Belfast Boys" Home Abuse Victims Win Legal Bid

By Henry McDonald
The Guardian
February 17, 2015

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/feb/17/belfast-boys-home-kincora-abuse-victim-wins-legal-bid

Northern Ireland secretary Theresa Villiers said an appropriate forum for the Kincora allegations to be investigated was through a Stormont-commissioned inquiry. Photograph: David Young/PA

Residents of a notorious Northern Ireland boys’ home are to be allowed to challenge a decision to exclude it from the UK-wide inquiry into establishment paedophile rings.

A high court judge in Belfast on Tuesday granted a number of former inmates from the Kincora home a judicial review into the decision to keep this scandal out of the investigation, headed by judge Lowell Goddard from New Zealand.

The Kincora boys’ home has been linked to a paedophile ring, some of whose members were allegedly being blackmailed by MI5 and other branches of the security forces during the Troubles.

Until now, the home secretary, Theresa May, has resisted demands from men who were abused at the home – and Amnesty International – that the inquiry be widened to include Kincora.

The campaigners want to establish whether the security services turned a blind eye to the abuse and instead used it to compromise a number of extreme Ulster loyalists guilty of abusing boys at the home.

Former Kincora resident Gary Hoy applied for leave at Belfast high court to judicially review the case, including the stated positions of the Northern Ireland secretary, Theresa Villiers, and the chairman of a separate inquiry into institutional abuse at orphanages and care homes in Northern Ireland.

The government has so far tried to keep Kincora within the remit of the Northern Ireland historical abuse inquiry, chaired by retired judge Sir Anthony Hart. However, campaigners demanding the truth about Kincora claim Hart does not have full access to all state papers and material relating to the scandal – particularly files from the security forces.

After hearing submissions, Mr Justice Treacy said an arguable case had been presented. He listed a full judicial review for the first week in June.

Amnesty International’s Northern Ireland programme director, Patrick Corrigan, who attended the hearing, welcomed the forthcoming judicial review. He said: “It is right that a legal challenge into the decision to exclude Kincora from the wider abuse inquiry is now allowed.

“The claims that MI5 turned a blind eye to child abuse and actively blocked a police investigation while using the paedophile ring for its own intelligence-gathering purposes, need to be part of this inquiry.

“Nothing less than a full public inquiry – with all the powers of compulsion which that brings – can finally reveal what happened at Kincora and the role the security services may have played in the abuse of these vulnerable boys.

“The government should move swiftly to bring the Kincora investigation within the scope of Justice Goddard’s inquiry.”

Three senior care staff at the children’s home were jailed in 1981 for abusing 11 boys, but it is thought that there were many more victims and abusers during the period 1960 to 1980.

Last week, the Commons home affairs committee also recommended that Kincora be included within the scope of the Westminster inquiry. The government is yet to respond to this.