PIE – documentary evidence 3 – from Magpie 9-17 (trigger warning – contains disturbing material)

[NOTE OF WARNING: In absolutely no sense whatsoever does the printing of the below material constitute any type of endorsement; in fact the very reverse]

[ADDENDUM: The Mail have located the NCCL ad in question and scanned and reproduced it here. I have reproduced it below]

Continuing from my last post, I reproduce here the most significant material from the PIE publication Magpie, Issues 9-17, generally without comment. I must warn readers that there is a good deal of extremely troubling and disturbing material reproduced here (more so than in my last blog post) so please be wary before reading further. Researching this journal is one of the most unpleasant activities I have ever undergone; I am presenting the material here so that no-one can be in any doubt about the nature of PIE, and disturbing connections about many high-level individual’s connections to the organisation will be seen to be as serious as they truly are.


Issue No. 9. No date given

‘..we have been featured not only in the Observer and Sunday Times reviews of the year, but also in the latter’s Christmas quiz.’
Talking about how ‘Our achievements during 1977 have been considerable’
Suggests both society and them have been forced to re-examine their attitudes.
‘Take the matter of child pornography. The whole issue sprang into prominence at the same time as we were being press-exposed. In at least one newspaper we were on the same page as an investigation into child-porn and so we could have been associated with it, or with its purveyors. Many leading figures have been called upon to take a stand on this subject, and unless we make our own position clearer we will continue to be connected, by default. Yet to formulate an acceptable policy on this matter is far from easy. Personally, I find most porn offensive, but I recognise that for many of our members it is the only way to release their pent-up emotions with relative safety. To take a stand, to formulate a policy devoid of hypocrisy is fraught with problems.’ (La Gazza Ladra, p. 2)

Ken Palmer, ‘Convenor’s Spot: For the Love of Children’, p. 3 (Palmer is Convenor of Winchester CHE). This article cites the work of Brongersma.
‘The greatest crime in the criminal calendar should be cruelty, either physical or mental. Frequently the law in its present state is most cruel in its effects ironically to the very persons it is designed to protect. Where love is uppermost in every human relationship there can be little real evil and the weight of such love should receive full consideration where adult sexual relations with children are known.’

‘Read All About It’, p. 3
Community Care 9/11/77 (letter from Tom O’Carroll; 2 hostile reactions); 16/11/77 (letter); new Society 20/10/77 (letter from Keith Hose); New Statesman 16/9/77 (Dr Maurice Yaffe, ‘Paedophilia – the forbidden subject’; Private Eye 16/9/77 (Auberon Waugh’s Diary); The Observer 28/8/77 (Dutch MP Backs child sex); 4/9/77 (Britain ‘intolerant’ on child sex – interview with Brongersma); Sunday Times 4/9/77 (Priest to reveal startling facts about paedophilia – ‘an unbiased account of Dr. Ingram’s paper to the Swansea Conference); Socialist Challenge 7/9/77 (PIE and the Press); 15/9/77 (Sexuality and PIE – letter from David Grove), 29/9/77 (Civil rights); peace News 7/10/77 (Where Fascism and Sexism met Beyond Law reform); Socialist Worker 29/9/77 (The Press and Free speech); 8/10/77 (letters, pro-PIE); Zero Oct-Nov issue No. 3 (The Case for PIE); Gay News Issue 128 (Pie meeting that NF tried to silence. Doctor protests – on Brongersma letter to Swansea; ‘Facing the Front’ – GN editorial; letters, Issue 129 (letters) 130 (letters) 131 (‘Forbidden Speech’ – ‘an excellent critique of Dr. Brongersma’s speech, published in last issue of Childhood rights, by Dr. Richard Norton); Libertarian Education no. 23 winter 77 (Press Reaction); Police Review 30/9/77 (Personally Speaking – ‘a long, fair and objective article by C.H. Rolfe’) (p. 3)

Tom O’Carroll, ‘Tom Tom’, pp. 4-6
‘We who believe there is nothing wrong with children being involved in sexual acts have no reason to share this position [that porn ‘depraves and corrupts’]. What we must concern ourselves with is that children only take part in sexual activities that they really desire – – whether the act is on celluloid or not is a very secondary consideration.’
[…]
‘Some years ago, after seeing my first half dozen boy films at a single sitting, what struck me most forcefully, apart from an uncontrollable urge to wet my pants, was that the degree of involvement and enthusiasm of the young participants varied immensely. Whereas some appeared to be genuinely rampant and “hungry for action”, others were limp, listless and indifferent.
This had nothing to do with age. I remember a boy of only 10 or so in a happy state of total commitment to his work, right through to its completion – – the quiver of climax was unmistakable – – while the 15-year-old who was sucking him looked as thought he’d rather be smoking a cigarette, which for much of the film he was. On the other hand I’ve seen a randy 12-year-old girl excitedly wanking her little five-year-old brother who, although effortlessly and endlessly stiff as a tiny spring-mounted poker, wore the detached, meditative air of one whose thoughts were precociously turned towards Zen Buddhism.’ (pp. 5-6)
[…]

‘Constantine [Larry Constantine, who gave a paper at the Love and Attraction conference in Swansea] talks about the benefits of a legal industry, open to inspection. I would go further and suggest that part of the reason for the exploitation of children in porn is not only the illegality but also the profitability, albeit the latter is to some extent a function of the former. As well as monitoring the industry, why not take the profit incentive out of it? Why not have government sponsored porn by way of competition? Via the Arts Council, it would be possible to create bursaries for artists working in the field of erotic photo and cinema featuring children, thus encouraging the emergence of really first rate, non-commercial porn.’ (pp. 5-6)

Keith Spence, ‘Chicken à l’Americaine’, pp. 6-7
Suggests Bruce Altman’s book ‘Raising Chickens – – A Beginner’s Guide’, could be an instruction manual for paedophiles.

Keith Hose, ‘Proud to be an Animal’, pp. 8-9
[…..]
‘They [antagonists in Gay News] would argue that we have women members because paedophilia is a male phenomenon caused by looking at relationships in a sexist way; in terms of dominance and submission. A violent reaction from women against this sexism is only natural they argue, women are all too aware of how they suffer from this attitude in men and do not want children to suffer in the same way. In fact desocialising children away from the traditional roles of male and female is the only hope; so leave the children alone for us to change them, they conclude.

My arguments however, are the other side of the same coin. I too am against sexism, but do not believe that paedophilia is caused by looking at relationships in a sexist way. Not all paedophile relationships are about dominance and submission, and adults will still be attracted to children, and children to adults, when and if we do reach a world free of sexism and other forms of exploitation.’ (p. 8)
[…..]
‘Our antagonist’s supposition that the women there were reacting against male sexual domination, may have some element of truth in it if we remember that to a lot of people sex only means coitus, sexual relationships involve one partner dominating the other, and children are lesser people than adults. With these beliefs sex with children means adults forcibly buggering or raping them. Add to that the deliberate misinterpretation of PIE’s Evidence to the Criminal Law revision Committee and the concentration on infants by the media, despite the fact that few of PIE’s members are sexually attracted to babies, and you can quite sympathise with their emotional, if mistaken, reactions.
Strangely, I found myself agreeing with a point made in Auberon Waugh’s article about paedophilia which was printed in a recent issue of the ‘Spectator’ (“Suffer the little children” – 1st October 1977), that there is a class difference in the way people react to paedophilia. While I may not agree with Auberon Waugh’s hypothesis as to the cause of the difference in class attitude, it is undeniable that it exists. Most of the demonstrators outside PIE’s first public meeting were working class, and coming from a working class background, I myself was aware, even at fifteen, that if I did not obtain a higher education I would be trapped into working in a ‘factory floor’ environment; my sexuality and personality would have to conform. I felt a middle class environment would give me more freedom.’ (p. 9) (etc)

‘la France.. Some general Impressions on France for Boy Lovers’, p. 10 (by Member 173)
This suggests that France is, ‘an unrewarding place for child-lovers is reasonable, up to a point’.
Mentions a ‘well known paederast, Gabriel Matzneff’, essay ‘The Under Sixteens’
Stricter families.
No established group like PIE in France.
But mentions FRED – Front Revolutionnaire pour une Enfance Differente’
And that Libération is ‘a paper very tolerant to paedophiles’
French boy: ‘I suspect that he is more of an adult than his English counterpart, less interested in sport and more concerned with being clever and a man of the world, and if he doesn’t share the stunning good looks of the Italian or Britisher, I challenge anybody to doubt his sophistication and seriousness compared to his counterpart across the water.’

Nathaniel Jacobs, ‘A Professional Learns to Listen’, p. 11
Talking about experiences as a professional counsellor with a Mr J. in prison, ‘Even though my acceptance of boy-love is limited, I sense the pain and rejection that fills the being of Mr. J. when he cannot, with sanctioned approval, practice the physical lovemaking he desires. Furthermore, just because I cannot accept the sexual ingredient does not imply that I heap condemnation upon the practice; nor do I consider Mr. J. a recalcitrant and sinner and cast him aside as being despicable and abased.
Quite the contrary, Mr. J’s love for children is transcendent the physical. He loves with the love of spiritual dimension. If I could but tap the mainstream of his compassion then my heart would also respond with a thunderous indignancy at a world which systematically destroys her children and protects them from those, such as Mr. J. who would give to them a love unconditional and free.’
[….]

Brongersma, ‘Paedophilia: the Act’, pp. 12-13 – with picture of young boy.

Another crossword, p. 15

Cartoon, reproduced from Spectator, boy saying to his mother, ‘Mummy, when I grow up can I be a paedophile?’, p. 15.

Quotes
‘Often a beautiful boy with scarlet lips
Asks me laughingly: what is your religion?
I answer him; in your love I find my faith,
My paradise, my God, and my eternity’
(Ibrahim Ibn Sahl. 12th century) (p. 15)

Back page (p. 16), lists of ‘Europie’, 12 in France, 3 in Italy, 1 in Netherlands, 3 in West Germany, 2 in Norway.

Issue No. 10. No date given.

Picture of young girl on front, with title ‘HAPPINESS! (before the arrest)’

La Gazza Ladra, p. 2 – on sacking of Tom O’Carroll from OU job.

‘Dear Sir,

‘Letters’ is a most acceptable way for members to express their opinions. Usually I don’t, but this time I am so shocked and distressed as a paedophile, and lover of music, that I will sound off.

On February 9th the Director of the ‘London Boys Singers’ was a troubled man. He attended the Magistrate’s Court, accused of ‘Indecency’ with a 10 year old boy.

I know none of the facts of his story, but can well imagine the innocence with which this act of love and affection had taken place.

No doubt Mr. Doggett, considering his social position, found his contact with the law enforcement people to be unacceptable to him. He was bailed, pending trial. He went to a pub and talked a while, wrote some letters to friends and relatives and then threw himself under a train.

If this man chose death as a means of protecting his beliefs towards Paedophilia, I wonder how many of those, who consider the bloody futile laws of this land to be correct and proper, would be willing to support their theories with their life?

It is of the utmost importance that Paedophiles be permitted to express themselves without oppression. It is the ONLY way to be sure that tragedies of this nature will be averted in the future.

My most sincere condolences to the members of the London Boy Singers.

Your loss is total.

Paul Andrews. [Treasurer of PIE]’ (p. 4)
[I will post more about Doggett in a later blog post]

Warren Middleton, ‘As I see it…A Question of Strategy’, pp. 4-5.
Angry that Tony Smythe, director of National Association for Mental Health (MIND) said he didn’t think PIE was the best group to advance children’s sexual rights.

Brongersma, ‘Paedophilia: the Person’, pp. 6-7
[……..]
‘The ideal of many paedophiles is a lasting intimate relation with one and the same child. The prejudices of society render this very difficult or even dangerous, save in those cases where the parents agree.’ (p. 7)
[…]
‘Other paedophiles may be so afraid of the pain that lasting relations inevitably inflict on the adult partner, or are in the impossibility under social pressure to establish such a relation, that they stay promiscuous and have sex with an often incredibly large number of children.’ (p. 7)
[….]
‘Nichols in the U.S.A. (Ethics, Goals and Responsibilities to be Encouraged in the Man-Boy Relationship, 1971), Himmelein in Germany, Etz in Austria and others proposed a kind of ethical code for boy-love, emphasizing the duty to respect the boy’s personality, not only in the sexual relations but in every way, to help him to grow up, to educate him, to be firm with him when necessary, not to spoil him, to prepare his way to a responsible heterosexual life, to comradeship, to society as a whole.’ (p. 7)

‘Photos Needed’, p. 7
‘If you have good, original non-nude photos of children that you would allow us to publish in MAGPIE, please send them along. We particularly need pictures for the front page, but photos of any size can be used. We’ll return them. Thanks.

‘J Z Eglington’, p. 11
Mentions on subway in NYC, August 1976, ad for Bronx Zoo, a pic of ‘a frecklefaced boy of 11 or 12’
And ads for Allan’s Frankfurters, which have been called ‘Bun Busters’.

Shops on 7th Avenue South selling picture postcard depicting nude boys, photographs by “Attilla” and others for Atlantis Studios, Box 56, Village Station, NYC 10014. Not pornographic. Models 11-15 in age.

And on ‘Eatable Undies’.

Loving account of a showing in the University of Miami Film Society of Death in Venice.

POST home delivery ad campaign posters, April-May 1977 in Denver ‘have been showing a handsome blond newsboy of 12 or 13, quoted as saying “I deliver a LOT more than the News’

And ads on automobiles in Cal, Tennessee and Kentucky, ‘Have You Hugged Your Kid Today?’

p. 12 (back page), crossword. Call for writings.

Says that cover picture ‘is of a 12 year old boy full of joy and happiness despite being form a home where is own mother didn’t know his correct age, and where his father is a thief and a drunkard. This picture of inner peace was made just weeks before the police brutally interrogated him, jailed his benefactor and returned him to the “custody of his parents” with a statement that he “requires psychiatric counselling”.’

Issue No. 11. May 1978

This issue can be read complete online here.

Boy of about 10-11 leaning against a pole on front.

‘Alan Doggett – Memorial Service’
A letter in Magpie 10 reported and commented on the recent suicide of Alan Doggett three weeks before he was to conduct the London Boys Choir, together with massed choirs of other children at the Albert Hall. On the night of that concert the programme contained an insert describing Alan Doggett’s years of dedicated service and paying tribute to his friendliness, integrity and loyalty.
Shortly after this date a requiem mass was said for him at the Holy Cross Priory in Leicester by the Reverend Father Michael Ingram.
On Saturday 20th May a memorial service will be held to commemorate Alan’s life and work. It will start at 3 p.m. and will be held at St. Barnabas Church, Addison Road, London, W14, taking the form of a choral evensong, performed by the London Boys Choir.
These religious functions, one Roman, the other Anglican must be seen not only as ceremonies of intercession and remembrance, but also as containing an element of protest. It would seem to be true that in today’s society religious organisations provide almost the only vehicle whereby such a protest can be made.’ (p. 2)

We have for sale a limited number of copies of a 99 page booklet by Den Nichols, called “Towards a Better Perspective For Boy-Lovers”. Published in 1976 in the United States in its preface to ‘serious minded adult males who feel an existential attraction to young boys”. Copies are £1 each, including post & packaging; orders to PIE. (‘Special Offer’, p. 2)

The article ‘NCCL Supports PIE’s Right’s was reproduced on my earlier blog post here.

‘Dear Sir,
The figures show that “enlightened” Britain has a mania for sending people to prison. Our prison population per head is vastly larger than any other European country. According to one BBC expert’s estimate (Nov. 16th) there are about eight thousand children incarcerated in England. Yet Mr. William Whitelaw calls for more imprisonments, more severe sentences and “short sharp shocks”. At the same time 80% of boys and 35 to 40% of girls commit another offence within two years of release. In other words the custodial treatment of the young offender is completely ineffective if its aim is to change his antisocial desires and acts. It is of course more succes- sful if regarded in the light of a punish- ment. It also protects society for the period of custody.
Many people involved with the problem are aware of this inadequacy and of the destructive effect of the court – and custody experience. Some express bafflement. It is not surprising since the only solution in most cases is one that society finds it almost impossible to pro- vide and that is love. Adults mostly seem to love only their own children, the only arrangement regarded as normal. Many are unable to love and cherish any children even their own. There are no wellsprings of affection available to rescue these children and it is not surprising that statistics show the only hope for the recidivist is a successful marriage. Non-conforming and bitter children are even more likely to be starved of affection and, most damaging, to be treated with no consideration for their dignity. The evidence is all around us that violence is more acceptable to society than love. Court sentences show that. People have always tried to prevent love by others but have made sure if they were powerful enough, that society condoned or at least tolerated their own foibles. Thus the Victorian ‘gentleman’ could have the working class girl-with dire consequences to her but none to him if they were found out, and every form of pro- stitution was available to him. Like the present day anti-porn lobby he was very concerned with the morality of others.
John Le Carre with his penetrating view of life writes in the ‘Observer’ that the affection-starved youngsters at his prep school went from bed to bed like sticky frogs looking for a pond. “There at last we embraced like the infants we were not allowed to be”. ‘ For punishment – love of course was a punishable offence – we had the . . . choice of several small riding whips”.
Science should be leading us to ask as a matter of course – “But what does the evidence show us?”. It is disheartening to find so distinguished a leader of society as Mr. Whitelaw favouring instead an emotive prejudice, either through a lack of understanding or political expediency. We need a more enlightened and scientific approach to the problem of law and order and the soul destroying effect of our overcrowded prisons.
Yours sincerely,
313.’ (p. 3)

‘Dear Editor,
I have been watching the progress of Magpie with interest since its inception last year, and I must say that it improves greatly with each issue, not only in quality of print etc., but also what started out as broadsheets, appealing for ideas and opinions, has developed into an intelligent, thought provoking publication. I read with interest Tom’s article on child-porn (issue no. 9) and thought you and other members may be interested to hear one or two comments.
Firstly, I think the inclusion of erotic pictures in Magpie would be a contradiction of P.I.E.’s objectives and would fuel the fires of our principal enemys namely the National Front and the Mrs. Whitehouse’s of this world.
Personally, like many other members. I suspect, I find magazines such as Male International, Kim, Boys Express etc., quite acceptable and I am not in the least offended by their contents. However. I feel that Magpie, for all its limitations, must he our vehicle for ideas, our means of communication, but more so, our shop-window to the world, our best advertisement for ourselves.
By producing an “educational” rather than “sensational” magazine, paedophiles will, I believe, gradually begin to come across as a caring rather than corrupting breed.
Only by striving to achieve a cloak of respectability will we be able to gain a place in society, we will never reach our goal by adopting a “don’t give a damn what you think of us” attitude. This, I think is where the Gay Liberation Front failed to gain support because the media and most of the public have a built in defence against these kind of tactics. You go out there saying “Bang ! Crash ! – Here we are, and we don’t care” and what happens – cries of “My God, how dare you do this ?” from the Press and T.V. etc. The result being that, far from furthering the cause – you frighten would-be members off ! No, I think to continue the magazine in its present format is far the wisest thing – after all we can all get hold of these other publications if we really want them. If anything, there could be a little more variety, perhaps more girls – and I am sure many members would not object to seeing boys in the 12 – 18 age group too. I think the inclusion of short stories or a serial would be a good idea, perhaps members could submit their own contributions, and I don’t see why members couldn’t contribute their own favourite photographs too – provided of course that they fit in with the objectives of the magazine.
I feel that articles written by such people on Dr. Brongersma are invaluable to our cause and I can only hope that you continue to publish his articles. There must be few among us who are not interested in nuts and bolts of paedophilia, and the inclusion of such items must surely increase our under- standing of ourselves.
It must also bring about new tolerances from the public, which at the end of the day will mean the gradual re- shaping of society’s attitude towards us.
Yours 214.’ (p. 3)

Brongersma, ‘Paedophilia: The Effects’, p. 4
[….]
It is said, rightly, that we’re not allowed to sacrifice children in order to solve our adult sexual problems. This was meant as a warning to the paedophile. But it is equally justified to address this admonition to parents and educators who have an emotional negative attitude to sex. How many children have been sacrificed, tortured, abused, troubled or even driven to suicide by adult prejudices against masturbation, now proven to be stupid nonsense and generally considered to be devoid of the least foundation? Let’s take care that the same doesn’t happen with the negative ideas most people foster against other sexual activities of children!

The child is definitely not a non- sexual being, but has its sexual impulses right from its birth. Babies may masturbate, even to orgasm, without behaving abnormally. The young child has, as everyone knows, strong sexual interests. Then follows the so-called latency period in which sexuality seems to sleep. But now we know more about other periods of western history and other non-western cultures, we must confess that this latency period is only the result of our suppressing culture and that the child of six to twelve, if left to its true nature, abounds in sexual play. Then the sexual impulse comes to a turbulent life in prepuberty, to reach in the years of puberty itself a force never equalled during the rest of its life.

The image of the a-sexual “innocent” child is not the outcome of scientific observation, but only of wishful imagination. We ought not to sacrifice children to this invention of people abhorring sexuality, that is: human nature as it is created. Of course the sexual life of a child is in a process of development, as every other aspect of its life. It should therefore be approached with care and consideration. It should not be suppressed or ignored. The child needs its sexual play, as all higher animals do, to prepare itself for a complete adult sex life. The cultural suppression of the child’s sexuality lies at the root of many divorces and unhappy marriages.

A sexual relationship between a child and an adult does not harm the child, may be even beneficial, provided the adult partner is considerate, loving, affectionate. The confusion of tongues about the influence of such relations is produced by the fact that nearly all studies on this subject are founded on criminal cases, throwing on one heap together, rapes and violent assaults with cases of accidental contacts devoid of any traumatic or lasting effect, as well as with cases of intimate loving relations. If we don’t discriminate between the deeds of people who, under the stress of sexual abstinence throw themselves on a child while in reality preferring an older partner, and the deeds of paedophile people with erotic preference for a child, we will come nowhere. Most statistics and “scientific” deductions are calculated upon this chaotic mixture of very dissimilar situations and therefore worthless.

All acts of violence and compulsion are, by their nature, traumatic and should be fought as morally bad and criminal. But what is the influence of an erotic relationship to which the child is spontaneously consenting or which it solicited itself?

In order to deal with this question we have, to start with, one popular prejudice to clear away: boys are perverted by sexual contacts with adult males and are “made” homophiles themselves. This widespread belief was at the origin of many penal laws, but it is completely unfounded. On few points there is much unanimity among expert commissions that studied this subject (Wolfenden, Cardinal Griffin in England, Speijer in Holland) and authoritative scientists: nobody becomes a homophile by seduction. Homophilia. if it is not an inborn quality, finds its origin in the first years of human life; if a boy is not a homophile at five or six years of age, he’ll never become one, regardless of how many homosexual acts he may participate in. This is shown best by boy- prostitutes and other boys who have sexual contacts with males for years on end while maintaining their sexual preference for girls.

Apart from this outdated prejudice, scientific literature enumerates many bad effects on children as a result from sexual approaches by adults. But this doesn’t help us to gain insight in this matter, in so far as this literature – as stated above – doesn’t make any clear-cut division between approaches which may be characterized as assaults (and therefore more or less traumatic) and those which are expressions of love and affection, experienced as such by the child (and therefore not traumatic).
[….]

It is pedagogically important, however, to see that this state of affairs is not protecting children but rather is a menace to their well-being. There is no reason to think lightly about the terrific damage inflicted on children who are subjected to parental outbursts of rage or dismay and to police enquiries on the discovery of the fact that they had, often at their own instigation and in any case with their own consent, affectionate erotic relations with an adult lover. When parents come to know that their son or daughter has had such relations, they should, in the very interest of their child, proceed with the utmost caution. Their first duty is to try to understand the real feelings of their child, not giving way to common prejudices.

It asks for some psychological discernment to see that – and why – some experiences in this field may be a source of fear and anxiety to one child, while to the other they are something unique, fantastic and delicious. Children who haven’t been brought up in an un- healthy fear of everything sexual, who have had sexual play with comrades, who were not taught to be disgusted by the body and its functions and who don’t have an abnormally weak sexual impulse, will mostly react positively when approached by a sympathetic adult. In more than 50% of the cases they even take the initiative themselves.

Nowadays there are more and more expert authors who have an open eye for the positive effects such an affectionate relation may have. No wonder! Could real love, affection, sympathy, tenderness ever have a bad effect on the evolution of a human being? The ancient Greeks had their wisdom about this and in our present day the official Speijer Commission, appointed by the Dutch government, came to the conclusion that “in a number of cases (heterosexual as well as homosexual) initiation by an adult may result in a better evolution of the boy or girl concerned”. The German scientist Prof. Schlegel advances the opinion that sexual contacts with an adult may be as necessary at puberty as maternal love and tenderness in the first period of life. Mature sexual behaviour has to be learned by children’s sexual play as many ethnological researches show. If our society had better understanding of this, our adolescents would enjoy more sexual liberty and be less tempted to aggressive behaviour.

‘Everyone knows the “Child Protection Bill” will pass. It is another misnomer, like “indecent assault” when applied to mutually desired and consenting happenings. This Bill is not designed to protect children (where does “childhood” end anyway?) but to “oppress” them. It seems that when you are a child, everything is illegal. You certainly can’t have sex with anyone. When I was fourteen and horny as hell, it was maddening to know that I was only allowed by law to do it to myself, by myself, and then only in secret from my parents because they even thought that was wrong. It was illegal for me to have sex with a man – I had to be ‘ protected”. Now that I am grown up. and have finally reached the “age of consent” it is illegal for me to have sex with a fourteen year old boy. He has to be protected. So I’ve lost out both ways, first as a boy. then as a man. If only I had known that it was legal to be photographed in an “indecent” pose! I might have had some pictures to look back on. 1 knew I had a beautiful body at that age – I used to admire myself in the mirror. But now a boy will have to keep himself under wraps until he is hairy and ugly. I still don’t know what I was supposed to have been protected from as a youngster. I wanted sex and couldn’t have it. and I am still mad at society for it. [….]’ (Paul Green, ‘Protection or Overprotection?’, p. 5)

Article ‘Pedofili i Norge – A Better Society’, translated from the BULLETIN of the Norwegian Paedophile Workgroup, p. 6.

‘Child Porn’, p. 7

“Porn’s evil men
on the run” (newspaper banner headline)

“I cannot understand the
mentality of people who
produce such muck”
(MP quoted in newspaper)
I’ve been looking at some “such muck”
pictures of naked boys
with beautiful bodies

traceried rib cages
knees like rounded nuts
a delicate black flash of pubic hair

and happy faces
not particularly exploited
(no more than by capitalism, advertising or education)

Sirs, your “campaign” is motivated by hate
of sex, of the human nude, of the possibility of deviance.
You, who refuse to contemplate the existence of more than one view,
you are the “evil men”.

[With picture of Pied Piper next to it]

Richard James, ‘A Jubilee Song’, p. 7

‘The disturbed boy quivering in his teacher’s hands
and scraping at their flesh with his nails, because he
knows he can expect nothing
but entertains fantasies of smashing everyone’s heads
— what have we done for this?

The poor harmless paedophile imprisoned
for a reciprocal love, and scalded as a “nonce”
(but Mrs. Whitehouse says who considers the children?)
— what has he done for this?

My own poor grown-up gay lover from the East End of London
accustomed by dad’s beatings to being out of work
behind with the rent, and your name in the local paper
— what have you done for this?

A black boy and a white boy, two friends
happily making love to one another, the one buying wranglers jeans
because they above all things turn his lover on
— may we go through hell-fire and high water that we
may be worthy of these

and may we all at last have peace. ‘

‘You show me yours…’, pp. 8-9

‘Remember playing Doctors ? As kids, most of us discover this marvelous excuse for touching and exploring another human body. The work of many social scientists and researchers have uncovered an abundance of early sexual experience – in sharp contrast to the common disclaimers from parents and teachers alike that the years before puberty are not sexual, not REALLY.

Statements about children being uninterested in sex are becoming less and less credible. The belief that preadolescence represents a period of sexual latency or inactivity is being rejected along with several other Freudian teachings. In their place we find a new understanding of sexual development as a lifelong process that begins at birth.

Birth — 2 years
Boys are often born with erections, and although there is no documentated evidence, there is no reason to suppose that girls do not enter this world in the same state. All of the sexual response equipment is present and operative on day one – it is the reproductive systems that do not develop until puberty. One study of nine male babies (aged 3 – 20 weeks) reported that the number of erections varied from five to forty per day. Fretting, crying and stretching usually accompanied the erection, which was followed by playful and relaxed behaviour.

During the first four weeks of life, the infant girl sustains an extraordinary though temporary degree of sexual de- velopment. Her genitals are swollen and red because of the remaining maternal hormones which produce a momentary masturbation. Her vagina also shows physiologic patterns, including secretion, similar to those of an adult woman. With all that equipment ready for arousal, it’s no surprise that genital play is one of most infants earliest experiences. A psychologist studied one infants genital play during his first and second years. The infant watched his penis bounce up and down when he sucked his stomach in. He let the bath water run over his penis until it became erect. He stimulated himself intensively once a week, and explored his genitals with moderate interest three times each week. He put his favourite stuffed toy between his thighs and squeezed, while having a partial erection.

Infants in the first year of life are not generally capable of the direct, voluntary action we call masturbation, but occasionally, infants do specifically stimulate themselves. The Kinsey report found six boys under the age of one year, and twenty three girls under the age of three years who masturbated to orgasm. There is no reason to think that these children were abnormal because they displayed their sexuality. More likely they were simply the ones who were spared the harsh lessons usually delivered when children touch themselves “down there”. Although a mother stimulates the infants genitals when bathing etc., she also often scolds and slaps hands when infants do the same thing. Such a young mind cannot understand this inconsistency, but it does set the stage for developing the negative attitude towards sexuality that plagues many an adult.

Modern psychologists now consider that erotic genital play is a good indicator of whether the infant is getting enough physical affection. Research shows that infants who receive large amounts of affection display high levels of genital play. Because giving adequate physical affection involves the possibility of arousal, the first outsider included in our sexuality is usually a parent. How parents handle these encounters is important to the infant, and possibly to society as well. An American psychologist, James Prescott, suggests that societies which promote physical pleasure among children are peaceful. Those which punish pleasure are violent. He believes that a society can reduce future levels of war and crime by providing more physical affection between parents and children, and more sexual pleasure for children.

3 to 7 years
An explosion of sexiness follows the hazy sensuality of infancy. Now children bloom into romantics and dive joyfully into a period of unrestrained emotional and physical affection: hugging and kissing etc. Children of this age will often copy what they have seen – at home, on television, etc.. and this is when they begin to bring other kids into their sexual adventures. The game of “You show me yours and I’ll show you mine” seems to be a favourite everywhere.

Cohorts get involved in cuddling, handling, and sucking each others sex organs, and attempts at intercourse – both anal and genital, hetrosexual and homosexual. Homosexuality is a normal part of growing up for both boys and girls, and is usually just a stepping stone on the way to adult hetrosexuality.

Many youngsters are often intro- duced to more advanced sexual play by slightly older children. Like so many other aspects of life, here the old teach the young. One young girl remembers “He (age II) asked me (age 5) if I wanted to play doctors. Thinking it was all in fun, I said yes. He informed me that he was the doctor and I was the patient. I was pregnant, and he was going to operate. He undid my pants, took them off, and did the same to his. He tried to have intercourse, but did not suceed”.

Another girls first experience was more scary than fun — “Bill and I, (both aged 5 years) were close friends, and the two of us went over to Tom’s house to play. Tom (aged 9 years) locked us in the bedroom. We could only go if we exposed ourselves physically to each other. We undressed, and Tom immediately fondled Bill’s penis, and then tried to touch my vagina. I either cried or screamed, and he stopped. I think where I became con- fused, was that at home, nakedness was common, accepted, and associated with good thoughts “.

Kindergarten age girls often try putting objects on or into their genitals. One woman recalls “Some afternoons we would lock ourselves in a bedroom and take our pants off. We took turns laying on the bed and putting pennies, marbles, etc., between our legs. Two other girls liked to pretend they were boys, and used a pencil for a penis. As the ritual became old hat. it passed out of existence”.

