Menu
Ireland's political and cultural magazine
6 2
July-August 2018
INTERNATIONAL
The DUP
skeletons
in Theresa
May’s
closet
INTRODUCTION
Last month
Village
described how Eric Witchell, the
paedophile who ran Williamson House for orphans
and neglected children in Belfast, was a key figure
in the Anglo-Irish Vice Ring. There is as yet no indi-
cation that he will be questioned by the Independent
Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse despite the fact he
is one of the most important living witnesses to the
existence of a vice ring which supplied children to
VIPs abusers. They included Enoch Powell MP and
a mysterious ‘refined’ Englishman who was a visitor
to Northern Ireland (NI). The victim of the ‘refined’
Englishman is certain he was Sir Anthony Blunt, the
infamous MI5 traitor, paedophile and Keeper of the
Queen’s Pictures. Blunt was also a regular visitor to
Ireland and active, albeit at a low level, in NI politics.
He had an extensive circle of friends in Ireland, many
of whom were also paedophiles.
In Part 1 of this article we will look at aspects of
Blunt’s background and some of his more sinister
connections to Ireland before turning to the intrigu-
ing allegation that he was the ‘refined’
Englishman.
In Part 2 we will describe the existence of a group
of children who were defiled and broken by Witchell
at Williamson House with the result they became
sexually compliant playthings before they were sent
to Kincora Boys Home where they became fodder in
an MI5 blackmail operation. According to one of the
victims, the operation revolved around a series of
hotels including the Park Avenue and the Europa in
Belfast, and one in Bangor. Independent contempo
-
raneous notes from a British Army psychological
operations (PSYOPs) officer confirm the existence
of a “prostitution ring supplying boys to hotels in
Belfast and Bangor” at the time. The targets of the
operation included working-class Loyalists from the
UDA, UVF and DUP. We will refer to one of the DUP
targets as “The Wife Beater”. He was a man with
connections to paramilitaries and was despised by
his party leader, Ian Paisley.
In Part 3 we will tell the story of ‘Charles’, another
of Witchell’s Williamson House victims. In 2017 the
Hart Inquiry rejected the notion that a paedophile
network had operated in NI in the 1970s with official
connivance. The Hart Report is littered with factual
inaccuracies and has been shredded by commenta-
tors. Charles’ account – told here for the first time
- undermines it even further.
A WORLD OF PAIN
Many of the boys who were sent to the hotels to sat-
isfy the venal appetites of the strangers who preyed
upon them in rooms booked for the night; or some-
times at their homes; and those who were abused
inside the walls of Williamson House and/or Kincora
by familiar staff members, were consigned to a life
of depression, ill health, drug and alcohol abuse,
isolation and – in a number of cases – suicide. Very
few of the victims went on to form stable and lasting
relationships or have families. It is now too late for
one of them, Clint Massey, who lived a lonely and
isolated existence. Towards the end of his life, he
grew into a courageous Kincora campaigner. Sadly,
he succumbed to cancer earlier this year without
ever achieving justice. It was Massey who recalled
a lot of “suits” arriving at Kincora, often in the even-
ing. “In those days, there were loads of people over
from London. I have always assumed they were
senior figures from Whitehall. I certainly heard Eng-
lish accents”, he once revealed.
None of the puppet masters in MI5, MI6, the
Home Office, the Northern Ireland Office, the For-
eign Office or Whitehall, who were responsible for
this world of pain, have ever been made to answer
for their egregious crimes.
THERESA MAY, A PM WHO CAN
SEE NO EVIL
Theresa May must shoulder the responsibility for
the ongoing cover-up of this far-reaching scandal.
When she was Home Secretary, she assigned the
Kincora Boys Home probe to the Hart Inquiry which
was not given the power to compel witnesses.
Instead, she should have let the Independent
Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse in London, which had
such a power, deal with it.
MI5 then proceeded to withhold the full truth
about its penetration of the DUP from Hart and much
more besides.
A number of declassified files which were fur-
nished to Hart reveal that the NIO (i.e. MI5) had
informers inside the DUP. However, they raise more
questions than answers. In particular, how many of
MI5’s DUP informers were blackmail victims, i.e.
men who were lured to the Park Avenue and the
By Joseph de Búrca
July-August 2018
6 3
other hotels by Joe Mains, the Warden of Kincora, or
his friend and fellow MI5 agent, John McKeague, to
defile boys? See
Village
December 2017 and Febru-
ary 2018 for details about John McKeague’s links to
MI5.
THE DUP DOG THAT WAGS MAY’S
TAIL
Some DUP informers who were recruited while they
were in their twenties are now in their sixties and
early seventies and may still be active in the DUP. It
would be a scandal if a single informer – recruited
as a result of underage sexual blackmail – remains
in the party that is now the tail that wags the British
Government dog.
More than any other political figure in the UK, The-
resa May, first as Home Secretary and now Prime
Minister, has had the right to ask and be told how
far MI5 managed to penetrate the fabric of the DUP,
whether by surveillance or agent recruitment. MI5’s
array of agents were undoubtedly recruited in the
normal way, i.e. through the exploitation of internal
party rivalries; bribery; and blackmail involving
sexual, political and financial corruption. As with
Sinn Féin, the penetration of the DUP was carried
out during the Troubles against a background where
the party had multiple links to Loyalist paramilitary
groups including the UDA and the Red Hand Com-
mando. The “Wife Beater”, for example, had
connections to the Red Hand Commando led by John
McKeague. Another DUP agent was a lover of Wil-
liam McGrath, the House father at Kincora, and
leader of a paramilitary group known as Tara. See
Village
December 2017.
