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Blackmailed? Paisley became a conspirator in the the Kincora cover-up. Had he wanted to expose it - and there is no reason to suppose that he did - his hands were tied behind his back because he was almost certainly being blackmailed by the Housefather at Kincora Boys' Home, William McGrath who knew Paisley had been involved in bombings in the late 1960s.

by Joseph de Búrca 6 September, 2019 3 Comments

This story was updated on 6 September 2019. The original content is reproduced underneath this update. UPDATE The imminent revelation by BBC NI’s Spotlight programme that Ian Paisley financed the infamous UVF Silent Valley bombing of 1969 will come as no surprise to Village readers. While the BBC disclosure provides another piece of the jigsaw and is of enormous historical value, it doesn’t begin to scratch the surface of Paisley’s deeply disturbing partnership with the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and – equally important – the Ulster Protestant Volunteers (UPV). In December 2017 Village published an article entitled “Blackmailed” which outlined Paisley’s links to the UVF/UPV bomb campaign of 1969 and showed how, as a result of it, he was compromised in his dealing with another of the conspirators, William McGrath, the notorious and brutal child rapist who was “Housefather” at Kincora Boys’ home in the 1970s. Paisley was nearly ten years younger than McGrath. He first met the sexually insatiable and lecherous pervert McGrath when he – Paisley – was 22 or 23 in 1949 through his involvement in the Unionist Association in the Shore Road area of Belfast. Paisley had moved into the locality to study at a bible college. McGrath perceived the Catholic Church as the instrument of the Antichrist and was determined to expunge it from the four corners of island of Ireland so that the Protestant community – which he believed was descended from the Tribe of Dan of Caanan, one of the Lost Tribes of Israel – could prevail. He perceived himself as a soldier in what he called the ‘battles of the Lord’. His self-anointed duty was to prevent the Pope ‘enslaving the people of God’, not just in NI but throughout Britain. Paisley came to share these bizarre views and took a step closer to his involvement with McGrath and others in the infamous 1969 bomb campaign. It is an indisputable fact that McGrath, Paisley and others such as John McKeague (another paedophile who was involved in the Kincora scandal) and Gusty Spence of the UVF instigated the violence that lit the sectarian firestorm that became the Troubles. The fact that Paisley financed the Silent Valley bombing demonstrates just how central he was to the entire affair. Paisley used to visit McGrath at Kincora long after 1973 when he had been told by Valerie Shaw that McGrath was a paedophile. One of the former residents at Kincora, James Miller, who was at Kincora between 1976 and 1978, told the Hart Inquiry on 8 June, 2016, about these visits. Miller thought it “just seemed strange that he was so friendly with Mr McGrath, you know”. [Day 210 page 75.] Yet, after the eruption of the Kincora scandal in 1980, Paisley would pretend to have difficulty even remembering who McGrath was. Readers interested in learning more about Paisley’s links to the UVF and UPV can read “Blackmailed” (see below) which first appeared in December 2017. Further details about Paisley’s support for McGrath after he was arrested by the RUC for the rape of children at Kincora can be read by visiting ‘Kincora Survivor‘ also on this website. It shows how Paisley bullied a former Kincora resident lest he might give evidence at McGrath’s trial about “Englishmen” who had abused Kincora boys. See: https://villagemagazine.ie/index.php/2017/11/kincora-survivor/ ‎ A question for historians now is to establish what role William McGrath played in {i} the formation of Ian Paisley’s bigoted, violent and hate-filled religious and political beliefs; {ii} what was the true nature of the Paisley-McGrath personal relationship; {iii} to what extent did Paisley wield his power and influence to cover-up McGrath’s brutal rape of children at Kincora and elsewhere; {iv} did McGrath implicitly or explicitly blackmail Paisley over the latter’s involvement in the UVF/UPV bomb campaign of 1969 {v} since McGrath worked for MI5 and MI6, what did those intelligence services know about Paisley’s financing of the UVF and why was neither man arrested? The source of the BBC’s forthcoming revelation about Paisley is David Hancock, a former British army officer. Hancock served as a major in NI from 1968 to 1970. He told the BBC that an RUC District Inspector in Kilkeel, Co Down, advised him that Paisley had supplied money for the bombings. Hancock is to be applauded for bringing this scandal to light. But why did the RUC not act on the information, then or later? Were MI5, MI6 and RUC Special Branch (who were all involved in running the Kincora operation ) afraid that if they acted on this information, McGrath would be exposed? McGrath, of course, was convicted in 1981. So why did no one at the Cabinet Office, NIO, MI5, MI6 or RUC – then led by Sir John Hermon – insist that the police act on the information after his conviction? Was it because McGrath had kept his mouth shut about their collective involvement and they wanted to ensure his silence by letting sleeping dogs lie? Is there now any good reason why the PSNI should not declassify the file it inherited from the RUC on Paisley and the Silent Valley bombing? Will Andrew Parker, the incumbent Director-General of MI5 who likes to pontificate on ethics, release his organisation’s file on the Silent Valley bombing? The original December 2017 article about Paisley is set forth below: As the Democratic Unionist Party rises to notoriety across the UK and EU for scuppering poor Theresa May’s first effort at a deal in Brussels, it’s timely to consider a hidden side of the party’s charismatic, and always notorious, progenitor, the Reverend, Dr Ian Paisley. Last month, Village revealed that Ian Paisley, First Minister of Northern Ireland (NI), 2007-2008, had participated in the coverup of the rape and abuse of children at Kincora Boys Home. It may have been that he had been forced into doing this because John Dunlop McKeague, a sadistic Loyalist terrorist, and his confrere, William McGrath, knew some of his darkest secrets, and had blackmailed him into coming to their assistance as they faced

