RECAP OF PART ONE
In Part One of this story, Alan Kerr described how he was sexually abused by three men at Williamson House, a Belfast Corporation Welfare Department care home in Belfast, in the 1970s. He was only six years of age when he was first raped. One of his abusers was Eric Witchell, the Office-in-Charge of the home. Witchell was a friend of the paedophile gang which ran the infamous Kincora Boys’ Home, also in Belfast.
Alan Kerr in the years after his arrival in London.
Later, Alan was moved to Shore House where he was abused by another two men, one of whom may have been William McGrath, the Housefather at Kincora.
Alan eventually fled from institutional care for a life on the streets of Belfast. Desperate, and in need of food and shelter, he worked for a spell at a brothel on the Lisburn Road where boys as young as 13 were made available to Belfast’s paedophile community. At the very least, the brothel enjoyed a measure of shelter from the wall of protection built around NI’s paedophile rings by the UK intelligence community. In order for the spies’ paedophile exploitation and blackmail operations to thrive in NI, it was necessary for the local paedophile population as a whole to flourish. If it wasn’t for this, Alan and many others might never have been abused.
HUNGRY, ALONE AND FIGHTING THE BITING COLD
Alan was abused by Billy ‘B’, a man he describes as a “toilet creeper”: “I met him out of the blue one time [in Belfast] while I was on the run from Rathgael [Training Centre]. He followed me into the toilet and smiled at me”, Alan recalls. B would prove to be one of Alan’s most prolific abusers.
When Alan was 15 or 16 B took him to London via the Belfast-Liverpool car ferry in his silver BMW. At the time Alan was subject to a care order which was not due to expire until he was 21. Alan stayed in London after B headed back to Belfast because he did not want to return to Ireland but this proved no more than jumping out of the Belfast frying pan and into a London hellfire. With no support, trade or qualification, he would spend his youth as a “rent boy” at such places as Victoria Station and on the ‘Meat Rack’ at Piccadilly Circus, also known as the “Dilly”. Over time, he would get to know boys from all over Ireland who were in the same dire straits as he was. The men who abused the young teenagers referred to them as ‘chickens’; the boys called their abusers ‘punters’. Alan would never return to live in NI again.
Piccadilly Circus
Victoria Train Station was an infamous hunting ground for paedophiles. “There were pubs inside the station in those days. Some of the men who went to them were only there to have sex with the boys. There was another pub nearby, the Shakespeare, which was similar. Soldiers used to go there a lot. At the weekends there would be a lot of military police outside it”.
The police knew perfectly well what was going on at Victoria Station. Not long after his arrival, Alan was approached by a British Transport Police (BTP) officer who asked him who he was and then went away to make inquiries about him. When he returned, he told Alan that since he wasn’t in trouble in NI, he wasn’t going to do anything about him. Clearly, the officer had been able to make enquiries with Belfast – presumably through the communication facilities in the BTP office in the station – and must surely have discovered that Alan was still under a care order. Nonetheless, he abandoned him to a life as a rent boy.
Finding somewhere to sleep was a priority for Alan, and the Victoria Station offered some shelter. “In those days, the station was open all night. It is unrecognisable now. I slept on trains that pulled into it for the night”. Sometimes he found himself drenched in so much sweat that his clothes would be wet, even in winter. Then, as the night and early morning crept in, he would begin to freeze while still damp if not actually wet. He recalls having to go to the toilets to try and warm himself up by using the hand dryer. ‘In the morning the police would come onto the trains and turf you off”.
One of the visitors to the toilets at Victoria Station was John Imrie, an MI5 officer named by Ken Livingstone in the House of Commons in connection with the Kincora scandal. Imrie was arrested at the station and convicted for exposing himself. See Village March 2018.
QUEER-BASHING AND SEXUAL ABUSE AT THE HANDS OF THE POLICE
During his early years in London, Alan was assaulted by police officers on a number of occasions. Typically, this happened as he was being escorted towards Vine Street Police Station from the Dilly. “They would start pushing and pulling you to make it look like you were causing them trouble. They would use this as an excuse to punch you in the stomach; always in the stomach; up against the wall outside the station. They never bruised your face as you might be going up before the Bow Street magistrates”.