In more recent times, an audit must have been
conducted by MI5 and the Cabinet Office to ascer-
tain what leverage the British Government might
exercise over the DUP
after
Brexit; the same files
must have been dusted down in the run-up to the
conclusion of the confidence and supply arrange
-
ment between the DUP and the Tories in 2017.
What, if anything, was May told about the use of
sexual blackmail involving children during MI5’s
penetration of the DUP? Was she told anything
about blackmail targets such as the “Wife Beater”?
Is it possible she knows less about the “Wife
Beater’s” dark side than the Garda? On one occa-
sion officers serving with Garda Special Branch
were told about the domestic abuse he meted out
to his wife by their RUC counterparts; and the
number of callouts the RUC was obliged to make to
his house to deal with his rages.
MAKING THE WHITEHALL
PIRATES WALK THE PLANK
If May was worthy of the trust placed in her by the
British public, and is the Christian she professes to
be, she would come clean on what MI5 has revealed
to her about the DUP members who were subjected
to blackmail, whether sexual or otherwise. If MI5
has disclosed nothing to her, and she has not asked
it about the issue, she should do so now; make a full
and comprehensive statement in the Commons, and
fire those who have participated in the cover-up of
this scandal.
May, of course, will do nothing of the sort because
she is gullible and in thrall to the most devious ele-
ments inside Whitehall who pull her strings and
really call the shots. Her predecessor David Cam-
eron was also their minion when it came to
intelligence matters. Cameron told the family of Pat-
rick Finucane (the Belfast solicitor who had been
assassinated by British agents in NI) that he could
not order a public inquiry into the scandal. When
Finucane’s brother Martin asked him why, he turned
to Mrs Finucane and said: “Look, the last adminis-
tration couldn’t deliver an inquiry in your husband’s
case and neither can we”. According to Cameron this
was because “there are people all around this place,
[10 Downing Street], who won’t let it happen”. As he
was saying this, he raised a finger and made a cir-
cular motion in the air.
Jeremy Corbyn, however, has the appearance of
a man with sufficient integrity and independence of
mind to force the Whitehall, MI5 and MI6 pirates to
walk the plank from Britain’s Ship of State. Corbyn’s
deputy leader, Tom Watson, is one of the few politi-
cians in Britain with proven grit: he has pursued the
VIP vice ring scandal with courage and vigour for
years. He is also a deft political operator.
PART 1: ANTHONY BLUNT,
WILLIAMSON HOUSE AND THE
ANGLO-IRISH VICE RING
THE PUPPET-MASTERS
By the 1970s, the puppet-masters who were over-
seeing the machinations of the paedophiles in the
Anglo-Irish Vice Ring were not the aristocrats, nor
the Unionist politicians who had been running it and
preying on orphanages and care homes since the
1940s but rather MI5 and MI6, two organisations
with an expertise in the black art of sexual black-
mail. Ian Cameron led MI5 operations in NI including
the exploitation of the Anglo-Irish Vice Ring, in the
mid-1970s. It is not even remotely conceivable that
Cameron’s superior, Director-General, Sir Michael
Hanley, who was based in London, was unaware of
what he was doing in Ireland.
Peter Wright of MI5 was Hanley’s right-hand man
at MI5’s HQ in London. Wright developed an exten-
sive knowledge of the Anglo-Irish Vice Ring. His
research most likely inspired the idea of exploiting
the boys already ensnared by the ring for blackmail
purposes if he did not instigate the sordid operation
himself. The blackmail operation began while Loyal-
ist opposition to the interests of the British State
was at its height in the 1970s. The information in
Wright’s files also provided potent ammunition for
destabilisation purposes. In his books Wright
blithely described how MI5 used prostitutes and
engaged in sexual blackmail, albeit he did not go as
far as to acknowledge that children had been
exploited in these operations. He did, however,
withhold his darkest secrets from publication and
threatened to release them if MI5 did anything unto-
ward against him during his marathon battle in
Australia to get his first book,
Spycatcher
, pub-
lished. Wright, more than most, knew full well that
the British State was capable of murdering him.
Clint Massey on the right, a brave man and
former resident at Kincora Boys Home. He
died from cancer earlier this year after a life
of misery, isolation and ill health. He never
saw justice. Also in the picture, Richard Kerr
and Gary Hoy, two other courageous Kincora
campaigners.
Arlene Foster, Leader of the DUP; and
Theresa may
According to David Cameron
there would be no inquiry
into the Pat Finucane murder
because ‘there are people all
around this place, [10 Downing
Street], who won’t let it happen’
An audit must have been
conducted by MI5 and the
Cabinet Office to ascertain what
leverage the British Government
might exercise over the DUP
after Brexit
6 4
July-August 2018
Emphatically, many of these secrets concerned MI5
wrongdoing in Ireland. “I spent a lot of time in Ire-
land”, he has written, “and it was not pleasant. We
also did a lot of things there which I am never going
to talk about, because it would just cause more trou-
ble”. See
Village
July 2017. Malcolm Turnbull, who
acted as Wright’s lawyer, might know about the
secret dossier. He is now Prime Minister of
Australia
A PACT WITH THE DEVIL
Peter Wright debriefed Blunt after he confessed in
1964 that he had worked for the KGB while serving
inside MI5. The debriefing lasted seven years during
which Wright and his colleagues in MI5 poured over
the lives of the Oxbridge graduates of the 1930s, and
anyone else of possible interest known to Blunt,
many of whom, like him, were paedophiles. “Often
we drank, he gin and I Scotch; always we talked,
about the 1930s, about the KGB, about espionage
and friendship, love and betrayal. They remain for
me among the most vivid encounters of my life”,
Wright wrote in
Spycatcher
.
