PIE was set up as a special interest group within the Scottish Minorities Group by founder member Michael Hanson, who became the group's first Chairman.
Since the majority of enquiries were from England, PIE relocated to London in 1975 where 23-year old Keith Hose became its new Chairperson.
Paedophile Action for Liberation had developed as a breakaway group from South London Gay Liberation Front. It was the subject of an article in the Sunday People, which dedicated its front page and centre-spread to the story. The result was intimidation of, and loss of employment for, some of those who were exposed. It later merged with PIE.[1]
This exposé on PAL had a chilling effect on PIE members' willingness for activism. In the PIE Chairperson's Annual Report for 1975-6, Keith Hose wrote that 'The only way for PIE to survive, was to seek out as much publicity for the organization as possible.... If we got bad publicity we would not run into a corner but stand and fight. We felt that the only way to get more paedophiles joining PIE... was to seek out and try to get all kinds of publications to print our organization's name and address and to make paedophilia a real public issue.'
A campaign to attract media attention was not effective at that time, but Hose's attendance at the 1975 annual conference of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE) in Sheffield, where he made a speech on paedophilia, was covered at length in The Guardian.
In the same year Hose also attended a conference organized by Mind, the national mental health organization, where it was suggested that PIE should submit evidence to the Home Office Criminal Law Revision Committee on the age of consent. PIE submitted a 17-page document in which it proposed that there should be no age of consent, and that the criminal law should concern itself only with sexual activities to which consent is not given, or which continue after prohibition by a civil court.
PIE was set up to campaign for an acceptance and understanding of paedophilia by producing controversial documents. But its formally defined aims also included giving advice and counsel to paedophiles who wanted it, and providing a means for paedophiles to contact one another.
To this end it held regular meetings in London but also had a 'Contact Page', which was a bulletin in which members placed advertisements, giving their membership number, general location, and brief details of their sexual and other interests. Replies were handled by PIE, as with a box number system, so that correspondents were unidentifiable until they chose to exchange their own details. Since the purpose of this contact page was to enable paedophiles to contact one another, advertisements implying that contact with children was sought and advertisements for erotica were turned down. The Contact Page ultimately resulted in a prosecution for a 'conspiracy to corrupt public morals'.
PIE produced regular magazines that were distributed to members. The original Newsletter was superseded in 1976 by Understanding Paedophilia, which was intended to be sold in radical bookshops and be distributed free to PIE members. It was mainly the concern of Warren Middleton, who attempted to make the magazine a serious journal that included extracts from sensitive paedophilic literature and articles from psychologists with the aim of establishing respectability for paedophilia.[1]
When Middleton ceased active work with PIE, Understanding Paedophilia was replaced by the magazine Magpie, which was more of a compromise between the proselytising of the earlier publication and a forum for members. It contained news, book and film reviews, articles, non-nude photographs of children, humour about paedophilia, letters and other contributions by members.
In 1977 PIE produced another regular publication called Childhood Rights. When the editor ('David') retired, this content was assimilated into Magpie.[1]
In 1976 both PIE and PAL had been asked to help the Albany Trust to produce a booklet on paedophilia which was to have been published by the Trust. This collaboration was 'uncovered' by Mary Whitehouse, who alleged that public funds were being used indirectly to subsidize 'paedophile groups'. The Albany Trust was partly supported by government grants. The Trustees decided not to publish the booklet, saying that it wasn't sufficiently 'objective'. A year later a question relating to the incident was asked in the House of Commons by Sir Bernard Braine but, despite a statement by Home Office Minister Brynmor John that there was no evidence of public money going to PIE, the issue was drawn out into 1978 in the letters pages of The Guardian and The Times.
