Come and face me: victim of self-confessed paedophile challenges abuser to return to NI
A SELF-CONFESSED paedophile has been challenged to meet one of the boys he abused almost 50 years ago in a Belfast care home.
Billy Brown was just 12-yearsold when he was abused by Henry Clarke in 1968.
Clarke, who now lives in Canada, was tracked down by BBC reporter Kevin Magee after clues to his identity were revealed at the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry sitting at Banbridge.
Clarke confessed his crimes to the RUC in the 1980s, but was never prosecuted for sex attacks on three boys in care homes — one of them Billy Brown.
Instead, he was allowed to return to Canada, where he had built a new life as a church pastor.
Speaking to the BBC’s Nolan Show yesterday, Mr Brown, now 61, called on Clarke to return to Northern Ireland to face justice for his crimes.
“You’ve admitted it — just jump on the plane and come home yourself, face the music, come and face me”, Mr Brown said.
“I’m not hiding from him any more, I’m not scared.”
Mr Brown told the programme that he was angry with Northern Ireland’s Public Prosecution Service (PPS) and the police for their failure to bring his abuser to justice. He said: “Why was I left in the dark all them years, going through alcoholism, taking drugs, trying to kill myself ?
“He shouldn’t have been able to leave this country to get to Canada.
“I want him prosecuted — if others have got jailed, why not him?”
The PPS has told the BBC it was concerned that the police did not at the time forward evidence to the Director of Public Prosecutions.
Now the PPS has written to the PSNI’s Chief Constable, requesting that the information given to police by Clarke in 1985 be handed over.
Jim Gamble, a former senior officer with the PSNI and now a leading child protection expert, said he doesn’t understand why Clarke wasn’t prosecuted
“You had an admission, so you didn’t have... to worry that the allegation was old, and the evidence may be stale”, he said.
“You had a contemporary admission. And given that, I don’t understand why he wasn’t prosecuted.”
Clarke, who is now 75, told the BBC he had never abused any children since he emigrated to live in Canada.