Wright also wrote about how “Blunt, too, loved to
discuss the scandalous side of Cambridge life in the
1930s… I soon realised that the Ring of Five [Cam-
bridge-educated spies and traitors] stood at the
centre of a series of other connecting rings, each
pledged to silence, each anxious to protect its
secrets from outsiders. There was the secret ring of
homosexuals, where loyalty to their kind overrode
all other obligations; there was the secret world of
the Apostles, where ties to fellow Apostles remained
strong throughout life; and then there was the ring
of those friends of Blunt and Burgess who were not
themselves spies, but who knew or guessed what
was going on. Each ring supported the others, and
made the task of identifying the inner core that much
more difficult”.
In return for betraying some – but apparently not
all – of his friends, former left-wing comrades and
other miscellaneous associates, Blunt was not pros-
ecuted for his treachery, nor for his sexual activities,
all of which were concealed from public view until
1979 when Robin Bryans, an Irish writer and friend-
turned-enemy, outed him with the help of
Private
Eye
magazine.
‘MOST IMPORTANTLY OF ALL, HE
KNEW WHO WAS SLEEPING WITH
WHOM’
Wright personally interviewed and re-interviewed
more than 100 people over a period of seven years.
By his own admission, the most ‘important’ infor-
mation was about ‘who was sleeping with whom’ in
the Guy Burgess and Blunt circle. Both Blunt and
Burgess were paedophiles.
In
Spycatcher
Wright revealed that one of his
interviewees, Arthur Marshall, “knew practically
everyone in Cambridge in the 1930s, particularly the
secret network of homosexuals at King’s and Trin-
ity. Artie had a prodigious memory for gossip,
intrigue and scandal, and most importantly of all,
he knew who was sleeping with whom in the [Guy]
Burgess and Blunt circles”.
By the end of his investigation Wright could
boast: “I had seen into the secret heart of the pre-
sent Establishment at a time when they had been
young and careless. I knew their scandals and their
intrigues. I knew too much, and they knew it”.
MAPPING OUT A CONCEALED
LAYER OF BLUNT’S EXISTENCE
These inquiries must have enabled Wright to
uncover and map out a concealed layer of Blunt’s
existence: a paedophile netherworld that spanned
both sides of the Irish Sea. Blunt was a regular visi-
tor to Northern Ireland and a veteran member of the
Anglo-Irish Vice Ring. Two of his closest friends in
Ireland were paedophiles: Captain Peter Montgom-
ery and Knox Cunningham, MP.
Peter Montgomery was the Deputy Lord Lieuten-
ant of Tyrone, and a member of Ulster’s landed
aristocracy. His family owned an estate at Fivemile-
town, Co Tyrone. During WWII he served with British
military intelligence. His second cousin was
“Monty”, the famous WWII general. Peter Montgom-
ery became Blunt’s first boyfriend and thereafter his
most enduring friend. Blunt always kept a room for
him at his London residence while Blunt often came
to Ireland to visit him at Fivemiletown. They also
enjoyed trips around Ireland to other paedophiles
on the “country house” circuit.
Sir Knox Cunningham was an Ulster Unionist MP
and QC. As an MP he had attended Cabinet meet-
ings in Downing Street as the private secretary to
British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan.
Somewhere along the line Blunt had become a
desensitised and callous abuser of young males
despite his lofty pretension to care for the working
class. He was particularly fond of ‘cottaging’ around
seedy toilets in London for urchins, and no doubt did
the same during his regular visits to Belfast.
All of MI5 files concerning Blunt and his associ-
ates should be handed over to the Independent
Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse.
A WORLD OF VIOLENCE AND
CRUELTY
The world Blunt was hurled into as a child was bar-
baric, even by the standards of that time. He
attended Marlborough College in the 1920s when it
was a brutal and sadistic institution. Blunt’s great
friend, the Irish poet Louis MacNeice, described in
his autobiography how the school bullies would
“seize a boy, tear his clothes off and cover him with
house paint. Then put him in a wastepaper bag filled
with rubbish and push him round the hall… The
masters considered this a fine tradition”.
Another Old Malburian, Sir Peter Tennant, remem-
bered that “Marlborough was ridden with
homosexuality. I suppose all public schools are full
of buggery. Masters were deeply involved in it. I
won’t name names but as far as I can make out they
were practising homosexuals and did it with some
boys… I remember the headmaster, George Turner,
giving a speech, saying, we will have no more
INTERNATIONAL
Tom Watson and Jeremy Corbyn; Theresa May, the daughter of a vicar. While she professes to be a devout Christian she has in fact shown no real
interest in helping the victims of child abuse. Instead she has placed her faith in many of the darker elements which inhabit Whitehall.
Sir Anthony Blunt
July-August 2018
6 5
buggery”.
John Betjeman, a future poet laureate and British
cultural attaché to the British Embassy in Dublin
during the 1940s, was haunted throughout his adult
life by the memory of a child at the school peering
out through the slats of a large basket like a terrified
animal as the bullies hoist him in the air.
Then there was “hot-potting”, where the Malbur-
ian bullies stripped the trousers off their victims and
made them wear two pottery tooth-mugs filled with
flaming paper on their buttocks.
Another ritual, known as “bum shaving” was
administered by prefects. This involved stripping
two small boys naked and forcing them to bend over,
backsides touching as one of the prefect’s whips
came down between their buttocks. The trick
according to Blunt’s older brother Wilfred, was to
relax at the last minute and let the other boy take the
full brunt of the lash.
