A BELFAST court will hear allegations this week that Lord Louis Mountbatten abused a boy at a notorious Belfast children’s home in the 1970s.
Arthur Smyth, a former resident of the Kincora home, has waived his anonymity to make allegations against the uncle of King Charles III, once a father figure and mentor to the new King.
Mr Smyth’s solicitor, Kevin Winters, said the allegations would form part of a civil action against state bodies responsible for the care of children in Kincora. He said he had filed a summons which was to be issued in the High Court in Belfast yesterday (Tuesday).
Lord Mountbatten’s murder came at the height of the Troubles and involved a Fermanagh victim.
Paul Maxwell (15), from Enniskillen, was working as a boat boy in the Co Sligo village of Mullaghmore when an IRA bomb exploded on Lord Mountbatten’s Shadow V fishing boat on August 27, 1979.
The bomb killed him along with the Queen’s cousin, Lord Mountbatten, and his 14-year-old grandson Nicholas Knatchbull.
The Dowager Lady Brabourne died the day after the attack and Nicholas’ twin brother, Timmy, his father, and mother Patricia and John Brabourne were seriously injured.
Mountbatten and his family spent time at their castle, Classiebawn, in Sligo, every summer and the boat trip was a regular holiday outing for them.
Mr Smyth, who now lives in Australia, told the Sunday Life newspaper he had been abused by Lord Mountbatten in 1977 but only realised who he was two years later from news reports after his murder.
“Central to the case is our client’s allegations of abuse by the late Lord Louis Mountbatten,” his solicitor Mr Winters said.
“He alleges to have been abused twice as an 11-year-old by the deceased royal.
“It’s the first time that someone has stepped forward to take allegations against Lord Mountbatten into a court.”
“He understands only too well that it will be a deeply unpopular case with many people coming as it does within weeks of the passing of the Queen.”
A public inquiry into historical abuse at a series of institutions took place in 2017. It found that 39 boys had been abused over the years at Kincora, and children there had been let down by the state.
Three former Kincora staff were jailed in 1981 for abusing 11 boys. They have since died.
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