A new book by Belfast-based investigative journalist Chris Moore, Kincora: Britain’s Shame, casts a searing light over the sexual abuses of a ring of establishment paedophiles, and their scandalous, systematic cover-up orchestrated at the highest level of the British state.
[Originally posted on communism.ie]
Loyalist paramilitaries, the Orange Order, Ian Paisley, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), MI5 – right up to the British royal family – all are implicated in what Moore calls “the most enduring child sex scandal in the history of the UK”.
Towering above this veritable swamp is the late Lord Louis Mountbatten: British war ‘hero’, viceroy of India, great-uncle and mentor to the current British monarch. But to one victim, quoted in Moore’s investigation, he was something else entirely:
“He wasn’t a lord… to me, he was king of the paedophiles.”
A web of abuse
Moore’s decades-long investigation centres around the Kincora boys’ home in East Belfast during the 1970s. The home was set up to provide “a homely, caring environment for deprived teenagers,” who instead, were delivered straight into the hands of serial abusers.
The list includes now convicted paedophiles: Joe Mains (Kincora’s warden); Raymond Semple (deputy warden); and – prominent Orangeman and loyalist paramilitary leader – William McGrath (housemaster). Together, they subjected children to a brutal regime of rape, intimidation, and psychological terror. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg.
McGrath used his position as housemaster to organise a ring of wealthy and powerful paedophiles. Lord Mountbatten figures as one of them.
Shortly after his arrival at Kincora, 11-year-old Arthur Smyth remembers how he was told to “look after Dickie [Mountbatten].” Another two children recall being taken to Mountbatten’s residency in Mullaghmore, Sligo. Then, there was Stephen, who was shortly driven to suicide. Another, 16-year-old Amal, was taken there four times. Apparently, the former viceroy of India liked “dark-skinned people especially those from Sri Lanka.”
Those are just a few of the stories that have emerged, involving only one of the dozens of establishment icons given unbridled access to abuse vulnerable kids for a decade and more in Kincora.
Throughout the investigation there emerges a picture of depravity, complicity, and abuse systematically perpetuated by the very top of British society against the most vulnerable, deprived and defenceless children they could get their hands on.
The cover-up
If the simple facts aren’t enough to make one sick to the stomach, Moore’s investigation revealed much more.
It seems the authorities knew all along, and did everything in their power to keep it hush.
The RUC were frequent visitors to the home in the 1960s and ‘70s, but dismissed complaints of abuse as “revenge” lies. When allegations escalated, it seems that MI5 stepped in – not to protect the children, but to bury the evidence.
In 1975, one police officer’s child abuse investigation led him to Kincora – but he was swiftly ordered by superiors to back off. That same year, Army Intelligence Captain Brian Gemmell submitted reports implicating the home. A senior MI5 officer told him to stop digging and forget about it.
It wasn’t until 1980 that a report in The Irish Independent forced the police to act. Mains, Semple, and McGrath were finally arrested. But even then, Detective Chief Inspector George Caskey was obstructed by MI5, who ensured that the investigation went no further than Kincora’s front door.
When public outrage pushed the government to consider a full probe in 1983, MI5 again ensured a last-minute U-turn. When calls for wider investigation continued, MI5 decided to bury their files relating to Kincora to as far as 2065 and 2085.
His Majesty’s secret services
What business did MI5 have in protecting a ring of paedophiles?
Undoubtedly, the direct involvement of Lord Mountbatten is part of the reason they took such an interest in the case. Afterall, it is His Majesty’s secret services we are talking about. The British state and rich elite always close ranks to hush up their indiscretions.
Indeed, that Mountbatten was a paedophile was already known to the FBI as far back as 1944. Their file on the then Supreme Allied Commander in South East Asia explicitly mentions his “perversion for young boys.” The British establishment and state protected their monarch’s relative for decades.
But, this time, there seems to be more to the story.
That McGrath was a paedophile was something of an open secret well before his appointment to Kincora. Indeed, even Ian Paisley knew about it. It seems that he was appointed as headmaster not despite, but because of it.
Moore suggests MI5 intentionally planted McGrath in Kincora as part of an intelligence-gathering operation. McGrath (who was already close to MI6 for smuggling illegal propaganda in the Eastern bloc) was the man they needed to exploit the ‘weaknesses’ of powerful individuals from the North of Ireland and Britain. MI5 could then use their paedophilia as leverage in their work.
To be sure, Moore is not the only one thinking so. Even Amnesty International – hardly a subversive outlet – has long demanded an inquiry into MI5 involvement in Kincora. An inquiry that has long been denied by the British state.
Rotten through and through
To sum it all up, here’s the tentative picture that emerges from Moore’s investigation behind a thick layer of conscious obfuscation.
At the peak of the Troubles, the forces of the Crown organised (or at the very least protected) a ring of paedophiles abusing deprived kids in East Belfast to gather intelligence and blackmail specific individuals in the area – and their monarch’s own relative was implicated!
It seems like the plot from a dystopian spy thriller. But it isn’t – those are the dirty means the ruling class uses to protect their interests and power.
Here’s the same people who claimed to be forces of civilisation, peace, and progress in Ireland. And while they were treating the Catholic population as terrorists, they were carrying out the most despicable crimes against vulnerable children in the heartland of ‘their loyal community’, East Belfast.
What’s most stomach-turning isn’t just the horror of the acts themselves. It’s the depravity of ‘polished’ individuals that comes out – personal, violent, systematic, with a certainty of impunity. It’s the British state playing with the lives of defenceless children as raw meat for their narrow interests.
Behind every abuse scandal, every royal hush fund, every buried report, lies a system designed to protect the privileged and crush the powerless. From Mountbatten and Kincora to Epstein’s island and Prince Andrew’s payouts – it’s the same pattern.
It’s not just a few rotten apples, the whole system is designed to let the very scum come to the top.