BLUNT’S DEPRAVED CIRCLE OF
IRISH FRIENDS
Blunt emerged from Marlborough homosexual and
went on to Cambridge. It was there that he
befriended Peter Montgomery. At Cambridge Blunt
also fell in with Guy Burgess, another future MI5 and
MI6 traitor, and an occasional visitor to Ireland. (See
Village
May 2017.) The pair frequently trawled gay
pubs and lavatories in London for working-class
boys. In 1938 Burgess was arrested and charged
with improperly soliciting a man in a public
lavatory.
One of Blunt’s biographers, Miranda Carter, has
provided a glimpse of the lifestyle of Blunt and
Montgomery. She described how “Hugh Massing-
berd, Peter Montgomery’s great-nephew,
remembered meeting Blunt, very much “off duty”,
with his uncle in 1965. “It was a very hot day, and
Blunt came in wearing virtually a G-string and a light
sleeveless T-shirt, and said, ‘Peter’s overdressed
and I’m underdressed. How do you do?’ It was a bit
stagey”. His uncle also once took him to a party at
Blunt’s old stomping ground, Palace Court. “There
seemed to be a lot of oriental youths around, and
Blunt and my uncle, one felt, had dropped their
guards. It was full of opera queens and an odd mix-
ture of seedy old faggots and oriental boys. It was
very much a gay party”. (384)
Montgomery was a key figure in the Anglo-Irish
Vice Ring and procured boys for its members from
Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh.
Lord Louis Mountbatten was one of those who
enjoyed sex with pupils from Portora during his
visits to Ireland.
Montgomery was also a friend of the British artist
Derek Hill who lived in Ireland. Bruce Arnold’s biog-
raphy of Hill provides a further glimpse of
Montgomery’s lifestyle. Arnold describes a visit
Montgomery made to a friend of Hill’s in Paris, a
man called Geoffrey Gilmour. “Geoffrey Gilmour’s
supposedly rather
louche
behaviour was not all fan-
tasy. A friend of Derek’s – Peter Montgomery, who
was gay – visited Geoffrey in Paris. He was taken to
visit Diana Mosley at Orsay and entertained well.
Geoffrey wanted to take Peter out clubbing in the
city. He made him strip to his underpants and unbur-
den himself of all possible valuables, including
watch, ring, everything. Only then was it safe to go
out and face gay club life in Paris. It seems it was not
a lot different from the same kind of entertainment
in New York and elsewhere”. (Arnold 293)
WAS BLUNT THE REFINED
ENGLISHMAN WHO CALLED
HIMSELF ‘ANDREW’?
Village
,
The Belfast Telegraph
and
Channel 4 News
have all reported extensively about the stolen life of
Richard Kerr, a victim of sexual abuse at Williamson
House and Kincora. See, for example, ‘Kincora Sur-
vivor’ in
Village
, November 2017; and ‘Suffer Little
Children’,
Village
May 2018. The
Channel 4 News
broadcast is available on YouTube.
In the summer of either 1973 or 1974, when Rich-
ard Kerr was 12 or 13 and a resident at Williamson
House, he was abused by a man who identified him-
self as “Andrew”. Kerr is adamant that the man was
Blunt. If he is correct, Blunt would have been about
65 or 66 years of age. The man Kerr recalls was
‘about 62 to 65’. Whether he was indeed Blunt or
someone who shared his distinctive appearance
and build, the fact that a young boy in care in Belfast
was supplied to an Englishman for sex is in itself a
scandal.
Kerr’s journey to meet ‘Andrew’ began at William-
son House where he was picked up by two men in a
car. En route, they stopped off at the Culloden Hotel
on the Bangor Road opposite what Kerr recalls as
the ‘Old Folk Museum’ which is clearly a reference
to the ‘Ulster Folk and Transport Museum’. The adult
front seat passenger went inside the Culloden, prob-
ably to make a telephone call and receive
instructions. After he came out, they proceed on to
Bangor and reached a hotel which Kerr recalls was
called the ‘King or Queen’s Arms, something like
that’. This was undoubtedly the Queen’s Court
Hotel. Kerr recalls the hotel was on the seafront; had
an old fashioned lift and a few floors, just as the
Queen’s Court had.
Significantly, it also had a large function room at
its rear and was a popular venue for dance bands
and discos in the 1970s, a factor which, in addition
to its seafront location, made it ideal for a paedo-
phile group because it was perfectly normal for
young people to be on the premises and for adults
who were total strangers to book rooms at it for
short stays.
The Girton Lodge and Park Avenue hotels on the
Newtownards Road were also used by the ring
because young people were often present
unescorted.
Kerr was taken inside and left to wait for a while
in the lounge area. He got the feeling that a man pre-
sent in the lounge was involved in what was taking
place. A while later Kerr was brought upstairs by the
adult passenger from the car and introduced to the
man who would abuse him, a man who called
Queen Elizabeth and Sir Anthony Blunt
Axis of evil: Sir Michael Hanley and Peter Wright of MI5 who, together with Ian Cameron, gathered
intelligence about, and exploited, the paedophile network which preyed on children in care at
Williamson House, Kincora and elsewhere
Witchell, if he chooses to tell
the truth, will be able to provide
the Inquiry with details about
the trafficking of Richard Kerr
to Enoch Powell MP, something
that is definitely within her remit
6 6
July-August 2018
himself ‘Andrew’. Kerr would spend about three
hours with him upstairs. ‘Andrew’ was tall, wore a
three-piece suit and came over as a ‘very unique
type of’ person; someone who ‘presented himself
very well and did a lot of talking’ in a refined English
accent. Kerr was struck by his penchant for secrecy.
‘We can keep this to ourselves’ he urged. ‘I am a man
of my word. I will look after you’, he promised, in
return for the boy’s silence.