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SECOND UPDATE: Kincora boy abused by Mountbatten committed suicide months later. By David Burke.

by admin 26 August, 2019 0 Comments

This article was updated on 20 December 2019 with additional information about the ongoing refusal of the Gardai to release the log of a visit by the Warden of Kincora Boys’ Home to Mountbatten’s home in the Republic of Ireland (See section 2) and further evidence of a link between Mountbatten and the abuse of boys at Portora Royal School (See section 13). It has long been rumoured in Britain that Lord Louis Mountbatten was a paedophile. A book now on sale has dug up impressive new evidence confirming what Irish sources – including the Provisional IRA – have known for decades about his sexual predilections. So impressive is the new evidence that mainstream British media outlets such as The Mail on Sunday, The Sunday Times and The Sun are covering the story. The book contains sensational new information about Kincora Boys’ Home in Belfast. Curiously, while the British media are happy to report on Mountbatten’s abuse of boys generally, the sections in the book about Kincora are being ignored. The book is called The Mountbattens: their Lives & Loves, and is written by Andrew Lownie. The author is a respected and serious historian who was once a Conservative Party Westminster election candidate. He is still friendly with many Tory MPs including one recently retired Cabinet minister. Lownie is also author of a book on Guy Burgess entitled Stalin’s Englishman which had many interesting Irish angles to it. 1. LOWNIE WAS DENIED ACCESS TO CERTAIN IRISH STATE FILES ON MOUNTBATTEN During his research for the biography, Lownie tried to gain access to certain Irish State files including Garda files about Mountbatten only to be rebuffed. They may contain some interesting material. A Deputy Garda Commissioner who is now dead told Village a number of years ago that he had heard disturbing rumours about Mountbatten sexual activities before he was killed. Another Garda intelligence source says that he had heard stories that while Mountbatten had been living in India, he had had access to a 14 year old boy. If Garda Intelligence, led by Larry Wren, the Head of C3 during the 1970s, knew anything about Mountbatten’s predilections, or the presence of cars with Northern Ireland registration plates, or of teenage boys visiting his property at Classiebawn in the company of older men, he did nothing about any of it. The Gardai had a security at Mountbatten’s estate and must have noted the registration plates of visitors. This means that the Gardai should have logs for August 1977 which noted the arrival of the car belonging to Joe Mains, the Warden of the notorious Kincora Boys’ Home because he trafficked at least two boys to Classiebawn that month. If the logs still exist, will Garda Commissioner Drew Harris (ex-RUC and ex-PSNI link man to MI5) see to it that they are released and prove once and for all that an Anglo-Irish Vice Ring ring existed and it involved Joe Mains? While the Kincora scandal was exposed in 1980, it was not until 1982 that allegations about MI5 and MI6 involvement in the affair began to appear in the press. Wren became Garda Commissioner in early 1983. He had developed exceptionally close links with British Intelligence during his tenure at C3. If the logs of cars visiting Classiebawn prove to be missing, an inquiry should be held to see if they were destroyed under Wren’s watch. For further information about Wren’s strange career at C3 please visit https://villagemagazine.ie/index.php/2019/06/16570/ ‎ Hopefully the car registration logs still exists. Will the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) in London which is probing the existence of VIP child sex abuse request Drew Harris and the Irish Government to release the relevant logs for August 1977, and indeed for all of the summers Mountbatten stayed at Classiebawn? Mountbatten’s movements were of enormous importance to the Gardai in the 1970s. Typically, the first they would hear about his pending arrival in the country was a frantic call from MI5 in London to alert them that he had boarded the Hollyhead car ferry en route to Dublin. Mountbatten’s reputation inside the Garda was that of a man who was reckless about his safety. He often gave them a security headache. On one occasion he managed to disembark before the Gardai could reach the ferry and provide him with an escort. However, on this occasion his car broke down and they rushed to his aid inland. His vehicle was towed back to Garda HQ at the Phoenix Park in Dublin where it was repaired by the fleet service department. While the repairs were taking place, Mountbatten was given a tour of the HQ which had originally been built as a Royal Irish Constabulary complex. The Gardai who dealt with him found him to have been ‘a most charming man’. 2.UPDATE: LOGS NOT MISSING BUT DISCLOSURE CONTINUES TO BE DENIED BY THE GARDAI Since this story first appeared, the Gardai have persisted in their refusal to allow Andrew Lownie gain access to their Classiebawn car registration logs. They emailed Lownie on 7 October 2019 stating that files ‘generated during the course of a criminal investigation’ are considered confidential and hence they would not be releasing them. It is significant that they did not deny that the logs still exist. Lownie responded to this by writing back pointing out that the logs he was looking for related to August 1977, i.e. two years prior to Mountbatten’s assassination. There could have been no investigation of a ‘criminal’ nature in 1977 to an assassination that did not take place until 1979. The head of the Irish police, Garda Commissioner Drew Harris is a former RUC Special Branch officer who worked extensively with MI5. To date, he has not intervened to have the logs of Mains’ visit in August of 1977 extracted from the main file, copied and sent to Lownie. Instead, on 7 November the Gardai reverted to Lownie saying: ‘I wish to inform you that all such security logs form part of the Garda Investigation File, and for the reasons outlined in email

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Does ‘Nick’s’ conviction mean Jimmy Savile and Ted Heath are innocent? Yes, if you work for the British tabloid press. By Joseph de Búrca