8 to 13 years
Until fairly recently, these years have been considered a period of sexual quiescence, a time when sexual interest takes a little time off before the big push at puberty, but in societies which allow children sexual freedom, youngsters increase their sexual activities during these years. This implies that the low levels of sexual activities expected then are more a function of old fashioned repression than of natural development. In fact, preadolescence may be a time when all we have learnt about sex comes into focus. If guilt has been the environment of sex. then fantasies of torture, masochism and sadism may erupt. Throughout these years, kids investigate every possible source of sexual pleasure. The techniques of gratification they discover are endless. “Circle jerk”, or group masturbation is a common one amongst boys. They sit in a circle, and masturbate to orgasm, often awarding special praise to those who “shoot” fastest or furthest. Climbing ropes or poles can often have a very gratifying effect!

America has produced several secret societies which foster sexual freedom between children, and between children and adults. One which has gone totally public, is the Guyon Society, whose members allow their offspring whatever sexual expression they want. The Child Sensuality Circle, a semi-public organisation based in San Diego, is one of five major groups seeking sexual freedom for children, and are now broadening their focus to cover the general liberation of children – legal and social as well as sexual An American doctor sums up with a view which is slowly becoming more and more acceptable to society:
“Personally. I like the idea of adult sex without children involved, but for the child’s sake, and for society’s sake, we’ve got to start allowing our children more sexual freedom instead of constantly burdening them with guilt and misinformation”. ‘
(adapted from an Article in Forum)

[Cartoon of a boy on a bench saying to an older man, holding a newspaper with a headline ‘Child Sex Attack’, ‘Would ya like a sweet, Mister?’. Drawn by Dominik.]

And a cutting: ‘’NO PIE’ BOY SACKED BY SCHOOL’, sent in by a reader – comment ‘progressive education rules OK?’ (p. 9)

Keith Spence, ‘I HAVE SEEN THE FUTURE and it works’, p. 10

‘I met him at the local swimming-pool. He was by himself, practising jumping feet-first off the spring-board with a single-mindedness that suggested Olympic training. 1 guessed he was about twelve years-old – his long, coltish body was still softened by the last traces of puppy-fat, but the way he stood and moved showed that he was growing up fast. He had silver-birch-blonde hair dropping to his shoulders, and grey eyes that sparkled when he laughed. And freckles. I’m kinky for freckles. He was absolutely my kind of kid.

For half-an-hour we jumped, dived, splashed, wrestled, ducked, bombed, and generally behaved in a thoroughly irresponsible fashion: and all without speaking a word. But finally, when we had dried and changed. I decided that the time had come to put our friendship onto a more regular basis.

“Do you want a coke?” I asked.

“Ferlot?” he said. “Vad sayer du?”

“A coke” I said, pantomiming desperately. “To drink. Do you want? Do you speak English?”

“Ferlot” he repeated, “jag forstor inte. Nu maste jag go. Hcj-do”. And he grinned maddeningly, waved once, and was gone.

If you think England is frustrating for paedophiles, you should try living in Sweden for a bit.

Admittedly the problems are rather different. In England, where children are only allowed contact with adults for purposes of punishment, and can’t take their socks off in public in case they start an orgy, the difficulty is to meet kids at all. Here in Sweden, making friends with them is laughably easy. The problems – – at least for a thick foreigner like me – – come from being forced to communicate almost entirely through sign-language. After three months, my Swedish vocabulary is still limited to such earth-shattering remarks as “There are three cats underneath the table” and “My hat is blue but yours is yellow”, which I’m sure will come in useful one day, but are not really very appropriate as the basis for a deep romantic relationship. The frustration is compounded by the fact that Swedish children are the most heart- shatteringly beautiful in the world: so that quite often, when walking down the street, the sight of one can literally stop you in your tracks and leave you gasping for breath. And as if this were not enough, the long-suffering paedophile visitor to Sweden also has to face the torment of various depraved Scandanavian practices, of which the most fiendish is undoubtedly the bastu or sauna. This institution is a large hot room, regularly patrolled by troops of highly uninhibited naked children. The result is that one sits there for far too long, turning the colour of raw beef, because one’s physical condition makes it impossible to walk out with any degree of dignity. It’s hell. I tell you! Sheer hell!

Actually, while sitting in the bastu last week, gazing at and being gazed at by a couple of faun-like children whose incipient adolescence was spectacularly in evidence, 1 found myself wondering what daft old Mrs. Whitehouse would have thought about it all. Here were two boys who, being Swedish, would have been accustomed to nakedness – – their own and other people’s – – from a few months old. They would already have received a thorough, factual and liberal sexual education. They would certainly have been encouraged to question and to experiment: that is how children are normally brought up in Sweden. Yet Swedish children are not promiscuous, nor has their health and happiness been ruined by whatever nameless horrors it is that Mrs. Whitehouse so abjectly dreads (to the best of my knowledge she has ‘never exactly specified what it is that she fears from allowing children to understand and acknowledge their sexuality. Whatever it is. it hasn’t happened in Sweden). On the other hand, children aren’t frightened by the changes in their bodies, nor in any way ashamed of them.

I suppose the secret is that children in Sweden are respected, and their rights are acknowledged in a way they have never been in Britain. That much is obvious as soon as you step into a Swedish school. Swedish children come to school because it is fun, and because they understand that it is important for them to learn. Once there, they are not urged to be ‘better’ than the other pupils – – there is no top (or bottom) of the form. Instead, the cleverer pupils help the less clever ones, and any academic achievement is the achievement of the class as a whole. Swedish school-children learn, before anything else, to co- operate, to tolerate, and to trust each other. Teachers are friends and equals, and one teacher may stay with the same class, every lesson, for two or three years. There is no compulsion, no formality. Christian names are always used, even to the headmaster. Above all, there is no fear: Sweden has a strict law that nobody – – not teachers, not police, not even parents – – may ever strike a child. A teacher who hit one of his pupils would be dismissed on the spot, and would probably appear in court. There are, in fact, no punishments at all in Swedish schools. The system isn’t based on punishment, it’s based on mutual respect and co-operation. And – – I’m sorry, Mr. Rhodes Boyson, but you’re wrong. It works.

Of course, as a refugee from England granted asylum in Swedish schools, it has taken me a little time to get used to the way things are done here. It’s a bit disconcerting to see a fifteen-year-old boy at the back of one’s class contentedly smoking a pipe, for example; or to have two fourteen-year-old girls politely excuse themselves from a lesson be- cause they have to cook supper for their boy-friends. And then there- was the class of ten-year-olds who were so excited at speaking English with a real Englishman that they barricaded the door at the end of the lesson and refused to let me out. Imagine being kidnapped by 22 Swedish children! I was quite rude to the Swedish teacher who rescued me. Of course, too, the system does have its drawbacks. It is criticised for not giving enough encouragement to unusually gifted children: and for not teaching pupils ambition (a questionable virtue anyway). Also, it would fail disasterously if it didn’t have total dedication from Swedish teachers- – a teacher who didn’t love kids unquestioningly and unconditionally could destroy an entire class. (That doesn’t happen. And a strike by Swedish teachers is unimaginable). But the few risks and disadvantages are a comparatively small price to pay for the joy of seeing a whole generation growing up free from aggression, loneliness, mistrust or fear.

In Sweden, one by one, the sacred cows of the ‘professional educators’ are being quietly herded off to the knacker’s yard and slaughtered. Discipline? Forget it. Rigid rules should only be needed when people can’t think for themselves; here they respect kids’ common sense instead. Religious instruction? That went long ago. The nuclear family? Sweden must have the world’s highest proportion of unmarried and seperated parents: but because such things arc treated without rancour or guilt, the children don’t often seem to suffer. Youthful innocence? Yes – – but here it means absence of shame, not absence of knowledge. And “Protection of Children?” Emphatically, yes! Swedish children are protected, by law. from violence, pain, destitution, exploitation and discrimination. I only wish the same could be said of Britain. Well – – alright. Perhaps I’m getting a bit carried away. And I can’t pretend that Sweden hasn’t got its problems – – they exist here as they do anywhere else. But after the joyless, loveless emotional waste-land which is childhood in Britain, the vividness and happiness of Swedish kids is strong medicine. Sweden may not have all the answers – – but it’s a damn sight closer to them than any other country I’ve visited, and working in Swedish schools is an enthralling experience. Now all I need is a decent phrase-book. Does anyone know the Swedish for “Will you come to the cinema with me on Saturday?” ‘

David Remfrey, ‘Images of Childhood’ – picture of two young girls sitting at a table, one pouring something like a cup of tea

‘I hope I was not the only one among us to visit the exhibition of drawings and paintings by David Remfry at the Mercury Gallery, Cork Street, London. Entitled Images of Childhood these paintings and drawings, mostly of little girls, have a calm beauty and subtle eroticism of great appeal. More often than not posed against a blank wall, barefoot on carpet, barekneed on chairs, simply dressed or not at all, playing hide and seek in a birthday suit behind the jardiniere, these children are caught, frozen in mid-dance, reclining on day beds, leaning listlessly, lost in sadness, pouring tea or simply playing, exempt from time yet dimly aware each day is one day nearer the gates of the Garden of Eden. Full of foreboding for the end of childhood, knowing they must grow up and what growing up means, these still nymphets are filled with unease and recall those many portraits of the Virgin looking wistfully at the Christ Child, as a mother protective, yet as the Mother conscious of, and resigned to, the Cross. For all their charm and apparent innocence, these paintings never lapse into sentimentality, and never do so because the subjects are clearly as aware as the painter of their potential appeal. Yet the eroticism is muted, not blatant as in Balthus’ paintings of pubescent girls, curiously English, reserved, belonging indoors, unrequited. It is precisely the eroticism of paedophilia, the attraction of the unattainable, the charm of cool remote children, the yearning to touch the untouched, tenderly. The distance between us and childhood, children, is the hallmark of paedophilic yearning, the rosegrey dream which dooms us, for when it is eclipsed in intercourse, there is the worm in the bud. Despair inevitably follows, not at once in the flush of passion, but later in twilight when we dimly perceive that our dream can never be incorporated in the smooth precise flesh of any child, not because children grow up, but because they must never cease to be distant. This is our dilemma: the child possessed is no longer child. Possessed, and a sword shall pierce the heart. So Remfry’s children, solitary especially in company, remain aloof, retain their distance, which is precisely their presence, and beckon us. only to ask us to go.’
C.J. Bradbury-Robinson (p. 11)

‘Hero and Lover’, p. 12

‘Both boys and girls can benefit from a responsible paedophile relationship with an adult friend that they can look up to, talk out their problems with, play with and learn from. The boy sees his man friend as a model to emulate in his self-development. The girl may see her man friend as more of a romantic hero. Likewise the lesbian paedophile relationship is based on the emulation self-development concept and the woman/boy relationship of one of romantic fulfillment. The responsible paedophile should not take advantage of this hero-worship just to satisfy sexual drives, but rather to be a supplemental teacher/parent in all phases of the child’s development. This should include basic friendship, teaching of ethical values, guidance and, ideally, dealing with matters of love and sensuality. With the adult as hero, he/she has the responsibility to place the welfare of the child first. A hero must live up to his honour. ‘

A further crossword, p. 12

Issue No. 12, December 1978 [Note that this was the issue preceding that in which NCCL took out an advert]

‘Magpie Comment’, p. 1
On Whitewash, who want to see PIE banned. (Whitehouse, presumably)

Compare themselves to IRA – ‘we do not use bombs and bullets to back up our arguments’

Apparently Tory MP Bill Benyon (an anti-abortionist) ‘bravely issued a press statement some time ago supporting Tom O’Carroll’s right to free speech in connection with paedophilia’

Demonstration outside British embassy in Oslo, Norway, about press and police harassment of PIE.

‘Lift PIE Ban, Gay News Told’.
WHS had refused to stock Gay News because of too much paedophilia.

‘News of the World’
Tom O’Carroll made complaint to Press Council about NOTW article in which he was dubbed ‘The nastiest man in Britain’ – about alleged errors of fact in the article.

‘David Grove Resigns’, p. 2 – becomes second life member, after Keith Hose, after Grove resigned as Secretary. Had joined in 1975.
Grove produced Childhood rights, running an anti-corporal punishment campaign, backed by Baroness Wooton and A.J. Ayer.

Review from Time Out of film “Montreal Main”. About an unemployed artist-photographer, Frank Vitale, who falls in love with 12-year-old Johnny. (p. 2)

‘Drug abuses’, p. 2. On two convicted paedophiles, who with help of National Association for Mental Health, are suing D of Health and doctors at Broadmoor for effects of hormone treatment – grew breasts which had to be surgically removed.

Item on p. 3:
‘Recent weeks have seen a veritable plethora of good viewing for “child sex persons” (a quaint term of endearment).
On TV: Truffaut films – L’enfant sauvage, Les Quatre Cent Coups.
Mark Lester molesting Britt Ekland in Night Hair Child.
More Truffaut, incl interview
Theatre: Annie; Bar Mitzvah Boy, revival of Oliver; cinema Fellini Satyricon; Tenderness of the Wolves, Lord of the Flies, and Blood Relatives, with Donald Sutherland, and Donald Pleasance as manic paedophile.

‘Pie Criticised Again – But This Time It’s Friendly!’, p. 4.
Review by Patrick Micel, of Libertarian Education, of Paedophilia: some Questions and Answers. Reprinted. Says that the pamphlet makes it seem to safe and easy, which it will never be. Says paedophilia ‘is sexist – a man will be imprisoned for acts thought laudable in a woman, particularly if the woman is the mother of the child concerned’
‘My last word to PIE is: be realistic – demand the impossible’

Various pictures of boys, aged c. 7-11, p. 5.

‘Feminism & Sexuality’, p. 6.
[…]
‘In the same way that countless women grow up, are married and go through their whole lives without realising that the attraction they feel for other women is, in fact, sexual and they are really gay, many women do not identify their feeling of love and attraction to children as sexual. Perhaps they don’t really enjoy sex with men, but get enormous pleasure from cuddling, caressing and bathing children. They get satisfaction from this but don’t see their natural spontaneous feelings as anything to do with paedophilia. A friend of mine, whose girlfriend had a baby, enjoyed a close loving relationship with the child and DID see it as sexual. They had a lot of fun together.

In Mexico mothers and grandmothers often lick their babies’ genitals to soothe them to sleep. The babies obviously like it. Is this a sexual assault? Should they all be arrested? It’s well known that babies and small children need to be touched and held a lot, otherwise they suffer severe emotional problems that can continue throughout their lives. So when do we define a touch as sexual?
And indeed, should we make that distinction at all?’

Column, p. 6, mentioning that hetero paedophilia insufficiently covered – will try to put this right.

Tom O’Carroll, ‘Is PIE Sexist?’, pp. 7-9
[…]
‘It has to be recognised that within the feminist movement there is an element for whom to be anti-sexist is ultimately to be anti-sexual, in a way which would make it impossible by definition for any man to have an acceptable, non-sexist paedophilic relationship. Arguably, most paedophiles are women, who get their buzz out of the intimacy of motherhood, but men who fancy kids are increasingly being labelled sexist, and it is a tag which is being attached specifically to the contents of this very magazine.’ (p. 7)
[…]
[As Gree Blachford, writing in Gay Left, has pointed out: “in our specialised society we objectify people all the time. When we purchase goods, we make the sales clerk into an object to satisfy our needs.” The important point is that in our society, it is thought to be demeaning for a woman to make herself available as an impersonal object for the satisfaction of a man’s sexual needs – by posing for a porn photo, say. In view of the fact that (following Blachford) objectification is otherwise acceptable, by elementary logic it is the sexuality that is problematic.’ (p. 7)

[More on this – arguing that many feminists see the sex act itself as inherently demeaning or degrading, pp. 7-8]

‘Feminists persist in feeling that objectification does matter. That it matters a great deal. They see that in a sexually guilt-ridden society the “degradation” of women in porn reinforces man’s view of his own superiority in the “natural” order of things; it reinforces the servile, passive nature of feminity [sic]. They are right, though they over-estimate the influence of such reinforcement: in Arab countries where no pornography is allowed, one finds the status of women much lower than it is here. Porn rankles so much with feminists here not so much because it is the cause of female oppression, no, even because it significantly adds to that oppression, but because it is such a [for them] visible symbol that the oppression exists. Nevertheless, it should be insisted that the cultural bias against women in our society is transmitted from the nursery onwards, in sexist education – by the time a boy is exposed to his first porn pix his attitude to girls I largely determined. What’s more, I believe that the solutions proposed by some women – which essentially lie in censorship and the total rejection of all male sexuality – are not only draconian, but take us back to an even more anti-sexual society than we have now. To a new Puritanism.

To understand this, one has to realise that an important element within the feminist attack is really directed not just against man in our society – the society and its values can be changed – but against the innate nature of the male sex, against the cardinal, biological nature of man. It is an emotional rejection of the penis, and of penetration. For some women to be fucked is always rape, no matter how unchauvinistic the individual man may be, no matter how sensitive or even “feminine” he is. He is a man, and that is bad enough – though it would be hard to formulate a more sexist notion than that! Theirs is the kind of thinking that defines all men as potential rapists – an idea which may be philosophically hard to deny, but which is hardly a celebration of the potential joy of sex either.

Some radical women – Germaine Greer is a notable one – do understand this happier potential. She has realised that there is liberation to be had not in retreating from men, but in going out and fucking them, in seeing the positive virtue of female sexual aggression (using the word in the original sense of coming forward, of taking initatives – not to be confused with destructive or sadistic impulses), of being active rather than passive in the se act itself. Her views are clearly pro-sexual, pro-fun. (p. 8)

[….]

‘Jane Gale (a woman, be it noted), put it well: “sexual acts between children are often considered exploratory and are consequently acceptable. Between child and adult the act is not considered exploratory, but rather a power relationship as the adult has a greater life experience and a greater propensity for evil and by his superior physical and mental strength may harm the child far more than another child could. It must be remembered that the adult, if he has a greater propensity for evil, also has a greater propensity for good. If a relationship should be deemed unacceptable because of the unequal distribution of power, then mot heterosexual adult relationships are unacceptable. The greater life experience of the adult may be more beneficial to the child than a relationship with someone of his own age.” (University of Kent, M.A. thesis) (p. 9)

[….]

‘Surely, I thought, we of all people, in PIE, should be in the forefront of raising levels of consciousness, among our own members, as well as others, as to the dignity and rights of young people – an emphasis requiring a very different vocabulary. I then went on to ask myself what this vocabulary should be. After all, the word “kids” and even “children” has patronising overtones. Shouldn’t we always use a dignified phrase like “young people”? One only has to make the suggestion to realise what sort of blind alley it leads us into: that of intense, earnest moralising talk, over-solemn and, as ever, hedged around by guilt – for woe-betide then the “backslider” who in an unwitting moment lets slip a “sexist” word.

I hope that in future PIE, and in particular Magpie, will pay attention to serious issues of children’s rights and to changing the oppressive attitudes to kids which some of our own (often well-intentioned) members may unconsciously have. Equally, our critics must realise that we are a tiny organisation, and that not many among us have had contact with “liberated” ideas through either the feminist or gay movements: most are very isolated. Our members include authoritarian teachers who believe that to spare the rod is to spoil the child. We have vicars and scoutmasters whose task includes the positive inculcation of oppressive establishment ideas. In no sense are we a cohesive radical group of like minds. (p. 9)

[…..]

p. 10 – lots of pictures of boys, c. 9-11, playing on skateboards.

‘The Paedophiles’, pp. 11-13. Reprint of a cover story appearing in The Hague Post (De Haagse Post), March 18, 1978.

Michael Berkel speaking with some children, a mother and with paedophiles.

Talking to a boy about why he likes a relationship with a man 30 years older (p. 11)

Talking to a man called Frans, a widower, and father of three children. Then talking to one of his sons, asking what he thinks of his father having a paedophile relationship with 14-year old Sander – asking such things as what he thinks of seeing his father and Sander lying in bed together (pp. 11-12)

‘”Don’t you find it strange to find your father and Sander lying in bed together?”
The son: “Why should I find it strange?”
Frans: “At first he was quite jealous of Sander. Suddenly someone his own age was taking his place in the home. But now all’s well and they no longer quabble with each other. Then, too, Sander is such a wonderful kid. I met him in the amusement arcade. He was playing one of the flipper machines and I said, ‘Hey, you don’t know what you are doing’. Immediate contact. Later we got some ice cream. Since then we have seen each other every day. We were like a pair of cooing doves. Whoever came to visit us was shoed away. We do everything sexually and emotionally that grown-ups do. We got out together. I take him with me on family visits, that sort of thing. No, my family doesn’t understand it but they have accepted it.”
Sander: “He never says things I don’t understand. You just don’t notice that he is so much older.”
Frans: “but now Sander’s family has moved out of the neighbourhood and I don’t see him so often. That’s hard on me, and it makes me very sad. Sometimes during the week he drops by to see me at work. My co-worked knows about us. And I see him weekends.” (p. 12)
[etc]

‘The Mother’

“According to Article 250 of the Criminal Code you are guilty of promoting lewd contact with minors. You provide the opportunity.”

Hetty (40) laughs. “Yes, in many eyes I’d be a dangerous mother figure. But that makes no difference to me. I still do it. Look, I’m not encouraging it, but I forbid nothing. I just let the child decide.”

“How open are you about it? Aren’t you afraid that it will be discovered?”

“Yes, I certainly am. Not because I will be embarrassed, but because I am in the midst of a divorce and I have not yet received final custody of the kids. If my ex-husband heard about it he would take advantage of it, I’m sure. He would probably try to take the children away from me. He would succeed because the child protection people don’t approve of these sorts of relationships. Thus we can’t be open about it. Sometimes the children’s neighbourhood friends ask Menno (12) whether he can go play with them and he says, ‘No, I’m going away on a visit’. He says that a lot because he spends most weekends with Kees. Then my heart skips a beat and I think maybe the boys will talk about that at home, and about Menno’s friend Kees, who has already been convicted once.”

“You’re very much of a libertine?”

“What is a libertine? If you have confidence in a relationship, why would you destroy it?
“I have known Kees two years. We came together when I had just left my husband. Kees helped me with all kinds of things. He became a personal friend. After the divorce I had the feeling that I was losing contact with Menno, my young son. H became so alienated from me. When I told that to Kees he said, ‘Send him to me for a while so I can talk with him. He can spend the weekend at my place’. Then I thought, ‘That’ll be good for Menno, to get out of the house’. I hoped that Kees could have some influence on him. Menno was away one day, then the weekend then the following weekend. And I thought, ‘Poor Kees has his own work and now he has to care for another man’s child. Isn’t that asking too much of him?’ I told Menno, ‘Don’t go to him this week’.
“As soon as Kees heard my son wouldn’t be coming he showed up at my door. He looked mad and he told me, ‘Why don’t you let Menno come? I know, because you know I’m a paedophile. A Child molester, as you’d say’. I used to sometimes hear that word at school but I hardly knew what it meant.
“Since then Menno has gone to Kees almost every weekend. I saw that so much empathy had grown up between them that I foud it normal that they spent so much time together. I noticed that mennow as a lot more open towards me, too. He started to talk with me again. It was striking how he changed. My oldest son commented on it, too. Menno had lost his trust in people and through Kees he has regained it.”

“Doesn’t it trouble you that they carry on sexually with each other?”

“I know nothing about the sexual aspects of their relationship. I haven’t asked. To tell the truth I don’t think I need to know. But if it happens I believe it is actually a great advantage for a child to have someone like that to guide him. To me it is a natural thing. If it grows out of a foundation fo warmth and friendship, how can it be wrong?”

“How do you bring up your children?”

“I have always brought them up in a sexually open manner. I have never failed to love them physically. I don’t hide my feelings. I myself at one time made love regularly with my brother. Until I was about 15 and my mother said, ‘You are getting too old now to crawl into bed with each other in the morning’. Then it suddenly became creepy, while before it felt completely normal. I believe as a parent you have a duty to help your children to reach sexual maturity. It is no disgrace if a father gets an erection playing with his daughter. But I’d better keep still about that because now we’re talking about incest and incest is a much greater taboo.”

“Are you yourself sexually interested in children?”

“When my eldest son gets all cleaned and combed and dressed up to go to a party I find I get a kick out of it. I am in education and I am thrown together with a lot of children of 11 or 12, but I don’t feel the same thing with them. Certainly not intellectually. They have no opinions of their own, know next to nothing, and I have asked Kees whether that isn’t a detriment to him, too, as a paedophile. But he tells me it is just as in a relationship with parents: the child himself must do something to you. You don’t fall for every boy who happens to be of that age.
“What I did find offensive was the way my ex-husband treated the children. If he wanted they had to climb into bed with him and take off their pyjamas. He made them even when they didn’t want to. You could see it embarrassed them. In the relationship between Kees and Menno these things happen naturally.”

“Would you advise other parents to pursue the same course you have?”

“Ive thought about that recently. I believe it can be a terrific protection for a child. A security. Certainly that’s so in Menno’s case because I also see it as something of a compensation for the fact that he no longer sees his father. Yet Kees is not a true father figure. There is not one bit of authority. No one is the boss. I think that later, when Menno starts going around with girls, sex will be less difficult for him, so he is already farther ahead. None of that kids’ sex play.”

“Isn’t kids’ sex play part of growing up?”

“Inexperience can be a bitter pill. You can save a lot of frustration when things don’t go right at first.”

“Professor De Levita, the child psychiatrist, has written that whenever a child is seduced into a premature sexual partnership, the growth process of that child can be destroyed.”

“Look, you can’t of course, be certain that this relationship is okay. You can only let your intuition speak. I see what I see, and for that I don’t need to read any books by psychiatrists. Menno has changed for the better. He’s less egocentric. Recently there was a TV programme on homosexuality and he went out himself and fetched Kees: “’Come here and look; there’s something you’ll find interesting’. He never would have done that before. As a mother you notice how such a relationship influences a son. If it hadn’t had meaning for Menno he wouldn’t have kept going back to Kees. That I am sure of. All this nonsense about children not being ready for it. Anyone can see that children are very much concerned with their bodies. Later they are always talking about it, or they buy condoms to go experimenting with.
“I have taught in a district of farm children. They wanted to know all sorts of things they didn’t dare ask. Then we made cards with questions on them and threw them into a hat. Then their bewilderment showed up, frustrations and miseries which the children lived with. Whether you always had to keep your clothes on when you did it, or who had to b on the top. They were very much concerned with such matters, but there was always that phrase, ‘had to’. It would be so much the best if these things just happened by themselves. And that’s happened in Menno’s case.”

“Don’t you have any reservations about this?”

“No. Truly. I am quite sincere. I have no reservations, but I am very much afraid that it will be a damnably long time before this sort of interview becomes superfluous. We’re talking about kids, right, and people involved emotionally with kids are condemned. However, things are improving – faster and faster, now, I understand. There is even an association of ‘Good Uncles’ being formed.” (pp. 12-13)

Crossword, pp. 13-14.

p. 14 – plug for next issue of Magpie including ‘Goodies for Girl-Lovers!!!’

p. 15 (back page)
Next to pic of a girl of about 7-8:
‘This is no time to sit on the fence! Magpie urgently requires your photographs, especially of girls. They should preferably be black and white, but we can still use colour snaps. Sorry, no nudes, nor anything which could be construed as too “racy” or overtly salacious. Use the photographs in this issue as a guide. Send your prints to the editor, and please specify if you wish them to be returned. We shall send £5 to the member who submits the best photograph each issue in the opinion of the EC.

Picture of c. 10 year old boy lying forwards suggestively on a fence, legs on either side of it.

Issue No. 13, April 1979

Editorial, p. 2. Usual stuff, dressed up in language of rights of children.

Underneath, the symbol of the International Year of the Child.

‘Further information on activities in Britain throughout the Year, plus suggestions for events you can organise yourself (don’t all rush at once!) are contained in the January edition of “Child’s Play”, available from: CHILD’S PLAY, FRANCIS HOUSE, FRANCIS STREET, LONDON SW1. (p. 2)
Published by ‘Child’s Play Information Centre’, which is funded by ‘Make Children Happy charity’. Supposedly ‘geared towards playleaders and youth workers, and covers book reviews, play schemes, campaigns and courses. A central information library has also been set up, (tel: 01 828 9055). Why not let MAGPIE know of any events you organise yourself… with photos?’ (p. 2)

‘Gay News Breaks its Silence’
‘At long last the big battalions in the gay scene have woken up to the existence of PIE’s QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS booklet. There have been reviews in both Gay News and in the CHE journal Broadsheet.
The Gay News review (25th January ’79 no. 159) by Jeffrey Weeks, himself an historian of the gay movement and a leading light of the Gay Left collective, is both full and positive, saying that the booklet has made “a useful starting point for a rational debate”.
The Broadsheet (February ’79) review is much more combative, but does at least endorse the main aim of the booklet – that of dispelling the ignorance, fear and prejudice which surround paedophilia – and concedes unequivocally that “it is important to have it established that the disruption of a paedophile relationship which the child desires is as destructive as the relationship itself can be creative and valuable”.
The winter issue of Gay Left also contains a lengthy and interesting editorial on paedophilia, to which PIE will be making a response in the spring issue.’ (p. 3)

p. 4 ‘It’s All Happening in…. Boston! A Report from Chairperson Tom O’Carroll on an American “New Deal” for Paedophiles’

Mentions DA trying to start a witch hung against gays, but also ‘formation of a brand new paedophile organisation covering the whole North American continent.’
About Boston-Boise Committee and Tom Reeves.

‘A Boy Lover’s Jamboree’, p. 4.
Report on Boston conference on May[sic]-Boy Love and The Age of Consent, held in December last year.

‘Boston: Is There a Lesson for PIE?’, by TOC
Mentioning how ‘Reeves was able to mobilise the support of much of that [gay] community (of which he feels himself to be a part) in sharp distinction to the relative isolation faced by PIE.[…] It would be nice for PIE to get the support of gays in the same way. But where would that leave the little boy and girl lovers? More importantly, where would it leave the revolution aimed at children being free to grow up in a society free from sexual guilt?’ […] (p. 5)

‘Thoughts on the Theme of Love’, by Cliff
Passages from Coleman, Keats, Blake, Kaufmann, Barford, and Miller (p. 5)

‘The Brownie Annual ‘79’, reviewed by Edward Dipfinger (Dip. Ed)
‘To be honest, I only buy Brownie annuals for the colour photographs of little girls with flat chests. And the 1979 Annual has rather a lot of these. But for the lover of girl-children with a tiny bubble of hot mischief in his loins there is a sort of hopeless beauty about nearly everything either inside or on the front cover of a brownie Annual. Of course, I realise very clearly that the Annual (by its nature) deos not invite grown-ups. Yet the paedophile’s cup of tea is often his elevenses – to repeat a joke I overheard a lollipop man permit himself one sunshine afternoon many school terms ago – and Brownies are eleven years of age, or younger… so there ought to be something in the annual to interest most hets. Personally, I always find Brownie Annuals extremely readable and worthwhile. Full of ideas and chock-a-block with up-to-date inside info on pack holidays and revels, the Annual never fails to please.
Robert Moss, the puttering fussy editor of the annual, is consistently dull and naïve. His vision of childhood is prim and sane, far too prim and sane to handle this delightful sub-species of Girl Guide, and so his book keeps drifting into unexpected havoc. It is absolutely loaded with those hints and jokes which tease like a U-film whisper.
Patience, a little wit, and perhaps an ounce or two of imagination, are the only gifts one needs to read between the lines… to peep behind the fig-leaves, as it were. It is easy and it is fun. And who said ripeness was next to rottenness?’ (p. 6)

‘Indecency in the House’, p. 7
About a Private Members Bill sponsored by MP Hugh Rossi, making it an offence to display ‘indecent’ material anywhere in public, with exception of museums, art galleries, and television.
‘Allan Gloak, a gay magazine publisher, said “this bill is dangerous. If it ever becomes law there’s no doubt in my mind that it’s going to be used for a censorship crackdown”.’ (p. 7)

‘Pie Victim of the child porn act’, p. 7
About how a ‘girl-lover’ from Blackpool, a former PIE member, received a fine of £400 + £200 costs after police found child porn mags and photos in his car. ‘Possession in itself is not a crime under the Act, but the defendant was said to have had the offending material with a view to showing or distributing it, and this is illegal.’
Resulted from the NOTW reproducing a contact ad from Magpie last year (‘Male, interest in girls 6-13, would like to correspond & meet others’), and the police tracing him. He said ‘But I cancelled his membership because all the members appeared to like little boys. I know I like girls and that is wrong but I hate anyone who messes about with little boys.”
Comments under from Magpie – detesting both the law and its implementation, and also the hypocrisy of the man.

