I’ll be honest, if you had told me earlier in the year that I would link to Socialist Worker and Pink News in the month of November, I wouldn’t have believed you but I think this is a good summary of the Kincora cover-up. I have been looking into the saga recently. Info is scarce on Wikipedia – Here but it does say “The tabloid press then linked the home with a whole series of establishment figures without any evidence being provided.” However, there is also no evidence that any public figure ever sued for libel for these public accusations. I’ve searched in vain for these tabloid allegations. I can only assume that the names mentioned online are the echoes of these original stories from the tabloid press of the 1970s. If anyone has a copy of the original newspaper allegations, I’d be grateful if you could send them to me.
Socialist Worker looks back at child abuse at Kincora Boys’ Home. The cover-up went to the heart of the establishment, as do scandals today
The Kincora Boys’ Home in Belfast was opened in 1958. The home’s warden Joe Mains at once started to abuse the boys in his care. Mains recruited Raymond Semple and William McGrath in the 1970s and they joined in the daily brutal abuse.
The assaulted boys tried to bring the abuse to the attention of the authorities, including the police and the press, who failed them utterly.
People in authority knew what was going on because military intelligence officer Colin Wallace blew the whistle.
Wallace told his superiors what was happening and even put out a press release in early 1973. It stated that William McGrath was using “a non-existent evangelical mission as a front” for paedophilia. He supplied the address and phone number.
No newspaper followed this obvious lead, despite the press usually running Wallace’s propaganda briefings unedited
More at – Source
I’d just like to take this opportunity of thanking those readers who Tweet and Facebook my articles. I’m not on Twitter or Facebook myself and I’m very grateful for your help in this area.
theneedleblog 
HiHi vicstats
December 22, 2015 at 10:23 pm
Thank you for the correction.
You must realise that my memories are from June 1960 at Glendhu, from September 1960 to about June 1961 at Williamson House, and from June 11961 to around March 1962 at Bawnmore.
I had never discussed the subject with anyone in N Ireland up until the time I let for London, in November 1972, never to return to Belfast, not even for my own father’s funeral.
Do you remember the English couple who came to take over Williamson House, a few months before we moved to Bawnmore? Mr and Mrs Smith?
Do you remember ‘Jimmy the gardener’ from Glendhu and then did the garden at Bawnmore?
There was an outbreak of dysentery at Glendhu and most of the kids caught it, including me. I was taken to Purdysburn Infirmary for two weeks and then to Williamson House.
Joseph Mains may not have owned the brand new, pale blue, Ford Anglia, but he was one of the passengers. There was another boy who was with me.
The girls were in the south side of Williamson House but we weren’t allowed to mix with them. The boys were in the north side of the large semi-detached house, which is now a derelict site.
The same perpetrator who attacked me was caught with one of the girls from next door in the bushes at the bottom of the drive, around January 1961, that’s when they may have moved the girls out. He was the oldest boy there at the time. He may have been only 15 but I never saw him much after that, because he may have turned 16 and been sent to live at Kincora which I believe he frequented?
Lots of rumours went around Bawnmore about Kincora: Boys allowed to smoke and drink, and have sex… But it doesn’t mean very much to a boy like me who was, until that point, brought up in a very ‘sheltered’ naïve lifestyle with 4 younger siblings by a father who was a religious zealot, a Jehovah’s Witness, and a mother who was a secular Catholic.
It must have been Joseph Mains who turned up at Glendhu in his B Special uniform with the Webley 45 in a big leather holster. The same man who interrogated me in the right hand side, front room of Kincora House, if you are looking at it from the front.
Paul
Pingback: IS SOMEONE OUT FOR REVENGE?? | Psalm79:9+10
Joseph Mains received 6 years in prison for his part in the Kincora abuse case .. His brother (neatly airbrushed out of any reports then or since) was Thomas James Mains, Head Constable of the RUC CID Unit in Londonderry and in 1966 he received the Queens Police Medal ..
While he was a serving police officer he visited Kincora ..
Joseph Mains travelled alot and he took boys from the home with him, which he abused, on these trips ..
The boys were threatened with physical harm & to being sectioned for being disruptive to Purdisburn Mental Hospital ..
He had formally been a charge nurse at Purdisburn Mental Hospital and therefore had contacts which enabled him to do this .. There is evidence that it was reported that he abused patients at this hospital prior to taking up his post of Warden of Kincora in 1958 ..
The main reason why the truth about Kincora was able to be supressed was that all the perpetrators that were charged, pleaded guilty and were quickly convicted resulting in there being no need to call or hear in open court the harrowing evidence from any of the victims ..