by Joseph de Búrca 22 July, 2019 0 Comments

The more excitable elements of the British media are in something of a frenzy after the conviction by a Newcastle jury of Carl Beech, 51, a former NHS manager, for perverting the course of justice, i.e. telling the police a pack of lies. He has been sentenced to 18 years imprisonment. Beech’s deceit relates to the existence of an alleged murderous VIP paedophile ring based around Westminster involving Jimmy Savile, the former British prime minister Ted Heath, 1970-74, and others. Beech’s allegations prompted a £2million-pound Scotland Yard inquiry. Beech claimed he was a survivor of an “establishment group” which including politicians, military figures and spies. Absurdly, he claimed the group kidnapped, raped, tortured and murdered boys in the 1970s and 1980s. This triggered an ill-fated probe that ended without a single arrest being made. Beech was found guilty after a ten-week trial at Newcastle Crown Court of 12 counts of perverting the course of justice and one count of fraud over a £22,000 criminal compensation pay-out he received for the alleged abuse he suffered. ‘Nick’ also known as (aka) Carl Beech aka Stephen Anderson aka Carl Anderson aka Samuel Karlsson. That Beech would be exposed as a liar amid a blaze of publicity was predicted by Village years ago. Village readers will be more familiar with Carl Beech as ‘Nick’. In the past he was a figure of anonymity merely referred to as ‘Nick’ in the UK press. His real name only emerged at the trial. Beech or someone acting in concert with him concocted a series of grotesque lies about a VIP paedophile ring which murdered boys. An array of gullible hacks in the British media initially lapped up the claims and splashed them all over the pages of their newspapers. They have now flipped and are in a frenzy of condemnation after his conviction on 22 July 2019 for deceit. No one, we are now told, can now believe a word Nick/Beech has ever said. Accounts of child abuse perpetrated by the likes of Ted Heath can now be dismissed as nonsense according to the former PM’s supporters because Nick made allegations about him. What next? Jimmy Savile is innocent too. Sir Cyril Smith was a paragon of virtue? Is there more to Nick the Deceiver than meets the eye, a lot more perhaps? RICHARD KERR SPOTTED ‘NICK’ AS A FRAUD FROM THE OUTSET Richard Kerr, who was a genuine victim of sex abuse, concluded Beech was a fraud years ago. When Beech made efforts to contact him, he was rebuffed by Kerr. Had Kerr fallen for Beech’s lies, he would now probably be the victim of tabloid derision. Instead Kerr was subjected to intimidation to get him to shut up. In December 2017 Village reported that a letter purporting to come from the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) had been sent to him. The UFF had nothing to do with the letter so we instead referred to the authors as the “Paedophile Protection League (PPL)”. The letter was sent to Kerr in 2016. Kerr, who lives in Dallas, Texas, was a resident at Williamson House in the early and mid-1970s, and later at Kincora (1975-77). He was abused at both homes. He was later abused in England by various highborn lowlifes, including Sir Peter Hayman, the former Deputy Chief of MI6, who infamously left paedophile material on a London bus whence it was picked up by the police; and a senior and highly influential member of Margaret Thatcher’s Cabinet. Before we turn to the so-called ‘UFF’ threatening letter, a little additional context will assist in explicating the underlying menace of it: Richard Kerr was a close friend of Steven Waring who was also a resident at Kincora. He committed suicide by plunging into the sea from the Belfast-Liverpool Monarch Ferry in 1977 rather than suffer any further abuse. Kerr has been haunted by his death ever since. Like Kerr, Waring had been taken out of Kincora and subjected to vile abuse on both sides of the Irish Sea. In November 2016 Kerr received the following anonymous letter: “DEAR RICHARD, HAVING READ AN ONLINE ARTICLE ABOUT YOU TODAY CONCERNING YOUR BEHAVIOUR IN LONDON IN 2015, A GROUP OF SURVIVORS HAVE RESEARCHED AND DISCUSSED YOUR ALLEGATIONS. IT IS OF MANY UK-BASED SURVIVORS OPINION THAT YOU ARE PLAYING A GAME AND WORKING FOR THE ABUSERS STILL. THERE ARE FIRST HAND ACCOUNTS OF YOUR BEHAVIOUR IN DOLPHIN SQUARE AND IN KINCORA INCLUDING ACCOUNTS OF YOU ACTING AS FACILITATOR FOR ABUSERS. THERE ARE ALSO ALLEGATIONS AND ACCOUNTS OF YOU ACTIVELY TRYING TO DISCREDIT OTHER SURVIVORS INCLUDING THE SUSPICION THAT YOU IN FACT KILLED STEVEN ON THE BOAT, RATHER THAN THE STORY YOU TELL OF HIM COMMITTING SUICIDE. WE DO NOT HAVE ANYONE IN TEXAS TO ACT AGAINST YOU. YOU HAVE BEEN DISCUSSED AT A VERY HIGH LEVEL AND ALTHOUGH THIS IS NOT A THREAT, AS A GROUP WE WOULD LIKE TO INFORM YOU THAT YOU ARE NO LONGER WELCOME IN THE UK OR IN NORTHERN IRELAND AND IF YOU ARE SEEN, ACTIVE SERVICE UNITS OF THE ULSTER FREEDOM FIGHTERS AND THEIR FRIENDS WILL FORCIBLY REMOVE YOU TO AN AIRPORT. YOU ARE OBVIOUSLY A SURVIVOR OF ABUSE SO BY OUR OWN CODE WE CANNOT ORDER ANYTHING MORE; HOWEVER FEELINGS ARE RUNNING SO HIGH ABOUT YOU THAT WE CANNOT GUARANTEE YOUR SAFETY AND WELLBEING IN THE UK OR NORTHERN IRELAND”. The anonymous letter was posted from south East Anglia. There is, however, little or no mystery about the identity of its true author. Richard Kerr had made a number of trips to Ireland and the UK before he received the letter. During these trips he was – as he puts it himself – “hijacked” by some very unsavoury characters whom he instinctively distrusted and to whom he decided not to provide his address in Texas. This group pretended they were interested in exposing the VIP paedophile ring but in reality wanted to find out what Kerr was going to say about it and discredit him. They