Affiliation to the NCCL
By 1978, PIE and Paedophile Action for Liberation had become affiliated to the National Council for Civil Liberties, now known as Liberty, with members attending meetings. The organisation campaigned against newspapers' treatment of the paedophilia activist groups. Whilst affiliated with NCCL, PIE also campaigned to reduce the age of consent and oppose the proposed banning of child pornography. In 1976, in a submission to the Criminal Law Revision Committee, the NCCL asserted that “childhood sexual experiences, willingly engaged in, with an adult result in no identifiable damage” and that the Protection of Children Bill would lead to “damaging and absurd prosecutions”. Whilst PIE was affiliated with it, the organisation argued for incest to be decriminalised and argued that sexually explicit photographs of children should be legal unless it could be proven that the subject had suffered harm or that an inference to that effect or to the effect that harm might have been caused could reasonably be drawn from the images themselves, with Harriet Harman (later deputy leader of the Labour Party) arguing that it would “increase censorship”.[3] NCCL had excluded PIE by 1983.[4]
Allegations against Labour politicians
On 15 December 2013 Jack Dromey MP 'expressed fury' at newspaper reports linking him and his wife Harriet Harman MP to PIE during the 1970s. Both were leading figures in the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL) when the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) became affiliated with it. Dromey said he opposed the activities of PIE and the more radical group PAL (Paedophile Action for Liberation): “My view then, and my view now, is that there is no place in a civilised society for any individual, or organisation, who promotes the abuse of children." [5]
On 24 February 2014, Jack Dromey and his partner Harriet Harman denied allegations that they had supported PIE while the group was affiliated to the NCCL. The conservative Daily Mail and The Daily Telegraph claimed the couple and former Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt were apologists for the sexual abuse of children while they were on the staff of the NCCL. Both newspapers demanded that Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, address the issue as a matter of urgency. Miliband backed Harman and stated that she had "huge decency and integrity". Patricia Hewitt has not commented on the allegations. Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, issued an apology for the previous links between the NCCL and the PIE. In December 2013, she said: "It is a source of continuing disgust and horror that even the NCCL had to expel paedophiles from its ranks in 1983 after infiltration at some point in the seventies."[6] [7]
Later that day Harriet Harman appeared on Newsnight to deny renewed allegations that she and her husband Jack Dromey had supported PIE when it was affiliated to the NCCL. [8]
On 25 February 2014, Harman issued a statement saying that while she did support the equalization of the age of consent for gay sex she had never campaigned for the age of consent to be reduced to 10; this was in response to the allegation that the NCCL proposed to legalise incest and wanted to lower the age of consent to as low as 10. Harriet Harman addressed the central questions raised in the newspaper reports. She stated that she was part of NCCL but at no point supported PIE, and expressed regret for the involvement of the NCCL with a paedophilia campaign run by PIE; however, a number of papers continued to press Harman on her and others' involvement, due to the fact that Harman had denied any connection only a few hours earlier.[9][10][11]
Alleged government funding
In December 2013, the Home Office started investigating allegations that PIE received public funds from the then Labour Government while James Callaghan was prime minister.[12] A highly ranked whistle-blower has claimed that payments were made to PIE by a senior government employee who worked under Labour's Home Secretary Merlyn Rees. The whistle-blower alleges that tens of thousands of pounds of public money was funneled to PIE via the Voluntary Services Unit, a department of the Home Office that gave grants to charities and non-profit-making lobby groups.[13]
Legal action against members
In the summer of 1978 the homes of several PIE committee members were raided by the police as part of a full-scale inquiry into PIE's activities; as a result of this inquiry, a substantial report was submitted to the Director of Public Prosecutions and the prosecution of PIE activists followed.
In particular, five activists were charged with printing contact advertisements in Magpie which were calculated to promote indecent acts between adults and children.
Others were offered lesser charges of sending indecent material through the mail if they testified against the five. These charges related to letters that the accused exchanged detailing various sexual fantasies. It eventually became clear that one person had corresponded with most of the accused but had not been tried. After the trial, it emerged that there had been a cover-up: Mr "Henderson" had worked for MI6 and been a high commissioner in Canada. Mr "Henderson" was later revealed, in the magazine Private Eye, to be Sir Peter Hayman. In 1981 Geoffrey Dickens MP asked the Attorney-General "if he will prosecute Sir Peter Hayman under the Post Office Acts for sending and receiving pornographic material through the Royal Mail". The Attorney-General Michael Havers replied, "I am in agreement with the Director of Public Prosecutions' (Sir Thomas Chalmers Hetherington QC) advice not to prosecute Sir Peter Hayman and the other persons with whom he had carried on an obscene correspondence."[14] Dickens asked "How did such a potential blackmail risk come to hold highly sensitive posts at the MOD and NATO?" He also asked the Leader of the House of Commons to "investigate the security implications of diaries found in the diplomat's London flat which contained accounts of sexual exploits".[15] There was much debate and condemnation in the international press of these events.[16]
Steven Adrian Smith was Chairperson of PIE from 1979 to 1985. He was one of the PIE executive committee members charged in connection with the contact advertisements; he fled to Holland before the trial.
In 1981 the former PIE Chairperson Tom O'Carroll was convicted on the conspiracy charge and sentenced to two years in prison. O'Carroll had been working on Paedophilia: The Radical Case in the period between the initial police raid and the trial. While the charges did not relate in any way to the publication of the book, the fact that he had written it was listed by the judge as a factor in determining the length of his sentence.
In 1984 The Times reported that two former executive committee members of PIE had been convicted on child pornography charges but acquitted on charges of incitement to commit unlawful sexual acts with children and that the group's leader had fled the country while on bail. It was announced that the group was closing down in the PIE Bulletin as of July 1984.
