Kincora: Britain's Shame by Chris Moore - Strong and unnerving, some accounts linger like a bad taste
Kincora: Britain's Shame
Author
:
Chris Moore
ISBN-13
:
9781785375545
Publisher
:
Merrion Press
Guideline Price
:
€19.99
When Chris Moore started working as a journalist with the
BBC
in 1979, one of his first assignments was to report on sexual abuse of boys at the
Kincora Boys' Home
on the Newtownards Road in
Belfast
.
That home was being run by three men, Joseph Mains, Raymond Semple and William McGrath, who were convicted of raping boys in their care.
But from an early stage there were indications that the story was much wider than the predations of these three horrors. McGrath was the leader of an eccentric loyalist paramilitary group called Tara, which was interested in reviving Irish identity among Protestants with a view to uniting Ireland inside the
UK
.
He was an evangelical preacher with a theology which endorsed his homosexual interests. Hadn't there been loving relationships between men in the Bible? Think Jesus and John.
READ MORE
McGrath's political connections raised suspicion that men in his wider circle were abusing children at Kincora too and, further, that the security services had an interest in suppressing the story and curtailing Moore's investigations.
Moore is now in his 70s and an independent researcher and writer, free of some of the constraints he believes the BBC imposed on him. And remarkably, he has stayed with this story and travelled the world to meet the men whose lives were tarnished by McGrath and others.
Much of Moore's approach is to extrapolate from evidence and in cases his extrapolations are strong and unnerving. There was interference from MI5. McGrath was an agent. MI5's interest was in exploring the connections between unionist politicians and loyalist paramilitaries.
There are compelling witness accounts here of boys being taken from the home to servicemen with secret lives, most notably Lord
Louis Mountbatten
, identified retrospectively by boys as their abuser from his picture on television after he was blown up in his boat by the
IRA
at Mullaghmore in 1979.
The book also reminds us of a time when McGrath's homosexuality was treated as criminal and sinful. The account of him being subjected on police orders to the discredited anal dilation test is one that, once read, lingers like a bad taste.
But a word to his publisher: a book like this should have end notes and an index.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Irish Times
4 hours ago
- Irish Times
Brentford agree potential £18m deal to sign Caoimhín Kelleher from Liverpool
Brentford have agreed a deal with Liverpool to sign Republic of Ireland international Caoimhín Kelleher for a deal worth up to £18 million (€21.4 million), it is understood. A reported initial fee of £12.5 million (€14.8 million) for the second-choice Liverpool goalkeeper can rise to £18 million if performance-related requirements are met. Kelleher, who has a year left on his contract at Anfield, played over a quarter of the champions' Premier League matches this season when Alisson Becker was injured. His move away from the Merseyside club has been heavily reported, with Giorgi Mamardashvili joining the club in July after Liverpool confirmed the signing of the Valencia goalkeeper last summer. READ MORE Kelleher's switch to west London comes as 31-year-old Bees goalkeeper Mark Flekken is set to join Bundesliga side Bayer Leverkusen. The transfer is the first of what is set to be a busy window at Community Stadium, with 20-goal winger Bryan Mbuemo expected to leave the club.
Irish Times
12 hours ago
- Irish Times
My mother's plan to leave her house to my sister and I could create more problems than solutions
My mother's will currently leaves her home equally to my sister and I. My mother has minimal alternative assets. My sister lives with my mum. I am wondering if the home is left jointly to myself and my sister and my sister buys me out, will she be liable for CAT on her portion of the inheritance? it is unlikely for my sister to be able to raise the funds to cover the market value of 50 per cent of the property . Although I myself have a sizeable mortgage and significant dependents, it is not in my interest to see my sister and her children homeless . Furthermore I have doubts on how practical it would be for my sister to vacate the property if it was needed to be sold to execute the will. READ MORE I am concerned that I end up with a large liability from an asset that, in reality, I have no access to or ability to sell. Is it possible to say during the probate period that I don't want 50 per cent of the property, can I just have 25 per cent, and if so what are the tax implications? Ms BW Families are complicated things – deeply intertwined, generally emotionally interdependent and, for all the familiarity, inevitably unique one from the other in subtle ways. And that's very much how it is here. Your mother's home is more or less the sum total of what she will leave behind and she is understandably keen that it should be shared between her two children. The fact that your sister lives there with her own family is, somewhat depressingly, no longer as unusual as we would like to think it should be. Bad luck in love, in business or in life means many of us are not as independent as we would have expected to be well into our adult lives. But it does certainly complicate things. There seem to be two distinct issues here – the initial inheritance and then how you two can find a workable solution. As of now, a person can receive an inheritance of up to €400,000 from their parents. Assuming neither of you inherited from your father or benefited from a valuable financial or other gift – something over the value of €3,000 in any one year – then you have the full inheritance tax-free limit to play with. So, as long as your mother's property is not worth more than €800,000, there should be no question of capital acquisitions tax (CAT), better known as inheritance tax, for either of you. [ Inheritance tax: How to avoid leaving your loved ones with a hefty bill Opens in new window ] If it is worth more than that, however, then you will have a tax liability – 33 