Amnesty International has welcomed a decision in Belfast's High Court today to allow a victim of child abuse at Kincora Boys' Home to judicially review the UK Government’s decision to exclude the home from the Westminster child abuse inquiry.

The judicial review will take place over three days from Monday 1 June.

Gary Hoy, who was abused by two of the men who were subsequently convicted, is taking legal action to force a full independent inquiry with the power to compel witnesses and the security services to hand over documents. The government has so far refused calls for the paedophile abuse scandal at the Belfast home to be included within the scope of the Westminster inquiry established by Home Secretary Theresa May and headed by New Zealand judge Lowell Goddard.

Today’s case heard allegations that MI5 was involved in covering up the sexual abuse of children in order to protect an intelligence-gathering operation it ran in the 1970s.

Last week the Commons Home Affairs Committee also recommended that Kincora be included within the scope of the Westminster inquiry. The government is yet to respond.

Amnesty International’s Northern Ireland Programme Director Patrick Corrigan, who attended today’s Court hearing, said:

“It’s the right decision, but it’s wrong that the victims are being made to fight at every stage, just to get their case into the inquiry.

“The victims were failed and abandoned in the seventies; they should not be left out again now.

“The claims that MI5 turned a blind eye to child abuse and actively blocked a police investigation while using the paedophile ring for its own intelligence-gathering purposes so obviously need to be part of the wider inquiry.

“Nothing less than a full public inquiry - with all the powers of compulsion which that brings - can finally reveal what happened at Kincora and the role the security services may have played in the abuse of these vulnerable boys.

“The government should move swiftly to bring the Kincora investigation within the scope of Justice Goddard’s inquiry.”

Background

Three senior care staff at the east Belfast children’s home were jailed in 1981 for abusing 11 boys, but it is feared that there were many more victims and abusers during the period 1960 to 1980. Allegations have persisted that a paedophile ring at Kincora was linked to the British intelligence services. Two former military intelligence officers have alleged that the security services blocked police investigation into the child abuse in the 1970s.