‘Sex without Shame’, TOC, p. 8
About book of that name by Dr Alayne Yates. She thinks parents should encourage children to have sex, and that ‘intercourse could begin at four years, and that many incest relationships, including those between father and daughter, can be a positive experience’

‘Statuesque Kids’
‘Are there any interesting statues of kids near you: in local parks/museums/galleries? We are hoping to run, possibly next issue, a photo guide to the best in child statuary. Your help would be appreciated.’ (p. 8)

Letter ‘Is Pie Sexist’, reply by a female member to Tom O’Carroll’s article, pp. 9-10.
[….]
‘As you point out, children’s rights are important to PIE. It is absolutely vital. Unless children have some control over their own bodies and their own lives, there will always be possibilities for adults to take advantage of, and exploit, children, sexually (just as they exploit children and use their power over them in so many other ways now).

If PIE is to be an organisation working towards a better society and sexual liberation, it must work towards a state where children can give free and informed consent to sexual relations, and where they will be taken seriously and respected if they say no.
I think (maybe wrongly) that you confuse “enjoying yourself in bed and maybe playing roles” with male sexual aggression. What people of any age mutually enjoy sexually has nothing to do with sexism or oppression, but this is very different from a society that is largely based on sex roles: Male = aggressive; breadwinner; sexually active – Female = passive; dependant[sic]; sexual receptacle for the Male. Neither men nor (especially women really fit into these moulds, and many are trying to break out: hence women’s liberation, gay liberation.

The ethic of male sexual aggression leads to, at worst, rape, at best, men using women – usually their wives – as objects of their sexual needs. The majority of heterosexual men are not really interested in learning how to make love to women, and even less in learning how to be made love to. Surely it is the sexist idea that sex equals penetration by the male that gives rise to a lot of the fears that people have about paedophilia. The “general public” see a helpless 4-year old being penetrated by an aggressive masculine male. Of course, no-one in his right mind would try to have intercourse with a 4-year old child. This doesn’t mean that a loving sexual relationship with a child of 4 is impossible. It just means that it would consist mainly of perhaps cuddling and stroking, and that the paedophile would be more likely to be female than male.

And it’s not only children who like cuddling and stroking. Most women enjoy it, and so probably would most men, but in our society it is considered unmanly to allow yourself to be cuddled. Sexism again!’ (p. 9)

[More stuff about general sexism. But opposing censorship of pornography]

‘Cambridge Conflict’, p. 10
University’s Vice-Chancellor, Sir Alan Cottrell, asking questions about advertising Paedophilia. Some Questions and Answers in student publications. SU president Charles Burch said to a local paper ‘I am quite impressed by the responsible way in which the PIE has written its booklet.’ (p. 10)

p. 11. Stories about slave-like working conditions for children in Bangkok. A Muslim child barred from school for declining to wear the school tie on religious grounds. Loss of Gay News blasphemy case. Story of a boy, Matthew Hall, who collected 2 ½ tons of cigarette packets towards a haemodialysis unit, a kidney machine. Report on schools and dealing with unmanageable pupils – pointing out that corporal punishment is on decline.

J. Pebble, ‘Child Porn (or Algebraic Paedophilia?): a heterosexual viewpoint’, pp. 12-13.
Arguing against those positions which oppose child porn on economic grounds or other arguments about exploitation, saying that these are just as rife in other areas – arms, drugs and advertising industries. Cites Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil).

p. 14. Has ad for NCCL.

5.jpeg

Also short piece about NUT sending a letter to Shirley Williams complaining about publication and distribution of “Blot” by National Union of School Students, which has articles on masturbation and promiscuity.

‘Castration Law in U.S.’, p. 15.
Mrs Joyce Lewis, in Maine, has proposed castration of both men and women for offences against children. Men would have nerves removed which enabled them to have erections; women would have ovaries removed, causing vagina to lose its elasticity, making intercourse painful. But may founder on grounds of ‘cruel and unusual punishment’.

David Grove, ‘The Oppression of Children’, p. 15
Mentioning child labour, floggings, etc. Citing Wordswhort:
“…trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home,
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shade of the prison house begin to close
Upon the growing boy… “

‘This fits in with other appropriate ideas, such as (a) this world is not reality, (B) we are really spirits, not bodies, (c) sexual activity is something which eventually sullies and degrades our angelic nature.
This type of romantic-idyllic thinking provides a very convenient background for the oppression of children. The truth is that the “growing boy” (or girl) is jolly lucky when he/she is at last old enough to escape from it.’ [etc]

Second part of ‘The Paedophiles’, pp. 16-18
Interview with Guillaume Sommer, sociologist in his 40s.
‘Boys start to become attractive to me around 12. If I hear a break in his voice, then it’s perfect. An intense pleasure. Acne. His look becomes suspicious. Then it comes to me. Then I feel a humility and a compassion. Something like, boy, it’s getting serious. Now it’ going to happen. It is also in the movement and the shape of such a boy. Why can’t I fall for a boyish looking girl? No, it’s the smell of the boy’s room. The bravuar [sic].
I always divide boys into angels and saucy little kids. I was, myself, as a child, one of the angels. A very good boy. Very inhibited. Never squabbled. Never showed my emotions. I came from a Christian home. You didn’t cry. I didn’t let myself get involved in paedophilia until I was in my 30’s. Around puberty I had violent loves for boys around 12. I could sometimes walk around in the shallow end of the swimming pool with a boy in my arms and the water washing over his chest. I never got an erection doing that because I didn’t connect the pleasure I got that way with sex.
In my twenties all that subsided. I also had feelings for girls. I was almost through school when my repressed paedophile feelings came back with a vengeance, toward a young cousin. I had an enormously erotic response to him. His parents let us go on a vacation together. For two weeks we shared a bed, and I didn’t dare touch him. That only increased his attraction for me. After that I came regularly every weekend to his house, but in a year and a half nothing happened that you could call sex. It was a passion: it played in my fantasies.
I know I once masturbated and that then the image of that boy haunted me. I was shocked. That is wrong, I thought: I must go to a psychiatrist. I went to a medical psychiatric office. A psychiatrist from the Rutger Society told me, “Yes, a wife with a penis, that’s what you want”. [etc] (p. 16)
[….]
‘I believe the war made a paedophile of me. It’s my Concentration Camp Syndrome. I think I belong to the most deeply hurt generation, the men in their 40’s who lived in camps as children, who were too little to understand it and weren’t able later to assimilate it. First I was with my mother in Soerabaja (Indonesia), in a woman’s camp. I had my mother all to myself because my father was already gone. When I turned 12 I had to go to a separate boy’s camp. We were taken there in a cattle truck. A man came between me and my mother. Why didn’t she attack the Japanese? Why didn’t she try to hold onto me? I must be brave. I mustn’t cry. My mother delivered me over to an aggressive man. That was not the first time.
I have nothing against women, but they are treacherous beings. Every time I form an attachment to a woman some man with aggressive impulses ploughs right through it. My father, for example, or that man who took out my tonsils, or the man who ran into me as I fled across the street to my mother. That pattern repeated itself, in the war in its most concentrated form.’
‘How do you connect that with paedophilia?@
‘During my analysis it came to the surface that somewhere a reversal of roles took place. As you yourself become a man you identify with the aggressive man, but, because I had an aversion to him, I projected myself into a young boy with whom I could form a relationship. A sort of atonement, a making amends with that boy who is really yourself. As if I was trying to say, ‘Young fellow, I’m really not so aggressive. I really care for you a lot. I care more for you than for a woman. I want to protect you from the things that happened tome when I was your age’.
I provide myself satisfaction with respect to myself as a 12-year-old boy. I have always fallen hard for 12-year-olds. I have also tried it with women, but that was more because society expected it of me. If you really enter into the advances, into an attachment with a woman, then there is an aggressive man in the scene. I see men, as perhaps you do, too, always as aggressors. Great convocations,. Crowds of men in grey suits. I become very frightened of them. [etc]
[….]
‘Winny [a boy of 12] is here every day. After dinner he always drops by. He has his own key to the house. He lives close by. I have known him for seven years. However, the love affair between us began just recently. It is a great pleasure. I sit in that chair and I put him on my lap, and with his arm about my neck we chat, about what school he will go to after he finishes secondary school, that sort of thing. I enjoy it intensely. I don’t baby him. I don’t speak in a different language. He has an attitude which makes me think he sees us as equals.’ (p. 17) (Guillaume is 45)
[….]
‘When a child comes here every evening for about six years and teaches me how to make love to him. I would be careful about qualifying children as different form adults. We live in an outspoken paedophile culture. The whole mythology of a child: the child is an angel, holy and innocent. Whoever doesn’t love children is an egotist. At the same time they are unruly creatures who must be quickly moulded into honest citizens. Sexual strivings in children – and by that I also mean body pleasure and free emotional expression – are forbidden. To me paedophilia is a product of a society in which sex is set apart. Paedophilia involves itself in forbidden things, and therefore it is forbidden. When an adult has a relationship with a small girl, isn’t people’s first reaction: ‘That penis is much too big.’ That comes from our fixation in sex and emotions upon sexual organs.’(p. 17)
[…]
‘What sort of image do you have now? What do you think I do with children? Rape them? Violate them? Murder them? I kiss them. They kiss me. I caress them. They caress me. When we want to we masturbate together, but sometimes that doesn’t happen in our relationship for weeks on end. Then a platonic contact prevails. No, I can’t find one scrap of evidence that this has undesirable consequences for the child.’ (p. 18)

‘Precious Metal-Hunter’, p. 19
’13-year old James Bolton, of King’s Lynn in Norfolk, is offering a free service with his metal detector to anyone who has lost items in the area. Now where did I leave that damnation cuff-link?’

Another item about a new article by Brongersma (p. 18)

‘Het’s Corner’, p. 19.
pics of pre-pubescent girls at school, aged probably 7-10. And some drawings, including one of a baby girl in nappies.

TOC, ‘How To Make Love… To Children’, p. 20

London Film-Makers’ Co-operative held an evening of films on Nov 10th. Purpose ‘To promote an educational discussion about film-making and the politics of sexuality’.
Films: Michel d’Hondt, Propaganda. – about children playing, with sexual overtones.
Mattyn Seip, Ijdijk (1963) – about an encounter between a man on a motorbike ‘and a boisterous youn blond boy’
Seip, Schermerhorn (1966) – about a continuing relationship between a man and a boy of about 15.

‘Feedback’, p. 21
Various letters from V.M., and members Nos. 275, 428, 426, 230, 39, 442.
No 426 suggesting that in some punk there are paedophile themes – lead singer of Buzzcocks was wearing a badge saying ‘I Like Boys’, and mentioning their 1978 hit ‘Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t ‘ve)?’. The Snifters, single ‘I Like Boys’. And band Raped (who changed their name to ‘Cuddly Toys’ after much criticism), had a single called ‘Pretty Paedophiles’.
No. 230 finding scenes with erotic overtones between children in Wuthering Heights and Romeo and Juliet.

Rev Olyobm ‘Once Below a Time’, poem in style of Dylan Thomas, p. 22.

Cliff, review of film ‘Nighthawks’, about comprehensive schoolteacher who prowls pub/club/disco scene by night, ‘only of peripheral interest to paedophiles’.

Crossword, p. 23

p. 24, back cover, two more pics of boys around 10-11.

Issue No. 14, Oct-Dec 1979

Cover ‘no longer alone!’. Picture of a Sri Lankan boy, maybe about 10.

p. 2. Picture of boy of about 11-12 sitting looking at the camera a bit provocatively.

‘The Continuing Crisis’, problems of money, p. 2
‘Light at the End of the Tunnel’, p. 2 – about some report recommending abolition of age of consent, report called Pregnant At School. Not much detail. Just saying that legality of sex acts should depend

‘First triumph for new conspirators’, p. 3
About Conspiracy Against Public Morals, a group formed to support PIE in its legal battle. CHE have affiliated to CAPM. A motion at a conference in Brighton for abolition of age of consent found widespread support, though no vote was taken. Give conspiracy defendants were remanded after a short hearing at Bow St magistrates court on Sep 4.

Conspiracy Against Public Morals, a broadly-based action group, has been formed to support PIE in its legal battle – and already the Conspiracy has scored its first success, by securing CHE’s affiliation to the campaign, at its annual conference in Brighton.

The Conspiracy, which aims to draw attention to the civil rights aspects of PIE’s case, and the unfairness of the law on ‘public morals’, is seeking support not only from gay organisations, but also from civil liberties and progressive legal groups, a wide range of sexual reformers, and those opposed to moral censorship.

The Conspiracy‘s Brighton triumph owed much to a speech by barrister Adrian Fulford, which Gay News declared to be the best made at the conference. The motion that followed it, calling for CHE’s affiliation to CAPM, was passed unopposed.

At the same conference, a motion in support of ending the age-of-consent laws also found widespread support. no official vote was taken – it was decided to leave the issue in the hands of the executive – but an informal show of hands indicated a 2 to 1 majority in favour of abolition.

In a brief hearing at Bow St magistrates court on September 4, the give conspiracy defendants were remanded on bail until November 22. […]’ (p. 3)

[This article provoked an investigation by the Mail, who wrote a major article about Fulford, now a High Court judge and an Adviser to the Queen: see Martin Beckford, ‘High Court judge and the child sex ring: Adviser to Queen was founder of paedophile support group to keep offenders out of jail’, Daily Mail, March 8th, 2014]

‘Roger Dodges Old Bailey Charge’, p. 3
Roger Moody, occasional contributor, acquitted of buggery against a 10-year old boy.

‘PIE Top 20’, pp. 4-5.
Selection of non-fiction books on and about paedophilia.

‘Norway – ‘It’s a knockout’ says Tom’, p. 5.
Went to conference with German, Swedish and Dutch delegates called ‘Amnesty for
Love and Attraction’ in Oslo, organised by Norwegian Paedophile Group, NAPF.
Much of it in English.
Papers by psychologists Thore Langfeldt of Norway, and Frits Bernard.
New international group to be set up, provisionally entitled Amnesty for Child Sexuality (ACS).
Tom went to see a Danish film called You Are Not Alone, about a school rebellion against sexual oppression imposed by teachers. ‘The main feature was a loving relationship between two boys, one about 15, the other 11 – and very much pre-pubertal. The erotic scenes between these two were astonishingly frank for a publicly licensed film, and at the same time beautifully tender.’

“Girl of Six” [under a picture of a girl of around 8-9 sitting in a chair]
‘You cuddled me and kissed me,
Mussed my hair, and smiled:
The woman in the child.’
Clark Ashton Smith (p. 5)

Mention of TOC’s forthcoming Paedophilia: The Radical Case (p. 5)

‘PIE no longer alone as major report says abolish age of consent’ – more about Pregnant At School, published by National Council for One Parent Families. Mostly to do with problem of juvenile pregnancy.
‘The sixty four thousand dollar question for any proposal to do away with a specific age of consent is what do you put in its place? How is the ability to consent to be determined? The report relies on criteria of physical and psychological maturity, with each case being considered on its merits. Thus a male would risk prosecution for having sex with a girl – or a mentally handicapped woman – of any age, if the female was found to be incapable of giving true consent. On the other hand, in theory at least, a physically well-developed (does this mean pubertal? – the report offers no definition) 10-year-old who plainly knew her own mind could consent.
Cases of alleged sexual assault, the report suggests, could be tried under existing laws ‘relating to criminal assault, sexual offences and the welfare of young people.’ In fact, although the report does not say so, some of these laws themselves presume that children under specified ages cannot consent, even to minor sexual activities, and would need to be amended in order for the report’s recommendations to be workable.’

Clipping from Capt Cook, Account of a Voyage Around the World (1769) on how a young man around six feet high ‘performed the rites of Venus (intercourse) with a little girl about 11 or 12 years of age’, in front of several people, and it seemed perfectly normal, with various women giving instructions to the girl how to perform her part.

Ad for Midwest Gay Academic Journal, p. 8

‘Chemical Castration makes a Comeback’, p. 9 – on how an Old Bailey judge forced this on a 53-year old caretaker who had a relationship with a boy of 13, if he wanted to avoid a stiff prison sentence. Castration has been banned in Holland.

Ralph, ‘The Child Protectors’, pp. 10-11
Teacher, then housemaster-tutor, eventually ‘in a well-known south east England public school’. Then returned to college and qualified in social work.
Looked after a nine-year old boy Phil, like a son.
Phil brought a 13-year old boy who was gay back. Ralph eventually received a four year jail sentence. Held back from suicide because of a letter from Phil, who was 14 when he returned. Heard about PIE whilst in prison. Then porn squad came to him. Phil ended up being boycotted by all his friends.

Toby, ‘Men with a Creche on Kids’, p. 15.
Just a book about organising a crèche, but feeling very much at ease around kids, in ways which sound sinister – quoting one man ‘My main feeling about the crèche is how important it is to have kids staying the night so that one really gets to know and be involved with them. If they go back to their parents in the evening (worse still if their stay is only for one afternoon) they never really commit themselves to being involved with you in the crèche and still want their parents at the slightest difficulties’.

Feedback, pp. 12-13
Usual sorts of things. Reply by Roger Moody to the piece by a woman member before.

‘World Contact Groups’, p. 14

‘Tu-Tuc-ing in to child-love’
‘How pleasant to see that there are gays who aren’t frightened of being associated with paedophilia, writes Serge, from Germany. At the Tuc Tuc café in Hamburg, the gay clientele have played hosts to an exhibition of paedophilc art – drawings, paintings and high-quality photos, together with poems on child-love.’ (p. 15)

Stop Press, p. 16
About NCCL publication First Rights – changes in criminal law as it affects children, abolition of corporal punishment, right for pupils and parents to see school records, and increased rights for young people in care.

Issue No. 15, Spring 1981

Cover, ‘Tom Jailed’, with lots of clippings.

‘Mid Trial Summary (PIE 4 Crown 0)’, p. 2.

Edward Brongersma, ‘The Dutch Experience’, p. 4

‘E.C. Appeal 1980’, p. 11. By Steven Adrian, Chairperson.
By time of appeal membership had dwindled to 150.

Article by Lesbian feminist Pat Califia, ‘Women against the New Puritans’, pp. 12-14
Arguing against Robin Morgan in particular, who had said that boy-love was a euphemism for rape (p. 12)

‘Morgan’s specious redefinition of rape could undo years of laborious public education. There is a clear difference between a consensual sex act which takes place between two people of different social status and a sexual assault (which can easily take place between people of equal social status). Her concept of rape implies that all kinds of relationships are inherently non-consensual – sex between men and women, between people of different racial or ethnic backgrounds, between people of different socioeconomic levels, between able-bodied and physically challenged people, and even between partners who differ greatly in size and strength.’ (p. 13)

[…]
‘WAVPM [Women Against Violence in Pornography and the Media]’s theory does not explain why an adult man would prefer boys (who have more social and physical power than girls) if he is motivated simply by a fear of powerful partners. It also does not explain why women have sexual relationships with girls. Yet this theory, which might explain heterosexual paedophilia, is being used to attack gay men.
What is missing from all this sanctimonious cant is the fact that some adults and young people care so deeply about each other that they are willing to risk long prison sentences, social stigma and violence to make contact with each other. Morgan is right: sexuality and emotions cannot be separated from each other without doing something horrible to the human spirit. But whatever makes her think that tenderness is not present in cross-generational relationships? The shrink establishment used to say that about lesbian relationships – that they were hopelessly neurotic because two women couldn’t really love each other.
I think it is interesting that so much of the new, ostensibly feminist morality dovetails with the old, Judeo-Christian morality. The American left is used to dealing with its own sectarian elements. The women’s movement is not. But we do have a conservative wing that is trying to turn feminism into a campaign against pornography, boy-lovers, sadomasochists, drag queens, transsexuals and prostitutes. It cannot be mere coincidence that so many groups of people who have already been outlawed, depersonalised and termed sick are being turned into symbols of women’s oppression.’ [etc] (pp. 13-14)

Also on p. 13:
‘When is a Paedophile not a Paedophile? When she is a Woman’
‘I find my daughter movingly, passionately beautiful: when I see her running naked, or coiled sleeping, I feel something which is not (I hope) lust, but alarmingly akin to it – a physical delight and recognition: and a desire to elicit from her a similar response.”
Thus Sara Maitland, feminist and writer, in a new book on motherhood (Why Children? Edited by Stephanie Dowrick and Sibyl Grundberg, Women’s Press, 1980).
And they say only men are paedophiles. . .’

‘Is the Far East going West’, pp. 15-16, 22. Mentions Tom Faret of Norwegian paedophile group NAFP.
[….]
‘Even so, conditions in the slum districts made a deep impression on us. Birth control instruction is now given in the schools, but it is stil usual for there to be 8 – 10 children in a family. Consequently, it is common for several children to sleep in the same bed, and it is perhaps because of this that the Filippinos have a completely different and more natural outlook on physical contact than we are used to. All this, of course, contributes to the fact that prostitution is pretty widespread. Every hotel boy and taxi driver do their best to offer their “chicks” to tourists. Even the poshest hotel have their “massage ladies” – it’s just that the price is higher the posher you live. Call boys right down to 12 years of age offer their girl friends or themselves quite openly to tourists in Manilla.
For those not interested in commercial sex we would recommend a trip to one of the smaller towns in the Philippines where there are fewer tourists. Here it is easier to come into contact with the local population, and we found it quite easy to build a really friendly relationship in a very short time. We went to a town called Bacolod on the island of Nigros and stayed there for eight days. In this comparatively short time we became known to a large number of people of all ages and both sexes. The standard of the hotels is good and the prices are very low. We often invited a large number of our friends to dinner at a good restaurant; everyone ate and drank as much as they wanted to, and the bill was seldom more than 50 Kr. (£5.00). A single room at our hotel was about the same price. That we had many guests in our room caused no eye-brow raising. We were invited to the homes of the boys we knew best and met their parents and family. Apparently, the parents thought it was a great honour that their sons had become so well-known to us. They told us how clever junior was at giving “massages”. . .
No minimum age for sex, nor any anti-homosexual laws, in Philippines.

‘Lolita on Stage’, p. 21. About Edward Albee’s stage adaptation.

Issue No. 16, Autumn 1981

Cover – more clippings about trial.

‘Hackney’s Decent People’, p. 2
The dirty tricks brigade were out in force during the Greater London Council’s recent elections. Under the heading – A Warning to the Decent People of North Hackney. Do You Want a Pervert to Represent You at County Hall? – they leafleted the London borough with a crude piece of trash directed against the Labour candidate, Gerry Ross.
Gerry was said to have a “shady and sinister past,” to be a “prolific writer and advertiser in . . . . Magpie,” to be a “close acquaintance of tom O’Carroll,” and “constant companion of Peter Bremner.”
‘Total fabrication’
Peter, a member of PIE’s Executive Committee comments, “It’s a total fabrication, of course; a primitive attempt by the lunatic fringe of the right wing to smear Mr. Ross.” Was Gerry a constant companion? “I don’t think I’ve ever met him in my life, though I’d like to. Gerry Ross is a well-known councillor in Hackney, and I respect his political views. But I can understand his anger at the leaflet. It claims, in one forged news cutting, that he was a defendant at the first PIE trial and a second so-called cutting comes from a fictitious newspaper. Who wouldn’t be angry about that?”
Increased majority.
The leaflet has been referred to the police for action on criminal libel. We are pleased to report that Gerry was elected councillor for North Hackney with a greatly increased majority.’ (p. 2)

‘Paradise Lost?’, pp. 3-4 (‘by a friend of PIE’)
On Sri Lanka.
[…]
With improved tourist facilities and cheap charter flights, more and more boy lovers have found their way to the island, spurred on in no small measure by its exposure as a BL paradise in such widely-circulated publications as SPARTACUS Gay Guide.
‘Predominantly now it was German tourists who came to find the boys for pleasure. And they came in their hundreds. Many acted with prudence, discretion and responsibility, but by no means all. It is a sad fact but it can be quite clearly understood that many of these sexually distraught boy lovers, with their frustrations bottled up inside them while in Europe, and with only one or two weeks to enjoy themselves, should fairly explode when they reached Sri Lanka and have sex and more sex with any boy who cared to come along (a tentative parallel could perhaps be drawn with sailors coming in on shore leave!) and, unaware of (or simply insensitive to) the cultural and economic gulf between them would shower money, cigarettes, watches and pocket calculators onto the boys. This easy money attracted more and more boys to follow tourists and to tout and pester them openly, and it seemed it would only be a matter of time before the authorities would have to act to prevent their precious tourists from this nuisance. Also, the blatant exhibitionism of the paedophile and gay tourist men and their boys offended the sensibilities of many local people. (Even I was guilty of that in the beginning, I’m Ashamed to admit.)

Well, it all began with the police arresting the boys and charging them with soliciting, or vagrancy. The topic began to be raised at international level in conferences on tourism. Remember that the western media had picked up on the item in Spartacus by John D. Stamford concerning the “rape of the third world”. In reply to one such question at a conference in Colombo, the Minister of State, Anandatissa deAlwis, tried to play it down with statements such as, “Why do tourists come here? Because there are beautiful girls and beautiful boys!” and “homosexuality existed here long before tourism”. However, his heroic stand was short-lived.’ (p. 3)
[…..]
Tim Bond, c. 34, from Christian children’s welfare organisation, Terre des Hommes came with a copy of Spartacus Gay Guide. Then wrote a report in which he condemned boy prostitution.
‘By April the local press was beginning to quote that most illustrious of all newspapers(!), the News of the World, by merely repeating, with no first hand knowledge of the facts, the fetid headlines and verbiage. By early May they caught onto another NOTW slant: “PIE’S DIRTY EYE ON LANKA” proclaimed the WEEKEND newspaper; “HAVEN OF SIN” said CHIC on page 3 in two-inch block caps. In earlier months, the local papers had referred to European paeds honestly as “coming here to satisfy their sexual needs” (as opposed to the more British perverted lusts). I could read no real hostility between the lines. But now, in imitation of the British rags, sexual pleasure was being equated with evil and sin. The NOTW’s suggestion that PIE might have connections with the Mafia (Heaven forbid!) were given wide coverage in the press. Some of the NOTW’s other wild speculations were transcribed into fact by WEEKEND on May 10: “PIE is responsible for preparing hard core child porn films and distribution among members as well as assisting the membership to procure children for their activities. PIE is said to have been supplied with ‘snuff’ films, showing children sexually tortured to death, by the Mafia.” It made my stomach turn to read it. I am familiar enough with PIE to know that they would outright condemn any kind of sadism or violence against children. How can this be paedophilia – love of and for children? But with libellous and inflammatory statements such as these appearing in the national press, is it any wonder that all BL tourists would be treated with great suspicion?
Last year, a resident guest, known by most people as “Charles White” was brutally murdered in his home in Colombo. He was a boy lover and had many personal contacts around the world. WEEKEND, in referring to PIE, claims that the police in Colombo stumbled onto a link when they came across some letters in his home written in English and French to which he had replied about the possibilities of “perverted activity here”. Some of the letters were from Morocco, and it is alleged that some of his Moroccan contacts had connections with the Mafia and “international sex rings”. The report then admits that, in fact, no direct links with PIE were shown in the Colombo letters. [etc]

‘Gayle Rubin, ‘Sexual Politics: The New Right & The Sexual Fringe’, p. 5. Edited version of an article for The Leaping Lesbian

‘At a time when feminists are called lesbians, when homosexuals are portrayed as “child molesters”, and when “child molesters” are presented as the four horsemen of the apocalypse, it would seem suicidal to try to defend the more exotic sexual minorities.

I would like to argue the exact opposite. It has never been more imperative that the women’s and gay movements develop more sensitivity to the problems, humanity, and legitimate claims of stigmatised minorities. If not, we will be contributing to a sexual witch-hunt. The actions of the “pro-family” forces at Houston are only the most widely-publicised aspects of the current sexual reaction. A more subtle and insidious repression is occurring elsewhere. It is in the pattern of arrests as well as in the “results” of referenda. It is in the new laws to regulate pornography and sexual behaviour that have been speeding through legislative bodies. It is in the New Journalism of self-conceived sexual muck-raking.

Although the reaction is aimed at feminism and gay liberation, both the women’s and gay movements are relatively strong and enjoy some measure of popular support. Lovers of young people, and others, are easier targets. There has been a marked increase in the tempo of arrests for sex “offences”. Many people have lost jobs and face sentences ranging from minor to many years in prison. While feminists and garden-variety gays are not exactly secure, it has been the more legally-vulnerable, more stigmatised, and less easily-defended groups which have sustained the highest casualties.

The issue which exemplifies these trends most dramatically is that of sex between adults and young people. “Boy-love” seems to be for Anita Bryant what communism was to Joe McCarthy. Gay men are reluctant to defend paederasts for fear of being confused with them. Feminists are wary of the subject out of a concern to end the sexual abuse of young people, and out of an awareness of the ways in which social power infects intimate relationships, thus neither feminism nor gay liberation was prepared to respond when a national hysteria over the sex lives of the young developed in the months preceding the Miami vote.

The lack of sociological sophistication displayed by both the media and the police was unnerving. There was a lot of talk of “national conspiracies” to draft boys into white slavery. From such data as actually appeared, it could be deduced that the “conspiracy” consisted primarily of the kind of contacts through ads, letters, and word of mouth, which characterises virtually every sexual sub-culture in the country. The “national conspiracy” was no more than the rudimentary social organisation of a sexual sub-group. By such criteria, the personal ads in “The New York Review of Books” would constitute a national conspiracy.

The campaign may have increased public awareness over the real abuse and exploitation to which many young people are subjected, but the most visible and immediate results were considerable less salutory [sic]. The media campaign shared with the sex statutes the concept that sex in general, and homosexuality in particular, are inimical to the well-being of the young. By emphasising “protection” of the young and ignoring the rights of the young, the campaign undoubtedly set back the aspirations of youth liberation. Youth liberation has argued for some time that young people should have the right to have sex as well as not to have it, and with whom they choose. The statutory structure of the sex laws has been identified as oppressive and insulting to young people. A range of sexual activities are legally defined as “molestation”, regardless of the quality of the relationship or the amount of consent involved. A crackdown on statutory molestation is not the best way to defend the rights of youth.

The incipient political mobilisation of paedophiles has been another victim. Over the last few years there have been occasional articles in the gay press which claim that most relationships between men and boys are consensual, loving, and beneficial to the young people involved. It has been argued that such relationships are to be distinguished from abuse, just as rape is to be distinguished from love in other contexts. There are journals of paedophile liberation, out of print classics of boy-love are being reprinted. . .

The “kiddie porn” campaign made the position of this movement rather untenable, and it manipulate concern over the welfare of young people to rationalise new legal attacks upon sexuality. Politicians cannot afford to oppose much of the new legislation, but groups like ACLU have criticised many of the proposed laws for containing dangerous restrictions on civil liberties and freedom of expression.

The recent career of boy-love in the public mind should serve as an alert that the self-interests of the feminist and gay movements are linked to simple justice for stigmatised sexual minorities. Such groups have been mobilising in the margins of the sexual left for some time, but their presence can no longer be ignored nor their claims dismissed.

There are also other reasons why we should pay attention to stigmatised sexual expression. For the existence of political organisations for groups like paedophiles is a manifestation of a deeper change. An increase in sexual awareness is evident from the imagery of movies, music and advertising, and this imagery is now diversifying. There have been TV programmes with lesbians, gay men, trans-sexuals and prostitutes. Ads play upon semi-conscious fantasy, and new wave rock characteristically celebrates, among other things, sex offenders, transvestitism, and anal sex.

Some of this newer erotic imagery can be attributed to the reaction against feminism, as for instance the ads which suggest violence against women. But much of it represents a return of some of the diversity of human sexuality from the shadows to which it has been banished. This return of the repressed contains a lot of untamed energy, some of which is feeding the wave of sexual reaction we have witnessed in recent months. Thus far, it has been primarily the Right which has responded to this profusion of erotic form, but it would be a great loss to leave it to the reactionaries to orchestrate a societal response to this widening of sexual consciousness. The women’s movement has always been suspicious of sex, and for good reason, since sexuality is the locus through which women’s oppression is managed. But rational paranoia can easily become a form of erotophobia.