One British Transport Police officer Alan got to know was a pederast, something that would explain how the abuse was able to thrive at the station. He developed a liking for Alan and frequently abused him, even taking him back to his flat. Some of the officer’s colleagues suspected what was afoot and attempted to persuade Alan to talk about it but he refused. The abusive officer has long since died. He operated out of the Transport Police office at Victoria Station. Alan didn’t reveal the nature of the relationship he had with this officer when he was interviewed by his colleagues because he was “afraid of the police”.
THE EARL’S COURT ‘CLINIC’ ON THE LONGRIDGE ROAD
One night Alan was approached by an Oriental man called Peter, in his 30s or 40s at Victoria Station. He escorted him to a house at 51 Longridge in Earl’s Court which masqueraded as a ‘clinic’. What Alan didn’t realise at first was that he was being sampled to see if he might be suitable to work for the man at his brothel; one that catered for older men who exploited teenage boys. “Peter always tested the boys himself to see if they were any good. He gave me a few quid the first time we had sex but never again. He never felt he had to pay for sex and had sex with the boys whenever he felt the urge. You couldn’t say no to him”.
The premises in Earl’s Court which once housed the ‘Earl’s Court Clinic’, an Oriental style brothel run by a Thai man called Peter. The room to the right of the black door in the picture is where the boys were kept. The photo on the right features Alan Kerr at the approximate age he worked for Peter. His recollection is that some of his co-workers looked as young as 13 or 14 years old.
“Peter was friends with another Thai man who ran a brothel on Sydney Street. They were always looking for chickens for their places. When I first started working for him, he was in a house in Earl’s Court called the ‘Earl’s Court Clinic’. It was all done up in an Oriental fashion with Oriental statues and flowers. Oriental boys and some Australian boys worked in it. Some of the Oriental boys looked about 13 or 14 but you had no way of knowing their age. Mainly, the boys were around my age. There was one older lad who was in his late 20s but he was more like Peter’s right-hand man. He would take over running the place when Peter wasn’t there”.
Peter later moved the Clinic to a basement at Nevern Place, also in Earl’s Court.
THE LONDON PAEDOPHILE CIRCUIT THAT REVOLVED AROUND ELM GUEST HOUSE, THE EARL’S COURT CLINIC, THE PHILBEACH HOTEL AND THE BROTHEL ON SYDNEY STREET
By the time Alan had arrived in London in the mid-1980s, Elm Guest House, an infamous boy brothel, had been raided and closed down by the police. Until 1982, the Elm was where the likes of Sir Cyril Smith MP abused boys. Once inside the doors, abusers could mingle with each other. There was, for example, a sauna which was available to all of its patrons. Cyril Smith once reportedly trapped himself inside it due to his obesity.
Haroon Kasir was part of the ring which ran the Elm Guest House. He is seen here being confronted by Irish correspondent Paraic O’Brien of Channel 4 News. Up to now, it has been assumed that Kasir and his wife Carol ran Elm Guest House but Peter, the Thai boy pimp who ran a brothel in Earl’s Court, may also have had an interest in it.
The closure of the Elm did not put an end to child abuse in London. It just moved – or intensified -at other establishments. One venue where underage boys were exploited was the Philbeach Hotel in Earl’s Court. Both Alan and his older brother Richard were abused at it. Richard had been held in the hotel by two men after he came to London. Richard had also been exploited at the Elm. A return visit he made to Elm guesthouse as an adult with a team from Channel 4 news is available on YouTube.
Richard Kerr says that Peter, the Thai child pimp, was involved in both the Elm and the Philbeach. Richard recalls a picture of Peter which hung on one of the walls in the Philbeach. It featured him amid a group of men.
