An investigation into a paedophile doctor, who was allowed to continue working with children after his conviction, was blocked on grounds of national security, it has emerged.
A report into the activities of Dr Morris Fraser found that health boards, medical professionals and the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) failed to stop him working in the health service in Northern Ireland, including as a child psychiatrist at Royal Victoria hospital in Belfast.
Fraser was convicted of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old boy in London in 1971. The report, published on Thursday, claims that, despite being aware of this, the RUC failed to act against the doctor.
The report, entitled child abuse, corruption and collusion in Britain and Northern Ireland, claims that due to a series of cover-ups by the authorities, Fraser remained on the medical register after he was again convicted of child abuse in 1974.
It also emerged that freedom of information requests for documents on Fraser were turned down on national security grounds.
His victims included boys sent to Kincora boys’ home in Belfast, where a paedophile ring operated, some of whose members were being blackmailed by MI5 and the RUC.
The report’s author, Dr Niall Meehan from Griffith College in Dublin, said there were suspicions that “he was working for the authorities in some way. People talk about these matters being in the past, but the victims of this abuse are alive – these are matters of the present. Children were abused while the authorities knew that they were being abused.”
Although he was sent to prison for possessing and distributing child abuse images in 1992, Fraser only voluntarily stopped being a doctor three years later.
Richard Kerr, a former Kincora resident, said he had been sent to be assessed by Fraser when he was 12.
On a second visit, while alone in Fraser’s clinic at Royal Victoria hospital, Kerr claims that Fraser told him to take his trousers down.
“For some reason, within a minute, he had some sort of Polaroid camera. He started taking shots. He said not to worry – he’s a doctor. But I felt embarrassed,” he said.
Kerr was subsequently sent to Kincora, where he was later abused by people who ran the institution.
Kincora and its legacy is about to come under the spotlight again in a public inquiry into child abuse across a range of care homes, schools and hospitals in Northern Ireland. One of the key allegations concerning Kincora is that the security forces knew that children were being sexually abused at the home but, in the early 1970s, they blackmailed the abusers to spy on fellow unionists and loyalists.
