1. Faith House – where the future ‘house father’ of Kincora abused boys.
Fewer than 30 boys are thought to have been abused at Kincora whereas one of the abusers, William McGrath, had earlier abused an unknown number, perhaps more than a hundred, and a lesser number of women, at his independent Christian Mission in Belfast called Faith House.
The leader of the mission moved it to the Upper Newtownards Road, which was no longer known as Faith House. The mission, the Christian Fellowship Centre and Irish Emancipation Crusade (CFCIEC), was run by William McGrath of Kincora infamy. The mission title was changed by the early 1960s when the word “Centre” was dropped from the title. This was to prevent parents suing the building, where children from a children’s meeting were sexually abused, so it would be claimed the building was not the mission’s property.
2. The abuse of children by McGrath at Faith House was not investigated.
One simple measure was the primary means of ensuring that Faith House and the security agencies was not investigated. This meant setting the Terms of Reference (TOR) in a way that ensured that Faith House was not investigated.
Judge William Hughes said his investigation was restricted “to the administration of social services in Northern Ireland.” The security services were also excluded by the strict TOR.
3. McGrath’s marriage.
Relatively few boys were abused at Kincora, but a hundred or more are believed to have been abused at Faith House, but the actual number could be even higher. The abuse began after the, or perhaps before, the mission was formed in 1941, but I suspect it had begun even earlier. The mission leader claimed a problem arose when girls became involved, and rumours suggested that boys and girls were engaged in sexual activities there. He claimed he tried to resolve this by having a married couple living at Faith House. He proposed to the girl by letter without a normal countship and she accepted. They were married I understand, before end of the 1940s.
I believe this approach was seen by some holiness Christians as an acceptable way to approach marriage and boys were always discouraged from forming relationships with girls. However, the mission leader was already abusing boys, and I suspect the rumours were actually about boys being sexually abused by the leader of the mission. It made sense for him to marry because it was then assumed that a married man could not be homosexual. Yet the abuse continued for decades at the mission and may have begun before the mission was set up in 1941. All the inquiries into child abuse faced restricted Terms of Reference (TOR), and the mission was deliberately I believe, placed outside the TOR so that Faith House was not investigated despite suspicions that the whole truth had not been told by any of the Inquires. I was also warned by Lawyer Brian Garrett that the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry (HIAI) could not be sued as he said it had privilege like a court.
4. Protected by MI5
The members of the Historical institutional Abuse Inquiry or HIAI, admit their Transcripts and Report that what they recorded was what they were told and was not necessarily true. I suspect the mission leader was protected primarily to shield him, as was of service to one or more intelligence agency, possibly a hardline element in MI5. The real aim may possibly have been to increase sectarian animosity and make Northern Ireland (NI) so ungovernable it could finally be excluded from the UK. Right-wing factions in Intelligence may have thought they were protecting NI but actually they risked undermining it. McGrath had rejected universal civil rights, and in private admitted he wished to prevent Catholics having equal rights. Later he went further and claimed that coexistence was not possible. He used 19th century sources to bolster his view that Catholics were not Christian but, as citizens of a democratic society all citizens should have had the same rights.
The mission claimed its aim was to take the evangelical gospel to the whole Irish people but only two attempts are known to have taken place supposedly to seek the conversion of Catholics in the Irish Republic but only, it seems, by distributing tracts. Even during these trips, one Faith House volunteer told me that McGrath had abused children and young people in the Republic. He did not assault victims, as normally understood, but used a complex rationale in his grooming by claiming he was helping them overcome various real or imaginary problems in their lives and become better Christians. His dubious grooming strategy caused enormous heart-searching and problems for some young Christians. He disguised or managed to hide his abuse by using psychological concepts in what purported to be a Christian mission. He appears to have picked up these during treatment by the Rev Dr William Northridge years earlier, when he said he had been mentored by Northridge.
5. McGrath might have engaged in necrophilia.
On one occasion a volunteer at the mission told me that McGrath’s father-in-law had died and his body brought from England and laid out in a room at Faith House. He then moved everyone from the room but stayed alone with the body for some time. My informant did not suspect anything untoward, but an element of necrophilia may have been involved. Why else did he remain alone with the corpse and move all the others out?
One of the female volunteers had been badly treated but for a time was employed in a shop that McGrath purchased in east Belfast. I was asked to deliver goods to the shop, which I did and while there, the assistant opened up and told me shocking details of what had happened at Faith House where she had run children’s meetings and a number of these were abused by the mission leader.
[1] The word “Centre” was dropped from the title, which I believe was to distance the building from the mission and avoid legal action against the Centre, in which the mission was based. ,