On the surface, the Philbeach was nothing more than a raucous party venue for consenting homosexual adults. Suffice it to say, many of those who frequented the hotel had no part in the abuse of underage boys. The LGBT Archive recalls it fondly in the following terms: “Philbeach Hotel in Philbeach Gardens, Earl’s Court, was a gay-owned hotel, catering for a gay clientele. Long before Soho became So-Homo, Earl’s Court was the gay capital of London. And if the walls could talk at the Philbeach, London’s most in-your-face gay hotel, they’d have some saucy tales to tell. It’s typically English B&B material, if a bit grubby. But people [didn’t go to it] for the chintz. For the Philbeach had gained a reputation as a cruisy hotel. If you don’t enjoy being propositioned in the bathroom, request a room with ensuite facilities. The Philbeach Hotel was open for 27 years and was one of the largest gay hotels in Europe. The Philbeach hotel was the only gay hotel in London that was owned by homosexuals and run by homosexuals. The hotel closed on January 31, 2008. It had 35 rooms on three floors.”.
The Earl’s Court Clinic and the brothel on Sydney Street run by Peter’s friend, form the third and fourth parts of a London abuse circuit. No doubt there were many other venues in the city.
The Earl’s Court Clinic later moved to a basement premises shown in these photographs. It is now a perfectly respectable premises. When it was run by Peter many years ago “punters” were able to pay to whip teenage boys with leather belts at it. These pictures were taken by Alan Kerr
THE ‘CLINIC’ WAS MORE DISCREET THAN ELM GUEST HOUSE
The ‘Earl’s Court Clinic’, was a far more discreet establishment than the Elm. “The punters who visited it came up the steps outside it and through the front door and into a hall. There was a door inside the hall with a bit of glass in it that acted as a one-way mirror because the hall was kept in semi-darkness but the room next to it – where we were – was well lit. The punters would peer through the glass at us – we would be sitting inside – and pick one of us out. In the first building – the house – Peter would walk into the room after the punter had made his choice and call out the name and shout “upstairs”. After we moved to the basement [premises], we would be sent to a room along the corridor. There was also a darkened window in the basement for the punters to look through at the lads. Peter would make recommendations about who was suitable for the punters who didn’t make up their mind immediately”.
FOR SALE: ASSAULT AND BATTERY
Peter allowed the ‘punters’ to assault his boys if they were prepared to pay enough. “The most I ever got was from a man who wanted to lash me with a leather belt. He paid me £20 per slap. I made a few hundred quid that night”, Alan recalls.
“We always got a cash payment but the commission was half. Peter always took half”.
‘The punters were rich. Most of them wore suits. There were no roughs. Most of them were in their 40s and upwards. The oldest was about 70. The older men were the worst. They were dirty down below. Some of them had already got cum in their pants they were that excited. They made me sick but you just had to get on with it. You had to be good to stay in the Clinic. If you didn’t make money, Peter got rid of you. I worked for him for about a year. Then I went back on the streets again. I haven’t seen Peter in a long time. The last time I saw him he was old and had grey hair”. Assuming the competence of the Independent Statutory Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse (IICSA) led by Professor Alex Jay to look into high-profile instances of non-recent child sexual abuse, it will have long since found out about Peter. If he is still alive, it will have asked him searching questions about what he knows about VIP paedophiles. It is hard to imagine a potentially more important witness for its work.
Lord Greville Janner who had an apartment at Dolphin Square where he abused Alan Kerr over the course of a week
GREVILLE JANNER MP AND THE APARTMENT AT DOLPHIN SQUARE
After his time at the Clinic, Alan went to the Meat Rack on the ‘Dilly’ at Piccadilly Circus. One night, Greville Janner, then a Labour MP, “came up behind me and started talking to me”. A short while later, he escorted Alan to the bar in Dolphin Square. Alan slept with Janner each night during the week that followed. “I was desperate for somewhere to live at the time. I wanted accommodation, food and security”.
Janner would throw him back on the street in the morning and then hook up with him at night. Janner made no attempt to hide who he was or what he did. One morning Janner warned him he had “a late sitting” that night but that he was to wait for him. This, presumably, was a reference to a late sitting in the Commons.
Janner and friends
THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER
During the course of the week, Janner invited him to go to a show in Earl’s Court. Alan was surprised but happy to accept. Janner then told him that he had to submit his – Alan’s – name for security clearance as they would be on Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson’s guest list. Alan obliged by providing his full name and his sister’s address. Janner subsequently told him that everything was “fine” with the security people.