per cent of anything above your personal limit. So if the property is worth, say, €950,000, your half share would be worth €475,000. You would pay 33 per cent tax on the €75,000 of value above your tax-free threshold – a bill of €24,750 each. Unless you both have ready access to that sort of cash, then you would be looking at having to sell the property and paying the tax owed. Your sister would have a net €450,000 to go and find a home thereafter and you would have your inheritance in cash of the same amount with no further tax owing on it. But let's assume the property is worth less than €800,000. What then? In simple terms, congratulations, you are joint owners of your mother's house. If you simply retain your interest in the house as an asset, there is no issue. When it is eventually sold, you will receive half the proceeds and your only 'liability' will be that any increase in value over the time you inherited it will be subject to capital gains tax – again at 33 per cent. There would need to be agreement between you and your sister, preferably in writing, that any running costs, regular maintenance, utility bills, local property tax etc would be met by her as they are her living costs, not yours. But what if your own financial circumstances dictate that you really need to get access to your inheritance or some of it? You say your sister would most likely not qualify for a mortgage to buy out your half: perhaps she could buy out a smaller portion, leaving you with reduced ownership of the property and some cash in hand. That would not leave her with any tax issues apart from a modest stamp duty bill. And, as it will be her family home, there will be no tax issues when she eventually sells it either. You could agree a staged purchase of your share over an extended period to make it more affordable to her. That would complicate things for you as each stage could trigger a capital gains charge if the gain on the portion being sold was greater than €1,270 in any one year. And there would also be stamp duty implications. Or you could agree to sell the house provided your sister is happy that her share of the sale proceeds would allow her to buy a home elsewhere or the wherewithal to raise a mortgage on a smaller home. How practical that is really depends on how much value there is in this current family home. In a world where you, understandably, do not want your sister and her family homeless, the realistic options are to sit on your inheritance and consider it an invested asset, get your sister to buy a portion of your share or agree to sell the property and use the proceeds for her to start again. You say your mother's 'current will'. I am assuming then that she is still alive. If this looks like becoming an intractable mess but you think your sister could raise enough to buy you out of a quarter share – and you are content that the inheritance will be lopsided according to your respective needs – you can always see if your mother is open to adjusting her will. Obviously, the choice is hers. [ Who gets the house: have you spoken to your parents about happens when they die? Opens in new window ] Can such cases end up in legal dispute? Yes, they can where one side wants to sell and the other refuses. But, really, the only winners in that scenario are the lawyers. Finally, on your suggestion that you might just say during probate that you only want a quarter of the house, not a half, I'm afraid that won't work. It is possible to 'disclaim' an inheritance – ie, say that you do not want it – but you cannot disclaim and then try to rewrite the will to say I don't want all of this, just some of this or a bit of that. If it is a bequest – ie, half the property has specifically been left to you by name – and you disclaim, it falls into the residue of the will. Now, it could be that you are one of the benefits of the residue, in which case you might have to disclaim again. Disclaiming a bequest and/or the residue would not prevent you accepting any other specific bequest that was made in your favour – such as for a favoured piece of art or jewellery, for instance. But it would rule you out of any benefit from any of the residue – including any of the house your mother intended to leave you half of. You cannot say, for instance, I would like only a quarter and not a half. There is one way this could work for you, depending on how your mother's will is worded. As it is, you and your sister are getting 50 per cent each of the house. Assuming that is by bequest, you can disclaim the bequest. Your share then falls into the residue – assuming there is a residuary clause in the will. There really should be in every will, if only to account for forgotten assets, but it is not always the case. Anyway, assuming there is a residue and it is again split evenly between you and your sister, she will get half of your half, leaving you with 25 per cent ownership. In terms of tax implications, whether it is a quarter or a half will have no effect as long as the value of what you receive is under €400,000. However, if this arrangement meant your sister got 75 per cent of the house and that portion was valued at more than €400,000, she would face a bill of 33 per cent of everything above that figure. That could, of course, force her to sell the house anyway which would defeat the object of the exercise. So you really do need to think this through carefully, and ideally get professional advice. The one thing you don't want is this gift from your mum leading to family discord. Please send your queries to Dominic Coyle, Q&A, The Irish Times, 24-28 Tara Street Dublin 2, or by email to with a contact phone number. This column is a reader service and is not intended to replace professional advice
Irish Times
15 hours ago
- Irish Times
Wokeness is on the wane almost everywhere
