1970s and 80s relating to the alleged use of paedophiles as agents inside Ulster loyalist organisations
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