Shortly afterwards, they attended The Prince and the Pauper at Earl’s Court‘s Olympia with the Royals. Janner and Alan sat directly behind the Royal couple who were in the front row, or very close to it. While they were waiting for the show to begin, Alan and Prince Andrew conversed. They also chatted during the intermission. “I had a good conversation with him. He had character. He was a cheerful guy. He was not snobby or anything. He told me he was going to open a hospital in Northern Ireland. I didn’t feel I had to bow down to him. I wasn’t nervous. Janner let me do the talking. They seemed to know each other quite well. That’s why I was able to talk to him. Sarah Ferguson didn’t speak much. She really just ignored us.”.
The guest list and the vetting records relating to this performance should still exist in an archive somewhere.
Alan Kerr in his 20s; Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson who met Alan while he was a guest of Greville Janner at a theatre in Earl’s Court; Janner’s book
WHAT WAS JANNER PLAYING AT?
Janner obviously knew Alan was from Belfast and that his name would be run by MI5 and the RUC Special Branch during the security vetting process. It must have occurred to him that Alan could easily have had one or more convictions for male prostitution under his belt. And Alan did indeed have a number of convictions. He believes – but is not certain – that he incurred some of them before he met the Prince. So, why was Janner prepared to submit his name to the officials responsible for protecting the Royals? Had he reason to believe he had nothing to fear from MI5 and the police?
Why did Janner – a married man, politician and author – take a male prostitute in his early 20s to the performance instead of his wife or some other friend? There must have been many influential people who would have been indebted to Janner for just such an invitation. [Please see the addendum entitled ‘Update on Alan Kerr’ posted at the end of this story concerning Alan’s age.]
If the tabloid media in the UK had discovered that Prince Andrew had enjoyed a social interaction – however fleeting and innocuous – with the brother of a Kincora boy, that fact alone could have generated waves of negative publicity for him, especially with the unrelenting reports about Kincora which the heavyweight campaigning journalist Paul Foot was publishing in Private Eye and the Daily Mirror.
There are other puzzling features about the event. Janner was a great communicator, so much so that he published multiple editions of a book entitled, ‘Janner’s Complete Speechmaking’. So why did he sit back – literally – and let Alan dominate the discussion with Prince Andrew?
MI5’s ‘DOLLY MIXTURES’
If MI5 had done its homework properly, it would have realised that Alan was the younger brother of Richard Kerr, the courageous boy who had exposed the Kincora scandal. Significantly, it was Richard’s social workers who had informed the Irish Independent about it. The link between the brothers was hardly a secret: when he had lived in Belfast, Alan had occasionally visited Richard at Kincora.
MI5 certainly kept an eye on the sexual antics of VIPs in the 1980s. It had a dedicated unit which monitored the sexual antics of Tory VIPs. It was called the ‘Dolly Mixtures’. In February 1985 Frank Doherty reported in the Phoenix magazine, that the ‘Dolly Mixtures’ had been set up on the “personal orders” of Margaret Thatcher to avoid embarrassing Tory sex scandals. It is highly likely that it or a parallel unit also monitored the young Royals. Indeed, the so-called ‘Squidgygate’ tape featuring Charles and Camilla is suspected of emanating from an MI5 leak. There is no space to analyse the Squidgygate affair in this article but it is discussed at length elsewhere, e.g. Wikipedia.
Frank Doherty’s Phoenix article about the ‘Dolly Mixtures’ (published five years before the Squidgygate scandal erupted) revealed that the ‘Iron Lady’ had ordered the establishment of the unit on account of “her fear of a repeat” of the Profumo scandal. ‘Since 1981, on her personal orders, an elite section of MI5, operating from Gordon Street, W1, has kept a discreet eye and an attuned ear on the personal and sexual indiscretions of Tory MPs. This section, known as the “Dolly Mixtures”, is composed of tall, blonde males, green-wellied Sloane Rangers, Young Fogie homosexuals, and young blue-chip ‘wets’ who together form a unit superbly equipped to socialise with and report on the morale, morals and mores of Tory MPs”.