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He socialised with Royalty and was abused by a future Lord, though his brother had revealed the key story about MI5 abuse of Kincora boys

by Joseph de Búrca 18 April, 2019 0 Comments

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

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The Boy on the Meat Rack

by Joseph de Búrca 18 December, 2018 0 Comments

A Life Derailed, Part 1 of the Story of Alan Kerr; By Joseph de Burca. INTRODUCTION Alan Kerr was sexually abused by three men at Williamson House, a Belfast Corporation Welfare Department care home in Belfast. He was only six years of age when it started. One of his abusers was Eric Witchell, the Office-in-Charge of the home. Witchell was a friend of both Joe Mains, the infamous paedophile and Warden of Kincora Boys’ Home and William McGrath, the Housefather at Kincora. Alan is the younger brother of Richard Kerr who has featured heavily in Village during the last two years. Alan did not realise he had a brother until he met Richard at Williamson House when he was six. He also met his sister at it and learned that he had another brother, and two other sisters; moreover, that both of his parents were still alive. Later, he was moved to Shore House where he was abused by another two men, one of whom may have been Witchell’s friend, William McGrath. Alan eventually fled from institutional care for a life on the streets of Belfast but it was no more than jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. Having been neglected, groomed and abused throughout his childhood, and finding himself desperate for food and shelter while on the run, he fell into the hands of a network of calculating paedophiles who abused him. At one point in time he was manipulated into working for a while at a brothel off the Lisburn Road where boys as young as 13 were made available to Belfast’s paedophile community. Later again, he was trafficked to Birmingham and thence to London by Billy ‘B’, one of his abusers. Out of desperation and with neither an education nor any sort of a qualification, he would end up being exploited as a ‘rent boy’ at Victoria Station; as a ‘Dilly boy’ on the ‘Meat Rack’ at Piccadilly Circus; and for approximately a year in a brothel in Earl’s Court alongside other boys who were younger than him; possibly even as young as 13 or 14. He also had a bizarre encounter with two members of the Royal Family. Alan’s life in London will be described in the next edition of Village. PART 1: A FOG OF FEAR AT BREFFNI NURSERY 1969-1974. ALAN AGED 0-6 INCARCERATING TODDLERS WHO CRIED AT NIGHT IN A PITCH-BLACK BOILER ROOM Alan Kerr was born on 8 May, 1968, and was taken into care at Breffni Nursery when he was only a few months old, sometime in late 1968 or early 1969. There was a lot of sobbing at night time in Breffni, a care home which catered for infants and pre-school children. Alan recalls how, if a child in the dormitory began to cry out loudly at night, some of the more brutal member of the night staff would put the child in a boiler room, well out of earshot. They were often left for hours alone in the pitch black. Alan often found himself crying because he was surrounded by cold strangers; had no family ‘to love me’; and had to cope with the unrelenting stress of a threatening environment. He too ended up in the boiler room on a number of occasions. He recalls one particular night when two of the night staff marched into the dormitory, hauled him out of bed and carried him to it, then pushed him inside and left him alone in the darkness four hours. PART 2: RAPE AT WILLIAMSON HOUSE 1974-1978. ALAN AGED 6-9 ALAN KERR WAS SEXUALLY ASSAULTED ON HIS FIRST NIGHT AT WILLIAMSON HOUSE. HE WAS ONLY 6 YEARS OLD 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. Alan left Breffni Nursery when he was about six, sometime in 1974, or thereabouts, and took up residence at Williamson House for the next two or three years. He describes it as being ‘worse’ than Breffni. ‘Things did happen there which I still can’t talk about.’ Alan would be abused by men who were not members of the staff at Williamson House; yet more proof of an organised child abuse ring operating in NI at this time. Astonishingly, the existing of a network has been dismissed by a series of lightweight inquiries which were no match for the corresponding heavyweight cover-ups organised by the British Establishment and which have lasted for nearly four decades. The most recent example of this was the mistake riddled Hart Report of January 2017, a document that even manages to contradict itself. ‘The abuse began on my first night at Williamson House when a man climbed into my bunk bed. I didn’t understand what was happening.’ The event was so traumatic, Alan manages to black it out most of the time and certainly prefers not to talk about it. Alan’s brother Richard and his sister were at Williamson House. Prior to his arrival, he had no idea that he had any family. He also discovered he had two other sisters and a brother. Alan, Richard and his sister were together for about a year before Richard was shipped out to Kincora Boys Home, perhaps the most concentrated cesspit of child sex abuse in Ireland at that time. Alan’s sister remained with him at Williamson House. He received his first visit – or at least the first visit he can remember – from his parents at the home. One of Alan’s abusers at Williamson House was Eric Witchell. He was a friend of Joe Mains, the Warden of Kincora, and William McGrath, the Housefather at Kincora. Although Witchell’s title was that of Officer-in-Charge, his responsibilities were confined to one of the two buildings at the institution, each of which was administered separately. Alan was not a resident on Witchell’s wing. Nonetheless, Witchell managed to lure

