MI5 Covered Up Child Sex Abuse At Belfast Care Home

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MI5 Covered Up Child Sex Abuse At Belfast Care Home

MI5 security service deliberately covered up the sexual abuse of boys at the Kincora children’s home, a former Army Intelligence officer claimed last night.

Brian Gemmell, a former captain in Britain’s Intelligence Corps, said security service chiefs at MI5 ordered him to “stop digging” when he reported  his suspicions of a pedophile ring at the Kincora home for boys in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Gemmell spoke out during a meeting with child abuse victim Richard Kerr in an exclusive Channel 4 News interview. Kerr  had been sent to the Belfast care home in the mid-1970s at age 15

RT reports: Kerr said he and two other boys were abused in Kincora in the mid-1970s, trafficked to London in 1977 and subsequently molested by a number of “very powerful” members of a Westminster pedophile ring.

He claims he was sexually abused by British politicians and senior establishment figures at a luxury Dolphin Square apartment in Westminster, and also at Elm Guest House in west London. Both locations are being investigated by Scotland Yard, following allegations that a Conservative MP murdered a young boy.

Campaigners battling for justice for victims of child abuse argue that Kerr’s account provides evidence of a concrete link between powerful pedophile rings that operated in Belfast in London during the 1970s.

MI5 has long been the subject of allegations it concealed child abuse to enable the gathering of intelligence on Loyalist MPs during the troubles in Northern Ireland. But it has also come under fire for suppressing evidence of child sex abuse in a bid to protect powerful establishment figures responsible for these crimes.

Gemmell, who was a military intelligence officer in Belfast during the 1970s, submitted a report examining claims of child abuse at Kincora to a senior MI5 officer in 1975. Much to his surprise, however, he was instructed to abandon the investigation.

Speaking on Channel 4 News, Gemmell apologized directly to Kerr.

“That’s the thing that hits me – that if I really pushed the thing through, you could have been rescued. I’m sorry,” he said.

Gemmell said Kerr’s perspective provides evidence of a link between the historic pedophile rings that operated in Belfast and London.

“I think Richard’s transporting over to the United Kingdom mainland to be abused, rather than just being abused in Northern Ireland, speaks volumes. It ties the two together,” he said.

MI5 has previously been accused of covering up allegations of child abuse against Liberal MP Cyril Smith after they surfaced in the 1960s, the 1970s and the 1980s. The MP died in 2010.

Revelations stemming from Kerr’s account of the abuse will likely add weight to calls for allegations regarding Kincora to be included in the scope of Britain’s judge-led abuse inquiry.

The inquiry is set to examine whether state and public bodies such as governments, the Church, charities and the BBC failed in their duty to protect children. It was sparked by allegations a powerful pedophile ring operated in Westminster during the 1980s.

The investigative probe, spearheaded by New Zealand High Court judge Justice Lowell Goddard, will likely have access to historic MI5 files.

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