The sexual fringe is a scary place, and those who do not live there are advised that it is a dangerous place to visit. But the fringe is also a repository for various examples of sexual expression which have been rejected by society. Much of it is worth reclaiming, and there is so much to learn out on the fringe. Both the mobilisation of the sexual fringe, and the increasing politicisation of sexuality challenge feminism to develop a politics which can be pro-sex while remaining anti-sexist. (p. 5)

John Parratt (Warren Middleton), ‘As Much A Martyr as Wilde: An Account of the PIE Re-Trial and the Imprisonment of Tom O’Carroll’, pp. 6-8

‘By repeatedly narrowing the line of fire, these too, were clearly favourable to the prosecution and had the added effect of excising any possible mention of Sir Peter Hayman, Britain’s former High Commissioner to Canada who, under the pseudonym of ‘Henderson’, had been a member of PIE. Whether this was done by accident or design we shall probably never know.’ (p. 6)

Other names of PIE members
Cyril Hall
Michael Dagnall (former editor of Magpie)
D.B. had also been an editor of contact pages
And Trevor Wade, who had been acquitted.

Keith Hose
David Grove, former secretary

Peter Bremner, ‘Tom in Prison’, p. 8

Issue No. 17. Spring 1982

Peter Saxon, ‘PIE Goes to Paris’, p. 3.
On the paedophile movement in France – GRED (Groupe de Recherche pour une Enfance Differente)

‘International Cooperation’, p. 5
GRED keen to establish greater contact between paedophile groups in different countries.
Mentions that possibly paedophile groups will be represented at this year’s conference of ILIS (International Lesbian Sisterhood)

John Finnin, ‘Zambia – a first glimpse’
Picture of a young Zambian boy – maybe about 5-6.
[…]
‘Scores of children walk barefoot in the streets, the wiser ones selling cigarettes or local curios which, more than likely, have been stolen or come by illegally. Their features are ebony black with high cheekbones and a stratling smile with rows of pearly white teeth.’
[…]
‘Boys of all ages can be seen daily in the big cities holding hands and caressing one another openly. This has no sexual overtones, but is generally regarded as displaying affection, and is looked upon as healthy. At times one can see grown men displaying similar actions.
By the time they have reached puberty, boys in most parts of the bush must go through an initiation ceremony which involves circumcision. [etc]
[….]
‘Boys often have sex with each other. It is considered natural, and not unusual to see two youngsters masturbating each other quietly behind their hut, or at the side of a dirt track road deep in the bush. Boys often walk about with their hands in one another’s pockets. It is not too difficult to imagine that fathers sleep with their sons and older men with other boys.
Thank God that the paranoia nad hysteria of the western culture towards sex among the young and old alike has not yet reached Zambia.’

Editorial: ‘The Spartacus strategy’, pp. 7, 24
Spartacus is a gay soft porn company based in the Netherlands. Publish magazine, non-pornographic, PAN.
Suspicious towards PIE.

Jane Rule, ‘making ADULTS easier to seduce’, pp. 8, 19. Lesbian writer, born Plainfield, NJ, 1931.
‘As a society we are so fearful of sexual initiation we pretend that by ignoring it, it will not take place. What we really want is not to know when or how it odes. We no longer frighten our children with threats of insanity and death as results of masturbation. It is, instead, clumped with picking one’s nose, belching, farting – something not to be done in public, by implication not to be done by nice people at all – but we give our children enough privacy so that the guilty pleasure can be discovered and practised not only alone but in the company of other unsupervised children. Children caught may be shamed, the more sexually aggressive children ostracised, but it is not, as it used to be, a cause of brutal retribution.
[….]
If we viewed sex as a basic appetite normally satisfied and gradually cultivated, we would not need to keep our children isolated and in ignorance for so long, building in them what we have ourselves experienced: intense fear and desire which, so long uninstructed, produce dangerous stupidity. Of course we don’t want dangerously stupid adults initiating our children. Fear of that leaves the children to themselves, not out of our conviction that children are, in this matter, the best teachers, but by default. We have so little trust in what we have to teach that we not only abdicate our responsibility, but label criminal any adult who might attempt instruction.

There are adults who do sexually exploit, damage and kill children. It makes no more sense to deal with the question by taking them as the norm than it would to take rapists as the norm for heterosexual relationships between adults. To say that any sexual activity between adults and children is exploitative because of the superior size and power of the adult is really to acknowledge that, overall, relationships between children and adults are unequal. Why we feel more concerned over children’s sexual dependence than over their physical, emotional and intellectual dependence says more about us as sexual incompetents than as responsible adults. (p. 8)
[…]
We must also examine the motives of all interaction between adults and children – how much has ever been done “for their own good”, how much we simply reinforce our own values – before we are too purely suspicious of anything but disinterested altruism in adults who relate to children.

More important than judging the quality of other people’s experience and relationships is the exercise of our own memories. Certainly my own initiation came long before I was legally adult. Though a number of males around my own age offered to participate, a woman ten years my senior was “responsible”, at my invitation and encouragement. The only fault I find with that part of my sexual education was the limit her guilt and fear put on our pleasure, the heterosexual pressure even she felt required to put on me. What she did “for my own good” caused both of us pain. If I were to improve on that experience now, it would not be to protect children from adult seduction but to make adults easier to seduce, less burdened with fear or guilt, less defended by hypocrisy.

If we accepted sexual behaviour between children and adults, we would be far more able to protect our children from abuse and exploitation than we are now. They would be free to tell us, as they can about all kinds of other experiences, what is happening to them and to have our sympathy and support instead of our mute and mistrustful terror. There are a thousand specific questions, all hard to answer, but we can’t begin dealing with them until our basic attitude changes.

Children are sexual, and it is up to us to take responsibility for their real education. They have been exploited and betrayed long enough by our silence.’ (p. 19)

‘Tom: Attacked Three Times in Three Weeks While Under Protection’, p. 9

Roger Nash, ‘How NZ Truth Killed Gavin Mitchell’, pp. 10-11.

Piece on Brooke Shields and nude photos of her in the bath when she was 10 – a 1 000 000 dollar damages claim brought by actress and her mother against photographer Garry Gross, who took the photos in 1975 for a Playboy Press book Sugar and Spice.
Judge dismissed suggestions that pics were pornographic. P. 11.

Various other pieces. Big interview reprinted from Australian gay magazine CAMPAIGN, interview with 12-year old boy, pp. 16-19.


PIE – documentary evidence 2 – from Magpie 1-8 (trigger warning – contains disturbing material)

[NOTE OF WARNING: In absolutely no sense whatsoever does the printing of the below material constitute any type of endorsement; in fact the very reverse]

Many people have sought to suggest that PIE was a minor organisation of no particular significance. As promised in my previous post, I will write a proper extended post on the organisation and its history (and ideology) later; but as time is limited at the moment, I propose simply to copy without comment (comment will come in that later post) a series of writings from and some information about Magpie: The Journal of the Paedophile Information Exchange, of which seventeen issues were produced from March 1977 to Summer 1982. These should give an idea of what the organisation was saying quite openly, and should leave no doubt that it was far from harmless.

Issue No. 1, March 1977

‘‘Magpie aims to provide paedophiles with their own journal, and to further the understanding and acceptance of true love for children in today’s society.

Magpie does not promote or otherwise encourage unlawful acts, sexual or otherwise.

All opinions expressed are those of their respective authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editor, or of PIE.

Magpie welcomes critisism [sic], contributions, advice and comments from its readers.

Reprints from Magpie are welcomed, please credit your source.

Magpie is published each month by the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE), the national paedophile organisation and research group. Correspondence for the magazine should be addressed to the Editor, whilst all other communications should be addressed to the Secretary.

Our address is:-

PIE,
c/o Release,
1, Elgin Avenue, London, W9.’

‘Magpie is intended to provide members of PIE and their friends, with a regular up to date service of news about PIE and information about other matters of interest to paedophiles. Magpie will report the activities and decisions of the PIE Executive Committee, news of PIE local groups plus any other articles of letters of interest which may come to its notice.

‘Whilst I applaud the efforts of Warren Middleton in producing ‘Understanding Paedophilia’ and I congratulate the Editor of ‘Palaver’ on his latest production, with respect to both these people, I feel that news should be forthcoming on a regular basis. To this end, Magpie will be produced each month – provided that nothing untoward happens to the Editor to prevent this! To achieve regularity, Magpie will, I fear, have to be of somewhat simple appearance; I cannot hope to emulate the sophisticated layout and quality of the other two publications. However, I trust it will not be of too dull a content. ‘ (La Gazza Ladra, ‘What’s This’, p. 1)

‘On the 3rd of March, Tom O’Carroll gave a talk about paedophilia and PIE to the Winchester branch of CHE [Campaign for Homosexual Equality]. This was his third public speaking engagement; if he did as well on the first two occasions as he did this time, then he has impressed and enlightened many people. Certainly his audience were impressed and eve the most hostile questioner was won over by his performance . . Congratulations!’ (‘Secretary speaks to CHE’, p. 2)

‘Ideas, please’

You may remember that at the last AGM it was decided that we should invite one or more prominent people to become ‘Honorary Vice-President’ of PIE. A number of names have been put forward and some of these have been written to, although as yet no one has taken us up on our offer!

One of the people written to was Bryan Gould MP – chosen largely because of the speech he gave to the CHE [Campaign for Homosexual Equality] Conference in Southampton last year. Although he declined to accept, his reply is worth reporting. It reads:-

“Thank you for your letter and for your invitation to become an honorary Vice-President. I am afraid that I have so much on my plate at the moment that it would be unwise of me to take on any further responsibilities for the time being. I should be less than honest with you however if I were to give you the impression that lack of time is my only difficulty. As you say, yours is an unpopular cause, and whilst I have a good deal of sympathy for your objectives, I do not think it would be fair to my wife and family for me to take a public stand on it. They suffered somewhat as a result of my speech to CHE and while I am robust enough to take the comments, correspondence etc., my wife in particular reacts badly to it. I am sorry to have to send you such a disappointing reply.”

Now, if an MP, who depends upon votes and public good-will, can give us such a considerate reception, there must be someone, somewhere who would be prepared to help us in this way. Any ideas please? (p. 4)

Issue No. 2, March 1977

An article detailed a trip by outgoing chair Keith Hose to Holland:

‘At the end of last year I decided to take a holiday in Holland with a friend. This was not the first time I had been there, but unlike previous visits, I arranged to call on our friends in the Dutch paedophile movement. As a direct consequence I was left with a feeling of elation at the progress made in social and legal attitudes to paedophilia in Holland, and a desire to be part of what is going on there.

Unlike PIE, the Dutch paedophile organisation is not autonomous, and it is only part of a bigger organisation, the NVSH. The NVSH, so I was informed by Dr Bernard (an important member of the paedophile sub-group), was started some years ago to encourage contraception. Over the years the group took under its wing other sexual liberation causes, including the campaign for childrens’ sexual rights, and in 1971, paedophilia. Although the NVSH is an independent organisation with its own membership and democratic process, it has for the past few years been largely government financed. A popular organisation, it had over a quarter of a million members only a few years ago, it has a strong influence on public attitudes to sex.
[…]
‘More or less, there is a paedophile group in every major Dutch town, and in addition but separate, there are many more groups of the NVSH fighting for this liberation of childrens’ sexuality. Reading the leaflet I had picked up in the Den Haag paedophile group, I telephoned the contact number given – which I found to be the home telephone number of the Convener. Rudely, but without choice, I assumed he spoke English, and I asked if we could come to see him. Warmly he invited us into his home.

When we arrived there, we could hardly believe our eyes. For there above his door, in full view of the street, was a most outrageous paedophile poster. We had seen both this poster, and a poster of the childrens’ sexual rights sub-group before, but we did not expect to see either on display above the entrance to a paedophile’s home. Naturally, once inside, we asked our host if he had ever had any trouble with his neighbours concerning the poster, especially in view of the fact that his home was right next to a school. But no – he insisted that all his neighbours were very friendly.’ (‘pedofeely’, pp. 5-7 (all material here from p. 5))

There was a plug for an international conference on ‘Love and Attraction’ to be held at University College, Swansea, September 5th to 9th 1977, adverts for ‘Boy Love news’ from Germany (p. 7) a feature on what to do with arrested or having photographic material confiscated (‘Survival’, p. 8), reports on arrests (pp. 9-10) and a guide to world paedophile groups with contact addresses: Studiegroep Pedofilie, Belgium; Landelijke Werkgroep Pedofilie, Netherlands; Paedofil Gruppe, Denmark; NAPF (Pedofil Arbeidsgruppe), Norway; Paedophile group, Sweden; Schweizer Arbeitsgruppe Paedophilie (SAP), Switzerland; DSAP and DAP, West Germany; Rene Guyon Society, Childhood Sensuality Circle, (CSC), Hermes and Gay Pederast Liberation Front, all USA; and mentions of provincial groups in some of these countries as well.

Issue No. 3, May 1977

This contained the item about NCCL taking up the case of PIE, as mentioned in my other blog post, then had an article by Tom O’Carroll, ‘Of Chickens and Chicken Hawks’, looking at an article by an NBC journalist on boy prostitution, more ads and features as in issue 2, and then a reprint from Forum entiled ‘Child Foot Fetishist.

On the back page (p. 8) was a feature called ‘One Man’s Booklist’, the comments accompanying which I summarise as follows:

Chuck Selwyn, Andrea, sibling and father-daughter incest
Sherman Sands, Funky Faculty, female teacher seduces schoolchildren and teenage girls seduce principal. ‘ridiculously unreal’
Paul Roan, When Miss Warren Comes. Mostly lesbian, some hetero stuff between female teacher and pupils.
Paula Welch, Darling Daughter, ‘mother lets her lover have her minor daughter, much voyeurism, coprolalia as stimulant, etc.’
Paula Welch, Daddy’s Girls, incest, mother daughters father
Paula Welch, I Can’t Stop – similar to Funky Faculty
Denise Bryant, as told to Roger Blake, Mother and Daughter. Autobiographical documentary by divorced school teacher with 13 year old daughter.
Rina Marshal, as told to Dalton Edwards, Don’t Ever Stop. Autobiography of a nymphomaniac, including childhood experiences.
Four Way Incest, with intro and comments by Roger Blake. Documentary told by aunt, uncle, niece and nephew all involved with bisexual incest.
Wayne Gibson, as told to Dalton Edwards, The Oversexed American. Autobiography of male world traveller with many experiences with both young boys and girls.
Frank Sheffield, The Meat Rack. Male homosexual autobiography, exploits including many affairs with minor boys.
Incest Experiences, with intro and comments by John F Trimble. 9 case histories of adult-child incest.
Freaked Out, with intro and comments by Dalton Edwards. Like above, also paedophilia and child-child relationships.

Issue No. 4, June 1977

This issue contained procedural information about the organisation, and stories from Keith Hose, who had to go to New Scotland Yard, was asked about ‘a certain famous member of PAL’ and whether certain other people were PIE members (Hose apparently refused to divulge names), also about an Andre Thoren trying to blackmail a potential member of PIE, and the organisation being attacked by a Bournemouth woman, Christine Jolliffe, and how Tom O’Carroll had sought and gained much publicity for PIE (pp. 3-4)

There is an ad called ‘Girls for Boys’ School’, about a school for boys, Sexey’s School (sic), Lusty Hill, Burton, Somerset, taking 22 girl pupils in September, apparently quoted from The Times (p. 4).

Tom O’Carroll wrote a long item about the NCCL Gay Rights Conference and the issue of Chemical Castration, apparently ‘consented’ to by prisoners, but this was under duress (Tom O’Carroll, ‘NCCL Gay Rights Conference. Chemical Castration’, pp. 5, 7).

One letter asked where pictures could be processed safely, ‘Not pornography, just good natural pictures’ (p. 6). Fears were given how the murder of a 4-year old girl could be linked to paedophiles, and there was a report about a case in the Appeal Court involving three men who had had sexual intercourse with a 14-year old girl (pp. 6-7).

A ‘Non-Fiction Book List’ mentioned various PIE publications, and also Kinsey, aDutch book Sex mit Kinderen, Parker Rossman, Sexual Experience between Men & Boys, Timothy d’Arch Smith, Love in Earnest; Brian Reade, Sexual Heretics; J.Z. Eglinton, Greek Love; Thorkil Vanggaard, Phallos; and Paul Gebhard et al, Sex Offenders.

Issue 5, July 1977

The cover of this issue had a picture of a young boy (maybe around 8) in shorts on the cover.

There were reviews of films Walkabout, Fireworks/The Queen/Children, Satyricon, Fear Personified, Run Rabbit Run, and Child Art on p. 2, all dissected for paedophile elements. Then the first article in this journal appeared by Father Michael Ingram (who was later convicted of multiple counts of sexual abuse during the time when these articles were written). I will copy a large section of this:

‘‘There seem to be few things that arouse the horror, anger and sometimes hysteria of society than the thoughts of children having sexual activity, especially with adults. Society’s attitudes are mirrored in prisons where those found guilty of offences against children need to be protected from other prisoners. But a cold examination of the facts indicates that much of this anger seems to be irrational and groundless, and that the reaction to discovery of the act can do more damage than the act itself.

Take the case of an eleven year boy whose parents overheard him tell his brother about a man who was ‘having sex’ with him. There was a family scene, mother crying, father packing up and down and vowing he could ‘kill the bastard’. The police were called in. the boy was interrogated over and over again by both parents and police. The boy was taken to the police station where he was told to lower this trousers. A doctor examined his penis, retracting the foreskin. The boy was made to bend down while a doctor put a lubricated rubber sheath on his finger which he inserted into the boy’s rectum. The man was charged, denied it and the boy was examined by the magistrates. The man was remanded on bail, so in order to prevent the boy meeting him again, he was sent to stay with relatives in Ireland until the trial three months later.

What seems to have happened was that the boy was rather deprived of affection from his parents who were cold and undemonstrative. He had often allowed the man to cuddle him, and this sometimes led to the man feeling him inside his trousers. If one can make a strong attempt to mask the disgust this might evoke, and consider the possible damage done to the boy by being starved of love at home, by enduring the anger, fearful interrogation, and most of all by submitting to the formal repetition by the doctor of the acts which were causing all the trouble, one can see that the offender was the last one from who the boy needed protection. As a psychiatrist involved in the case put it, “If he hadn’t been buggered by the man, he certainly had been by the doctor”.

The offender in this case was sent to prison, where he pretended to be there for larceny. He was put in the ordinary wing. His secret was discovered and he was beaten up, suffering severe injuries. He lost his job, was cut off from his family and his voluntary social work. He had done a great deal for his local community, especially for the children, and all this was forgotten. At the age of twenty-six he was a ruined man because he showed too much love for a little boy.

Nine years later the boy is now twenty, cold, repressed, afraid of sex, isolated and friendless, depending on anti-depressants to make his moods tolerable.

In the last nine years there have been considerable changes in police and legal practice, and nowadays the needs of the child are more taken into consideration. My experience is that parents also are less inclined now to ‘bring in the law’, but even so, much is left to be desired. Even recently, a little girl who was making allegations against a man was visited at her home by two uniformed police officers, when it had been explicitly promised that only plainclothes officers would be sent. But meaningful changes in the law will only be accomplished once public opinion has been changed and public fears allayed. Our society still thinks that children have no sexual feelings unless unnaturally aroused by depraved persons. We still think of adults whose love for children sometimes has sexual expression as being unspeakably degenerate and corrupting. We still reflect the legal idea that a young person under sixteen can not meaningfully consent to a sexual act, and we still think that children can be persuaded by adults to commit sexual acts against their will.

The most important thing it seems to me, and with this all readers would agree, is that our first duty is to protect a child from harm. What is controversial is the method by which we achieve this.

In the first place we need to recognise that children do have sexual feelings, and these feeling like all other childrens’ feelings are expressed in play. A lot of children will play at ‘peeping’ games, stripping games, competitions to see who can pee the highest and furthest, ‘knackering’ (boys grabbing or punching each others genitals), and even exploratory sexual acts. They are often interested in adults’ bodies and, from the age of about nine or ten, in adult’s sex lives. They are quite capable of indulging in sex games with willing adults, and even of provoking or initiating them.

In a study I have made of 57 boys who were ‘indecently assaulted’, 8 of them resisted the assault, which was discontinued for that reason. The rest appear to have been willing for it to take place. Thirty-eight of the boys returned to the same man for more, and three were promiscuous and made money by it. Eleven of the seventeen men involved in the study claimed that most of the children, if not actually initiating the activity, were at least seductive. In most of the cases, the sexual act was part of a more extensive demonstration of affection. The child appeared to need a lot of love.

In twenty out of the 50 families from which the boys came, the boys admitted to being frightened by their fathers, who were violent and/or given to drink. In 17 cases the father was absent due to death, divorce, or unmarried mother. In nine families the father was clearly dominated by his wife, was of weak character, and took no notice of his growing boys.

Nine of the boys felt rejected by their mothers, two mothers had deserted the family, 29 were suffering from depression and anxiety severe enough to need medical treatment. Only six boys had satisfactory relations with their fathers, and only eight with their mothers, (and this 8 included the six who had good relations with their fathers). All eight of these children rejected the act, told their parents about it, and, characteristically, the parents did not get upset, did not call in the police, and the only thing they did was to ask the present author to discuss the matter with their children.

All the acts in the above study are homosexual acts. Being a man, girls are not usually referred to me in cases like this. Statistically, heterosexual acts are much commoner (about three to one) and my findings may not be typical. But they do closely resemble results produced by other studies. They do not go to show that all children who get involved in sexual activity are disturbed and come from bad family backgrounds, but that such children do tend to be the ones who get involved because their need for affection is matched by the willingness of the man to give it.

But this has very unfortunate repercussions. There are many children in need of affection, for example, in children’s homes, and it is no longer possible for caring adults to show this affection in any meaningful way except for feeding and providing material goods. A man I once interviewed had been an assistant in a childrens’ home for seventeen years. He was adored by the children, they sat on his knee for stories, he kissed them goodnight, cuddled them whenever they seemed to need it. It was often suspected that he ‘went too far’ but there was no evidence, and one or two people in fact deliberately closed their eyes to the possibility. But he did not get promoted, and when he applied for other posts he never got them, in spite of the fact that he was such a wonderful assistant. Finally, his staff was joined by a middle-aged single woman who went on a witch-hunt once her nose started twitching, and evidence was unearthed that sent the man to prison for three years. The children in the home were left desolate and now, four years later in that same home, staff do not touch the children.

There is no evidence that sexual contacts with adults do any damage, psychological or moral, to the children any more than the ‘rude games’ that many of them play. There is considerable evidence that parental distress and police intervention do cause a great deal of harm, and there is overwhelming evidence that deprivation, especially deprivation of physical love, damages personalities and is a significant factor in the development of sexual disorders in later life.

I do not think that children should be encouraged to have sexual relations with adults, and I do think that problems could arise from them, given the unequal needs of the partners, but all the evidence I can muster indicates that children will take from a relationship what they need, and will grow out of it when they are ready. Of the 57 cases I studied, thirteen rejected the man and the act shortly afterwards, fifteen rejected it after some lapse of time, and of the rest I have no information. Only the 3 promiscuous ones stated that they did not regret the act, and they would do it again given the chance. All three have now grown up and are practising homosexuals.

What seems to be necessary, therefore, is an effort to inform the general public about the groundlessness of their fears, of the need for calm when an act is discovered, and a sense of balance about a child’s needs and vulnerability. Children need to be brought up in an atmosphere in which these topics can be discussed as calmly as school or play. In one family a boy announced that someone had ‘played with his willy’. His mother said “Did he, dear? Are you going to see him again?” “No. I don’t think so.” “I suppose you are right, it is better not to play at sexy things until you understand them when you get older.” Another mother said, “Oh, did he? Well I don’t think it is wise for you to go on seeing him at his house. If you want to see him again, invite him round for tea.” This was done. The matter was discussed with the man and the boy, and the mother and father said they felt their son was too young for such things. The mother of an older boy (aged 13) said, “Well I think you ought to ask advice about this. You like Father Ingram a lot, why don’t you go and ask him what he thinks? He understands these things better than your father and I.”

These reactions all seem to be healthy, but are only three compared with a whole lot of hysteria and rage that I have been called in to calm, usually too late to prevent the damage.

It is probably necessary to have a minimum age of consent, but I suggest it would be better to be flexible and prohibit sexual acts whenever there is an age difference of say, two or three years, when one partner is below the given age. This would be enough to protect children from emotional exploitation. Prosecutions should only be initiated if there has been violence or undue pressure, or indications of other forms of moral corruption, and so on. Medical examinations should be prohibited except when the child complains of pain, or when damage is suspected. Interviews should always be done by plainclothes officers in the presence of the parents when the children are very young, but with older children, the choice of speaking in the presence or absence of the parents should be left to the child. I have often found that older children prefer not to discuss things with their parents. But above all, society should not cut off from children the contribution that can be made to their welfare by those whose only fault is that their love leads to acts that society fears without reasonable cause, and whose importance diminishes in comparison with what their love can do.’ (The Rev Fr Michael Ingram, O.P. ‘”Filthy”’, pp. 5-6, reprinted from Libertarian Education)

Tom O’ Carroll would write underneath:

‘To the weary traveller, the Priory of the Holy Cross, Leicester is a haven of warmth and welcome; in the best traditions of the mediaeval Church, the wayfarer is plied with good, wholesome victuals and no shortage of drink either – and one’s host, the good Father Michael, is the very embodiment of that spirit of hospitality: convivial, affable, a man of charm and engaging conversation. All in all, a stout fellow!

I happen to believe that Michael Ingram, of the Dominican Order of preachers, represents the best of the 20th century Church too, though there are doubtless those in the Vatican who do not agree, for he has ‘advanced’ views on such subjects as birth control and abortion, and to my ignorant mind at any rate (untutored in theology, and therefore a suspect guide), his views on the Meaning of Sin and the Authority of the Church come exciting near to – dare I say it – heresy!

Established as a heavyweight intellectual – he was recently invited to deliver a series of lectures on sexual ethics to Harvard University no less – he nonetheless has work as a child counsellor in Leicester which keeps his feet firmly on the ground.

This work with children began when he studied child counselling as an associate student with the Tavistock Clinic, followed by work among deprived children in Camden, and later Leicester.

It has to be in this context that he has made an extensive, and largely positive, study of paedophile relationships between men and boys. The outcome of this study is to be a paper presented at the forthcoming Swansea Conference of the British Psychological Society on “Love and Attraction.”’ (p. 6)

A columnist by the name of Ray Halliwell wrote the following:

‘When I joined PIE some ten months ago, I wasn’t sure I had done the right thing. It wouldn’t have surprised me in the least to find half of Fleet Street on my doorstep one morning. If it had happened, I would have had a heart attack. However, since attending a PIE meeting last September, I made a decision – to ‘come out’.

At home I worked out a plan of action. Leave a copy of “Understanding Paedophilia” on the sideboard. A subtle hint here and there. Of course everyone thought I was going a bit crazy or something. Then it happened – one of my friends got the message – I had something to tell him. “I’m sexually attracted to boys,” I said. “Oh,” he replied. That was just about the last thing I had expected. The truth was that my real friends had long suspected that I was homosexual, and they were more interested in the price of a pint than the fact that I was paedophile. So far so good. Next thing I knew was when a spanner got thrown in the works when I was offered a job in a new town and accepted.

Now came the big problem. How to tell the new people? You can’t very well walk into the local and say, “hello, I’ve just moved here – nice weather – I’m paedophile, you know.” So I thought I’d wait until someone asked before I told thema bout myself. Of course no one did and I’ve now got myself into a situation where people assume that I am heterosexual. So I am starting all over again. Maybe I could try wearing a PIE tee-shirt or next time I get the urge to rush up Nelson’s Column and shout “I like boys, so what!” I should do it. Who knows, maybe I can make a success of this coming out thing yet.

Finally, on the off-chance that “horrified of Halifax” or “Disgusted of Dewsbury” or some neurotic gossip columnist is reading this piece, I have a word of advice for them.

I’ve no desire to change my sexual orientation and I am happy the way I am, thank you very much. There will always be people like me in the world to brighten up your day – that’s nature. If this fact disturbs you, I can recommend a very good psychiatrist.’ (Halliwell, ‘Coming Out’, p. 7).

There was a further Non-Fiction book list, and also a poem entitled ‘Children. North-South-East-West’ (p. 8)

Issues No. 6, August 1977

This had on the cover a picture of a young boy with their hands over their face. Importantly, this issue also featured an advert for a ‘Seminar on Paedophilia’ by the Dutch Dr Edward Brongersma, who would become closely involved with the paedophile movement. This was to take place on Thursday, 1/9/77 at Shaftesbury Hotel (p. 2).

In a long review of the film ‘Les Amitiés Particulières’ by Keith Hose (pp. 4-5), he wrote

‘The film portrays the younger boy as partly unrealistic, idealised character; a paederastic fantasy. He is beautiful, camply seductive, confident, cultured and mature. The book however, is not immune from this either, but whether one would call this a criticism, I am not sure. I still disagree with those who would say that a twelve year old boy can never have this degree of sophistication.’

Then the following was written by a Cyril Halley, entitled ‘Lament’, writing about the loss of a loved one who he will never see again:

‘The scene I shall ever remember was her languid expression, her listless gaze, as she went away, out of the room and out of my life.’
[….]
‘I shall never know either, how deeply Julie loved me, or indeed if she even loved me at all. We never discussed the question of love although I had said quite a few times when she needed consoling, “I love you, Julie, you know that.” She allowed me to kiss her on occasions and seemed to like a fuss made of her. She let me cuddle her and she was mildly jealous if I showed affection to another; but for all that I shall go through life continually thinking that my undying love was unrequited.
It was on Saturdays that Julie used to come and see me. She arrived at about 8pm and left at eleven. These three hours per week are imprinted on my memory. The lateness of the hour often made her sleepy towards the end of her stay, and then she slept in my arms, showing a loving trust that makes all else in life superfluous. The tender memories flooding back as I write this narrative are filling me with a sense of hopeless frustration.’
[….]
Her vision is before me now, holding the palm of her hand to her mouth to suppress excitement or uttering, as only she had not quite heard what was said to her.’
[…]
You see dear reader, my beloved Julie is only eight years old.’

An piece of fiction by Charles Napier, entitled ‘Spy-dophilia’, was a thriller involving a gay Los Angeles private eye, David Brandstetter (pp. 6-7).

On the back cover was a map of local groups, claiming 65 members in the London area, and many others all over the country (p. 8).

Issue 7, September 1977

This was the first properly typeset issue. There was a message on p. 2 from the convenor of the French group of PIE:

‘La première reunion du groupe francais a eu lieu recemment. Les autres reunions auront lieu chaque premier samedi du mois chez le member No. 234. Les personnes interessees de se joinder a nous sont pirees de prendre contact avec le member No. 234 en ecrivant a l’adresse de P.I.E. a Londres.’

In ‘Notes & News’ (p. 2) there was reference to a long article by Tom Crabtree in The Guardian. Then there were reports of how the ‘Love and Attraction’ conference at Swansea was moved, and how NUPE forced the conference organisers to eject Tom O’Carroll, who was also physically attacked. Also about how there was apparently much press hysteria, death threats, sackings, and a near riot in central London. After a meeting was planned at Conway Hall on Sep 19th, about 120 people, PIE members and press, went, ‘braving a barrage of abuse, blows and missiles rained on them by a crowd outside, at least partly organised by the National Front’ (p. 2).

On p. 3, there were letters from a John Page (who talked about living in ‘an age of utter barbarism which has been created largely by Christianity and Judaism combined’), an A. Paedophile (which included ‘Let us not equate “paedophile” with “child molester”. True paedophiles love all people, and especially the youngsters.’; and ‘I contribute to the NSPCC’) and a Nicholas J. Ferguson, London (who wrote ’One of the self-made ‘rules’ of responsible paedophiles is not to ‘share their young friends around’’. So no pooling of photographs, collections of diaries or letters) (p. 3).

