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