Kerr found him ‘polite’ and ‘a little more gentle’
than some of his other abusers. Kerr was, as he puts
it himself, ‘abused by sharks and dolphins and I
would rather be with the dolphins.’ ‘Andrew’ was not
violent with him as Enoch Powell MP had been.
‘Andrew’ had a grandfather watch and chain. ‘He
pulled it out and flipped it open and entertained me
with it. He let me hold it’, Kerr recalls. He also gave
him a box of chocolates. ‘A lot of them gave me choc-
olates, Black Magic, Milk Tray and Quality Street.
How did they known I liked chocolates?’
Despite his pretence at kindness, the man was a
perfidious and calculating pervert with only one
agenda – to have sex with a child. Once he had put
him at a relative ease, the older man instructed Kerr
to get undressed and
started kissing his
ears. By now this
type of behaviour
had become ‘natural’
for the boy; he had
become, as he puts it
himself, “a boy toy”.
He focussed his mind
on the chocolates
while ‘Andrew’ con-
tinued to talk into his
ears softly; repeat-
edly whispering that he was “safe”. He soon made
his real intention clear: he wanted the boy to pene-
trate him and then give him a massage. Kerr did as
he was bid.
Later, in the car on the way home, one of the men
stressed the importance of not talking about the
man in the hotel. ‘Richie, you must not talk about
this to anyone’, he stressed. It was night by the time
Kerr arrived back at Williamson House after this
ordeal. He was abused on approximately two fur-
ther occasions by ‘Andrew’ who had obviously been
promised access to the boy by the men running the
ring and hence ‘Andrew’ had told him in Bangor that
he ‘would look after’ him. Kerr never stayed with him
overnight as he did with some of his other
abusers.
Kerr recalls another incident which took place in
a house with a ‘library’ with a driveway leading up
to it. On this occasion, ‘Andrew’ gave him alcohol,
either brandy or scotch.
One day Kerr was watching TV when Blunt came
on the screen and he recognised him immediately
as ‘Andrew’. This was undoubtedly the press inter-
view Blunt gave after he had been unmasked as a
traitor on 20 November 1979.
WHAT WAS THE EXTENT OF
BLUNT’S REHABILITATION WITH
MI5?
MI5 and the RUC Special Branch had a clear duty
and interest in maintaining an eye on Blunt’s move-
ments in Ireland for a number of reasons. First, he
was the Keeper of the Queen’s Pictures, a former
member of MI5, and, like his friend Captain Peter
Montgomery, the Deputy Lord Lieutenant of Tyrone,
a possible IRA assassination target.
Second, as a former Soviet agent, Peter Wright
and others in MI5 would have felt it imperative to
keep an eye on him lest he revert to his treacherous
old ways. At the time they were concerned that the
Soviet Union might be meddling in the affairs of
Northern Ireland.
Third, Blunt remained a potent font of knowledge.
Despite any lingering suspicion MI5 might have har-
boured about his repentance, by the early 1970s,
they would have been quizzing him intently about
what he knew about his political friends including
those in the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) such as
Knox Cunningham and his protégé James Moly-
neaux MP, who rose to become leader of the UUP.
Suffice it to say, they would have had a particularly
keen interest in any of the paedophiles and peder-
asts in his circle who were now influential in Loyalist
circles.
Bearing the foregoing in mind, and assuming for
the moment that Blunt was indeed ‘Andrew’, it is dif-
ficult to conceive how he could have gained access
to a child from Williamson House without MI5’s
knowledge. While it is possible that Peter Montgom-
ery could have arranged the assignations for him, it
is unlikely that Eric Witchell would have released
Kerr from the home on three occasions to him or
anyone else without permission from his handlers.
The odds are high that Blunt had wormed his way
so deeply back into MI5’s good books they were pre-
pared to let him enjoy this perk as a reward.
BLUNT SCHEMES AGAINST IAN
PAISLEY
Blunt was also active in
Northern Ireland politics. In
one of his books, the Irish
author and journalist, Robin
Bryans, described how
Blunt - whom he had known
extremely well - had once
tried to inveigle him into a
scheme to undermine Ian
Paisley. Unfortunately,
Bryans did not reveal the
details of this plot; in par-
ticular he failed to disclose
the date. Nonetheless, it is
abundantly clear that MI5
schemed and plotted against
Paisley during the early and mid-1970s by attempt-
ing to link him with a homosexual netherworld,
precisely the terrain about which Blunt was so famil-
iar. See
Village
December 2017. If the plot Bryans
wrote about falls into this timeframe, it raises the
possibility Blunt was a cog in it, a further indication
of his return to the MI5 fold.
If it was earlier, in the mid to late 1960s, before
Paisley became a target of MI5, the British spies
would have been keen to learn the minutiae of the
plot as part of its efforts to build up a picture of Pais-
ley’s life and associations. Ultimately, it recruited
William McGrath, the housefather at Kincora, who
knew about Paisley’s involvement in string of UVF
explosions in the late 1960s. See ‘Blackmailed’ in
INTERNATIONAL
Portora Royal College and Kincora
Blunt and Derek Hill
Richard
Kerr at the
approximate
age he was
abused by
“Andrew”
IF THE FULL TRUTH ABOUT THE
VENAL ABUSE OF CHILDREN IN
CARE IN NORTHERN IRELAND
IN THE 1970s WAS TO EMERGE,
IT WOULD THROW THE TORY-
DUP CONFIDENCE AND SUPPLY
ARRANGEMENT INTO TURMOIL.
