A man who was allegedly sexually abused as a teenager when staying at the Kincora Boys' Home in east Belfast said he hoped the inquiry into the home will prove there was an official cover-up of the abuse.
Clint Massey, who is due to give evidence next week, waived his right to anonymity. He said he was in care at Kincora as a 16-year-old in 1973 when he was allegedly abused.
While sexual abuse at the home is acknowledged, the inquiry is also investigating whether prominent people such as politicians, police officers, civil servants and legal figures abused boys from Kincora either in the home or brought them to hotels and other places within the general area to be abused.
Mr Massey said some members of Kincora staff abused him and he could not help the inquiry into wider allegations that establishment figures used some boys as male prostitutes.
Nonetheless, he believed there was a cover-up and hoped it would be exposed by the inquiry. “The state used us in their dirty war. We were expendable. They had a big picture and we were nobodies in it. We were what would be described now as collateral damage, and that is what we were.”
Investigation
The inquiry chairman Sir
Anthony Hart
said the Royal
Ulster
Constabulary, MI6, MI5, the British ministry of defence, the
Northern Ireland
Office and the
Belfast County Borough Welfare Committee
and Department, and its successor, the Eastern Health and Social Services Board, would be investigated.
Organisations such as the PSNI, MI5 and MI6, the Ministry of Defence and the NIO have legal representation at the inquiry. It is not yet clear whether anyone from MI5 or MI6 will give evidence to the inquiry.
Sir Anthony said the inquiry would investigate whether members of these organisations or bodies knew of the abuse, what they knew, when they knew, what they did with any knowledge they had, and what they should have done with that knowledge.
“There is a suggestion in this case that children in Kincora were abused and prostituted in order to satisfy the interests of national security. If that is true it must be exposed,” said Sir Anthony.
“As a society we must not repeat the errors of the institutions and should remember our obligations to the children. If the suggestion is not true the rumour and suspicion surrounding this should be allayed,” he added.
Evidence
Sir Anthony also referred to how
Roy Garland
, a former
Ulster Unionist Party
member and
Irish News
columnist who was involved in initially helping to expose the abuse at Kincora, had declined a request to give evidence to this inquiry.
He also referred to two former British intelligence officers, Colin Wallace and Brian Gemmell, who had also made allegations about abuse at Kincora, but who also declined to give evidence to the inquiry.
Sir Anthony said it was believed Mr Garland, Mr Wallace and Mr Gemmell could give “relevant evidence” to the inquiry. “We are not dependent upon their evidence, and their refusal to co-operate or answer our questions will not prevent us from carrying out our investigations,” he said.
“Nevertheless, if even at this late stage any of them decides to assist the inquiry by providing answers to the questions we have asked, the inquiry will enable them to do so and involve them in the inquiry as core participants,” he added.
Sir Anthony noted that concerns had been expressed by some that the ability of this inquiry to investigate matters relating to Kincora was handicapped by the absence of powers of compulsion. “The inquiry has powers of compulsion which it does not hesitate to rely on if necessary,” he said.