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THE DUP SKELETONS IN THERESA MAY’S CLOSET

by Joseph de Búrca 23 October, 2018 0 Comments

SIR ANTHONY BLUNT, BRITAIN AND MI5’S ARCH TRAITOR, WORMED HIS WAY BACK INTO THE GOOD BOOKS OF BRITISH INTELLIGENCE BY 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. 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 PAEDOPHILE UNDERWORLD AS BLUNT IN THE MID AND LATE 1970s. 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’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. 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 indication 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 intriguing 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 the Queen’s Court in Bangor. Independent contemporaneous 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 Northern Ireland in the 1970s with official connivance. The Hart Report is littered with factual inaccuracies and has been shredded by commentators. 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 satisfy the venal appetites of the strangers who preyed upon them at them and sometimes in 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 evening. “In those days, there were loads of people over from London. I have always assumed they were senior figures from Whitehall. I certainly heard English accents”, he once revealed. None of the puppet masters in MI5, MI6, the Home Office, the Northern Ireland Office, the Foreign 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 furnished 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 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 February 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

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Suffer little children

by Joseph de Búrca 7 June, 2018 0 Comments

Eric Witchell is a serial paedophile. In the 1970s he ran Williamson House where he preyed on pre-pubescent boys and young teenagers. He and his accomplices drove at least three of them to commit suicide; and another two to attempt it. One of his charges was supplied to Enoch Powell MP, for abuse. A select few were transferred to the notorious Kincora Boys Home when they reached 14 years of age. At Kincora they became fodder for MI5 ‘honey trap’ blackmail operations. THE ENOCH POWELL STORY IS CONTAINED IN PART 2 OF THIS ARTICLE. Part One: Williamson House A WOLF IN A MONK’S HABIT Eric Witchell, a serial paedophile, was a key figure in the Anglo-Irish Vice Ring about which Village has been writing for the last two years. He is currently living in London aged 70, safe in the knowledge that a succession of senior MI5 figures have gone to extraordinary lengths to cover-up what he and his associates did in Belfast, London, Manchester, Liverpool and elsewhere as they – MI5 – benefited from the existence of an Anglo-Irish paedophile network of which he was a key member. In Northern Ireland (NI) MI5 exploited the network to gain leverage over influential Loyalists, including members of the DUP. Witchell, who hailed from England, was born in 1948. He became a Franciscan at the age of 19. Before his appointment to Williamson House, he had been a housefather in an English boys school attached to the Franciscans. He became the Officer-in-Charge (OiC) of Williamson House in May of 1975 at the age of 27. The small boys Witchell abused were abandoned, vulnerable and powerless waifs. A select few were later sent to the notorious Kincora Boys Home where they were used as bait in MI5 ‘honey trap’ blackmail operations. Sir Michael Hanley was Director-General of MI5 at the time. Ian Cameron ran MI5 operations on the ground in NI for Hanley from his office in Lisburn. Witchell betrayed the trust bestowed upon him by Belfast’s child welfare authorities but also by the Anglican Franciscan Order of which he was