MI5 certainly appreciated the real and present danger posed by Richard Kerr to the British Establishment, and had done so for years before the performance at the Earl’s Court Olympia which his younger brother attended. In the early 1980s Richard had lived in Preston and later in London. He had become the target of heavy-handed officials at both locations. In 1981 he had been warned by the RUC, who visited him in Preston, not to return to Belfast to give evidence at the Kincora trial. The RUC only wanted boys who had been abused inside the walls of Kincora by the staff to get into the witness box; not those like Richard who had been taken out of the home to places such as the Park Avenue hotel where they were made available to MI5 surveillance targets including at least one senior member of the DUP (the ‘Wife Beater’) and his friend John Dunlop McKeague, the leader of the Red Hand Commando. Later, a group of police officers had assaulted Richard in London to keep him quiet. On one particular occasion, he was assaulted by an undercover officer who had been listening to what he was telling his friends about Kincora in a fast food restaurant in London.
The Phoenix 15 February 1985
JANNER’S FRIENDS ON THE BENCH
Janner knew that Alan occasionally got into trouble with the law. When Alan found himself up before the magistrates at Bow Street on another charge later on, he informed the MP – with whom he had now become quite friendly – about his looming appearance. Janner, who was also a barrister and friendly with a number of judges, penned a letter for him. Janner attended the hearing but didn’t have to move from his seat during the hearing. In the event, Alan was found not guilty.
Alan is aware that at least one of the magistrates Janner knew also visited the Dilly to procure sex from the rent boys at it.
Overall, Alan was impressed by Janner. “He came across as a very intelligent man”, he says.
Others were impressed with him too: Janner was later made a member of the House of Lords.
ALAN NOW
Alan Kerr in later years. He still lives in London.
The only occupation Alan has ever had is that of a male prostitute and a brief moment as a model for a pornographic gay magazine. He now lives in a small flat in London. A report from his counsellor states that his experiences have left “him feeling extremely isolated and [he experiences] regular traumatic flashbacks and debilitating bouts of anxiety and depression”. He is a poor sleeper and becomes physically shaky when agitated.
He has attempted suicide by inhaling gas. On another occasion he punched his hand through plate glass resulting in severe injuries. He has engaged in other bouts of self-harm.
He is not in a relationship and has no children.
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE
Looking to the future, he is eager to give evidence to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse in London about the VIP child abuse.
QUESTIONS FOR PROFESSOR ALEXIS JAY
The London-based Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) is currently carrying out its inquiries. A number of questions arise about what Professor Alexis Jay, Chair of IICSA, is and is not doing. They include the following:
• Will she ask MI5 for its files on Alan and Richard Kerr?
• Will Professor Jay let Alan and his brother Richard (who was abused by a string of Westminster MPs and a Tory Cabinet Minister) appear before IICSA? If not, why not? The revelation about the abuse by the Cabinet Minister was broadcast on Channel 4 News a number of years ago. IICSA can hardly be unaware of it.
• Will Professor Jay ask the department responsible for the security vetting for the Earl’s Court Olympia performance of The Prince and the Pauper which Alan Kerr attended with Lord Janner, for all of its relevant records?
• Will she ask MI5 for the reports and files generated by the ‘Dolly Mixtures’ about Tory VIP sexual misbehaviour to vet them for child abusers?
• Will she ask MI5 and the Home Office for their files on Lord Janner who abused Alan Kerr and the various other MPs who abused his brother Richard?
• Will she investigate Peter, the Thai child pimp who ran the Earl’s Court Clinic, and his rich clients? Will she ask MI5 for any files it might have concerning him?
• Will she interview Eric Witchell?
• Will she ask MI5 for its files on Haroon Kashir, Carol Kashir and John Imrie?
• Will she also find out why MI5 and MI6 gave evidence to the Hart Inquiry in NI which was manifestly false? (See Village February and March 2017.)
THE DIETRICH GAMBIT?
In the celebrated film of Agatha Christie’s ingenious Witness for the Prosecution, Marlene Dietrich plays a cunning witness for the prosecution who testifies at a murder trial with the premeditated intention of being exposed as a liar and thereby discrediting the prosecution. Village has aired its reservations on numerous occasions that equally dark forces are conducting a comparable gambit in an effort to control the VIP sex abuse scandal with the tacit – if not outright – support of MI5 and MI6.
