NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph
Kincora: As this murky episode recedes ever further into the past, time is running out to shine a light on it
BY LIAM CLARKE – 06 AUGUST 2014
Kincora is one of those scandals that just won’t go away. It has always been surrounded by rumours of high-level abuse rings, prostitution of boys from care homes and a cover-up by the intelligence services.
It is rather like the fantastic rumours that swirled around major public figures like Jimmy Savile and Cyril Smyth.
It is partly the fact these rumours turned out to be true that has reignited interest in Kincora. There is a growing belief that men like Savile and Smyth did not act alone, and that they were part of a network of abusers who were too well connected to be touched.
For years the official line has also been that Kincora was solved.
Three employees who systematically abused boys and youths in the east Belfast home were jailed in 1980.
Since then there have been two official inquiries, which turned up nothing out of the ordinary.
The first, headed by Sir George Terry, the Chief Constable of Sussex, concluded in 1983 that “there is no substance to the allegations that Army intelligence had knowledge of homosexual abuse at Kincora”.
The second inquiry, under Judge William Hughes, was set up just a year later.
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