THERESA MAY YET CLINGS
TO POWER WITH THE AID OF
THE DEMOCRATIC UNIONIST
PARTY (DUP), AT LEAST ONE OF
WHOSE MOST SENIOR MEMBERS
FREQUENTED THE SAME SEEDY
PADEOPHILE UNDERWORLD AS
BLUNT IN THE MID AND LATE
1970s.
July-August 2018
6 7
Village
December
2017.
Either way
Blunt would have
been of enor-
mous potential to
MI5 as a source in
the very early
1970s when they were desperate for information
about the men directing the Loyalist opposition to
London. A man like Blunt would have been invalu-
able to them because he would have helped to break
their dependency on the RUC Special Branch which
was loyal to the Stormont Government and, in their
eyes, neither reliable nor competent.
It has been common knowledge for decades that
Blunt cooperated with MI5 after it discovered his
treachery but the depth of that cooperation has
never been fully fathomed. If he gave them informa-
tion which they used to ensnare Loyalist
paedophiles, it would make sense of the strenuous
efforts that a string of senior officials in Whitehall
exerted to dissuade Margaret Thatcher from naming
him as the traitor referred to obliquely in
Private Eye
.
The magazine had stopped just short of naming
him. One of their concerns must have been that he
would blow the whistle on their dirty trick opera-
tions in Ireland.
PART 2: THE HOTEL VICTIM
GROUP
THE TRANSFER OF 14-YEAR-OLD
BOYS FROM WILLIAMSON HOUSE
TO KINCORA
Ultimately whether Blunt was ‘Andrew’ and back in
the MI5 fold or not, it is crucial not to lose sight of the
real essence of this scandal: the existence of the
Anglo-Irish Vice Ring and its exploitation by MI5 and
MI6 to recruit Loyalists including DUP members.
The links between the key suppliers of children to
the ring such as Eric Witchell at Williamson House
and the trio of abusers at Kincora were strong. The
Kincora trio consisted of Joe Mains (an MI6 and later
MI5 agent); William McGrath (also an MI6 and MI5
agent); and Raymond Semple (who did what Mains
told him). All of them were visitors to Williamson
House. Mains sometimes stayed overnight.
In 1975 a group of 14-year olds under the care of
Witchell at Williamson House was transferred to
Kincora. Up to this point, Kincora had normally
housed 16 –18 year olds. Some, if not all, of the new
influx from Williamson House had already been
crushed and remoulded to the point where they
were fearful and compliant sex drones; probably the
very reason for their transfer. They were now ear-
marked as bait for an MI5 ‘honey trap’ operation
based at a series of hotels in Belfast and at least one
in Bangor. Over time, some of the boys, especially
Richard Kerr,
would begin to
resist, but not at
this stage.
Most, but not
all, of the new
boys installed at
Kincora hailed
from Williamson
House. They
included Richard
Kerr who arrived
in August 1975;
‘F’, who is still
alive; ‘B’, who later shot himself, and ‘S’.
Steven Waring, who had not been in Williamson
House, joined a few months after Kerr. He commit-
ted suicide in 1977.
The reinvigorated Belfast and Bangor hotel
‘honey trap’ operation got under way in September
1975, a few weeks after Kerr’s arrival at Kincora.
Another young boy, ‘D’, would be consigned to
the hell of this existence the following year. He is still
alive. Collectively, these boys will be referred to as
the Hotel Victim Group.
Kerr, who has described what took place to
Vil-
lage
, was the first of the Hotel Victim Group to arrive
at Kincora. On the surface, there was no logical
reason for the transfer of the new residents. Ian
Cameron and MI5, however, were the beneficiaries
of the new arrangement because it allowed them to
replenish their ongoing “honey trap” blackmail
operations in Belfast and Bangor with a fresh batch
of younger teenagers who were sexually compliant.
In addition, MI5 was in complete control of Kincora,
a detached house which was smaller and more
manageable from their perspective than Williamson
House which consisted of two buildings. Kincora
was also controlled by three men, all of whom were
paedophiles. Witchell – as a paedophile - was very
much on his own at Williamson House, at least at
that point in time. In a nutshell, MI5 could remove
the members of the Hotel Victim Group from Kincora
at will.
Members of the Hotel Victim Group were also
shipped to England and Scotland by Mains on the
orders of Joss Cardwell, an influential Loyalist politi-
cian. (See
Village
February 2018.)
OPERATION CLOCKWORK
ORANGE AND THE REFERENCE
TO THE “PROSTITUTION RING
SUPPLYING BOYS TO HOTELS IN
BELFAST AND BANGOR”.
The account Richard Kerr has provided about the
defilement of boys – including himself - at hotels in
Belfast and Bangor is independently confirmed by
contemporaneous British Army notes.
One of MI5’s darkest projects in Northern Ireland
was entitled Operation Clockwork Orange. It went
through a number of phases. It was primarily
designed to counter Loyalist anti-State activities. It
involved, inter alia, the collection of damaging infor-
mation about DUP and other Loyalist politicians as
well as paramilitaries.
Colin Wallace, a British Army PSYOPS officer, was
asked by MI5 to assist Clockwork Orange. Towards
this end, he was provided with information which
he recorded in his notebook. Forensic examination
has proven that his notes are authentic. In Decem-
ber 1974 Wallace recorded the following: “Joseph
Mains may be extensively involved in a prostitution
ring supplying boys to hotels in Belfast and Bangor.
The hotels include: Girton Lodge, Park Avenue; Stor
-
mont; Europa and the Queen’s Court in Bangor.