They have spent years promoting manifest hoaxers with remarkably similar farfetched yarns in the media and on the internet. Ultimately, their wild allegations were exposed as decidedly unhinged.
Professor Alexis Jay, Chair of the IICS. Is IICSA going to listen to the evidence about VIP sex abuse which is possessed by credible witnesses such as the Kerr brothers or rely on manifest hoaxers to dismiss all abuse victims as unreliable?
Some of these characters have tried to present their yarns to IICSA with straight faces. The overarching intention of this audacious stratagem is for the so-called ‘victims’ to paint credible witnesses such as the Kerr brothers with the same absurdist brush with which they have been tarred.
This murky scenario provides a plausible explanation for the otherwise senseless behaviour of the British police and the BBC during the fiasco that engulfed Cliff Richards, a patently innocent man falsely accused of sexual wrongdoing.
The reaction of the British public to the outrageous ill-treatment of such a beloved figure has been to diminish and undermine concern about VIP abuse rings.
There have been other victims such as Lord Brammal and Paul Gambaccini. The common denominator in each case is a police force which seems to have lost control of its senses.
The cumulative effect of these scandals is that quite a number of British TV and radio broadcasters, along with invited guests, have become sceptical about the existence of a VIP child sex abuse network of any sort and antagonistic towards those who are probing it.
This was quite evident after the release of the careful, considered and credible report by the Wiltshire Police concerning the abuse of boys by former Tory PM, Ted Heath, in October 2017.
On the other hand, the Establishment sceptics would have us believe that {i} a string of fantasists, {ii} none of whom knew each other, {iii} concocted absurd stories with similar themes by sheer coincidence and {iv} were then uniformly treated as credible by credulous police forces who {v} all overreacted in a grossly unprofessional manner against entirely innocent men with high profiles such as Richards, Brammal and Gambaccini.
Either way, it is up to Professor Jay to distinguish between the real and the artificial.
The lazy option will be to lump them all together and dismiss them as a motley collection of unreliable fantasists.
MI5 HQ London.
The Update featured below is an extract from a story which also appears on this website entitled: ‘Does ‘Nick’s’ conviction mean Jimmy Savile and Ted Heath are innocent? Yes, if you work for the British tabloid press.’ The link to the full story is:
https://villagemagazine.ie/index.php/2019/07/does-nicks-convi…he-british-media/
UPDATE ON ALAN KERR
Village has learnt that Alan Kerr (the brother of Richard Kerr) has made a statement to the IICSA. Readers who are not familiar with his story are invited to read The Boy on the Meat Rack and Out of the Frying Pan and into the Fire about his appalling life. Alan Kerr was abused by many men including Lord Greville Janner. On one occasion Janner took Alan Kerr to see The Prince and the Pauper at a theatre in London where they sat behind Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson who were then engaged to be married. Their engagement had taken place on 19 March 1986. Prince Andrew told him that he was going to open a hospital in Belfast. These dates are significant because they help identify Kerr’s age at the time he was being abused by Janner. We can now update that story originally published in the Out of the Frying Pan story. Prince Andrew visited the City Hospital and then went to Hillsborough with NI Secretary Tom King on 25 June 1986, a date that was not available at the time the original story was published. He was married on 23 July. This means that Kerr was aged 17 or had possibly just turned 18 at the time of the performance as he was born on 8 May of 1968. Village had erred on the side of caution when it published Out of the Frying Pan indicating that Kerr was possibly in his early twenties at the time. Janner’s defenders still persist in the claim he had no interest in young males.
PLEASE ALSO NOTE that in Part 1 of Alan Kerr’s story, The Boy on the Meat Rack, a ‘caveat’ was entered concerning dates. It read as follows: ‘A caveat must be entered before we proceed any further: Alan Kerr does not have access to his institutional records from Belfast and therefore cannot provide precise dates. Instead, he has done his best from memory.’ In a similar manner, the absence of any sort of records relating to his teenage years in London made calculating dates difficult. In any event, the year of the performance of The Prince and the Pauper has since become clear: it was 1986.
