NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph
Kincora: How three men alerted MI5 officers to home’s dark secret… and still nothing was done to stop the child sex abuse
BY LIAM CLARKE – 06 AUGUST 2014
The Belfast Telegraph can name three people who gave information about child sex abuse in Kincora to British military intelligence only to see any investigation blocked for years by MI5.
Last night Brian Gemmell, a former captain in military intelligence, confirmed that he had passed on information from three men – James Miller, Roy Garland and Jim McCormick – to a senior MI5 officer named Ian Cameron. All three information sources were completely opposed to the abuse and wanted it ended.
Mr Gemmell, an officer in military intelligence at the time, was trying to gain an entrée to Tara, a secretive Protestant paramilitary group headed by William McGrath. Until late 1971 McGrath’s second-in-command in Tara was Mr Garland.
“I had been aware that McGrath was a child abuser since the 1940s,” Mr Garland said.
He first became aware of it when McGrath, a born-again Christian, was carrying out a mission in Faith House. The premises in Belfast’s Orpen Park has now been converted to an old people’s home and has no connection with its role in McGrath’s day.
A second source of information on McGrath was Mr Miller, an Englishman and former soldier who had settled in Northern Ireland.
He worked as a military intelligence and MI5 agent. In 1971 Mr Miller, who is now dead, was infiltrating Tara for the intelligence services and had reported his suspicions to his handlers.
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.