NORTHERN IRELAND
Commonspace
What is Kincora Boys’ Home?
Kincora’s Boys’ Home was a children’s home that became the centre of a notorious child abuse scandal in Belfast, Northern Ireland from 1958 to 1980. The home provided full-time accommodation for 15-18-year-old boys who faced an abusive or compromised home life. It closed in 1980 following allegations of wide scale child sexual abuse. At least 29 boys were raped, prostituted or otherwise sexually abused by senior care staff while resident in the home. The scale of the abuse remains unclear. There have been allegations of a decades-long cover up involving British intelligence services, prominent political figures, and the aristocracy.
What happened at Kincora?
As soon as the home was opened, warden Joe Mains began abusing boys in his care, and soon recruited his deputy Raymond Semple and housemaster William McGrath to join the daily abuse. Some of the victims allege that they were not only abused at Kincora, but were trafficked to England in order to be subjected to further abuse at locations including the infamous Dolphin Square and Elm Guest House.
Dolphin Square is an apartment block situated in Pimlico, London, near Westminster, that became the centre of a Metropolitan Police investigation in 2014. The inquiry was sparked after two separate witnesses claimed that the block was a venue for routine child sex abuse by groups of men including prominent MPs. …
Was there a cover-up?
There have been constant claims that MI5 and MI6 allowed the abuse at Kincora to continue in order to blackmail politicians and establishment figures during the Troubles.
McGrath was the leader of a rightwing Ulster loyalist movement, Tara, which espoused a brand of evangelical Protestantism, and extreme anti-Catholic views. Author Martin Dillon claimed that McGrath may have been blackmailed by MI5 in return for intelligence on other loyalist groups.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.