NORTHERN IRELAND
News Letter
Sam McBride
sam.mcbride@newsletter.co.uk
Monday 24 August 2015
Declassified Government files on Kincora reveal that there was a consistent consensus among senior civil servants that the scandal should be investigated by the most thorough form of public inquiry – yet that did not happen.
Time and time again, different high-ranking officials gave the view that an inquiry under the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act 1921 was unavoidable given the level of concern about allegations that boys had been abused over 20 years at Kincora by senior public figures and that their crimes had been covered up.
In a 30 March 1982 meeting at Stormont Castle to discuss the issue, a detailed minute records: “Given the importance of securing public confidence in the inquiry, it was agreed that [four words underlined] in the absence of powerful arguments to the contrary it would have to be held under the authority of the 1921 Act.”
The Hughes Inquiry – eventually set up as a much weaker and more limited form of inquiry – would ultimately say that there was no evidence of either a homosexual vice ring based at Kincora or of a cover-up by the authorities.
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