Some say there's no such thing as wokeness. Others accept there might be such a thing but it's just an abusive right-wing jibe at those who have a sincere commitment to social justice. Others again say wokeness does exist and that it's a rigidly moralising form of left-wing identity politics. And there are those who believe that the word accurately describes everything irritating in modern life, from cycle lanes to health warnings on wine bottles. Lately there have been signs that, whatever your stand on wokeness, it's on the wane. Centre-left parties in different countries are wondering why they've lost the support of the working class, with many blaming an undue deference to a set of esoteric ideas about gender and race that those voters often find alienating or irrelevant. Even in Ireland, a place in thrall to extreme wokeness if you believe the right-wing UK and US media, last year's defeat of the family and care referendums suggested the alleged fever might indeed be breaking. Most critics define wokeness as a postmodern form of left-wing politics that rejects traditional Enlightenment values as being imperialist, patriarchal and Eurocentric. Now, though, a new phenomenon has emerged: the 'woke right' mimics many of the tactics of the 'woke left' that it claims to oppose. Its emergence offers a new perspective on the original idea of wokeness: if its methods and mindset can be so easily mirrored by those with opposite political aims, then perhaps the approach itself is fundamentally flawed. READ MORE [ 'Woke' keeps coming up in elections but it is a meaningless insult Opens in new window ] Like its progressive alter ego, the woke right claims that words are dangerous, and that vulnerable groups must be protected from them. Like its opponents, it deploys the language of psychotherapy to justify itself. In Florida, under a 2022 law written using terminology that uncannily recalls words previously used to justify 'safe spaces' on college campuses, schools are now banned from teaching anything about historical racism in the US that could make students 'feel guilt, anguish or other forms of psychological distress'. This in a former slave state where legal segregation continued until the late 1960s. Meanwhile, since coming to power, the Trump administration has shown more enthusiasm for enforcing language codes than the most radical cultural-studies theorist, running word searches through every official document and excising blasphemies such as 'diversity' and 'inclusion' wherever they occur, often with ludicrous results. And mobilisation tactics usually associated with left-wing activism such as boycotts and cancellations have been enthusiastically taken up by protesters objecting to LGBT-friendly messaging by brands such as Bud Light and Target. The woke right defines itself as an oppressed minority, subjugated and silenced by an elite liberal consensus. But its supposed commitment to free speech is skin-deep and its hypocrisy knows no bounds. JD Vance lectures Europeans about US tech companies' right to free speech in their countries, while his own government runs ideologically driven checks on the social-media accounts of US visa applicants. Unlike their left-wing counterparts, woke right-wingers don't have the intellectual ballast of decades of unreadable doctoral theses to bolster their claims. Some of their actions, such as bringing Afrikaner farmers as refugees to the US – are simply provocations designed to troll the libs. But others take the successful activist playbook of the past 10 years and put it to their own use. And both movements share a postmodern antipathy to the idea that there can be any such a thing as empirical truth. Rather than embracing free inquiry and institutional neutrality, both sides now use institutional power as a weapon in culture war battles. In doing so they validate the idea that might makes right, rejecting liberal democratic ideals. [ The Irish Times view on Trump's war on woke: an unwarranted interference Opens in new window ] Some on the left will argue that drawing such parallels is unfair or downright false because progressives are motivated by admirable humanitarian goals while the reactionary right clearly is not. As a letter writer to The Irish Times put it recently , 'progressive values are not censorship,' seemingly oblivious to the fact that they can be and it just depends on how they're applied. The idea that if your ends are justified (which in itself should be open to debate) then your means will be too does not have a happy history. One reason the ideological extreme right is in a position to instrumentalise these tactics so effectively is because the institutions it attacks had already ceded the high ground. Consider the disastrous performances of the heads of some of America's most prestigious universities when brought before a hostile congressional committee last year to defend themselves against accusations of tolerating anti-Semitism on their campuses. Their wan attempts to defend the speech rights of pro-Palestinian demonstrators were fatally undermined by their colleges' long records of failing to do the same for perspectives that had been deemed unacceptably heterodox by students and faculty alike. An early casualty of the emergence of the woke right is likely to be the marriage of convenience that had developed in recent years between some anti-woke conservatives and anti-woke liberals concerned about the rise of intolerant groupthink in universities, the media and the wider culture. Australian journalist Claire Lehman, for example, whose magazine Quillete was a flagship of this uneasy coalition for its dissections of the excesses of the progressive establishment, now finds herself disowned by part of it for her criticism of Trumpism. Both critiques are grounded in exactly the same principles. At its worst, woke leftism demands conformity to an ever-evolving set of progressive values. Those who question or fall short of these values, even inadvertently, are often publicly shamed or ostracised as racists or bigots. The woke right has adopted a nearly identical posture: conservatives who do not conform to its own orthodoxies on gender and race are dismissed as traitors, RINOs (Republicans in name only) or globalist shills. This growing trend of ideological absolutism across the spectrum undermines reasoned debate. Both the woke left and right encourage in-group loyalty and out-group hostility, fostering a culture of mutual suspicion and self-censorship. When disagreement becomes synonymous with moral failure, democracy suffers, and open discourse retreats.