a member. He was, however, a godsend to Hanley and Cameron. The Williamson House scandal is worse than the outrage at Kincora insofar as younger children were abused at it. Witchell’s sordid branch of the Anglo-Irish Vice Ring supplied very young children to VIPs including Enoch Powell MP. The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) was set up to investigate allegations of child abuse by VIPs including Westminster MPs. There is no indication yet that Witchell will be questioned by IICSA which is based in London despite the fact that Witchell is one of the most important living witness to the existence of a VIP vice ring and lives in London. Witchell did not appear before the Hart Inquiry. Had he done so – and told, or been made to tell, the truth – Judge Hart would have reached a wholly different conclusion to the one he published in 2017. Hart denied the existence of any sort of vice ring beyond the walls of Kincora Boys Home. WHO PAVED THE WAY FOR WITCHELL TO TAKE OVER WILIAMSON HOUSE? Witchell secured the post at Williamson House despite the fact his tutor at the National Children’s Home Training College in England had advised the appointment panel of Belfast‘s Welfare Department that at “this stage I would have some doubt in commending him to be the Officer- in-Charge… I would commend him to you for employment, but I would not commend him to you for employment as Officer-in-Charge”. It was fortuitous for MI5 that Witchell became OiC despite this because he was the vilest sort of paedophile, someone who was prepared to farm out the children in his care to a wider network of child molesters. This suited MI5 because it enabled them to manufacture blackmail opportunities and ensnare Loyalist politicians, paramilitaries and Orangemen and force them to do their bidding. After Witchell became OiC at the home, he moved into an apartment in the attic. It had a TV, sofa, sleeping quarters and a drinks cabinet. This was where he abused the young boys. He would usher his chosen victim upstairs and lock the door behind them. Physically, he was tall, thin and imposing. He wore glasses and had black longish hair. He was an exceptionally cruel and violent man with an insatiable sexual appetite. His preference was for prepubescent boys but he assaulted teenage boys too. His taste ranged from masturbation to anal rape. At least three of his victims would never recover from the assaults he and his associates perpetrated, and committed suicide; another two attempted to kill themselves. Officially, he held the post of OiC at Williamson House until 1 March 1980 but he actually left before then as the RUC and MI5 were losing control of the secrecy surrounding the scandal. WITCHELL’S ACCOMPLICES By the early 1970s MI5 had probably gained control over all of the key figures in the Anglo-Irish Vice Ring including Councillor Joshua (Joss) Cardwell, a Unionist politician and paedophile, who was also Chairman of Belfast Corporation Welfare Committee. The Committee was responsible for both WH, Kincora and other homes in Belfast where sexual violence was commonplace. Cardwell was also a friend of Joe Mains, the Warden of Kincora. Together Cardwell and Mains supplied boys from Kincora to England and Scotland. As Village reported last February, it was Cardwell who instructed Joe Mains to send Richard Kerr, who had been at Williamson House but was now residing at Kincora, to London in the mid-1970s. He was abused by a high-profile TV star there: a man still well known to the public, so much so that his photograph recently appeared in an Irish national daily newspaper. On another occasion, while still at Kincora, Kerr was sent to be abused by a Tory MP in London. Another Kincora boy, Stephen Waring, was also sent to the UK from Kincora. He committed suicide in 1977 by jumping into the sea

