Westminster paedophile scandal: Boys from Kincora were 'playthings for powerful people'

A survivor from the Belfast home believes documents in Westminster shows the Government was linked to child abuse in Northern Ireland.

Clint Massey was a teenager when he was sent to Kincora Boys' Home in east Belfast. He claims he was abused by staff but also by many Englishmen with upper-class accents.

The 57-year-old told Sky News: "I see it as one of the most shameful episodes in Northern Ireland's history. Nobody should think otherwise."

"Young boys from troubled backgrounds who were just put in there to be playthings for powerful people, somebody has to answer for that."

The Northern Ireland home was named in the latest paperwork released from Westminster that shows there were Government files held on the orphanage and more letters have emerged related to prominent figures in Northern Ireland.

This has led to greater pressure to include Kincora to the Child Abuse Inquiry for England and Wales, headed up by Judge Lowell Goddard.

"The local inquiry here in Northern Ireland doesn't have the bite to it - they [Goddard] can command, they can order people to appear, they can order files to be released to them.

"If they give that lady a free hand there will be people in the House of Lords shaking in their cloaks."

What the documents prove is that questions about Kincora were asked and discussed by government officials as far back as the 1980s and 1990s.

The Home Secretary has so far refused to include Kincora in the Westminster-based Goddard inquiry, which could take up to five years before reaching its conclusion.

Amnesty International's Patrick Corrigan told the BBC: "The Northern Ireland Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry (HIA) inquiry headed by Sir Anthony Hart simply does not have the power to compel the production of documents such as these or indeed witnesses from central government to come forward and lay bare what happened at Kincora.

"The Westminster inquiry does have those powers - it is absurd that the government continues to exclude Kincora from that inquiry that actually does have the powers to finally reveal the truth."