Charles Napier wrote a poem about the now almost-mythological figure of Tom O’Connor (p. 4). And an article by Dr. Frits Bernard, who would become a regular contributor, referred to as ‘Psychiatrist, Sociologist, Writer’, said the following about the age of consent, mentioning that in some countries it is at age 12:

‘Some take as the criterion for drawing the boundary line the onset of puberty, the first menstruation or the first ejaculation. In my opinion this is a biologically acceptable criterion (it is a fact that can be observed) but represents no psychologically valid attitude. The affection of a girl or of a boy for a man or woman before reaching puberty and after passing this boundary, should be no different in terms of experience. Orgasms without ejaculation can give the same gratification as with ejaculation.’ (Dr. Frits Bernard, Psychiatrist, Sociologist, Writer, ‘Paedophilia. What are we talking about?’, p. 5).

The following letter appeared on the same page:

‘Dear Sir,

I was interested to read in MAGPIE No. 5 that you had received a copy of the Spartacus Holiday Help portfolio on paedophiles and their vacations. I wrote to the address you gave for further information, enclosing an international reply coupon, but have received no reply – – this was more than five weeks ago. I suppose it wouldn’t be possible to let me know what information was given on the two countries coming out top of the list, i.e., Sri Lanka and the Philippines? I am sure that this would be of interest to other members as well.

Your sincerely,
157

Brighton,
24 Aug. 77’

An article by a Robert Mitchell, on the search for the murderer of a young boy in West Yorkshire, argued against the Chief Constable’s position that all paedophile relationships should be eliminated because of this case. ‘Lots of friendly and loving people will be humiliated and tortured – kicked and punched in police cells; imprisoned for many years in order to “mark society’s strong disapproval”; in prison bashed and gang-raped, and driven to attempt suicide; and upon release have to live dogged by a criminal record’). Another by Ray Halliwell was about taking out a subscription to ‘Boys International’ and not feeling he had to hide it (p. 7).


Issue No. 8. No date given.

The cover featured a picture of a boy with something like a coke bottle, in swimming trunks.

‘Spartacus Guide’
In the last issue of MAGPIE one of our readers asked us to reprint the information given in the Spartacus Holiday Guide for Paedophiles, and this we agreed to do.
However, in the light of what we now know about Spartacus, we have reluctantly decided that it would not be helpful to our members and readers for us to do such a reprint, the information given being at best superficial and at worst inaccurate.’ (p. 2)

Tom O’Carroll, Review of film The Bad News Bears, dir. Michael Ritchie (1976) (p. 2)

[…]
‘There I was, at prime time, a mid-evening performance in the opening west end week, and the place was deserted except for a few scattered Paedophiles (don’t ask me how I know!) who wanted to see how much Tatum had grown up since !”Paper Moon” and to have a good ogle (and what’s wrong with that?) at the baby Bears of the little league baseball team.’
[…]
‘For me, the star performer wasn’t Matthau or O’Neal, although Tatum still looks pre-bra enough to be physically interesting. No, the palm must go to a little guy whose name I can’t remember – He is supposed to be a symbolic non-entity in the film, so I guess that fits – who was not only a lousy player at the start of the story, but he stayed that way. He was always the one left on the bench, the substitute, the nothing guy. When the other kids picked on him he hadn’t the guts to fight back, and the most ambition his feeble spirit could muster was the thought of being associated with the winning team’
[….]

A letter from a Charles Gerrivoenski (of whom more in a later issue) praised Frits Bernard’s article, and talked about warning a 12-year old boy not to tell his parents about their sexual relationship, mentioning a ‘clash of loyalty’.

‘Read All About It’, p. 3.
Mentioning articles in Guardian, 12/9/77 (half page article based on interview with Keith Hose), Community Care, 28/9/77 (“PIE is not getting a fair hearing”), 12/10/77 (reader’s letter), 19/10/77 (four pages on PIE and its aim, based on interview with Tom), new Society 8/9/77 (Marginal Note on PIE’s attempts to hold an open meeting), 6/10/77, “TV parents” – about children’s TV preferences; Peace news 23/9/77 (PIE in the sky – a report of NUSS support of PIE); Time Out 9/9/77 (“Untouchable subject” – on PIE and its aims); The Sun 10/9/77 (“Priest in Sex Row Hits Back”); Spectator 1/10/77 (“Suffer the little children”), Medical News 21/9/77 (Article by Eric Trimmer based on findings and fumings at Swansea Conference)
Quote from the end of the last:
‘Up in the Press room at the university on the day I met a very charming and lively little boy who was passing his time making paper aeroplanes out of abstracts of delegates papers. I asked his father, one of the Department of Psychology, if he was hiding him up there in case Tom O’Carroll was about. “Good God no Man” he replied in an accent straight out of Milk Wood, “he’s such a little horror at home I’m hoping they do meet up. Might cure both of them”. (p. 3)

Article by Member 136, ‘As I see it…’, p. 4:

Talks about members being adherents of the Kid’s Lib.
‘I believe P.I.E. would be better employed in devoting its major efforts to radically reducing the penalties imposed on Paedophiles and also to reducing to a minimum the distress inflicted on the child in the case by seeking to change the investigative and court procedures. [….]
Recent articles in Magpie have suggested that contributors are vaguely but grudgingly aware of the existence of parents but would prefer to dismiss their right to any claim upon their children. I think this is a stupid view to take and one that does our case no good. Perhaps this article will re-dress the balance a little and perhaps give rise to some constructive controversy.’ (p. 4)

Michael Ingram, ‘Laws of Consent’, pp. 5-6
This proposed equalising homo- and hetero-sexual ages of consent. ‘In the discussion which follows you might like to express your opinions as to whether 16 is the best age.’ (p. 5)
The duty of the law to protect the simple from exploitation, so Ingram suggested that the age of consent might be flexible, ‘and that parents who feel that their daughter under the age of, say, 18 is being exploited should be able to invoke the law by some means to prevent it.’
Laws should apply equally to men and women.
Either laws should apply to children, and contraceptive information only be given to parents, and doctors forbidden to prescribe pill to under-age girls, or laws should not apply at all to under-age children.
‘It might be possible to devise a system whereby the consent laws become more flexible, and prohibit intercourse, or sexual activity between persons who [sic] age difference is greater than two or three years when one of them is below the given age of consent.’ (all p. 5)

An article by Keith Spence, ‘Reflections in a square eye’, p. 8, portrayed paedophiles somehow transgressing social norms, talking about:

‘the fundamental honesty of Paedophile relationships, which can find their natural course without constantly needing to conform to an established stereotype.
So – let conventional people hide behind their rules and standards. Keep your images. I’m happier without a reflection, thanks. Anyone know of a nice, succulent jugular?’

P. 9 feature a picture of a young boy, maybe about 4-5.

On pp. 10-11, there was the first of what would become a regular crossword, with all clues to do with paedophilia. Here are some examples of the clues:

Across clues 20. ‘How your boy must have felt when his dad found out his first letter traded south. (3).
24. The older boy’s penis may be, but still he yearns! (6)
38. Gay little Leslie sings both ways, to a point! (7)
47. Morocco would be no place for a boy-lover who suffers from it! (10)
(p. 10)
Down clues, p. 11
E.g. 4. Balls to the doctor! All boys have them set up twice. (6)
12. Sounds like the boy to sustain morally, but you can’t make love to this one! (4)
37. An Irish kid who is apt to get screwed up. (3)

A map on the back showed 9 branches in Australia and one in New Zealand.

Later issues featured even more disturbing material – I will post this tomorrow.


More pro-child sexual abuse propaganda from Germaine Greer

In an earlier post I drew attention to the justifications for sexual abuse of children provided by Germaine Greer, in particular in the case of Helen Goddard, convicted abuser who taught at City of London School for Girls. I have just come across a quote from considerably earlier, from a 33-year old Greer. Clearly this type of view has been consistent throughout her career; I believe all of her writings and work in other media should be more closely scrutinised in light of this.

One woman I know enjoyed sex with an uncle all through her childhood, and never realized that anything unusual was toward until she went away to school. What disturbed her then was not what her uncle had done but the attitude of her teachers and the school psychiatrist. They assumed that she must have been traumatized and disgusted and therefore in need of very special help. In order to capitulate to their expectations, she began to fake symptoms that she did not feel, until at length she began to feel truly guilty about not having been guilty. She ended up judging herself very harshly for this innate lechery.

Germaine Greer, ‘Seduction is a Four-Letter Word’, Playboy (January 1972), p. 82, cited in Richard Parson, Birthrights (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974), p. 151.

It is not surprising that Tom O’Carroll, former chair of the Paedophile Information Exchange, should have been so enamoured of Greer (see his comments on her in ‘Is PIE Sexist?’, Magpie 12 (December 1978)) , and continued to enthusiastically report her support for Harriet Harman and NCCL this year; according to O’Carroll Greer argued on Any Questions? ‘that the age of consent issue was not just about paedophiles but about young people’s right to a sexual life, which was why she and others had supported changing the law’.

Michelle Elliott, researcher into sexual abuse committed by women, in the interview below (from about 9’25”) quotes Greer’s comment to her ‘Well, if it is a woman having sex with a young teenage boy, i.e. 13 or 14-year-old, and he gets an erection, then clearly it’s his responsibility’.


Academia and Paedophilia 1: The Case of Jeffrey Weeks and Indifference to Boy-Rape

Over on the Spotlight blog, a series of important articles have been posted on paedophilia in academia, focusing on the work of sociologist Ken Plummer at the University of Essex, Len Davis, formerly Lecturer in Social Work at Brunel University, and Donald J. West, Professor of Clinical Criminology at the University of Cambridge. There is much more to be written on the issue of the acceptance of and sometimes propaganda for paedophilia in academic contexts; I have earlier published on the pederastic scholarly writings of Clifford Hindley (formerly a senior civil servant at the Home Office alleged to have secured funding for the Paedophile Information Exchange), as well as the pro-paedophile views of leading feminist and Cambridge University Lecturer Germaine Greer. In several fields, including sociology, social work, classical studies, art history, music, literature and above all gender and sexuality studies, there is much to be read produced in a academic environment, and published by scholarly presses, which goes some way towards the legitimisation of paedophilia. In July, Andrew Gilligan published an article on this subject as continues to exist in some academic summer conferences (Andrew Gilligan, ‘Paedophilia is natural and normal for males’, Sunday Telegraph, July 6th, 2014), whilst Eileen Fairweather has written about how easily many in academia were taken in by the language and rhetoric of PIE, as they ‘adroitly hijacked the language of liberation’, presented themselves in opposition to ‘patriarchy’ and would brand critics homophobic (Eileen Fairweather, ‘We on the Left lacked the courage to be branded ‘homophobic’, so we just ignored it. I wish I hadn’t’, Telegraph, February 22nd, 2014). Back in 1998 Chris Brand, Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Edinburgh, was removed from his post after advocating that consensual paedophilia with an intelligent child was acceptable (see Alastair Dalton, ‘Brand loses job fight over views on child sex’ The Scotsman, March 25th, 1988, reproduced at the bottom of this), but such cases are rare.

I would never advocate censorship of this material or research of this type, but I believe it to be alarming how little critical attention this type of material appears to receive, perhaps still because it is taboo in certain circles to criticise anything which in particular attaches itself to the cause of gay rights (just as victims of female abusers, or researchers into the subject, find themselves under continual attack from some feminists who would prefer for such abuse to continue than for it to disturb their tidy ideologies – see my earlier post on child abuse and identity politics).

I have over a period of time been assembling information on what I would call a paedophile ‘canon’ of writings, many of them produced by academics, which use similar ideologies and rhetoric to attempt to normalise and legitimise paedophilia. Detail on this will have to wait until a later date; for now, I want to draw attention to some of the writings of Emeritus Professor of Sociology and University Director of Research at South Bank University Jeffrey Weeks, previously Executive Dean of Arts and Human Sciences and Dean of Humanities. Rarely has Weeks’ work been subject to critique of this type (one notable exception is Mary Macleod and Esther Saga, ‘A View from the Left: Child Sexual Abuse’, in Martin Loney, Robert Bocock, et al (eds), The State or the Market: Politics and Welfare in Contemporary Britain (London: Sage Books, 1991), pp. 103-110, though this is problematic in other respects).

Weeks was described in a hagiographic article from 2008 as ‘the most significant British intellectual working on sexuality to emerge from the radical sexual movements of the 1970s’ (Matthew Waites, ‘Jeffrey Weeks and the History of Sexuality’, History Workshop Journal, Vol. 69, No. 1 (2010), pp. 258-266), having been involved the early days of the Gay Liberation Front and their branch formed at the London School of Economics in 1970. He published first in Gay News, and was a founding member of the Gay Left collective; their ‘socialist journal’ included several pro-paedophile articles (all can be downloaded here – see in particular issues 7 and 8). Weeks’ first book, Socialism and the New Life: the Personal and Sexual Politics of Edward Carpenter and Havelock Ellis (London: Pluto Press, 1977) was co-authored with Sheila Rowbotham; Rowbotham wrote on Edward Carpenter, who was a key member of the ‘Uranian’ poets, who have been described as ‘the forerunners of PIE’; the volume completely ignored any of this.

In the preface to the paedophile volume The Betrayal of Youth: Radical Perspectives on Childhood Sexuality, Intergenerational Sex, and the Social Oppression of Children and Young People (London: CL Publications, 1986), editor Warren Middleton (aka John Parratt, former vice-chair of the Paedophile Information Exchange and editor of Understanding Paedophilia, who was later jailed for possession of indecent images), acknowledged Weeks gratefully alongside members of the PIE Executive Committee and others who had ‘read the typescripts, made useful suggestion, and, where necessary, grammatical corrections’.

Here I am reproducing passages from four of Weeks’ books, which should make his positions relatively clear. The first gives a highly sanitised view of the paedophile movements PAL and PIE, accepting completely at face value the idea that they were simply ‘a self-help focus for heterosexual as well as homosexual pedophiles, giving mutual support to one another, exchanging views and ideas and encouraging research’, whose ‘method was the classical liberal one of investigation and public debate’ (rather than a contact group for abusers and for sharing images of child abuse, as was well-known and documented by this stage), and more concerned about the tabloid reaction than about their victims. It is a lousy piece of scholarship as well, considering this is a revised edition from 1997 (the book was earlier published in 1977, 1980 and 1993); Weeks breaks one of the first principles of scholarship by shelving information which does not suit his a priori argument, thus saying nothing about the various members of PIE who had been convicted and imprisoned (or fled the country) for offences against children, including most of its leading members, claiming that the involvement of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality was due to its being ‘gratutiously dragged in’, ignoring the fact of their having made public statements of support at their 1974 conference (of which Weeks, at the centre of this movement, would have been well-aware). The second, on ‘intergenerational sex’ (an academic term used to make paedophilia sound more acceptable) is backed up by a range of references which is almost like a who’s who of paedophile advocates, many treated as if reliable scholarly sources rather than the child abuse propaganda they are. In common with many left-liberal writers on paedophilia, he does not endorse sex between adult men and young girls, but applies a very different set of standards when boys are concerned. The third passage is more subtle, appearing to distance Weeks from the view of J.Z. Eglinton and others, but again (drawing upon Brian Taylor’s contribution to the volume Perspectives on Paedophilia) ends up trying to make distinctions in such a way that some child abuse is made less serious. The fourth takes an angle familiar from Peter Righton and others; as abuse mostly takes place in the family, the risks from other types of paedophiles end up being little more than a moral panic.

Weeks’ minimisation of concern about sexual exploitation of boys, and concomitant greater sympathy with gay abusers than their victims, resonates with the view coming from the Labour Party at the moment, with the Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper determined to make child abuse purely an issue affecting girls. Furthermore, the Labour Deputy Leader Harriet Harman, as is now well-known, was involved at the centre of the National Council for Civil Liberties when they were closely linked to PIE (whose membership were overwhelmingly adult males looking to have sexual relations with boys). Under General Secretary Patricia Hewitt, NCCL submitted a document in 1976 to the Criminal Law Revision Committee, arguing amongst other things that ‘Childhood sexual experiences, willingly engaged in, with an adult result in no identifiable damage. The Criminal Law Revision Committee should be prepared to accept the evidence form follow-up research on child ‘victims’ which show that there is little subsequent effect after a child has been ‘molested’’, echoing PIE’s own submission on the subject. Harman was not involved with NCCL until two years later, but there is nothing to suggest policy changed during her time or she had any wish to change it, whilst during her tenure NCCL went on to advertise in PIE’s house journal Magpie, and had Nettie Pollard, PIE member No. 70, as their Gay and Lesbian Officer. This was the heyday of PIE, and the support of NCCL was a significant factor. Harman, quite incredibly, went on to make paedophile advocate Hewitt godmother to her sons. Cooper is of a different generation, but all her pronouncements suggest the same contemptuous attitude towards young boys, seeing them only as threats to girls and near-animals requiring of taming, rarely thinking about their needs nor treating them as the equally sensitive and vulnerable people they are; with this in mind, abuse of boys is an issue she almost never mentions. It is alarming to me that both Harman and Cooper have parented sons and yet appear to be entirely unwilling to accept that boys deserve equal love and respect, nor keen to confront the scale of organised institutional abuse of boys

Though considering the number of stories involving Labour figures alleged to have abused or colluded with the abuse of young boys (I think of the cases in Leicester, Lambeth, the relationship of senior Labour figures to PIE, not just Harman, her husband Dromey, and Hewitt, but also former leadership candidate Bryan Gould, who made clear his endorsement for the organisation (see also this BBC feature from earlier this year; the relationship of the late Jo Richardson to the organisation also warrants further investigation), not to mention the vast amount of organised abuse which was able to proceed unabated in Islington children’s homes when the council was led by Margaret Hodge, who incredibly was later appointed Children’s Minister, the allegations around former Speaker of the House of Commons George Thomas aka Lord Tonypandy, and some other members of the New Labour government who have been identified as linked to Operation Ore; and the support and protection afforded to Peter Righton by many on the liberal left), it is not surprising if the Labour frontbench want to make the sexual abuse of boys a secondary issue. This is unfortunately a common liberal-left view, and a reason to fear the consequences of some such people being in charge of children at all, whether as parents or in other roles. There are those who see young boys purely as a problem, little more than second-best girls, to be metaphorically beaten into shape, though always viewed as dangerous, substandard, and not to be trusted; this in itself is already a type of abuse, but such a view also makes it much easier to overlook the possibility their being sexually interfered with and anally raped (not to mention also being the victims of unprovoked violence) – the consequences are atrocious. Many young boys were sexually abused by members of the paedophile organisation that Harman, Hewitt, Dromey et al helped to legitimise (I am of a generation with many of the boys who appeared in sexualized pictures aged around 10 or under in the pages of Magpie; I was fortunate in avoiding some of their fate, others were not); it is right that they should never be allowed to forget this, and it thoroughly compromises their suitability for public office. The Labour Party and the liberal left in general, have a lot of work to do if they are not to be seen as primary advocates for and facilitators for boy rape. In no sense should this be seen as any type of attack on the fantastic work done by MPs such as Simon Danczuk, Tom Watson or John Mann, or many other non-politicians working in a similar manner; but the left needs rescuing from a middle-class liberal establishment who are so blinkered by ideology as to end up dehumanising and facilitating the sexual abuse of large numbers of people. Weeks, Plummer, West, Davies, Greer, Millett, Hindley, and others I will discuss on a later occasion such as Mary McIntosh, are all part of this tendency.



Jeffrey Weeks, Coming Out: Homosexual Politics in Britain from the Nineteenth Century to the Present, revised and updated edition (London & New York: Quartet Books, 1997)

‘Even more controversial and divisive was the question of pedophilia. Although the most emotive of issues, it was one which centrally and radically raised the issue of the meaning and implications of sexuality. But it also had the disadvantage for the gay movement that it threatened to confirm the persistent stereotype of the male homosexual as a ‘child molester’. As a result, the movement generally sought carefully to distance itself from the issue. Recognition of the centrality of childhood and the needs of children had been present in post-1968 radicalism, and had found its way into early GLF ideology. The GLF gave its usual generous support to the Schools Action Union, a militant organization of schoolchildren, backed the short-lived magazine Children’s Rights in 1972, campaigned against the prosecutions of Oz (for the schoolchildren’s issue) and the Little Red Schoolbook. But the latter, generally a harmless and useful manual for children, illustrated the difficulties of how to define sexual contact between adults and children in a non-emotive or moralistic way. In its section on this, the Little Red Schoolbook stressed, rightly, that rape or violence were rare in such contacts, but fell into the stereotyped reaction by talking of ‘child molesting’ and ‘dirty old men’: ‘they’re just men who have nobody to sleep with’; and ‘if you see or meet a man like this, don’t panic, go and tell your teacher or your parents about it’. [28]

But the issue of childhood sexuality and of pedophile relationships posed massive problems both of sexual theory and of social practice. If an encounter between child and adult was consensual and mutually pleasurable, in what way could or should it be deemed harmful? This led on to questions of what constituted harm, what was consent, at what age could a child consent, at what age should a child be regarded as free from parental control, by what criteria should an adult sexually attracted to children be judged responsible? These were real questions which had to be faced if any rational approach was to emerge, but too often they were swept aside in a tide of revulsion.

A number of organizations in and around the gay movement made some effort to confront these after 1972 on various levels. Parents Enquiry, established in South London in 1972 by Rose Robertson, attempted to cope with some of the problems of young homosexuals, particularly in their relationships with their parents. Her suburban middle-class respectability gave her a special cachet, and with a series of helpers she was able to help many young people to adjust to their situation by giving advice, holding informal gatherings, mediating with parents and the authorities. [29] More radical and controversial were two pedophile self-help organizations which appeared towards the end of 1974: PAL (originally standing for Pedophile Action for Liberation) and PIE (Pedophile Information Exchange). Their initial stimulus was the hostility they felt to be directed at their sexual predilections within the gay movement itself, but they both intended to act as a self-help focus for heterosexual as well as homosexual pedophiles, giving mutual support to one another, exchanging views and ideas and encouraging research. The sort of gut reaction such moves could provoke was illustrated by a Sunday People ‘exposé’ of PAL, significantly in the Spring Bank Holiday issue in 1975. It was headed ‘An Inquiry that will Shock every Mum and Dad’, and then, in its boldest type, ‘The Vilest Men in Britain’. [30] Despite the extreme hyperbole and efforts of the paper and of Members of Parliament, no criminal charges were brought, since no illegal deeds were proved. But it produced a scare reaction in parts of the gay movement, especially as CHE had been gratuitously dragged in by the newspaper.

Neither of the pedophile groups could say ‘do it’ as the gay liberation movement had done, because of the legal situation. Their most hopeful path lay in public education and in encouraging debate about the sexual issues involved. PIE led the way in this regard, engaging in polemics in various gay and non-gay journals, conducting questionnaires among its membership (about two hundred strong) and submitting evidence to the Criminal Law Revision Committee, which was investigating sexual offences. [31] PIE’s evidence, which advocated formal abolition of the age of consent while retaining non-criminal provisions to safeguard the interests of the child against violence, set the tone for its contribution. Although openly a grouping of men and women sexually attracted to children (and thus always under the threat of police investigation), the delicacy of its position dictated that its method was the classical liberal one of investigation and public debate. Significantly, the axes of the social taboo had shifted from homosexuality to conceptually disparate forms of sexual variation. For most homosexuals this was a massive relief, and little enthusiasm was demonstrated for new crusades on wider issues of sexuality. (pp. 225-227)

28. Sven Hansen and Jasper Jensen, The Little Red School-book, Stage 1, 1971, p. 103. See the ‘Appeal to Youth’ in Come Together, 8, published for the GLF Youth Rally, 28 August 1971.
29. See her speech to the CHE Morecambe Conference, quoted in Gay News, 21.
30. Sunday People, 25 May 1975. For the inevitable consequences of this type of unprincipled witchhunt, see South London Press, 30 May 1975: ‘Bricks hurled at “sex-ring” centre house’, describing an attack on one of the addresses named in the Sunday People article.
31. There is a brief note on PIE’s questionnaire in New Society, vol. 38, No. 736, 11 November 1976, p. 292 (‘Taboo Tabled’).



Jeffrey Weeks, Sexuality and its Discontents: Meanings, Myths & Modern Sexualities (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985).

Intergenerational sex and consent

If public sex constitutes one area of moral anxiety, another, greater, one, exists around intergenerational sex. Since at least the eighteenth century children’s sexuality has been conventionally defined as a taboo area, as childhood began to be more sharply demarcated as an age of innocence and purity to be guarded at all costs from adult corruption. Masturbation in particular became a major topic of moral anxiety, offering the curious spectacle of youthful sex being both denied and described, incited and suppressed. ‘Corruption of youth’ is an ancient charge, but it has developed a new resonance over the past couple of centuries. The real curiosity is that while the actuality is of largely adult male exploitation of young girls, often in and around the home, male homosexuals have frequently been seen as the chief corrupters, to the extent that in some rhetoric ‘homosexual’ and ‘child molesters’ are coequal terms. As late as the 1960s progressive texts on homosexuality were still preoccupied with demonstrating that homosexuals were not, by and large, interested in young people, and even in contemporary moral panics about assaults on children it still seems to be homosexual men who are investigated first. As Daniel Tsang has argued, ‘the age taboo is much more a proscription against gay behaviour than against heterosexual behaviour.’ [30] Not surprisingly, given this typical association, homosexuality and intergenerational sex have been intimately linked in the current crisis over sexuality.

Alfred Kinsey was already noting the political pay-off in child-sex panics in the late 1940s. In Britain in the early 1960s Mrs Mary Whitehouse launched her campaigns to clean up TV, the prototype of later evangelical campaigns, on the grounds that children were at risk, and this achieved a strong resonance. Anita Bryant’s anti-gay campaign in Florida from 1976 was not accidentally called ‘Save Our Children, Inc.’. Since these pioneering efforts a series of moral panics have swept countries such as the USA, Canada, Britain and France, leading to police harassment of organisations, attacks on publications, arrests of prominent activists, show trials and imprisonments. [31] Each panic shows the typical profile, with the escalation through various stages of media and moral manipulation until the crisis is magically resolved by some symbolic action. The great ‘kiddie-porn’ panic in 1977 in the USA and Britain led to the enactment of legislation in some 35 American states and in Britain. The guardians of morality may have given up hope of changing adult behaviour, but they have made a sustained effort to protect our young, whether from promiscuous gays, lesbian parents or perverse pornographers. [32]

From the point of view of moral absolutism intergenerational sex poses no problem of interpretation. It is wrong because it breaches the innocence necessary for mature development. The English philosopher, Roger Scruton, suggested that we are disgusted by it ‘because we subscribe, in our hearts, to the value of innocence’. Prolonged innocence is the prerequisite to total surrender in adult love. Erotic love, he argues, arises from modesty, restraint and chastity. This means ‘we must not only foster those necessary virtues, but also silence those who teach the language which demeans them.’ [33] So ‘intolerance’ is not only understandable but virtually necessary—there are no liberal concessions here.

Liberals and radicals on the other hand have found it more difficult to confront the subject. It does not easily fit into the rhetoric of rights—whose rights, and how are they to be expressed: the child’s, the adult’s? Nor can it be dealt with straightforwardly by the idea of consent. Kinsey argued that in a sense this was a non issue: there was no reason, except our exaggerated fear of sexuality, why a child should be disturbed at seeing the genitalia of others, or at being played with, and it was more likely to be adult reactions that upset the child than the sexual activity itself. [34] This has been echoed by the advocates of intergenerational sex themselves. David Thorstad of the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) argued that ‘if it feels good, and the boy wants it and enjoys it, then I fail to see why anyone besides the two persons involved should care.’ Tom O’Carroll, whose Paedophilia: The Radical Case is the most sustained advocacy of the subject, suggested that:

The usual mistake is to believe that sexual activity, especially for children, is so alarming and dangerous that participants need to have an absolute, total awareness of every conceivable ramification of taking part before they can be said to consent…there is no need whatever for a child to know ‘the consequences’ of engaging in harmless sex play, simply because it is exactly that: harmless. [35]

There are two powerful arguments against this. The first, put forward by many feminists, is that young people, especially young girls, do need protection from adult men in an exploitative and patriarchal society, whatever the utopian possibilities that might exist in a different society. The age of consent laws currently in operation may have degrees of absurdity about them (they vary from state to state, country to country, they differentially apply to girls and boys, and they are only selectively operated) but at least they provide a bottom line in the acceptance of appropriate behaviour. This suggests that the real debate should be about the appropriate minimum age for sex rather than doing away with the concept of consent altogether. [36] Secondly, there is the difficult and intricate problem of subjective meaning. The adult is fully aware of the sexual connotations of his actions because he (and it is usually he) lives in a world of heavily sexualised symbols and language. The young person does not. In a recent study of twenty-five boys engaged in homosexual paedophile relations the author, Theo Sandfort, found that ‘Potentially provocative acts which children make are not necessarily consciously intended to be sexual and are only interpreted by the older persons as having a sexual element.’ [37] This indicates an inherent and inevitable structural imbalance in awareness of the situation. Against this, it might be argued that it is only the exalted cultural emphasis we place on sex that makes this an issue. That is undoubtedly true, but it does not remove the fact of that ascribed importance. We cannot unilaterally escape the grid of meaning that envelops us.

This is tactily accepted by paedophile activists themselves who have found it necessary to adopt one or other (and sometimes both) of two types of legitimation. The first, the ‘Greek love’, legitimation basically argues for the pedagogic value of adult-child relations, between males. It suggests—relying on a mythologised version of ancient Greek practices—that in the passage from childhood dependence to adult responsibilities the guidance, sexual and moral, of a caring man is invaluable. This position is obviously paternalistic and is also often antihomosexual; for it is not the gay nature of the relationship that is stressed, but the age divide and the usefulness of the experience for later heterosexual adjustment. The second legitimation relies on the facts of childhood sexuality. O’Carroll carefully assesses the evidence for the existence of childhood sex to argue for the oppressiveness of its denial. [38] But of course an ‘is’ does not necessarily make an ‘ought’, nor does the acceptance of childhood sex play inevitably mean the toleration of adult-child relations.

It is difficult to confront the issue rationally because of the series of myths that shroud the topic. But all the available evidence suggests that the stereotypes of intergenerational sex obscure a complex reality. [39] The adult is usually seen as ‘a dirty old man’, typically ‘a stranger’ to the assaulted child, as ‘sick’ or an ‘inhuman monster’. Little of this seems to be true, at least of those we might describe as the political paedophile. He is scarcely an ‘old man’ (the membership of the English Paedophile Information Exchange, PIE, varied in age from 20 to over 60, with most clustered between 35 and 40); he is more likely to be a professional person than the average member of the population (only 14 per cent of PIE members were blue collar workers); he is more often than not a friend or relation of the child; and to outward appearances is not a ‘special type of person’ but an apparently healthy and ordinary member of the community. His chief distinguishing characteristic is an intense, but often highly affectionate and even excessively sentimental, regard for young people. [40]

The sexual involvement itself is typically seen as being an assault on extremely young, usually pre-pubertal, people. The members of PIE, which generally is preoccupied with relations with pre-pubertal children, seem chiefly interested in boys between 12 and 14, though heterosexual paedophiles tended to be interested in girls between 8 and 10. This is less startling than the stereotype of babies barely out of the cradle being assaulted but poses nevertheless difficult questions about where protection and care ends and exploitation begins. Most members of NAMBLA, on the other hand, which has attracted obloquy in the USA as great as PIE has attracted in Britain, have a quite different profile. They appear to be chiefly interested in boys between 14 and 19. As Tom Reeves, a prominent spokesman for man/boy love, has put it:

My own sexuality is as little concerned with children, however, as it is with women. It is self-consciously homosexual, but it is directed at boys at that time in their lives when they cease to be children yet refuse to be men. [41]

Self-identified ‘boy-lovers’ like Reeves scarcely fit into any conceivable picture of a ‘child molester’. They carefully distinguish their own practices from sex between men and girls which ‘seems to be a reprehensible form of power tripping as it has been reported by women’; and stress the beneficial aspects for adult and young partners of the sexual relationship.

When the official age of consent in France is 15 for boys and girls in heterosexual and homosexual relations (compared to 16 for girls in Britain, and 21 for male homosexuals), and when in the 1890s Krafft-Ebing fixed on 14 for the dividing line between sexually mature and immature individuals, [42] the fear that NAMBLA is attempting a corruption of young people seems excessive.