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Culture

Songs of Inexperience

by Joseph de Búrca 22 February, 2018 0 Comments

U2 released ‘Songs of Experience’ before Christmas as a companion piece to 2014’s Songs of Innocence. Thematically, ‘Songs of Innocence’ was inspired by the band’s memories of their youth in Dublin in the 1970s with Bono describing it as “the most personal album we’ve written”. ‘Songs of Innocence’ touched upon these memories as perceived four decades on. The chances are slim that U2 will ever release the music they actually recorded in the 1970s – which also explored these themes – but at a time when they were raw and painful. A collection of primitive U2 demos – all recorded before their first official release in September 1979 – has been largely consigned to the vaults. Much to the dismay of avid fans, the black market bootleggers never managed to get their grubby hands on more than a few of them. While they are no astonishing gems in the vaults, the tapes do at least provide a few insights into how the U2 sound evolved. U2’s first demo session was the prize for winning a talent contest in Limerick in March 1978. While snippets from it have been broadcast during radio interviews with the band, the session has remained virtually out of bounds to the bootleggers; and even avid U2 websites profess ignorance about what was recorded. After four decades, Village will now finally – and exclusively – review U2’s first ever recording. The CBS Sessions: ‘They Were Extremely Nervous And No One Was Expecting Miracles’ One of the judges at the Limerick talent contest was Jackie Hayden of CBS Ireland who became a critical figure in U2’s early success. The band’s bass player Adam Clayton felt Hayden “had a bit of flair and he wanted to sign Irish bands. The rest of the companies weren’t interested but he offered the best he could. He actually talked CBS into paying for our first demo tape”. The session took place in April 1978 at Keystone Studios in Dublin. According to Adam, “It was our first time in the studio and I think his first time as producer. He told us to set up as we would for a live show and play the set. It was all done in two-track. He thought that was a good way to do a demo. Then he took the tapes off to London to try to talk them into signing us and they just laughed. The tapes were awful. We didn’t know at the time, we had nothing to compare them with”. Hayden didn’t disagree. “After all”, he has said, “it was their first recording date, they were extremely nervous and no one was expecting miracles”. HANG UP The first song on the CBS session was called Hang Up. Like most of the original compositions, the lyrics evoke teenage angst. On this one Bono pleads on the phone to a soon-to-be ex-girlfriend not to “hang up/time is a cure/time can be found”. UNKNOWN TITLE (possibly SHE’S MY GIRL) The next track is also about teenage yearning but is far more interesting for a hint at how the U2 sound evolved. U2’s guitar player, The Edge, has explained that, “Adam is a very ostentatious sort of person, you know, very extravagant, so when he started playing bass he wasn’t interested in taking the bottom end of the sound spectrum at all. He wanted to be right up there in the mid ranges…In order to give the group any sort of clarity, therefore, I had to stay away from the bottom end of the guitar as much as I could. So, I tended to work around those ringing sounds”. This track displays one of Clayton’s early midspectrum forays. It also features an unremarkable Edge solo in the typical do-it-yourself garage-pub rock style of the time. STREET MISSIONS Another version of this song was eventually released by the bootleggers. This version is not as polished as the later version and the Edge’s contribution is far more restrained here. CONCENTRATION CAMP This song grew to become one of the highlights of U2’s live set in 1979 as they edged closer to a recording contract. It contains a solo courtesy of the Edge and is propelled by a strong bass but is distinguished by Bono’s rapid-fire vocal delivery which is quite unlike any of the other numbers they recorded during the session. The theme is elusive. However, references to “schooldays” suggest that Bono was venting his anger against the educational system. During an interview 1979 he revealed that as a pupil he had reacted against excessive demands for “intelligence in school – everything that it seemed you were not was pushed at you and I had a bit of a heavy reaction against that’. Instead, as he states in this track, he wanted to “live his life tonight”. UNKNOWN TITLE The fourth song is a slow number with vague echoes of Shadows and Tall Trees which appeared on their debut album Boy in 1980. The theme is also dominated by descriptions of life on the streets of Dublin city. INSIDE OUT This forgotten composition, written in 1978, captures U2’s continuing evolution and innovation. It sways on Clayton’s ropey bass. Meanwhile, Bono sings about his feeling that he is “inside out” in the “modern world”. The bootleggers did manage to get a hold of it from tapes of an early radio interview with Bono during which it was afforded an airing. BORN IN THE BACK IN THE STREETS U2 just about stumbles to the end of this track with Bono making excuses: “Doesn’t matter if we make a mess of it, does it?”. They didn’t run through it again so this incomplete version may well be all that remains of this arrangement. Aside from references to being born in the back streets, the lyrics make little sense. Bono admitted in 1979 that: “I never write lyrics until the last minute because they are constantly building as we work out the song. They build subconsciously because I find that