[John] McKeague is said to use the Royal Avenue
Hotel for the same purposes. Bearing in mind that
the East Belfast UDA leadership use the Girton
Lodge and the Park Avenue for their meetings, it is
simply [not] credible that they did not know what is
going on there. Note: Mains has a brother in the
RUC. He also has a questionable relationship with
Belfast Corporation Welfare Chairman (Cardwell)
and Legal Adviser (Young)”.
In September 1975 Wallace wrote a letter to his
former boss at British Army HQ in Northern Ireland
which referred to “homosexual prostitution at a chil-
dren’s home in Belfast”. The relevant extract reads
as follows: “My concern now is that there may be an
attempt by the Ministry [of Defence] to deny any
form of official ‘dirty tricks’ organisation existed
within the Security Forces. For example, in the Min-
istry’s summary of my oral representations made [at
an employment tribunal] to John Groves and Mr Fair-
bairn on 10 May reference is made in paragraph 3 to
Robin Bryans
Richard Kerr
THERESA MAY’S NAIVETY AND
LACK OF CURIOSITY, FIRST AS
HOME SECRETARY AND NOW AS
PRIME MINISTER, HAS ENABLED
AN ON-GOING COVER-UP OF
THIS FAR-REACHING SCANDAL.
Blunt was not prosecuted
for his treachery, nor for his
paedophilia, all of which were
concealed from public view until
1979 when Robin Bryans, an
Irish writer and friend-turned-
enemy, outed him with the help
of Private Eye magazine’”.
6 8
July-August 2018
‘actions’ which I was asked to launch during the
[Ulster Workers Council anti-power-sharing] strike.
The word “actions” appears to have been used by
MOD to conceal the fact that I referred to the
attempts made by the Security Service [i.e. MI5] to
discredit various Loyalist politicians, including the
Rev Ian Paisley [of the DUP], by the use of forged
documents and by linking the MPs with loyalist par-
amilitary figures involved in homosexual
prostitution at a children’s home in Belfast”.
Wallace’s Clockwork Orange notes and his Sep-
tember 1975 letter were furnished to the Hart Inquiry
which clearly did not appreciate the significance of
either. On their own – and at a minimum – they con-
firm that MI5 knew about the existence of a
paedophile network involving Joseph Mains and
John McKeague in Belfast and Bangor five years
before it was exposed in the
Irish Independent
, yet
did nothing to interfere with it.
TAKING THE WORD OF A
CONVICTED PAEDOPHILE AT FACE
VALUE
When Kerr’s social worker rang Kincora looking for
him while he was out of the home being defiled, Joe
Mains would brush her off by saying he had gone on
some sort of an outing. She was not fooled and
would eventually expose the scandal through the
Irish Independent
in the Republic of Ireland.
Others, beguiled by State lies, have not demon-
strated the same penetrating insight as Kerr’s social
worker. To cover his tracks, Joe Mains would enter
false destinations for the boys into the Kincora log-
book, or make no entry at all. While Kerr refused to
appear in person before the Hart Inquiry in 2016, it
examined a written account he had provided con-
cerning his trips to England. Hart ultimately decided
to {i} accept the veracity of the Kincora logs main-
tained by Joe Mains at face value and {ii} use them
to dismiss Kerr’s account of his trips to England and
{iii} dispute his credibility. Does it need to be
stressed that the organisers of paedophile rings
have never been known to {i} make accurate and
incriminating records of their crimes, {ii} preserve
them and {iii} ultimately furnish them to the police?
PART 3: THE NEXT GENERATION
OF VICTIMS
THE BLIGHTED LIFE OF A BOY
CALLED ‘CHARLES’
After the departure of Kerr and the others from Wil-
liamson House in 1975, Witchell found a set of new
victims to torment. ‘Charles’ (not his real name) was
a few years younger than Kerr. His ordeal began in
1975.
Last month
Village
outlined some of the activities
Witchell engaged in while at Williamson House.
Charles’ account adds further detail to our knowl-
edge of him. He recalls how Witchell presented
himself as “plausible”, and how he ‘hoodwinked
people into thinking that he was a man of God”; how
he “wore a cloak, portraying himself as a man of God
but was a paedophile”. Witchell, an Anglican Fran-
ciscan, should not have worn the habit of his Order
as it was a condition of his employment that he
would not.
Witchell’s horrific abuse of Charles lasted five
years, only ending when he left Williamson House
at age the age of 18.
Charles had been abandoned by his parents at
Brefne Residential Nursery in Belfast as an infant.
He was transferred to Williamson House at the age
of 4 at the end of the 1960s.
Charles’ motive for talking to
Village
is to tell the
story of what happened at Williamson House on
behalf of the victims who took their own lives. Rich-
ard Kerr shares this identical motive, as does his
brother Alan Kerr, whose story will be told in the
next edition of
Village
.
BEFORE WITCHELL, SOME HAPPY
TIMES AT WILLIAMSON HOUSE
Unlike Richard Kerr, Charles has many happy mem-
ories of Williamson House. They all pre-date 1975.
For a start, the children were always well fed and
clothed, and the home boasted a full complement
of staff to mind the children. Charles remembers
games of tennis and football; playing in a recrea-
tion room which had a television; visits from
well-wishers. Christmases were memorable too
for all the right reasons: Charles and his friends
spent time with kindly families who welcomed
them into their homes over the festive season.
There was also a string of Christmas celebrations
around Belfast to which they were taken.
The children were integrated into the wider
community by being enrolled at various primary
and secondary schools nearby. Some of the Cath-
olic boys, for example, went to a Christian
Brothers school.
Charles recalls how the Catholic and Protestant
children got along perfectly well with each other.