The young people themselves are typically seen as innocent victims. Certainly, many children are cruelly assaulted by adults, but in relations involving self-identified paedophiles or ‘boy lovers’ there seems to be no evidence of either cruelty or violence. Sandfort found that in his sample the boys overwhelmingly experienced their sexual activities as positive. The most common evaluative terms used were ‘nice’, ‘happy’, ‘free’, ‘safe’, ‘satisfied’, and even ‘proud’ and ‘strong’; and only minimally were negative terms such as ‘angry’, ‘sad’, ‘lonely’ used. Even when these negative terms were used, it was largely because of the secrecy often necessary and the knowledge of hostile norms and reactions, not because of the sexual contact itself. [43] There is strong evidence that the trauma of public exposure and of parental and police involvement is often greater than the trauma of the sex itself. Moreover, many adult-child relations are initiated by the young person himself. A young member of NAMBLA was asked ‘You can be desperate for sex at 13?’ He replied, ‘Oh yes’. [44] Force seems to be very rare in such relations, and there is little evidence amongst self-declared paedophiles or ‘boy lovers’ of conscious exploitation of young people.

All this suggests that intergenerational sex is not a unitary category. Brian Taylor has distinguished eight possible categories which pinpoints the existence of ‘paedophilias’ rather than a single ‘paedophilia’. There are the conventional distinctions between ‘paedophiles’ (generally those interested in prepubertal sex partners), ‘pederasts’ (those interested in boys) and ‘ephobophiles’ (those interested in adolescents). But distinctions can also be made on gender of the older person or the younger person and along lines of homosexuality and heterosexuality. This variety suggests we need to be equally discrete in our responses. [45] There are three continuums of behaviour and attitude which interweave haphazardly. Firstly, there is a continuum of beliefs and attitudes, from the actual violent assaulter at one end to the political paedophile at the other. These can not readily be put in the same class for approval or disapproval. Most people brought before the courts for child abuse are heterosexual men who usually view their girl victims as substitutes for real women. Most activists who court publicity (and risk imprisonment themselves, as happened to Tom O’Carroll of PIE in 1981) have adopted a political identity, which sometimes does not coincide with their actual sexual desires (both NAMBLA and PIE had members interested in older teenagers) but is built around an exaggerated respect for children. [46] It is not obvious that all people involved in intergenerational sex should be treated in the same way by the law or public opinion if intentions or desires are very distinct.

A second continuum is of sexual practices. Some researchers have found coitus rare. It seems that the great majority of heterosexual paedophilia consists of ‘sex play’, such as looking, showing and fondling, and much homosexual involvement seems to be similar. Tom O’Carroll has suggested that these sexual distinctions should be codified, so that intercourse would be prohibited before a certain minimum age of twelve. [47] But bisecting these nuances, problematical in themselves, are two other crucial distinctions, between boy partners and girl, and between heterosexual and homosexual relations. There is a strong case for arguing that it is not the sex act in itself which needs to be evaluated, but its context. It is difficult to avoid the justice of the feminist argument that in our culture it is going to be very difficult for a relationship between a heterosexual man and a young girl to be anything but exploitative and threatening, whatever the sexual activity. It is the power asymmetry that has effect. There is still a power imbalance between an adult man and a young boy but it does not carry the socio-sexual implications that a heterosexual relation inevitably does. Should these different types of relation carry the same condemnation?

The third continuum covers the age of the young people involved. There is obviously a qualitative difference between a 3-year-old partner and a 14-year-old and it is difficult to see how any sexual order could ever ignore this (even the PIE proposals, which first sparked off the panic about paedophile cradle snatching in Britain, actually proposed a set of protections for very young children). ‘Sex before eight, or it’s too late’, the reputed slogan of the American René Guyon Society, founded in 1962 to promote intergenerational sex, is not likely to inspire widespread support, because it imposes sex as an imperative just as now our moral guardians would impose innocence. There is a strong case for finding non-legal means of protecting young children, as Tom O’Carroll has suggested, because it is clear that the law has a damaging and stigmatising impact. [48] But protection of the very young from unwanted attentions will always be necessary. The difficult question is when does protection become stifling paternalism and ‘adult oppression’. Puberty is one obvious landmark, but the difficulty of simply adopting this as a dividing point is that physiological change does not necessarily coincide with social or subjective changes. It is here that it is inescapably necessary to shift focus, to explore the meanings of the sex play for the young people involved.

Kate Millett has powerfully underlined the difficulties of intergenerational sex when adult/child relations are irreducibly exploitative, and pointed to the problems of a paedophile movement which is arguing for the rights of adults. What is our freedom fight about? she asks. ‘Is it about the liberation of children or just having sex with them?’ [49] If a progressive sexual politics is fundamentally concerned with sexual self-determination then it becomes impossible to ignore the evolving self-awareness of the child. That means discouraging the unwelcome imposition of adult meanings and needs on the child, not simply because they are sexual but because they are external and adult. On the other hand, it does mean providing young people with full access to the means of sexual knowledge and protection as it becomes appropriate. There is no magic age for this ‘appropriateness’. Each young person will have their own rhythms, needs and time scale. But the starting point can only be the belief that sex in itself is not an evil or dirty experience. It is not sex that is dangerous but the social relations which shape it. In this context the idea of consent takes on a new meaning. There is a tension in consent theory between the political conservatism of most of its adherents, and the radical voluntarism implicit in it. 50 For the idea of consent ultimately challenges all authority in the name of free self-determination. Certain categories of people have always been deemed incapable of full consent or of refusing ‘consent’—women in marriage, certain children, especially girls, under a certain age, classes of women in rape cases. By extending the idea of consent beyond the narrow limits currently employed in minimum age or age of consent legislation, by making it a positive concept rather than simply a negatively protective or gender-dichotomised one, it may become possible to realize that radical potential again. That would transform the debate about intergenerational sex, shifting the focus away from sex in itself to the forms of power in which it is enmeshed, and the limits these inscribe for the free play of consent. (pp. 223-231)

29. See, for example, Daniel Tsang, ‘Struggling Against Racism’ in Tsang (ed.), The Age Taboo, pp. 161-2.
30. Ibid., p. 8. There are plentiful examples of the automatic association made between male homosexuality and child molesting. In the year I write this, 1983, there has been a rich crop of them in Britain, with the low point being reached in the Brighton rape case, August 1983, where a deplorable assault on a young boy led to a rapacious press attack on the local gay community and legal action against members of the Paedophile Information Exchange, who were in no way connected with the case. The moral panic had found its victims; calm was restored; but the three men who actually assaulted the child were never found.
31. Kinsey et al., Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, p. 117, note 16; Mary Whitehouse, Cleaning-up TV. From Protest to Participation, London, Blandford Press, 1967, and A Most Dangerous Woman?, Tring, Herts, Lion Publishing, 1982; Anita Bryant, The Anita Bryant Story. For general commentaries on events see the articles in Tsang, The Age Taboo; Altman, The Homosexualization of America, pp. 198ff; Mitzel, The Boston Sex Scandal, Boston, Glad Day Books, 1980; Tom O’Carroll, Paedophilia: The Radical Case, London, Peter Owen, 1980, ch. 12; Ken Plummer, ‘Images of Paedophilia’ in M. Cook and G.D. Wilson (eds), Love and Attraction: An International Conference, Oxford, Pergamon, 1979; Major events included the Revere ‘Sex Scandal’ in Boston, the raid on Body Politic following its publication of the article ‘Men Loving Boys Loving Men’ in Dec. 1977; the ‘kiddie porn’ panic of 1977; the trial of Tom O’Carroll and others in England for conspiracy to corrupt public morals in 1981.
32. Pat Califia, ‘The Age of Consent; An Issue and its Effects on the Gay Movement’, The Advocate, 30 October 1980, p. 17. See also Florence Rush, ‘Child Pornography’ in Lederer (ed.), Take Back the Night, pp. 71-81; Illinois Legislative Investigating Commission, Sexual Exploitation of Children, Chicago, The Commission, 1980 (see further references in Tsang, op. cit., pp. 169-70); and on similar events in Britain Whitehouse, A Most Dangerous Woman?, ch. 13, ‘Kiddie Porn’, pp. 146ff.
33. Roger Scruton, The Times (London), 13 September 1983.
34. Kinsey et al., Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, p. 121.
35. Interview by Guy Hocquenghem with David Thorstad in Semiotext(e) Special: Large Type Series: Loving Boys, Summer 1980, p. 34; Tom O’Carroll, Paedophilia, p. 153.
36. See, for example, ‘“Lesbians Rising” Editors Speak Out’ in Tsang, op. cit., pp. 125-32; Stevi Jackson, Childhood and Sexuality, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1982, ch. 9. See also, Elizabeth Wilson’s comments on the debate about proposals to lower the age of consent in England in What is to be Done about Violence against Women? p. 205.
37. Theo Sandfort, The Sexual Aspects of Paedophile Relations: The Experience of Twenty-Five Boys, Amsterdam, Pan/Spartacus, 1982, p. 81.
38. Kenneth Plummer, ‘The Paedophile’s Progress’ in Brian Taylor (ed.), Perspectives on Paedophilia. See J.Z. Eglinton, Greek Love, London, Neville Spearman, 1971 for a classic statement of the first legitimation, and O’Carroll, Paedophilia, especially chs 2 and 5 for the second.
39. For an overview of these stereotypes (and the facts which rebut them) to which I am very much indebted, see Plummer, ‘Images of Paedophilia’.
40. Glenn D. Wilson and David N. Cox, The Child-Lovers. A Study of Paedophiles in Society, London and Boston, Peter Owen, 1983; Peter Righton, ch. 2: ‘The Adult’ in Taylor, Perspectives in Paedophilia; Parker Rossman, Sexual Experiences between Men and Boys, London, Maurice Temple Smith, 1976.
41. Tom Reeves, ‘Loving Boys’ in Tsang, op. cit., p. 27; the age range given on p. 29. On PIE members’ interests see Cox and Wilson, op. cit., ch. II.
42. Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia Sexualis, p. 552: ‘By violation of sexually immature individuals, the jurist understands all the possible immoral acts with persons under fourteen years of age that are not comprehended in the term “rape”.’
43. On paedophilia as abuse see Florence Rush, The Best Kept Secret: Sexual Abuse of Children, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall, 1980; Robert L. Geiser, Hidden Victims: The Sexual Abuse of Children, Boston, Beacon Press, 1979. For alternative opinions: Sandford, op. cit., pp. 49ff; cf. Morris Fraser, ch. 3, ‘The Child’ and Graham E. Powell and A.J. Chalkley, ch. 4, ‘The Effects of paedophile attention on the child’ in Taylor (ed.), Perspectives on Paedophilia.
44. See interview with the then 15-year-old Mark Moffat in Semiotext(e), loc. cit, p. 10; cf. Tom Reeves’s account of being cruised by two 14-year-olds in Tsang, op. cit., p. 30; and O’Carroll, ch. 4, ‘Paedophilia in Action’ in Paedophilia.
45. Taylor (ed.), Perspectives on Paedophilia, ‘Introduction’, p. xiii. In the rest of the discussion I shall, however use the term ‘paedophile’ to cover all categories as this is the phrase adopted most widely as a political description: ‘Boy lover’ is specific, but exclusive.
46. On offences see P.H. Gebhard, J.H. Gagnon, W.B. Pomeroy and C.V. Christenson, Sex Offenders, New York, Harper & Row, 1965; J. Gagnon, ‘Female child victims of sex offences’, Social Problems, no. 13, 1965, pp. 116-92. On identity questions see Plummer, ‘The paedophile’s progress’.
47. O’Carroll, Paedophilia, pp. 120, 118.
48. Ibid., ch. 6, ‘Towards more Sensible Laws’, which examines various proposals, from Israel to Holland, for minimising the harmful intervention of the law; compare Speijer Committee, The Speijer Report, advice to the Netherlands Council of Health concerning homosexual relations with minors, English Translation, London, Sexual Law Reform Society, n.d.
49. Interview with Kate Millett by Mark Blasius in Semiotext(e) Special, loc. cit, p. 38 (also printed in Tsang (ed.), op. cit.).
50. Carole Pateman, ‘Women and Consent’, Political Theory, vol. 8, no. 2, May 1980, pp. 149-68.



Jeffrey Weeks, Sexuality, third edition (London & New York: Routledge, 2010; first edition 1986)

4. The limits of consent: paedophilia
The power relations that sex can involve are most dramatically illustrated by the question of sex between the generations, or paedophilia. Few topics arouse such fear and anxiety in contemporary societies. The ‘paedophile’ has become a symbol of predatory evil, a synonym indeed not only for child abuser but also in many cases for child abductor and even murderer. The peculiar horror invoked by the abuse of innocence, by the imposition of adult desires on the vulnerable, powerless child, speaks for a culture that is profoundly anxious about the boundaries and differences between adults and children, and has become increasingly concerned with protecting the young as long as possible. Yet this has not always been the case.

In the late nineteenth century paedophilia was lauded by some for its pedagogic possibilities – the so-called Greek love justification: in the passage from childhood dependence to adult responsibility, guidance, sexual and moral, of a caring man can be invaluable, it was argued. It was further legitimated in the twentieth century by the supposed facts of childhood sexuality: sexology itself has revealed the wide extent of childhood sexual potentiality including the existence of infantile masturbation. If something is so natural, and omnipresent, should it be as rigidly controlled as childhood sexuality is today? And again, if it is natural, then surely it cannot be harmful even if it takes place with adults. As Tom O’Carroll, a militant supporter of inter-generational sex (who ended up in prison for his pains) wrote ‘. . . there is no need whatever for a child to know “the consequences” of engaging in harmless sex play, simply because it is exactly that: harmless’. [6]

For the vast majority of the population this is not harmless play, it is simply child sex abuse. It involves powerful adults using their experience and wiles to gain satisfaction from exploiting children. The growing sensitivity to abuse is the result of long campaigns, often led in Western countries by feminists, or by campaigners who experienced abuse themselves. This has become a global phenomenon, with international campaigns to end the traffic in children and the worst abuses of sex tourism. This without doubt marks an advance in society’s awareness of the reality of exploitation, and the power of adults over children. Yet there is something rather odd in the ways in which various late modern societies, from Australia to Europe to the USA, have focused on the figure of the anonymous paedophile rather than on the hard reality that most abuse of children is carried out by a close relative or family friend, or perhaps by a priest, as a wave of scandals from the UK and Ireland to Australia and the USA has recently underscored. [7]

Despite, or perhaps because of, the emotiveness of the issue, it is important to be as rational and dispassionate as possible in looking at what is involved. Age is an ambiguous marker. Is there an ideal age at which consent becomes free, rather than abusive, and a relationship becomes consensual, rather than coercive? Certainly the vast majority of us could agree that it should not be 3 or 8, but what about 12 or 14 or 15 which are the ages of consent in various European countries? Laws vary enormously, and sometimes affect boys and girls quite differently. Brian Taylor has pointed to the existence of eight possible subcategories of inter-generational sex, depending on the age of those involved, the distinction of gender, the nature of the sexual proclivity, and the interaction of all three (Taylor 1981). This suggests that there are paedophilias, not a single paedophilia, and the social response should be sensitive to these distinctions, even as it focuses rightly on protecting the young and vulnerable. (pp. 95-97)

6 O’Carroll (1980: 153). For the various legitimations offered, see the discussion in Plummer (1981).
7 There is an excellent debate on the implications of the early twenty-first century anxiety about paedophilia in Loseke et al. (2003). For feminist perspectives, see Reavey and Warner (2003).



Jeffrey Weeks, The World We Have Won: The Remaking of Erotic and Intimate Life (London & New York: Routledge, 2007)

‘Through stories – of desire and love, of hope and mundane reality, of excitement and disappointment – told to willing listeners in communities of meaning, people imagine and reimagine who and what they are, what they want to become (Plummer 1995 [Plummer, K. (1995) Telling Sexual Stories: Power, Change and Social Worlds, London: Routledge], 2003 [Plummer, K. (2003) Intimate Citizenship: Private Decisions and Public Dialogues, Seattle: University of Washington Press]). Of course, all this does not mean that anything goes. It is noticeable that as some barriers to speaking are removed or redefined new ones are erected. Paedophilia began to speak its name in the 1970s, but has been redefined as child abuse and trebly execrated in the 2000s.’ (p. 10)

‘The age of consent may be an ambiguous barrier for young people themselves but it is a fraught one for many adults, usually men. The age of consent itself is constructed in terms of protection of young girls, and it assumes male agency (Waites 2005a [Waites, M. (2005a) The Age of Consent: Young People, Sexuality and Citizenship, Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan]). But the growing awareness of the extent of child sex abuse poses wider questions about the power relations between adults and children (see Reavey and Warner 2003 [Reavey, P. and Warner, S. (eds) (2003) New Feminist Stories of Child Sexual Abuse: Sexual Scripts and Dangerous Dialogues, London and New York, Routledge]; O’Connel Davidson 2005 [O’Connell Davidson, J. (2005) Children in the Global Sex Trade, Cambridge: Polity Press]). The government has responded to widespread anxieties about breach of trust on the part of adults by attempting to write into law notions of protection that should operate in certain types of adult child relationships, such as teaching (Bainham and Brooks-Gordon 2004 [‘Reforming the Law on Sexual offences’, in Brooks-Gordon, B., Gelsthorpe, L., Johnson, M. and Bainham, A. (eds) (2004) Sexuality Repositioned: Diversity and the Law, Oxford, and Portland, OR: Hart Publishing, pp. 291-296]; Epstein et al. 2004 [Epstein, D., Johnson, R. and Steinberg. D.L. (2004) ‘Thrice Told Tales: Modernising Sexualities in the Age of Consent’ in Steinberg, D.L. and Johnson, R. (eds) (2004) Blairism and the War of Persuasion: Labour’s Passive Revolution, London: Lawrence & Wishart, pp. 96-113). These have the habit of all attempts at redrawing boundaries of becoming fiery touchstone issues, as the Secretary of State for Education and Skills, Ruth Kelly, found out in early 2006. The discovery by the press that there were teachers in schools who had previously been accused of abusing children threatened to engulf her and end her career, though she could realistically have had very little knowledge of how her civil servants operated the register of offenders (Doward 2006a:8-9; [Doward, J. (2006a), ‘Sex Scandal that Engulfed Kelly’, Observer, 15 January, pp. 8-9] see also Aaronovitch 2006: 21) [Aaronovitch, D. (2006), ‘The Paedophile Panic: Why We Have Reached Half Way to Bonkers Island’, The Times, 12 January, 21] Behaviours which were once regarded as natural and even healthy (childhood nudity, for example) have become fraught with menace, as parents and carers have discovered when their holiday photographs of naked children playing on the beach have been processed, and police summoned.

Many of these anxieties had been brought to the surface following the murder of the 8-year-old Sarah Payne in summer 2000. The News of the World’s campaign, in response to this, of naming and shaming alleged paedophiles, in turn stimulated a local vigilante campaign led by mothers on the Paulsgrove housing estate in Hampshire (Bell 2003: 108-28 [Bell, V. (2003), ‘The Vigilantt(e) Parent and the Paedophile: The News of the World Campaign 2000 and the Contemporary Governmentality of Child Sex Abuse’’, in Reavey and Warner 2003, pp. 108-28]). This raised in turn a number of crucial issues: the role of the press in stirring up moral panic, the role of class in configuring the response to the working-class mothers’ action, the role of women in confronting an alleged lack of communication from the state, and the role of the state itself in responding to acute anxiety, ignorance and fear. But as important was the shift in the perception of sexual risk and the management of risk that was taking place. As Rose (1999: 206) [Rose, N. (1999), Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self (2nd edn), London and New York: Free Associations Books] points out, outrage at the neglect of abuse emerged most strongly from the very group in society that was once deemed most likely to abuse children – the working class itself. And in practice, of course, the vast majority of cases of abuse take place within families or are by someone known to the child. Yet the anger focused on the dangerous stranger, the paedophile, bearer of a particular psychopathology and history, completely detached from the family. A similar process has been at work in relation to so-called paedophile priests in the Roman Catholic Church. A scandal that the church had long hidden, it raised crucial questions about the religious calling, church discipline, priestly celibacy and simple trust. Yet in the church’s eyes it became less about abuse than about Catholic attitudes towards homosexuality, gay priests and the like. When in 2006 a new Pope sought to ban gays from taking up the priesthood, it was widely seen as a response to the paedophile scandal (Loseka 2003: 13 [‘”We hold these Truths to be Self-evident”: Problems in Pondering the Paedophile Priest problem’, Sexualities 6 (1), February, 6-14]). Anxiety has become individualized, thus expunging the most dangerous sites for the production of abuse, the home, the local community, and it appears the Catholic church, from the story. (pp. 153-154)


The Scotsman
, March 25th, 1988
Alastair Dalton, ‘Brand loses job fight over views on child sex’

THE controversial academic Chris Brand, sacked by Edinburgh University for promoting his views on paedophilia, yesterday lost his appeal against his dismissal.

The independent QC asked by the university to hear the appeal agreed that the psychology lecturer’s behaviour had amounted to gross misconduct and ruled that his dismissal could not be said to have been improper or inappropriate.

Mr Brand, 54, last night described the university’s actions as “treacherous”, but refused to say whether he planned to take his case to an industrial tribunal or the courts.

He was dismissed for gross misconduct last August by the university principal, Professor Sir Stewart Sutherland, after he published on the Internet his view that consensual sex between adults and children was acceptable as long as the child was intelligent.

Mr Brand had previously caused a storm after his 1996 book, The g Factor, claimed there was genetic proof black people had lower IQs than white people. It prompted students to disrupt his lectures and the book was withdrawn by the publisher. The university found no grounds for disciplinary action against him then, although the principal described his views as “obnoxious”.

Gordon Coutts, QC, who conducted Mr Brand’s two-day appeal hearing last week, stated : “The appeal fails. I reject all the revised amended grounds of appeal. I find that the appeal does not raise any question of academic freedom.”

He added: “In pursuit of his objectives, he (Mr Brand) set out to promote controversy. In that he succeeded but cannot now complain if the effect of his behaviour has been to render his continued employment by the university impossible.

“The principal of the university did not dismiss him for views he held; he was dismissed because it was established that his behaviour made it impossible for him to work within a university department.”
Sir Stewart said yesterday he was “naturally content” that “an independent legal expert has endorsed in the clearest possible terms” the findings of the university’s disciplinary tribunal and his subsequent decision to sack Mr Brand.

He said: “I would repeat that it is for aspects of his conduct, not his opinions, that Mr Brand has been dismissed. Mr Brand has again, in recent months, been reported in the press as alleging this process was an attack on academic freedom, though this was not argued by his counsel at the appeal hearing. It has not and never has been such an attack, as independently confirmed by the appeal decision.

“Neither I nor my colleagues at this university have sought in any way to censor Mr Brand’s researched conclusions, on ethnic background and intelligence, for example.

“But it was made clear to him, well before he publicised views on paedophilia, that he also had responsibilities to act with care, whether in a departmental, teaching or wider situation – advice which he apparently chose to ignore.”

Mr Brand condemned the university. He said: “Their behaviour has been shameful.

They have been treacherous to their own academic staff and a disgrace to academia.”

Mr Brand, a former prison service psychologist, had stated on his web site: “Academic studies and my own experience as a choirboy suggest that non-violent paedophilia with a consenting partner over 12 does no harm so long as the paedophiles and their partners are of above-average intelligence and educational level.”

He was suspended in November 1996 and a three-member disciplinary tribunal was appointed the following April to consider the charges against him.

The tribunal ruled that Mr Brand had compromised his position, and his teaching had fallen below the standards expected of him. It further ruled that the university’s reputation had not been damaged by Mr Brand’s publications on the Internet, but a disciplinary offence had been committed.

Mr Brand, a London-born father of three, had been at Edinburgh University since 1970.

Last night Nicola Owen, convener of the Anti-Nazi League Society at Edinburgh University, said: “It’s wonderful news.

It vindicates all the students who fought to get Mr Brand removed from the university.”


The Love and Attraction Conference (1977) and book (1979)

One of the events which was most significant in drawing public attention to the Paedophile Information Exchange was the Love and Attraction conference at University College, Swansea, hosted by the British Psychological Society, which took place from September 5th to 9th, 1977 (advertised in Magpie, Issue No. 2 (March 1977), p. 7). This came very soon after the campaign by the Daily Mirror in August, leading to far right demonstrations outside PIE meetings at Conway Hall, Holborn, London (see Lucy Robinson, Gay men and the Left in post-war Britain: How the personal got political (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2007), pp. 134-135). Much of the Swansea conference was relatiely innocuous, but it was the involvement of PIE which gained attention (Mathew Thomson, Lost Freedom: The Landscape of the Child and the British Post-War Settlement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 169). The conference as a whole was organised by Mark Cook, whilst Kevin Howell convened the symposium on paedophilia

The Dominican priest Father Michael Ingram (see the article on Spotlight here) was due to give a paper at the conference (‘Priest’s child sex views repudiated’, The Guardian, September 9th, 1977), which had been described by Tom O’Carroll as ‘an extensive, and largely positive, study of paedophile relationships between men and boys (O’Carroll, writing in Magpie, Issue 5 (July 1977), p. 6); he argues that in all but a few cases child sex does more good than harm. Ingram was attacked by the Bishop of Nottingham, the Rt Rev James McGuinness, who adamantly pointed out that Ingram did not speak for the Church, and acknowledged sympathetically fears of parents (‘Priest’s child sex views repudiated’).

According to the account of the occasion by Tom O’Carroll (then chair of PIE) (O’Carroll, Paedophilia: The Radical Case (London: Owen, 1980), Chapter 4), all the papers on paedophilia and child sexuality, including one by Dutch psychologist (and frequent contributor to PIE publication Magpie) Dr Frits Bernard, were given in secret session. Various porters, kitchen staff and other workers, from the union NUPE, threatened strike action if O’Carroll were allowed to stay at the university, who acceded to their demands. O’Carroll, who was also physically attacked by one account, also recalls being accosted by one professor who thought that PIE’s ill-judged campaign had ‘put the case for paedophilia back at least ten years’, by turning an academic conference into a media sensation (O’Carroll, Paedophilia, Chapter 12; and ‘Notes & News’, Magpie, Issue 7 (September 1977), p. 2). Earlier this year, when PIE was once again in the news, Swansea University declined to comment upon the original invitation to O’Carroll (‘Swansea University silent on 1970s paedophilia advocate’, South Wales Evening Post, March 3rd, 2014). The Dutch politician and long-term paedophile advocate Edward Brongersma (1911-98) was rejected from the conference by Cook, who was concerned it would be used to make political statements. Brongersma would lambast the attitudes of the British to the subject (‘Conference ban puts paedophilia in the cold’, The Guardian, August 27th, 1977; ‘Dutch MP backs child sex’, The Guardian, August 28th, 1977; Iain Murray, ‘Britain ‘intolerant’ on child sex’, The Observer, September 4th, 1977; ‘The Forbidden Speech’, Childhood Rights, Vol. 1, No. 2, p. 1 – this issue of the PIE publication also contained Brongersma’s ‘On Loving Relationships Human and Humane’, pp. 1-4)

Christian right-wing activist and Law Professor Judith Reisman gave a research paper at the Swansea conference, speaking later of how:

I first met up with what I had come to call ‘The Academic Paedophile Lobby’ in 1977 at The British Psychological Society Conference on Love and Attraction, Swansea, Wales.”

I delivered a research paper on child pornography in Playboy 1954-1977.

Other conference academicians, some hired by pornographers, presented ‘scientific’ papers advocating the legalization of child pornography, prostitution and an end to age of consent.”

They promoted their ‘scientific’ claims for early childhood sexuality to lawmakers and fellow academicians via both legitimate and pornographic media.”

The DSM is typical of this degeneracy since they already had lightened the diagnosis of paedophilia as to make it almost meaningless, requiring that the paedophile be ‘bothered’ by his and her abuse of children and so on.

We now have women and children sexually violating children as well as men. This will continue to spiral down into, well, we’d have to say the abyss of hell, unless we retrieve our laws, our mass media and our schools. (‘Fears that academic conference will normalise paedophilia’, Christian Concern, August 18th, 2011)

(It should be noted that Reisman is a quite extreme homophobe, quick to equate homosexuality and paedophilia, and for this reason I would treat many of her wider views with caution. See ‘Judith Reisman: Homosexuality leads to “tyranny” and “slavery”‘, The Examiner, May 9th, 2013)

Another report on the conference told the following anecdote:

Up in the Press room at the university on the day I met a very charming and lively little boy who was passing his time making paper aeroplanes out of abstracts of delegates papers. I asked his father, one of the Department of Psychology, if he was hiding him up there in case Tom O’Carroll was about. “Good God no Man” he replied in an accent straight out of Milk Wood, “he’s such a little horror at home I’m hoping they do meet up. Might cure both of them” (Eric Trimmer, article in Medical News, September 21st, 1977, cited in ‘Read All About It’, Magpie Issue No. 8 (no date), p. 3).

Larry L. Constantine , a polymath figure who is also a computer software designer and composer, co-edited another key volume – Larry L. Constantine and Floyd M. Martinson (eds), Children and Sex: New Findings, New Perspectives (Boston: Little, Brown, 1981) – which collected various views on the subject, including Constantine’s own essay ‘The Effects of Early Sexual Experiences’, in which he notes that many studies have reported neutral or even positive reactions. More can be read on Ken Plummer (about who I will blog at length at a later date) here on Spotlight.

A book coming out of the conference was published in 1979: Mark Cook and Glenn Wilson (eds), Love and Attraction: An International Conference (Oxford: Pergamon, 1979). A full list of contents, with notes on contributors, can be found at this link. Below are some related articles, and the relevant chapters.

[A further book was produced in 1981, edited by the two Swansea conference organisers: Mark Cook and Kevin Howells (eds), Adult Sexual Interest in Children (New York: Academic Press, 1981). Includes Constance Avery-Clark, Joyce Ann O’Neil and D.R. Laws, ‘A comparison of intrafamilial sexual and physical child abuse’, pp. 3-39; J.W. Mohr, ‘Age structures in pedophilia’, pp. 41-54; Kevin Howells, ‘Adult sexual interest in children: considerations relevant to theories of aetiology’, pp. 55-94; Thore Langefeldt, ‘Sexual development in children’, pp. 99-120; Matti Virkkunen, ‘The child as participating victim’, pp. 121-134; Kurt Freund, ‘Assessment of pedophilia’, pp. 139-179; David Crawford, ‘Treatment approaches with pedophiles’, pp. 181-217; Kenneth Plummer, ‘Pedophilia: Constructing a Sociological Baseline’, pp. 221-250; Donald J. West, ‘Adult sexual interest in children: implications for social control’, pp. 251-270. ]


The Guardian
, August 27th, 1977

Guardian 270877 - Conference ban puts paedophile group further into the cold


The Guardian
, August 28th, 1977

Guardian 280877 - Dutch MP backs child sex

‘Priest to reveal startling facts about paedophilia’, The Sunday Times, September 4th, 1977.

Sunday Times 040977 - Priest to reveal startling facts about paedophilia


The Guardian
, September 9th, 1977
‘Priest’s child sex views repudiated’

Guardian 090977 - Priest's child sex views repudiated.


Section on ‘Infant and Child Sexuality’

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Section on Paedophilia 1

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Betrayal of Youth (1986) – including the contributions of Middleton, Owens, Faust, Tatchell

[WARNING: some may find some of the material below distressing]

An extremely rare publication which is of central importance to the study of the Paedophile Information Exchange, its members, ideologies and activities, is Warren Middleton (ed), The Betrayal of Youth: Radical Perspectives on Childhood Sexuality, Intergenerational Sex, and the Social Oppression of Children and Young People (London: CL Publications, 1986). A copy can be found in the British Library, and it can also be found in the Bishopsgate Library, National Library of Wales, National Library of Scotland, and the libraries in Oxford and Cambridge. Here I reproduce sections of the book so that more people can see this for themselves. In particular, it includes most of one of the long chapters by Warren Middleton, an interview between Tuppy Owens and Tom O’Carroll, a piece by Father Michael Ingram, the somewhat notorious chapter by Peter Tatchell, and a chapter by Roger Moody on how to make paedophilia more ‘acceptable’.