One-time treasurer of PIE Charles Napier is alleged to have sexually assaulted boys whilst a gym master at Copthorne School.[17] He became an English Language Trainer at the British Council and was convicted of sexual assault against minors in London in 1995[18] and investigated as an alleged member of a paedophile network operating in British schools in 1996.[19] He set up his own school in Turkey and resumed English Language Training with the British Council after serving his sentence.[20]
In 1972, Napier was found to have indecently assaulted pupils at a Surrey school where he was working. After being banned from teaching, he left the country.In 1978, he was working in Sweden where he taught at a junior school with pupils as young as 11 - and was visited by Righton.Napier later surfaced in Egypt, where he worked as the assistant head of studies with the British Council in Cairo.A letter from the time saw him boast to a friend that the city was "full of boys, 98 per cent of them available".He also helped set up and run a school in Turkey. His picture appears on a website offering English as a Foreign Language, where he boasts: "Most of my posts have been in Europe, North Africa or the Middle East, and for the last eight years I've been in Istanbul, running my own school and writing a series of course books for Turkish students."Back in England, Napier was jailed for nine months in 1995 for sexually abusing a 14-year-old boy he'd lured to his home in the 80s.He befriended the lad, enticing him with lager and computer games - then abused him.Prosecutors said: "It wasn't just a stranger grabbing a boy in the park. This was a slow insidious process. The boy was trapped - not forced."Righton, a founder member of PIE, was at one time the UK's leading authority on the protection of children.Yet he used his power to not only hide his paedophilia, but to help other child abusers - among them Napier.The latter's ban on teaching meant he was added to List 99, a precursor of the Sex Offenders' Register.And Righton - the subject of a 1994 documentary on paedophiles - used his influence to try to have Napier removed from the list so he could be allowed back into schools.Risk Righton wrote to the Department of Education saying: "Mr Napier is a gifted teacher of both adults and children."I believe that during the years since his conviction he has acquired a knowledge and disciplined mastery of himself which would justify the conclusion he no longer constitutes a sexual risk to children in his charge."It would give me great pleasure - and cause me no anxiety - to hear the Secretary of State had reviewed his decision of October 24, 1972, in Mr Napier's favour."In 1981, the ban was relaxed to allow Napier into colleges and universities. In 1990 he applied for the ban to be further relaxed - this time enlisting Dr Malcolm Fraser as his referee.Dr Fraser was convicted in 1992 for possessing indecent photographs of children. His third conviction saw him struck off - and Napier remained on the banned list.
Source
Surveys
In 1978–9 the Paedophile Information Exchange surveyed its members and found that they were most attracted to girls aged 8–11 and boys aged 11–15. In 1978 Glenn Wilson and David Cox approached O’Carroll with a request to study the PIE membership. A meeting was held with the PIE leadership to vet the survey instruments and, after approval, these were distributed to PIE members in the course of their regular mailing. Wilson and Cox went on to use the data in writing their book, The Child-Lovers – a study of paedophilies in society.[21]
Notes and references
Notes
- ^ a b c d Paedophilia – The Radical Case : Chapter Eleven ISBN 0-7206-0546-6
- ^ "Paedophile campaigner is jailed". BBC News. 2007-08-13. Retrieved 2012-10-28.
- ^ Beckford, Martin. "Jimmy Savile: Labour faces embarrassment over former child sex claims". Telegraph. Retrieved 2012-10-28.
- ^ Beckford, Martin (2009-03-09). "Harriet Harman under attack over bid to water down child pornography law". Telegraph. Retrieved 2012-10-28.
- ^ http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/local-news/jack-dromey-fury-paedophile-links-6407122
- ^ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/10659100/Harriet-Harman-Jack-Dromey-Patricia-Hewitt-and-the-Paedophile-Information-Exchange.html
- ^ http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/feb/24/harriet-harman-daily-mail-paedophile-campaign-allegations
- ^ http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/feb/25/harriet-harman-regrets-employer-link-paedophile-lobbyists
- ^ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2567329/Call-apology-Harriet-Harman-Labours-deputy-leader-expresses-regret-civil-liberties-groups-links-paedophile-lobby.html
- ^ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-26333558
- ^ http://www.harrietharman.org/nccl-statement---24022014
- ^ Adams, Guy. "How Labour Deputy Harriet Harman, her shadow minister husband and former Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt were all linked to a group lobbying for the right to have sex with children". Daily Mail. Retrieved 25 February 2014.
- ^ Elkes, Neil (15 December 2013). "Jack Dromey fury at paedophile 'links' story". Birmingham Mail. Retrieved 25 February 2014.
- ^ "Sir Peter Hayman (Hansard, 19 March 1981)". Hansard.millbanksystems.com. 1981-03-19. Retrieved 2013-11-19.
- ^ Edmonton Journal - Google News Archive Search
- ^ The Weekend Herald - Google News Archive Search
- ^ "When I was at school...". Guardian.
- ^ Charles Napier presentation on 'The Innocence of the Young' at Sherborne School, Private Eye, 2012-11-02
- ^ Police Investigate Public School Paedophile Ring, The Times, 25 August 1996
- ^ Knight, Kathryn (2 September 1995), Former teacher jailed for sex abuse of boys, The Times
- ^ Wilson, G. and Cox, D. The Child-Lovers – a study of paedophilies in society. London. Peter Owen (1983). ISBN 0-7206-0603-9
References
- The Times, 17 November 1984, p. 4: "PIE member faces child pornography charge"
- The Times, 15 November 1984, p. 3: "Leaders of paedophile group are sent to jail"
- Wilson, G. and Cox, D. The Child-Lovers – a study of paedophilies in society. London. Peter Owen (1983). ISBN 0-7206-0603-9
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