It is worth noting that both the perpetrators & the investigators were all members of the Orange Order ..
Joseph Mains was a member of the B Specials at that time .. This part time auxilliary police force, noted for it’s brutality & corruption was later disbanded ..
Joseph Mains recommended both of his fellow abusers, Semple & McGrath, who had no formal training in social care for adolescents for their employment at Kincora ..
As a victim of abuse in Kincora and a plaintif in Hughes Inquiry I am agrieved that I have never been allowed to give detailed evidence of my experiences at the hands of Joseph Mains .. It was very clear that they wanted to expeditiously bury this story ..
I was in Kincora from 1958 – 1963 ..
I am in possession of substantial documentation in relation to this case ..
Why not put it online? It’s clearly impossible to get a fair hearing in court, so why keep it hidden where no-one will ever know of it. I’m a victim of programming and mind control, and trying to expose these paedophile rings as a bridge to the programming world. All the best to you, and justice will be served.
Dear Hugh,
I was in Glendhu House, Hollywood Road, in 1960, when I recall a big B Special officer arriving to sit in the kitchen and chat up the female staff members of the children’s home.. I remember that he carried a Webley 45 (looking like a cannon to an 8 year old). Later I bumped into him at Wilson House when he and McGrath turned up to take me off for the day around the Glens of Antrim, in a brand new pale blue Ford Anglia.. After that I was taken back to Kincora for an interrogation full of sexual innuendo (entirely above my head). A couple of months previously, a 16 year old boy in Wilson House, who regularly visited Kincora attempted to rape me in front fo a bedroom with 5 other boys cheering him on. Not sure who to contact over this episode?
•”Till at last the child’s mind is these suggestions, and the sum of the suggestions is the child’s mind. And not the child’s mind only. The adult’s mind too – all his life long. The mind that judges and desire and decides – made up of these suggestions. But all these suggestions are our suggestions… Suggestions from the State.”
– Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Ch. 2
Hi Edward
I think you may have some of your facts wrong
1st it was Williamson house 446/448 Antrim road
not Wilson house
2nd joe mains had a black morris minor he never
had a ford Anglia
3rd there where no boys or girls in Williamson house
at the age of 16 when you left school at 15 in the 1960s
you also left Williamson house or Bawnmore where I was
and either went into Kincora or went back to your own home
if you had one
4th Mc Grath never came on the scene until sometime
in the early 70s I was in Kincora from 1965 to 1968
and I have never heard of him until the scandal broke
And also for Hugh Quinn I think Joe Mains brother was called
Kenneth Mains he owned a shop on the comber road Dundonald
after he retired from the police but I am not entirely sure as he
may have had other brothers
Many thanks Vicstats.
Are you involved with the high court case or the Hart Inquiry ?
email me if you prefer > gojam57@gmail.com
Reading your post and the wikipedia entry again, you could interpret the wikipedia phrase as meaning that the tabloid allegations occured AFTER the 1999 book was published! This would mean that you need to look at a much more accessible date period. Take another look.
For about 7 quid, you could access most of the tabloidy stuff from that period. Here:
http://www.ukpressonline.co.uk/ukpressonline/open/services.jsp;jsessionid=8BFEA0A1B6845A791B0BFCA10A75C287
http://newsstore.fairfax.com.au/apps/viewDocument.ac;jsessionid=6CBF575DCB61A6C679C328DC082C58D0?page=1&sy=smh&kw=Kincora&pb=all_ffx&dt=selectRange&dr=entire&so=relevance&sf=text&sf=headline&rc=10&rm=200&sp=adv&clsPage=1&docID=news900203_0047_1079
Again, not quite the articles you are seeking, but background from abroad. .Above top secret website references many articles in Irish Times. Sadly without a subscription I can’t delve further there. Will keep looking
Not quite the answer you are seeking – but interesting chronology.
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/othelem/chron/ch82.htm
Echoes of Ken Livingstone’s maiden speech. Spooks and blackmail re Northern Ireland seem to be linked to abuse
Further background from The Lobster………. need to scroll thro
Click to access lobster04.pdf
Gives some ref’s to Sunday News and The Phoenix
Thanks Anna,
Every bit helps.
Ideally, I’m looking for the original print press allegations from national tabloids. Unfortunately, Google archive doesn’t have the most likely candidates for the time period.
Pop down to your local library and use their ‘newsbank’- an internet resource licensed to them- it’s a database of UK and global news articles going back years…