Details of the contributors can be found at the bottom of this post. Middleton (aka John Parratt), was jailed in 2011, alongside Steven Adrian Smith, Barry Cutler, John Morrison and Leo Adamson – for offences relating to child abuse images. Michael Ingram was a serial abuser of boys who was finally convicted in 2000, but took his own life before being sentenced. Peter Tatchell is well-known, but his past views on sex with children and association with some involved with PIE have been heavily criticised (see here and here – and here is an important series of letters and articles in The Guardian following Tatchell’s response to a critical review of Joseph Geraci (ed), Dares to Speak: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Boy-Love (New York: Gay Men’s Press, 1997) by Ros Coward). Tatchell has given his support to a national inquiry into organised abuse in response to queries on this issue; whilst some have implored me to remove his name, for now it will stay though one should not ignore his earlier statements.

Roger Moody was a ‘paedophile activist’ who was author of Indecent Assault (London. Peace News, 1980), an account of his trial and acquittal at the Old Bailey in March 1979, and who also strongly attacked Geoffrey Dickens for his anti-paedophile work – see more on Moody here. John Lindsay was a long term Socialist Workers Party and also gay rights activist, who urged more integration of the two movements. Here is a recent interview with Tuppy Owens. Some more information on Australian feminist and acolyte of Germaine Greer (about whose apologia for child abuse I posted here), Beatrice Faust, can be found here; she was awarded the Australian centenary medal in 2001 for ‘service to the community through women’s issues’. I am also including here an article she wrote on child sexuality and ages of consent in the Netherlands. Beatrice Faust – Child Sexuality and Age of Consent Laws – The Netherlands Model

Tom O’Carroll, chair of PIE from 1977 to 1979, is well-known. He was a regular contributor to various PIE publications (see here, here and here) and author of Paedophilia: The Radical Case, and has been imprisoned three times, first for two years in 1981 on the charge of ‘conspiracy to corrupt public morals’ based upon the contact ads section of Magpie, then to nine months in 2002 on grounds of importing indecent pictures of naked children, though this sentence was overturned on appeal, then again for two-and-a-half years in 2006 for possession of a huge range of images of abuse, together with retired Anglican minister Michael John De Clare Studdert.

My earlier post on PIE and the Home Office clarifies how Smith (also known as Steven Freeman) essentially ran the organisation from the Home Office itself. He fled the country for the Netherlands soon after writing this article, as detailed below, and was eventually jailed in 1991, and then more recently was given an indeterminate sentence in 2011 after being convicted of producing drawings of children being raped (‘Ex-paedophile group leader Freeman jailed over child rape drawings’, BBC News, July 15th, 2011).

Timothy d’Arch Smith was the author of Love in Earnest: Some Notes on the Lives and Writings of English ‘Uranian’ poets from 1889 to 1930 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970), about a group of poets devoted to the issue of man-boy love. A three volume neo-Hellenic apologia was published by Boston aesthete Arthur Lyon Raile (Edward Perry Warren), A Defense of Uranian Love (London: Cayme Press, 1928-30), which can be read online here. A further book on the Uranians entitled Secreted Desires: The Major Uranians: Hopkins, Pater And Wilde (2006) can be read online here. Middleton, as can be seen below, specifically compares them and their offshoot, the British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology, founded in July 1914, with PIE. Recently two anthologies of Uranian poetry entitled Lad’s Love have been published, edited by Kaylor.

Do note the list of acknowledgements, not least to Nettie Pollard, who was NCCL’s Gay and Lesbian Officer and also a PIE member herself (#70), who invited Tom O’Carroll to sit on NCCL’s gay rights committee; the Sunday People wrote a piece on Pollard in March. Former NCCL officials Patricia Hewitt, Harriet Harman (Labour Deputy Leader) and Jack Dromey still need to answer questions about their relationship with Pollard. Pollard is also one of the leading acknowledgments in Moody’s Indecent Assault, and also in Tom O’Carroll’s Paedophilia: The Radical Case (London: Owen, 1980).

Here and here I have posted key chapters from an earlier important PIE-related publication, Brian Taylor (ed), Perspectives on Paedophilia (London: Batsford Academic and Educational Ltd, 1981). Later I will post material from another volume, Mark Cook and Glenn Wilson (eds), Love and Attraction: An International Conference (Oxford: Pergamon, 1979), which came out of the notorious conference in 1977 at Swansea.

I am looking for someone who has access to the third major PIE journal, Minor Problems who may be able to copy some of this – please let me know if you can help.

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Contents 1

Contents 2

Introduction 1

Introduction 2

Introduction 3

Owens-O'Carroll 1

Owens-O'Carroll 2

Owens-O'Carroll 3

Owens-O'Carroll 4

Ingram 1

Ingram 2

Ingram 3

Faust 1

Faust 2

Faust 3

Faust 4

Faust 5

Faust 6

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[continuing in part]
…taken from the hands of the police and ordinary courts and entrusted to the hands of sympathetic trained counsellors who could conduct investigations in a more relaxed atmosphere, amid pleasant, informal surroundings. In cases where the child freely participated in sexual activities, or where he/she made the first sexual approach, both the child and the child’s guardians (where incest is not involved) should be allowed an important say as to whether prosecution should go ahead. When prosecution is recommended, the child should, at all costs, be kept out of conventional court hearings – if these are absolutely necessary – while the strongest possible measures are taken to ensure the defendant’s position is not compromised in the process. This would also have the effect of substantially reducing the number of paedophiles who plead guilty simply to protect their young friends from the trauma of court appearances.

7. In the event of a separate category of ‘sex offences’ being retained, then the Home Office and prison governors must take extra steps to ensure the safety of such prisoners from assaults by other inmates. Any abuses by prisoners should be automatically recorded, and those responsible made liable to loss of privileges, loss of remission, and, in more serious cases, prosecution. Prison officers should not be allowed to inform inmates what any particular prisoner has been convicted for, and failure to comply with this rule should result in disciplinary proceedings, or dismissal.

8. All defendants in court cases, whether sex is involved or not, should be protected from ‘trial by the press’. We think, therefore, that names and addresses of the accused should, by law, be kept out of the news media until such time, at least, as a verdict has been announced. [end p. 178]

Section on ‘Long Term’, pp. 179-180

Notes and References, pp. 181-187



Appendix 1
Steven A. Smith, ‘PIE: From 1980 until its Demise in 1985’, pp. 215-245

The name of PIE has cropped up several times in this collection. Since the group had, in its time, been so thoroughly misunderstood and misrepresented, it was deemed only fair to allow Steve Smith, its last chairperson, an opportunity to redress the balance. Accordingly, he now takes up the story from where Tom O’Carroll left off. –ed.

Questions of Priority

It seemed to me, when I succeeded O’Carroll as chairperson in 1979, that the most sensible order of business for PIE was firstly to regulate its internal affairs (MAGPIE [1] was appearing very erratically – partly my own fault – and members were receiving nothing else of value from the group); secondly to begin an energetic recruitment drive to replenish our depleted executive committee; thirdly to formulate collectively a coherent body of policies on key issues; and fourthly to tackle our campaigning objectives as a group, rather than as one or two individuals speaking on behalf of the group. More than simply addressing an occasional CHE branch, student gaysoc or academic conference, what I wanted to see was PIE producing a manifesto on video for the widest possible circulation (as GYM had done), or trying for ‘community access’ slots on TV and local radio, or producing posters and broadsheets aimed at the public rather than potential members, or even working in concert with the NUSS (the now-defunct National Union of School Students) to redress the steady flow of anti-paedophile propaganda which the police were imparting to schools all over the UK.

PIE had always felt a sense of kinship (not often reciprocated) with the gay movement, and a firm commitment towards autonomous youth liberation (children’s rights), but I wanted to see develop a far closer interaction – on practical as well as philosophical levels – between PIE and the various paedophile groups in Europe and the States. I felt we should lend considerable effort to the formation of an international alliance along similar lines to the International Gay Association (this was before we discovered how bureaucratic the IGA was in practice). Lastly, with the abandonment of PIE’s Contact Page under the menace of further prosecutions, the EC felt very keenly that members still needed something from PIE in the way of social support; something beyond the ad hoc counselling which many committee members undertook on a one-to-one basis. If British law prevented paedophiles from writing directly to one another through a simple small ad service, then some alternative had to be found which would abrogate the profound isolation which had driven them to the desperate resort of joining PIE in the first place. We began to look afresh at the establishment of local groups, which PIE had attempted in earlier years without much success.

In the event, PIE failed to draw onto its committee the kind of radicalised, hard-working people that were needed, and not one of the above objectives was realised. Year by year, PIE had sunk deeper into a state of collective torpor, grimly determined to survive, if only in catatonic immobility. So, we failed to attract into PIE useful paedophiles who were commited [sic] both to political action and to the development of a mutual support framework – this was due in part to PIE’s consummately negative image in all quarters (the radical leader was quite as easily duped by the press stories about us as anyone else, judging from the strange impressions of PIE that had reached our ears), but due also to obstruction and non co-operation wherever we sought wider publicity for the group’s address. Many gay and alternative journals must share the blame for PIE’s then continued parlous, debilitated condition. I’m convinced there are still many thousands of paedophiles in the UK alone who are ignorant of PIE having ever existed, and I know for certain there are many others who saw the various ‘exposés’ and shock reports about us, but were thwarted in their efforts to find us.


Perspectives on Pearl Harbour

A former treasurer, on resigning from the EC, put it to me (though not quite in these terms) that PIE’s reputation across the board had become so desperately negative that the groups’ mere existence could only harm the paedophile cause, whatever we tried to do about it. We were a pariah among alternative movements, evil incarnate to society at large, and by continuing to exist so doggedly in the face of all opprobrium, PIE was doing for British paedophiles what AIDS was doing for the gay community. A harsh judgement, I feel. If AIDS had not existed the Moral Majority would’ve had to invent it. If PIE had not existed, it would have been necessary for the NEWS OF THE WORLD to invent us. And in one sense it’s true to say that the gutter press did invent PIE – or at least, the image of PIE which had been in general coinage since 1977; that of a secretive international ‘cult’, probably with underworld connections, certainly with influence in ‘high quarters’; a porn-producing syndicate of callous men intent upon nothing but their own sexual gratification. But if PIE’s early strategy had been different, how different would its public image have been?

Several times the idea of folding PIE and replacing it with a new paedophile grouping was mooted on committee, but we’d never have successfully jettisoned PIE’s reputation by the simple expedient of a name-change, and even a substantially different alignment would not for long have escaped the vitriolic attention PIE had enjoyed. This rose by any other name would have smelled no sweeter. There was nothing endemic in PIE itself which another broad-based group could have avoided and thus somehow bridged the ‘credibility gap’. NAMBLA in the US, for example, has placed its emphasis exclusively on gay paederasty (men attracted to teenage boys and youths), thus neatly sidestepping the two most controversial planks of PIE’s platform – heterosexual and pre-teen paedophile relationships. Notwithstanding this, NAMBLA has been attacked, boycotted and obstructed every bit as much as PIE had been by the media, women’s groups, sections of the gay scene, and has come in for just the same intimidation and harassment from the authorities. So much for tactical compromise. PIE’s trajectory into the public eye in 1977 can be compared to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, after which Admiral Yamamoto observed: “I fear that all we have done is to waken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve”. Doubtless, many paedophiles wish we’d let this particular giant sleep on, but neither they nor children can be liberated from his tyranny without at least waking him in the process.

The conflicting demands of our campaigning and befriending objectives from the start presented a fundamental dichotomy in PIE. What for years we viewed as one of PIE’s greatest strengths may in truth have been its greatest weakness, or at least its greatest liability; our acceptance into the group and onto its Executive Committee of paedophiles, whatever their attitudes, abilities or political persuasion (with the exception of the far Right, of course). By straining to be all things to all paedophiles I doubt that we fully satisfied any, and we certainly alienated a few. There is a very powerful argument which runs thus: that the accommodation of a passive, inert membership consumes so much of the energies of a small group’s activist core that the raison d’être of the group is lost in a sea of ‘club-shit’. In other words, committee devoted so much of its time and attention to the routine of organisation and providing reading material and other services for consumption by the Moloch that vital campaigning work was neglected. After six years hard labour on the PIE committee I can only say that this was absolutely true.

Probably the only way ahead for paedophilia in the UK will be the emergence of two distinct groupings – though working in concert – attending to these differing needs. I for one did not wish to see the majority of paedophiles abandoned while the few activists diverted their attentions elsewhere, as some would have had us do, but equally I recognised that our political momentum had been retarded by a plague of part-time paedophiles – those who wanted to know what was going on without getting involved any deeper; who wanted to see changes made but not to help bring them about. PIE’s committee did not comprise many true activists anyway – it never did – so it alone did not have the capacity to diverge, and the very few paedophile activists who could be identified outside the group showed no interest in helping the metamorphosis come about.

Perhaps PIE’s mistake was in tackling non-paedophile prejudice in the first place? Perhaps instead we should have operated under the most stringent security precautions as a kind of Masonic network through which paedophiles might have contacted one another in safety? I’ve heard this view from outsiders. I don’t think that locking oneself in the closet would have been a terribly progressive move; by its nature such a network would have benefited only a tiny minority of those ‘in the know’, and the outside world would have been vindicated in its suspicions about us if we had behaved so furtively and were so indifferent to public opinion and the political imperative of children’s liberation.

The most bizarre misconception about PIE was held by a guy who later joined the committee for a short while – Lee Edwards. He’d visualised PIE being as affluent and neatly-organised as the Mormon Church, with smoked glass offices in the City of London and a full-time secretariat. He was, let’s say, a shade disillusioned by the reality. PIE did actually have an office in Westminster only a smirk away from the desk of the Home Secretary, but more of that later. The group’s silence in recent years had done nothing to dispel the illusions of people – friend and foe – about us, but then Pie itself had been undergoing an identity crisis of sorts, uncertain about which direction it should be taking. But one thing is quite certain – if we were none of the things people expected us to be, we were certainly none of the things the press had claimed us to be in their haste to deceive the British public.


Loaves and Fishes

I found PIE in 1978 entirely by accident through a classified ad in TIME OUT magazine. Many others came to us through a regular listing in GAY NEWS. However, both sources of new blood had been closed off long before the trial. [3] Occasionally, we would discover a listing in some unexpected place, inevitably giving an old address, but in general PIE was unable to get a listing in any gay or alternative paper in the UK. After the trial we attempted to retrieve this situation by a general approach to dozens of such papers here or abroad, asking for either free listings or concessionary advertising rates. A special appeal was made to the membership for donations to fund this advertising drive. MANCUNIAN GAY was the only paper in the UK willing to help us. Abroad, our ad was accepted without qualm by THE BODY POLITIC (Toronto) and GAY COMMUNITY NEWS (Boston) – both excellent gay papers whose unequivocally supportive stance on paedophilia put the faint-hearted GAY NEWS to shame – also by REVOLT (Sweden), CSC NUSLETER (California) and several others. But where we needed members most of all, where members were potentially of most value to the group, here in the UK, the drive got us nowhere. TIME OUT kept our hopes up for several months with repeated promises of a listing, but finally backed out with the feeble excuse that, as PIE wasn’t strictly a gay group, it was inappropriate to include us in a gay listings column. The only option left to us – a rather desperate one – was to litter PIE’s address around the streets by means of a sticker campaign, and this is what we did.

The sticker featured the silhouette of a standing child embracing a seated adult encircled by our name and address. We decided on this low-key format, foregoing bold and provocative slogans, as the object was simply to attract new members, not to outrage every parent that saw them. Even so, we were politely requested by one (prospective) London MP to desist planting them in his constituency (they had been discovered rather close to schools, you know!). Well, the campaign brought us just a handful of new people – too few members had been planting the stickers on a regular basis for fear of being caught red-handed and beaten up; those that were planted were being far too eagerly torn down; and worst of all one committee member made the terrible gaffe of not renewing the postal address on the sticker, so that later mail was never redirected to us at all. Perhaps the act of planting stickers, like writing political graffiti, is little more than a satisfying gesture of defiance for the individual, but I think we made a mistake in not concentrating our efforts on a far smaller area – probably London itself – and perhaps, if there had been a next time, we should have gone for those bold, provocative slogans.

There were a number of projects in various stages of completion during this period – none of which had any significance to non-paedophiles. The PIE Press Service was revived, making available once more all PIE’s early material (UNDERSTANDING PAEDOPHILIA and CHILDHOOD RIGHTS, for example) together with items like Tom’s book PAEDOPHILA: THE RADICAL CASE, [4] which PIE subsidised to its members; the early US boylove magazine BETTER LIFE; and the celebrated BODY POLITIC article ‘Men Loving Boys Loving Men’ [5] (which has been subjected to not one, but two trials of its own). We owe thanks to Julian Meldrum of the Hall Carpenter Archives for supplying us with much early PIE material. So many important documents were lost whenever Scotland Yard descended on the homes of committee members that arrangements were made with the Brongersma and Bernard Foundations in Holland to deposit copies with them for safe keeping.

A reading list of paedophile fiction was added to the press service, complied by Lewis Grey, David Joy and Leo Adamson, and later a non-fiction list condensed by Tom O’Carroll from the copious bibliography of his book. Work was also begun on a film guide and on a survival guide for paedophiles in the UK.

A growing number of our members were captives in US prisons. Coping with the special needs of these people prompted us to set up a prisoner support scheme which, under Peter Bremner and later Tony Zalewski, found correspondents for these prisoners and sought sponsors to cover the expenses of their membership, mailing them recommended books and items from the press service. It hardly needs saying that our attempts to operate the scheme with inmates of British prisons were scotched by this country’s Draconian censorship restrictions. Mail from US prisoners often carried an apologetic stamp on the envelope which read: “Prisoners’ mail uncensored. Not responsible for contents.” I look forward to the day when British prisons need to be so apologetic – I had a long and fractious correspondence with the governor of Wormwood Scrubs over the confiscation of several letters of mine and other items sent to Tom O’Carroll. As with all things in the US, prison regulations vary wildly from state to state, so while some members were receiving regular visits from the boys for whose ‘protection’ they had been imprisoned, others were not even permitted to receive MAGPIE. NAMBLA was far better placed than we were to defend the interests of these people, and is now doing so. PIE was powerless to help prisoners in the UK without some referral arrangement with the social services, and the Home Office lifting restrictions on visits and correspondence.

Given the monstrous treatment of many paedophiles in prison, and the squalid, dehumanising conditions that prevail throughout the prison system, it is a marvel to me that people can emerge from this ordeal without a deep and burning animosity towards the society that abused them so. Imprisonment is the grossest indecency.

If there was one venture that I expected to be an unqualified success and firmly supported by the membership, it was the re-establishment of social meetings through local group organisers. This was the sort of freedom which other oppressed groups – blacks, gay men and women, and many more – took entirely for granted. Any attempt by PIE to arrange social venues (this applied equally to workshops, AGM’s, marches and demonstrations of any kind) carried with it the implicit danger of press harassment, police observation, and physical attack from fanatics of every species. Accordingly, such precautions had to be taken to insulate these meetings from the hostile gaze that the people who had most need of them – frightened, solitary people with zero political awareness – were the last to be invited to them. Where possible, committee members attempted to meet new people in order to establish their bona fides, but there was always a substantial part of the membership who could not be directly vouched for, and we knew there was an agent of the NEWS OF THE WORLD among them.

Having an EC member in Birmingham, the first step was to organise meetings in this area for members in the midlands. Several meetings took place, but then the host was arrested and sent to remand prison on an unconnected charge, and interest petered out. With my help, an Australian member attempted to generate support for a PIE branch in his country (we had more members in Australia than in Scotland and Wales together), but the majority of those approached preferred to keep the breadth of the globe between them and the kind of flak which PIE attracted. This was not too surprising when one learnt that an earlier bid to establish an independent Australian paedophile group – SYBOL – crashed when a conservative gay group threatened to hand the organisers’ names and addresses to the police. Plans for a Canadian branch of PIE went awry also, but happily NAMBLA was able to establish a chapter there soon after.

Our greatest concentration of members had always been in London and the home counties. All but a handful of PIE’s workers through the years had lived there. From August ’82 we booked a private room one night a week in a series of West end pubs, inviting along all members who were known to us. The average attendance was very disappointing: always the same few faces. Presumably, everyone feared that a press plant would be present, as had in fact happened once before in 1979: A known freelance operating for the NOTW, had turned up half drunk at one pub meeting and begun asking those present to procure boys for him. “I know there are kids around who’ll go with you for money,” he said, “but where are they? Why don’t we do something instead of just sitting here?” No such investigative journalist graced any of the more recent meetings. TIME OUT reporter, John Gill, came along once or twice, but he was there at our invitation, preparing a feature on the anxieties and expectations of paedophiles living in London (a feature subsequently suppressed by the magazine’s editors). Other guests present at those meetings included many GYM members and one or two representatives from CHE – one of them a woman who was entirely supportive. Discussions with these people were on the whole constructive and stimulating, and made the meetings worthwhile for us on the EC, but the objective of a social forum for members outside the committee was never realised.


Babel Wasn’t Built in a Day

In August 1980 PIE circulated an open letter among every known paedophile group in Europe, Scandinavia and North America, and also to prominent individuals such as Dr. Edward Brongersma, Dr. Frits Bernard, Drs. Theo Sandfort, and Valida Davila of CSC (Childhood Sensuality Circle). The letter outlined an ambitious, some would say grandiose, proposal for a new transnational paedophile federation through which member groups would collaborate on material projects and share resources at the same time as working towards a common philosophical platform. As I wrote in MAGPIE 15, “Much more than a simple mutual aid society, such a federation would be the consolidation of a coherent international paedophile and children’s liberation movement out of the present chaos of tiny national groups working largely oblivious of one another”. This initiative was very much a personal commitment of my own – my committee colleagues were not all so inspired by this euro-vision. I had learned through PIE that there were groups in Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, Portugal, Belgium, yet we knew virtually nothing about these people and their organisations, what they were doing in their own countries, or how their political analyses differed from that of PIE. Any contact we had established had been of a token kind, genuine in spirit but superficial in practice, so it was safe to assume that these groups were in the same state of ignorance about us. It seemed important to me that a full and penetrating dialogue be established at least with the strongest of them.

Inevitably, there were language obstacles. We mustered a few members to translate from French, German and Dutch for us, but although our files were brimming with magazines from these groups we could hardly ask people to translate whole magazines, and in any case one could not always rely on forming an accurate view of a group’s thinking merely by reading its general literature. (There had been no language barrier for Tom O’Carroll when he represented PIE at an Oslo conference ‘Amnesty for Love and affection’ hosted by the Norwegian group, NAFP, in 1979. There had even been discussions there on forming a new, broad-based international group called ‘Amnesty for Child Sexuality’, but nothing had come of this.)

The Open letter included a proposal for an early ‘summit’ conference of interested groups to discuss the general concept of an IGA-type alliance, and areas of practical collaboration between us. The most enthusiastic responses we received came from people and groups who had least to gain from the proposed alliance: “I am in complete agreement with your plans,” wrote Valida Davila; “Some people are ruined by oppression and persecution, and others are fired to fight back. I see your committee has chosen the latter road.” “We think the idea of an international association for paedophiles excellent,” wrote REVOLT of Sweden; “If there is anything we can do to support, never hesitate to ask.” Pasteur J. Doucé of the Centre du Christ Libérateur, Paris, wrote: “If I can be of any help in the formation of an international paedophile fellowship please let me know.” An anarchist commune for young people in Nuremberg, the Indianner, said that although they had deep reservations about the German group, DSAP, they still wished to “join a basic form” with us.

The groups themselves were not prepared to take a lead. They wanted to see PIE set up the conference itself. What better demonstration of the poor grasp our friends had on the political realities for PIE? We were possibly the only group among them which was unable to hold a general meeting for its own members without grave risk of injury to those attending, and prosecution of the organisers. After the events of 1977 for PIE, did anyone seriously expect an international paedophile conference to be permitted in the UK? NAMBLA chose to “wait and see what leadership develops on these concepts”. The paedophile wing of the Dutch civil rights umbrella organisation, NVSH, felt that their priorities should be domestic, and that international co-ordination should be left to the auspices of the IGA itself. NAFP in Norway “sympathised” but wanted “more concrete ideas”. [6]

The first months of the following year saw the emergence in France of a new paedophile organisation – the Groupe de recherché pour une Enfance Différente – and four of us from PIE sped along to its inaugural congress in November. Also present on that occasion were David Thorstad representing NAMBLA, Frits Bernard representing DSAP, and a member of the Belgian Paedophile Studygroup [sic]. The atmosphere at that opening day was something I had not experienced before even at PIE’s 1978 AGM – an intensity, an electric urgency of expression that welled as much from the floor as from the platform. The strength of the GRED committee was plain to see, as one after another they all addressed the meeting with equal vigour and self-assurance, and everyone it that packed hall (including, to our delight, a handful of women paedophiles) was involved, not quietly receiving the transmitted wisdoms of the committee. With the promise of an imminent reduction in France’s homosexual ‘age of consent’ from eighteen to fifteen, the liberation of children was for these people far from a remote utopian objective.

I came away from that conference profoundly frustrated, both with the inadequacy of PIE and my own inadequate French. I went to listen, but came away having understood little that I’d heard. I went to contribute my views, but came away without having said a word. I went to take part, but was obliged merely to observe. It’s not entirely unreasonable, of course, that a French group meeting in France should conduct its meeting in French, but I had rather hoped that, at least in the workshop on international collaboration, some concession would be made to a humble Anglophone like myself. Unfortunately, GRED’s English was only a little better than my French. One might think such a lesson in futility would have made me reconsider the practicality of collaboration on the level suggested by the Open Letter but, on the contrary, I felt all the more keenly how much we had to gain from a close dialogue and mutual co-operation with people such as GRED. If we left them with a rather poor understanding of PIE and what we had to deal with over here, that was entirely our own fault, of course, but even among the extrovert committee of GRED, and in its journal, PETIT GREDIN, there was a hint of the same parochialism displayed by the NVSH paedophiles and others, confining their analysis of the problems and solutions within national boundaries. Perhaps PIE was unique in this respect – that more than half our membership lived abroad, scattered among twenty or so countries, and it was plain to us that the ignorance and intolerance of paedophilia knew no frontiers, as with the inhibitory myths of childhood. While the police and the agents of ‘moral’ conformity were concerting their efforts internationally against us, would we not even collaborate in our own defence, if for no better motive?

Another item under preparation for the PIE Press Service at that time was a comprehensive directory of paedophile/children’s liberation groups – the first such guide ever to be published in the English language, filling in a little detail to that cold, unwelcoming expanse of acronyms: SAP, DAP, DSAP, PAC, AKP and so on. Questionnaires were distributed hot on the heels of the Open Letter, and the information that came back immediately helped to dissipate our own ignorance a little. We discovered, inevitably, that some of the groups had already collapsed. In Germany, for example, the Deutsche Studie und Arbeitsgemeinschaft Pädofilie had disintegrated over an ideological clash between anarchists, conservative reformists, and revolutionary socialists – notably about the nature and extent of freedom it wished to seek for young people. Blackmail threats had come into play here too, as with SYBOL in Australia, but this time one paedophile against another, to the utter damnation of those that made them. NAFP in Norway also, sadly, dissolved. And for each group that vanished another would suddenly appear elsewhere on the map – Stiekum in Belgium, for instance.

At the GRED conference it was agreed that the groups represented there would all follow NAMBLA’s example in joining the IGA itself and through it lobbying the gay movement directly for firmer support. The extent of our links with the gay political scene was an essential aspect of PIE’s strategy (insofar as PIE had such a thing) which I want to consider separately but, in the absence of a constructive dialogue with gays (or anyone else) in our own country about the radical means to accomplish our short and long term objectives, other paedophile groups abroad remained the only people from whom alternative strategies could be learned, our own analysis refined, different perspectives examined. Practical alteration to the law and its institutions is an objective necessarily specific to one’s own country, but awakening a whole culture to the living realities of sexuality and of youth is the promulgation of an idea, a new system of living, and is not confined to the arbitrary frontiers of states.


Prodigal Son? _ Or A Cuckoo in the Nest?

1983 was the first time in PIE’s nine-year history that a handful of members carried a PIE banner at the London Gay Pride march. The banner read simply: ‘Adults Loving Children loving Adults’ – a bisexual extension of the famous BODY POLITIC caption. This bold initiative was largely due to the efforts of one EC member, Leo Adamson, who, in a very short time of involvement in PIE, had propelled the group a deal closer to the gay movement than it had been for a considerable while. As a member of GYM (Gay Youth movement), Leo was able to speak for PIE at their annual conference ‘Gym’ll Fix It’, and he also took an active role in the group’s lobby of Parliament. In July ’83 he represented PIE at the IGA conference in Vienna. One could say that PIE had waited a long time for individuals with Leo’s stamina and conviction to come along and fulfil this vital liaison role.

Eric Presland, writing in CAPITAL GAY, [7] rejoiced in the appearance of PIE’s banner at the Gay Pride march, and bade us a hearty ‘Welcome back!’ While there was no doubting the sincerity of Presland’s support for PIE, nor his personal commitment to the liberation of children, there was an assumption behind his remarks that PIE had somehow drifted away from the gay movement in recent years, had now seen the error of its ways and returned – like the prodigal son – to its spiritual home. But it was not PIE that moved away from the gay movement in the UK, it was the gay movement that moved hastily away from us once the muck began to fly; and not because it viewed PIE as too reformist, sexist or reactionary – these tags were slapped on us much later – not because our proposals were insufficiently radical; they were too radical by half for the majority of gays. If we had concentrated, as NAMBLA had done in the US, simply upon sexual relationships between men and teenage boys, gays might have been rather more sanguine about solidarity with us. We were not prepared to barter away the interests of so many paedophiles and of pre-teenage children to realise that support.

If anything, the political leaning of the EC had become further to the Left than ever before, though unfortunately there was no output from PIE to attest to this. Committee may have been radical in its sympathies, but was singularly reticent to express this thinking through MAGPIE or CONTACT. [8] Repeatedly it was put to them that committee should buckle down and talk through some coherent policy positions on key questions – I prepared a discussion paper on pornography to set this process going – but there was no enthusiasm at all for the hard graft of policymaking. Little wonder then that Pie was seen as complacent and insular when it could not produce a single political position or line of analysis to promote wider debate. Those people who troubled to look for evidence of PIE’s philosophy or political credentials were left to glean what they might from the tone and content of MAGPIE, or from documents published years ago by a very different EC – the ‘Questions & Answers’ booklet [9] and our ‘Evidence to the Home Office Criminal Law Revision Committee’. [10] I don’t think there was anyone active in PIE at this time who was happy with the proposals contained in the ‘Evidence’ paper; many would have liked to see them publicly rescinded. All in all, if gays regarded PIE with some suspicion as being an unknown political quantity we had no-one but ourselves to blame for that.

“I don’t think the time is yet read,” wrote an editor of REVOLT in answer to our Open Letter, “for a great association that would support both gays and paedophiles. There are still too many prejudices in the various camps, and paedophile liberation has some very specific aspects which certainly would be overlooked (or neglected) in a general gay association.” I entirely agree with that view. Whereas those paedophile groups that had sprung initially from the gay movement (PIE, NAMBLA, GRED) had tended to survive without the umbilical intact, those which tried to submerge back into the gay movement, becoming just one of several special interest groups within it, (NAFP for example) expired in the process. It is manifestly obvious that the struggles and obstacles faced by paedophiles in the UK today, and indeed the major arguments marshalled against us, bear a striking resemblance to those which gays themselves were confronted with a scant few decades ago. Many of the tasks that face us are the same – combatting the monolithic heterosexuality of ‘educational’ propaganda, for one – and there is great scope here for joint action, but our demands of society are far from being identical, and nor are they at the same stage of accomplishment.

To pluck a metaphor from the mouths of our critics, in any relationship between paedophiles and gays, it is gays who are demonstrably the stronger partner, far greater in size and power, their social status much higher. In contrast, paedophiles are weak, vulnerable, and – as a political force – lacking in experience, our status just about the lowest there is. Can true equality ever be realised in such a relationship? Will gays not simply abuse their power advantage to silence or control paedophiles? Does the gay movement really care about the needs and aspirations of its younger protégé?