‘The Catholics were like my family”, Charles, a
Protestant, recalls. Charles got to spend time
with two other families in the community who
treated him kindly. He went with one of them to
the Martyrs Memorial Church on Sundays where
Ian Paisley gave his sermons. Charles recalls
having chatted to Paisley, something that
occurred a few times as the family he accompa-
nied to Paisley’s church often turned up half an
hour before the sermons began, when Paisley
came out to mix with them.
Charles enjoyed Paisley’s captivating style of
preaching. “He was charismatic”, he recalls. Pais-
ley would quote scripture and make the
occasional reference to Catholics but, insofar as
INTERNATIONAL
The ‘Clockwork Orange’ notes with references to the use of hotels by Joseph Mains. This provides
corroboration of the evidence of Richard Kerr about the use of the Park Avenue and other hotels
as locations of abuse.
Brefne Residential Nursery
SIR ANTHONY BLUNT, BRITAIN
AND MI5’S ARCH TRAITOR,
WORMED HIS WAY BACK INTO
THE GOOD BOOKS OF BRITISH
INTELLIGENCE BY EFFECTIVELY
PROVIDING THEM WITH DETAILS
OF A PAEDOPHILE NETWORK
IN IRELAND OF WHICH HE
WAS A MEMBER AND WHICH
THEY LATER EXPLOITED
FOR BLACKMAIL AND
DESTABILISATION PURPOSES
JJuly-August 2018
6 9
Charles recalls, he didn’t really dwell on the issue.
“The implication was that the Catholics were
going to go to hell. He didn’t say so in so many
words” but that was what he meant. Charles, who
clearly had a mind of his own from a young age,
took no heed of Paisley’s bigotry and continued
to get on perfectly well with his Catholic “family”
at the home.
What Charles did not know was that Paisley
knew what was going on at Kincora from at least
1973 (see
Village
December 2017). Paisley – one
of the best informed men in Ireland about the
seedy underbelly of Loyalist politics and paramili-
tarism – must have learnt or at least suspected
that Kincora was not an isolated aberration and
that similar violations were being perpetrated at
other homes. Yet, while he occasionally visited
care homes and orphanages – including William-
son House – he never once lifting a finger to end
the suffering of a single victim at any of them.
KINCORA WAS WHERE
WITCHELL SAID HE SENT ‘BAD
BOYS’
Eric Witchell used the existence of Kincora to
intimidate and control the children he abused at
Williamson House. “He threatened us with Kin-
cora,’ Charles has explained. “If you are a bad
boy, you’ll end up in Kincora”, he would warn.
William McGrath, the Housefather at Kincora,
was a familiar face to the children at Williamson
House. Witchell introduced him to them as
“Master McGrath”, his idea of a joke as Master
McGrath was then a popular dog food.
He described McGrath as “his friend, someone
who worked in another home” but he did not tell
them it was Kincora. “They were often together
having cups of tea and biscuits. [McGrath] would
chat with Eric in a room”. He saw them together
“many, many times”. Richard Kerr confirms what
Charles has to say about McGrath’s regular visits
to Williamson House.
Raymond Semple, the third abusive staff
member at Kincora, also visited Williamson
House. However, he may have been visiting a rela-
tive who worked there, a ‘lovely’ person who was
not involved in any abuse, according to Charles.
Mains, McGrath and Semple were all convicted
of child abuse in December 1981. How and when
did Witchell first become acquainted with Mains
and McGrath and what did they discuss? Some of
their deliberations must have involved the selec-
tion of suitable candidates for the transfers from
Williamson House to Kincora. These are ques-
tions Witchell will have to answer if he is brought
before the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual
Abuse in London. Professor Alexis Jay, who is now
in charge of it,
can hardly be
expected to
understand the
full extent of the
sexual abuse
which took place
in England, Scot-
land and Wales
– much of which
was successfully
concealed by the
Special Branch
on orders from
MI5 – if she
chooses to
ignore the
research and evi-
dence available
about the modus operandi of MI5 in Ireland.
Unfortunately, she cannot rely upon the Hart
Report as an accurate account of what happened
in NI. At the very least, she should conduct inter-
views with the many witnesses - whether victims
or perpetrators - who did not contribute to the
Hart Inquiry, especially Eric Witchell.
Witchell, if he chooses to tell the truth, will be
able to provide details about the trafficking of
Richard Kerr to Enoch Powell MP, something that
is definitely within her remit. See
Village
May
2018. Witchell should also be asked about what
he knows about Anthony Blunt, again some-
thing within Professor Jay’s remit.
Colin Wallace, whose life was derailed
because he tried to tell the truth about Kincora,
is another witness who should be interviewed.
In addition, MI5 should be required to furnish
Professor Jay with the list of the agents it
recruited inside the DUP. It should not be limited
to those who attained elected public office.
Two pictures of Kerr in London. The Hart Inquiry refused to believe Kerr’s account of his visits to London, instead relying upon dishonest entries placed
in the Kincora log by Joe Mains, a convicted paedophile. The photo on the right was taken while Kerr was meant to be residing at Kincora in Belfast. Sir
Anthony Hart, author of the 2017 Hart Report.
Enoch Powell, MP and Ian Paisley, MP
Eric Witchell (left); Joe Mains, Warden of Kincora, and William McGrath, housefather at Kincora,
who were both regular visitors to Witchell at Williamson House
Professor Alexis Jay of
the Independent Inquiry
into Child Sex Abuse.
Will she call Eric Witchell
before her?
Colin Wallace, whose life was
derailed because he tried to
tell the truth about Kincora, is
another witness who should be
interviewed by Professor Jay’s
Inquiry. In addition, MI5 should
be required to furnish her with
the list of the agents it recruited
inside the DUP