Well, you may be sure that PIE did not endorse that kind of negativistic approach. The assumption that the strong will tend inevitably to exploit the weak is true of fascists, not of sexual groupings. I believe that the gay movement in the UK neglected PIE’s struggle to establish a discrete paedophile consciousness, as it has largely neglected the predicament of gay people younger than sixteen or seventeen. From its position of comparitive [sic] strength it had much to offer us by way of philosophical analysis as well as options for positive action. Instead, we found ourselves forced consistently onto the defensive, perpetually having to justify our very sexuality, to avouch our responsibility as caring people. We were nothing beyond a coffee-table controversy to most gays, and our demands for acceptance and support were given barely more credence here than that which society gives to demands for gay equality. I’m afraid the movement itself has much to answer for the continuing misery and frustration gay children in this country are compelled to endure.

It was a measure neither of PIE’s ineptitude, nor of the political vacuousness of British paedophiles, that so few radical activists materialised among us. It was rather too facile to apply to us the logic of gay and feminist activism, as though the realities were no different for a paedophile coming out in a militant way. Every risk that a gay or lesbian accepts in entering a career of sexual politics, on whatever level, is multiplied many times for a paedophile doing likewise. It is a simple equation of greater risks equalling fewer volunteers. Beyond this rather elementary observation, it is in the nature of paedophilia that the greater number of us will channel their whole energies into working with and for children (however misguidedly), whether this be as youth workers, teachers, nurses or, yes, as scoutleaders. Individuals who would have been of immense value to a group such as PIE either never contemplated joining because their attention was squarely focussed on working with the young, or shied away from deeper commitment for fear the publicity would disable them from continuing such work. True, many of these people themselves inadvertently abet the social conditioning of youth, but they are sincere in the belief that their work is beneficial and constructive. The essential point is that a paedophile’s natural first loyalty is to children – not to other paedophiles.

Unlike gays and feminists, who seek the company of people like themselves for social and sexual reasons, and then develop a political consciousness within that society, drawing strength from their community for ‘coming out’ and embarking on political work, paedophiles do not tend to gravitate so readily into one another’s company, (those that would have no means of doing so, of course) and the breeding medium for radicalisation is so much less fertile for this often-overlooked reason. In the company of a thirteen year old boy one can learn a good deal about the realities of powerlessness and dependence and the frustration of being thirteen in this society – all the more so from a girl – but this is a long way from assimilating a commitment to political struggle. The younger the children a paedophile seeks for company, the more this argument applies.

Thanks in large part to PIE, some paedophiles did befriend one another, but all too often in such meetings the differences of perspective were more apparent than the congruences. There was a commonality of interest without a commonality of awareness. Therefore among paedophiles this consciousness has to be cultivated in an altogether more deliberate and artificial way. Those paedophiles who regard themselves (sometimes mistakenly) as the most revolutionary are generally those that move largely in gay circles. Undoubtedly, coming out as a paedophile via the gay movement increases one’s exposure to radical though – though anyone acquainted with CHE might laugh at this – but it may also leave one with a smug and false sense of security.

While my own sexual tastes extend to eighteen or nineteen year old guys, I confess I never had much inclination to join a gay group or frequent any gay clubs. I think my perspective might have been rather less parochial if I had, but this is to illustrate that there are many paedophiles like myself who wish to work in close harmony with gay society, not to join it. To those who say, “So why didn’t PIE make more effort towards a rapprochement with radical gay groups?” I reply, “Why didn’t the stronger, more numerous, and better-equipped gay groups approach PIE with advice, criticism, active support, even when we were reeling in the wake of an Old Bailey trial?” Why should we have had to make all the running? Let me cite one or two instances of the positive vibrations PIE was receiving from the mighty ‘λ’.

At the 2nd annual conference of the IGA (Barcelona, 1980), the only group to abstain from a general motion calling on member organisations to support paedophile groups more vigorously was Britain’s CHE, who insisted on their exception being noted for the record. At GYM’s 1982 lobby of Parliament (which only twelve of some four hundred MPs felt obliged to attend), it was a vice-president of CHE, Martin Stevens, MP (Conservative, needless to say), who favoured the retention of the homosexual age of consent at twenty-one (for males), whilst others present were quite willing to negotiate an initial reduction to eighteen. Stevens’ rationale – if we may dignify it by that term – was that if homosexual behaviour was legally sanctioned among teenagers, “teenagers might in later years regret their youthful flings”. Similarly, at the IGA’s 1983 Vienna conference, it was Michael Brown of Britain’s Conservative Group for Homosexual Equality who supplied the most stentorian opposition to every paedophile motion put before the conference. In this case, where one of the motions called upon PIE to urge all other paedophile groups to affiliate as we had done, Brown was joined by Denmark’s F48, Norway’s DNF48, and Lavender Left of New York, who had apparently determined by explicit resolution to vote against all paedophile-supportive motions. The excellent ‘Gay Youth Charter’ composed by GYM in 1982 was rejected by CHE’s own conference until a reference to paedophilia had been expunged from it. A comparison between GYM’s ‘Gay Youth Charter’ and CHE’s ‘Charter for Gay Rights’, published in the same year, is extraordinary – the one is detailed, uncompromising, bold and lucid; the other bland, timid and cursory.

CHE’s dilemma was summarised by their own Law Reform Committee thus: “CHE has hitherto directed its campaign towards achieving equality under the law relating to heterosexual and homosexual behaviour. The reasons for this, while in large part tactical, are nonetheless important. The argument for equality is much easier to explain to a prejudiced audience and can be forcefully advocated on grounds of simple justice.” It goes on to ask, “Would adopting a position in favour of the abolition of all ages of consent laws risk appearing, in the eyes of the general public, to be so extreme as to make (CHE’s) aims on other issues more difficult to achieve; or has it reached the position where no further significant advance can be made without working – in collaboration with other organisations – for reform of these and the other laws relating to sexual behaviour generally?” [11]

It was the same dilemma which confronted broader civil rights groups like the NCCL (National Council for Civil Liberties) when the rights at issue were those of PIE. Any association with our particular cause threatened to undermine their own political credibility cross the board. PIE was the hottest potato of all, and triggered off all kinds of atavistic terrors in more respectable reformist groups. We were therefore sacrificed on the altar of short-term tactical compromise.

Not to confine this criticism to gay and civil rights groups however the producer of London Weekend Television’s ‘Gay Life’ programme (screened once a week in the late night horror slot) promised me there would be a programme on paedophilia in the second series to which PIE might be allowed to contribute. Alas, there was not. Among the helplines which consistently declined to give PIE’s address to paedophile callers were Icebreakers, London Gay Switchboard, Brighton Gay Switchboard, and Friend. One of these told me their solicitors had advised them that by passing out our address it might be construed that they were acting as agents for the organisations.

The fact that PIE was not exclusively homosexual represented part of the reason for this moratorium. GAY NEWS and TIME OUT both quickly zeroed in on this objection, though as with the ubiquitous power argument, it often serve as a radical justification from the mouth for a decidedly unradical prejudice in the mind. I think it stood to the credit of the PIE EC (whose most active members had always been boylovers) that we did not cave in under such pressure. No heterosexual paedophiles ever stepped forward to defend their own ground, and this made it rather difficult for us to answer the challenges of the gays and feminists with total conviction. Between gays and our heterosexual members the strand of mutual acceptance was very thin indeed (between them and feminists it did not exist at all).

David Thorstad, while still spokesperson of NAMBLA, expressed his own position all too clearly: When Anita Bryant would say that gay men are child molesters, they would say ‘Oh no, we don’t do that; gay people are not molesters, it’s the heterosexual who are the molesters’. I’ve used that argument myself; I believe it’s true.”

Many heterosexual paedophiles are just as ready to swallow society’s stereotype model of gays, their masculinity squirming uncomfortably at the prospect of too close an association with the world of such caricatures. This kind of stupidity is an obstacle we can all do without.

No-one will be astonished to hear that the facet of gay politics in the UK for which PIE felt the closest affinity was gay youth, and that GYM came top of our list of groups to form an alliance with. The first meeting between members of our two committees only reinforced this feeling. As we sat about a table in a London pub, no more than a dozen of us, it was not a bunch of middle class, middle-aged liberal paedophiles confronted with a bunch of radical gay teenagers suspicious of our motives. In fact the majority of both committees were in their mid-twenties. The youngest PIE representative was twenty-one, the oldest GYM representative, twenty-six. Some suspicion was evident on GYM’s part, or rather a wry scepticism about PIE’s political soundness, but it was expressed with candour, not hostility. For our own part, the only major criticism of GYM was its arbitrary self-imposed age limit of twenty-six (a strange paradox in a group whose existence is a reaction against arbitrary age boundaries), in that this tasted a little of ageism in reverse – the idea being that, without an upper age limit, GYM would be taken over by older gays (older than the then committee guiding lights), or that gays would flock to it like moths to a flame in search of teenage boyfriends.

Strategically, so much more can be accomplished under the banner of gay youth than would ever be possible for an overtly paedophile organisation, but that apart, GYM has a freshness and directness which PIE lost long ago. Whereas we talked years back of producing a general information video, GYM have gone and made one. While PIE made ginger overtures to carefully-chosen MPs, GYM staged a general lobby of Parliament. While PIE agonised over whether or not we dared to call another AGM, GYM revels in mass meets.

It is time that gay society in this country woke up to the crucial role it has to play in the foundation of a stable, vigorous and independent paedophile movement which is committed to radical change. What emerges may not be PIE, nor will it be a clone of the gay movement itself, for paedophiles are more than simply gay and straight adults who like their partners particularly young. Ours is a whole different sexuality, our needs and priorities are very different. We are brothers with the gay world, not twins.

PIE in the Face of Fleet Street

Journalism is one of those unsavoury professions – advertising is another – in which an individual’s potential for success is inversely proportional to that person’s scruples. Note that I do not say there are no journalists of conscience or integrity in Fleet Street, only that such people had never been to the fore when the focus of attention was on PIE, or paedophile matters, or rights (in their totality) of people under sixteen, and that such exotic blooms must seem strange indeed in that arid, thorny habitat. Doubtless there remains one detective at Scotland Yard who really believes the police are the servants of the community, and not its warders; or doubtless Thatcher has one Cabinet Minister who genuinely believes in equality of opportunity. These are all, however, statistical freaks. If we find journalism itself to be venal and corrupt – as I believe it is – then this is a profound cause for alarm. As one American commentator observed succinctly, (but glibly), “The news media have become Orwell’s Big Brother of ‘1984’ – all pervasive, all influencing. The freedom of the press is eating away the freedom of the individual”.

Television long ago supplanted religion as the opiate of the working class, and most of the criticisms I make here of the press apply with equal force to the broader media, notably television. There is a disturbing trend towards tabloid-style presentation in TV news programmes, with the same crass, superficial coverage, the same rampant sexism and imperious moral tone, and the same calculated imbalance. Recent reports, for example, of a mother seeking legal compulsion on doctors to inform parents before prescribing contraceptives to girls under sixteen were invariably followed or preceded by progress reports from police investigating the sexual murder of a five year old girl. Such judicious editorial juxtapositions are common. (A contemporary report in a local Harrow paper on similar demands from the ‘Harrow Child and Family Protection group’ appeared on the same front page as an overtly sexist pin-up – of a fifteen year old girl.)

As to the quality of the coverage – in a Central TV news report on the swelling number of teenage runaways in the midlands (‘minors’ voting with their feet?), it was emphasised throughout that the principal fear was not of physical, but ‘moral’ peril; that girls would be “drawn into drink, drugs and prostitution”, and that boys would “fall into the hands of homosexuals”. (TV journalists, like their Fleet Street counterparts, do not care to use the word ‘paedophile’, you may notice.) As always, the people who had most to say on the matter, the people most directly affected, whose anxieties and exasperations had driven them to take off in the first place, were the only people not consulted. It might have been a report on lost dogs or stolen cars. So much for the objectivity and impartiality of British television news.

Every year since PIE had come into being, during the slow news time of parliamentary recess, the minions of the soft-porn tabloids had scurried out with their indignation and their power-winder cameras to rake together another shock story about the group. We were a silly-season staple for the NEWS OF THE WORLD, the SUNDAY PEOPLE and the DAILY STAR. The danger with papers of this vulgar, facile kind is that they are widely dismissed as being of no consequence to significant trends in popular opinion. The NOTW is generally regarded as a joke, but without the implicit malevolence and cruelty behind the joke being fully appreciated, or the extent to which the paper’s four million readers are being duped by the fantasies of its squalid-minded editor and staff. There is no room here to catalogue all the misshapen, libellous reports that have appeared concerning PIE over the last few years. An analysis of the coverage of the Old Bailey trial alone would require a full chapter, and in any case, such a virulent poison permeates this sea of press cuttings that the mere task of reading them all through is grossly offensive and unhealthy for one’s state of mind. Confronted with such wholesale, indiscriminate hatred a sense of proportion is difficult to maintain. There had been several major stories on PIE since Tom O’Carroll was convicted, each of which had repercussions far beyond the immediate distress inflicted on the committee members named, and illustrate well the harm which the gutter press can cause.

The first of these stories (NOTW, March 22nd., 1981) was occasioned by PIE having to open a new post Office box, the sponsor of our previous box, David Grove, having died. The Post Office leaked the home address of our new sponsor, Peter Bremner, to the NOTW so fast that the reporters were at his door before the box had even been used, and before the Executive Committee itself, let alone our members, knew where the P.O. Box was located.

Inside, the paper ran a feature on PIE, and the child pornography industry, being careful to blur any distinction between the two. The reporters were Charles Sandell and George Edwards. ‘The Dreadful Web of Child Corruption’ began as follows: “The evil men of Britain’s child sex organisation, the Paedophile Information Exchange, are just the tip of an iceberg. Behind them lies a web of pornography and degradation that spreads its tentacles worldwide – and even involves the Mafia.” After another couple of paragraphs which could leave no doubt in the reader’s mind that PIE was in fact a front for the manufacture and distribution of pornographic material, Sandell and Edwards went on: “The magazines… they produce do not stop at sexual abuse. Some show the systematic slow torture and even murder of children and young people.” Now if that was not a cut and dried case of libel, what is? Who could blame the public for its outrage against PIE when such nightmarish tales could be published about us with complete indemnity?

Someone else who spreads his tentacles worldwide is Rupert Murdoch, the Jehovah of yellow journalism, and the essence of this NOTW story quickly resurfaced as far away as Australia and in Sri Lanka where, in the SUNDAY OBSERVER (April 5th), PIE was described as “the sick porn merchants of the West”. Sri Lanka, like the Philippines, had long been celebrated among paedophiles and gays for its tolerance to homosexuality in general, and sudden government moves late in 1981 to curb sexual contact between local youth and Western tourists have been attributed in part to the scare campaign triggered by the NOTW. Perhaps this is overestimating the impact of that tawdry little paper, but the snowball effect of press hysteria was a very real phenomenon, as later stories demonstrated.

It was an open secret among anyone linked to the Executive Committee that for four years I was employed by a firm of electrical contractors, Complete Maintenance Ltd, to monitor a control panel of alarm systems at the Home Office, Westminster. The job entailed practically no work on my part, beyond attending the panel, and in fact I had a furnished office completely to myself seven days a week on a rotating shift basis. Much of PIE’s less sensitive file material was stored in locked cabinets there, where no police raid would ever have found them. Each year my security clearance was renewed by Scotland Yard without my connection with PIE being discovered. I’d known from the start that such a marvellous snook could never be cocked forever and sure enough the News of the World got hold of this information eventually. The paper contacted the Home Office immediately of course and gleefully drew this oversight to their attention. My security clearance was cancelled on the spot, my employers notified and I found myself not sacked but ‘rendered without employment’ – on the same day that reporter Alex Marunchak greeted me on my doorstep. ‘Child Sex boss in Whitehall Shock’ ran the headline.

And what do you suppose? – “Home Office security chiefs knew all about Steven Adrian Smith’s links with PIE”, claimed the report; “A Home Office spokesman said, ‘We’re aware of Smith’s background, and since the NEWS OF THE WORLD contacted us he has been told he’s no longer acceptable to us. He no longer works here. It would be true to say that he would still be here if you hadn’t been in touch.’” This silly bit of official face-saving apart, Marunchak went on to concoct a brief interview with myself. Instead of slamming the door in his face, which I seem to recall having done, I appear to have told him (with a swirl of my opera cloak), “Yes, I’m the chairman of PIE. So you’ve found out!” and so on. There was possible libel here too, for he alleged that at an EC meeting I had “bragged of (my) relationships with boys and urged members to organise a ‘dirty weekend’ with children at a south coast hotel.” This is imputing to me a specific criminality, but nonetheless – we were advised by a solicitor – whether I won a libel suit or not, and I stood every chance of doing so, that the sympathies of the jury would be wholly against me, and any damages derisory.

Some of us had fondly hoped that my inevitable discovery would at least throw such egg on the face of the government as to oust the Home Secretary (then, Mr. Whitelaw), but in the event, this story was curiously not picked up by any other paper (obviously, the ‘ruling class’ had to be protected), and our own attention was diverted by a plague of visits from DAILY STAR reporters the very next week. (Incidentally, the extent of security chiefs’ knowledge of my activities did not prompt them to investigate the content of my filing cabinets and a carload of PIE files was safely spirited from the building before it could occur to them to intervene.)

Once upon a time a reporter in the alternative press wrote (with just a hint of sarcasm) that it was about as difficult to ‘infiltrate’ PIE as to infiltrate Piccadilly Circus. He was absolutely right. One of the hazards of keeping our door wide open (as any counselling group must) is that all manner of creepy-crawlies are apt to find their way in along with more welcome visitors, and such a one was Charles Oxley, principal of two public schools, Christian fundamentalist, and wizened protégé of Mary Whitehouse. [12] Under the name of David Charlton he joined PIE with offers of practical help in EC work. He was good enough to type out for us Tom O’Carroll’s copious non-fiction booklist, and to photocopy at his own expense many other items for the PIE Press Service. As with anybody else who expressed a willingness to work, he was first met by an EC member to assess his character and reliability, then invited along to a couple of committee meetings. His sensational findings formed the basis of a four-page spread in the DAILY STAR (‘Child Sex Spy Tells All’ – August 21st, 1982) and many subsequent radio, press and police interviews. On the strength of just two meetings with the EC, Oxley had become the Establishment’s trusted authority on PIE. Who was taken in the more by his fantasies, PIE or the Establishment, is open to question. STAR reporters Paul Henderson and Barry Gardner played Woodward and Berstein [sic] to Oxley’s ‘Deep throat’.

Four committee members were named – David Joy, Peter Bremner, Lee Edwards and myself, and photos appeared of three of us (my mother was later to comment that the STAR photo was one of the best of me she’d seen!) It was no coincidence that the three committee members who were to be raided by the Obscene Publications Squad, almost exactly a year later, were David Joy, Peter Bremner and Lee Edwards. Not content with publishing our addresses, the DAILY STAR carried photos of our homes too, for greater ease of identification by neighbourhood vigilantes, mums’ armies, and neo-fascist groups.

The text itself was rather lame, even amusing in comparison to the previous year’s NOTW extravaganza, and only of interest for the crude, obvious manner in which colour was added. To convey the impression of PIE as a shifty, back-street organisation, our homes were variously described as “dingy”, “seedy”, and “an old mansion that comes straight from a horror movie”. Meetings were arranged, it said, “through a complicated exchange of letters and coded telephone calls” using “secret codes and passwords”. This was total fantasy and a familiar lie printed about the group – arrangements were far more mundane and prosaic than that, I’m afraid. Oxley knew that no pornography had been handed round at the meetings, but he was determined to create that impression at least: “Various paedophile books and magazine were mentioned and passed around” he hinted darkly. As I remember, Oxley took away one of these magazines himself for closer inspection, and never returned it – it was the latest issue of PAN (Paedo-Alert-News).

The news-gathering tactics of the DAILY STAR rate a mention here. We learned later that they had used menaces toward several children in Lee’s home street who would not answer their questions (Lee was staying with a family at the time, and the two daughters were tailed by the press for several days). When this proved fruitless, they set up a couple of young boys to accost Lee in the High Street and make conversation just long enough for him to be photographed form a parked car across the road. (Even when he called on me, Henderson had attempted to force his way into my house.) It was a standard routine for reporters on this kind of story to make a point of visiting all one’s neighbours and filling their heads with who-knows-what horrific yarns. There was a knife attack on Lee shortly after the story appeared, but as Lee is an ex-boxer he managed to send his assailant away with a bloody nose, never to return. Another standard hurdle with these reports was the local press follow-up, a boringly predictable after-shock when your local paper contrives to regurgitate the story for those of your neighbours who missed it the first time around. In this particular instance the STAR itself ran a follow-up story a few days later (‘Ban the PIE Men’) in which glory-hunting Tory back-bencher, Geoffrey Dickens, vowed he would table a Private Member’s Bill at the next session of Parliament which would proscribe PIE explicitly, and outlaw any other pro-paedophile organisations. [13] Dickens was the same stalwart who named diplomat Sir Peter Hayman, under House of Commons privilege, as the PIE member whose identity had been concealed throughout the trial (some six months after Hayman had been publicly identified in PRIVATE EYE magazine). Dickens did not win the Private member’s ballot, as chance would have it, and nothing more was heard of that pledge, but it seemed to us a serious threat at the time. Even a bungling oaf of Dickens’ calibre could hardly have failed with such an intimidatingly populist Bill, had he won the ballot.

By the winter of ’82, the papers were full of the Geoffrey Prime affair. Prime was exposed as a Russian supermole who worked at the government’s intelligence HQ at Cheltenham. Imprisoned for sex offences against young girls, as well as spying, it was alleged, unsubstantiated of course, that he either had links with Pie or was actually a member under an assumed name. As with the much earlier Sir Peter Hayman affair (he was the former British high Commissioner to Canada), and the later revelation that I myself and an EC colleague, Barry Cutler, were both employed on security at the Home Office, this latest scandal must have caused considerable embarrassment to the government. By now, PIE’s name must have been truly hated in the corridors of power. [14]

In June, 1983, the NOTW ran yet another of its regular silly stories, this time claiming that top TV stars and MPs were members of the Exchange. No names were mentioned, of course – except those of EC members. As a result of this and follow-up stories in such scandal sheets as the STAR and the SUN, committee members Mike Williams and Richard Travell lost their voluntary work as a scoutmaster and Sunday School teacher respectively. Travell was later denounced by his father, a church minister, and forced to move out of his home.

It would be possible to go on and on about the shock/horror stories concerning PIE, but this would serve little purpose since the point has been made. Suffice it to say that press harassment of the group was real, and it seemed that reporters were prepared to use any means, fair or foul, to ensure the organisation was destroyed. The time is coming when something will need to be done about the press in this country – and the sooner the better.

Final Words

If paedophiles have little faith in the press, they have certainly got even less for the criminal justice system in this country, for being a paedophile is an invitation for every sort of injustice there is. While baby batterers walk away with derisory sentences after being slapped on the wrist and told not to do it again, people whose only ‘crime’ is that they love children can expect to have the book thrown at them and endure years of attacks in squalid prisons from real criminals. One can inflict horrendous physical suffering on a child, but if one is unfortunate enough to be a paedophile who has consensual sex – oh well, that’s classed as worse than murder.

Similarly with ‘corporal punishment’ which is, in truth, nothing more than a euphemism for legal assault. This practice is widely supported in these isles, and it is no coincidence that the organisations and people who were most opposed to PIE were the very ones who endorsed it most. The message is clear: abuse is okay as long as it is socially approved.

Back in its earlier days, PIE itself initiated a campaign against this practice and received letters of support from such well-known people as Baroness Wootton, and Sir Alfred Ayer, the philosopher. But PIE, being a tiny organisation, could only do so much.

For PIE, the time has now run out; but the ideas behind it will continue to survive.

Editor’s note: Soon after the above article was written, its author along with two other PIE EC members were arrested on incitement charges in connection with issue No. 6 of the group’s internal bulletin, CONTACT. Before the trial, Steve Smith fled to Holland where he still resides. The two other defendants were subsequently found not guilty of the incitement charges, but guilty of a lesser charge. After renewed threats to proscribe PIE, the group finally succumbed to political pressure, and the organisation disbanded in early summer, 1985. Because of this, all articles in this book referring to PIE, including the above, have had the tense changed from present to past.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1. A journal of PIE
2. Lee Edwards was later alleged (though unproven) to have given or sold confidential information about PIE and its members to the NEWS OF THE WORLD, which published the details, much of them erroneous, in a front page splash.
3. I refer, of course, to the notorious Conspiracy to Corrupt Public Morals trials of early 1981.
4. Tom O’Carroll (Peter Owen, London, 1980).
5. ‘Men Loving Boys Loving Men’, by Gerald Hannon (BODY POLITIC, March/April, 1979).
6. It was Kenneth Clarke in CIVILISATION who said that ‘nearly all the upward steps in the history of civilisation have been internationalist steps.”
7. CAPITAL GAY (July 15th, 1983).
8. CONTACT! Which was edited by myself, was the internal bulletin of PIE.
9. PAEDOPHILIA: SOME QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS (PIE, 1979).
10. EVIDENCE ON THE LAW RELATING TO, AND PENALTIES FOR, CERTAIN SEXUAL OFFENCES INVOLVING CHILDREN – FOR THE HOME OFFICE CRIMINAL LAW REVISION COMMITTEE, ed. by Keith R. Hose and Michael Burbidge (PIE, 1975).
11. THE LAW RELATING TO CONSENSUAL SEXUAL ACTS: A DISCUSSION PAPER (prepared by The CHE Law Reform Committee’, 1980).
12. Oxley was, at the time of writing, chairman of the right wing National Campaign for Law and Order, which incidentally supports hanging and corporal punishment, and deputy chairman of Mary Whitehouse’s Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association.
13. Even revelations that he was consorting with two other women, despite the fact that he was married, didn’t stop Dickens attacking PIE. Hypocrisy has no bounds, it seems. I often wonder what the dickens the man would do if it weren’t for paedophiles???
14. Well before the Hayman affair, another Establishment figure, Lord Bingham, had also been revealed as a PIE member.

[ADDENDUM: The ‘Lord Bingham’ in question here was Richard Maurice Clive Bigham, Viscount Mersey (1934-2006), who admitted PIE membership and contact with a 10-year old girl, who would remove her clothes when offered money and sweets by him; the girl’s mother went on trial in Manchester Crown Court in 1978 on charges of inciting one of her daughters to commit gross indecency with Bigham. See ‘Peer’s son in sex case ‘revolted”, Glasgow Herald, July 20th, 1978]



Appendix 2: Timothy d’Arch Smith, ‘The ‘Uranians’’, pp. 246-253.

In Britain, the birth of what could be called a politically conscious campaigning paedophile movement occurred around October 1974 with the inception of two groups; PAL – Paedophile Action for Liberation, and PIE – Paedophile Information Exchange. However, after a scurrilous SUNDAY PEOPLE exposé of PAL on May 25th 1974, the group went into a steady decline which, by 1977, resulted in both PAL and its magazine PALAVER being incorporated by the Exchange.

Until the emergence of PIE, never before in the history of this country ahd such a cohesive group of crusading paedophiles come together so openly to press for changes in the laws and public attitudes. Indeed, the nearest and only comparison one can make is with the Victorian literary clique known as the ‘Uranians’ (or Calamites) and its offshoot, the British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology, founded in July, 1914 by some of the group’s leading lights.

The Uranians consisted largely of undergraduates who extolled the beauty of young boys in their poetry and prose, and much of their work is refreshingly outspoken for the period.

We are indebted to Timothy d’Arch Smith for bringing this remarkable and hitherto unsuspected literary phenomenon to public attention with his brilliantly research study, LOVE IN EARNEST.

For the benefit of those not acquainted with this study, and because the Uranians were the forerunners of PIE, he was asked to expound a little about them for the present book. –ed.

The word ‘Uranian’ was coined by the nineteenth century Austrian jurist, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, before the word homosexual had been invented. Casting about for at term to embrace a group of poets who celebrated in their verse the love of boys, for whom in any case homosexual would not do, I chose Ulrichs’ word. My book appeared as long as sixteen years ago and yet the name appears to have stuck. Since alternatives – paedophile, paederast – originally discarded as unfamiliar, are now so overloaded with opprobrium synonymous these days almost with monster, perhaps semantical and, astrologers tell us – the word deriving from the planet Uranus – fatidical inexactitudes, it will continue to survive.

The Uranians flourished between 1850 and 1930; approximate but by no means arbitrary dates. Three influences were the cause of their ascension. Urlichs’ pamplets, calling for revisionary views on homosexuality, began to circulate in the 1860s and 70s and their influence soon spread to England for propagation in the 90s by the sexual reformers, Havelock Ellis and John Addington Symonds. Attention was being directed to homosexuality by its incidence at the public schools whose traditional structure nurtured its existence as loving as it zealously stamped out its manifestations; and intense study by boys of the classics, read during the Victorian age as much for their content as for their syntax, directed sympathetic minds to Greek love. Further, as the century progressed, there arose a rebellious dissatisfaction with Victorian ‘stuffiness’ that would lead, in the nineties to the ‘decadent’ movement; a conscious, indeed a self-conscious desire to shock.

The movement, not intendedly one despite mutual ties but retrospectively observable as such, numbered about forty exponents, each the author of at least one volume of unmistakably paedophilic verse. The best of the British, the public school tradition – it must not be forgotten that the Uranian movement was quintessentially British and proud of it – was the Rev. Edwin Emmanuel Bradford (1860-1944). [1] With twelve books to his credit, he was the movement’s most prolific writer. His cheerful verses, airily overlooking any sexual implications, tapped out in rollicking jingles the Uranian philosophy. Of the proselytisers, the campaigners for sexual reform who, in those days, saw no difference between homosexual and paedophilic attachments, or if they did see it, advanced no reason for dissimilar compassion, we may single out Edward Carpenter (1844-1929), author of TOWARDS DEMOCRACY, [2] and John Addington Symonds (1840-1893), who never missed a chance of bending classical and biblical themes to a homosexually allegorical advantage. [3] If we exclude Oscar Wilde, the chief exponents of the decadent school were Wilde’s catamite, Lord Alfred Douglas (1870-1945), [4] and the fashionably shocking Theodore Wratislaw (1871-1933), whose two poems ‘L’Éternal Féminin’ and ‘To a Sicilian Boy’ were almost the only examples of Uranian poetry to have suffered censorship and suppression. [5]

Each of these sub-sections had, of course, its neurotics; obsessive paedophiles who spent their lives thinking of very little else. John Gambril Nicholson (1866-1931), [6] arguably the best poet of them all, friend to his recurrent disadvantage of Fr. Rolfe (‘Baron Corvo’), [7] fell into this category. Ralph Nicholas Chubb (1892-1960), attempted to raise paedophilia to a religion, and his prose-poems, issued in stringently limited editions from his own hand-press, were examples of fanaticism run riot. [8] A late runner in the decadent stakes, Philip Gillespie Bainbrigge (1891-1918), with his smutty pastiche, ACHILLES IN SCYROS, provided the best example of unashamedly erotic verse. [9]

Love of boys – or girls come to that, although there is no similar sub-literature – raises the acutest problems, and although Uranian poetry was, for the most part, not very good, it raised psychologically interesting points. Shot through with simple yearnings – analogy with the negro blues not too far-fetched, both reflecting the discontents of an outcast people – it was permeated with longings for the poets’ lost boyhood; with regrets for the briefness of boyhood’s span; with declarations of the supremacy of Uranian love over other manifestations of affection; its, as it were, rightness.

As might be expected, dissatisfactions outweighed euphoria. Celebrations of untroubled and untrammelled love affairs were few and far between. With admirable stoicism, however, the Uranians were able to console themselves with very little: a boy seen in the street, the sound of a treble voice, glimpses of bare flesh at a bathing place, and on occasions, a kiss. Hard won, of rare occurrence, these to the Uranians were riches indeed. Almost all of the group were quick to assimilate the catachrestic lessons of Symonds, and Uranian poetry abounded with reiterations of the legends of Achilles and Patroclus, Zeus and Ganymede, David and Jonathan.

The most striking curiosity of their verse was an almost unanimous obsession with class distinctions. This slightly reprehensible ‘snobisme’ took the form of the poet (the lover’s) desire for lads of the lower orders. Guttersnipes, lift-boys, oil-begrimed stokers on the knife-edge of puberty bowled over, like so many skittles, are Uranian poets. One wonders why this should have been.

The uniqueness of the Uranians’ ideal lay in their single-minded tenet that society should discard the socially acceptable prerogative of parenthood and allow them to take from a boy such love as he has had, in the past, to reserve for his father and mother at a time in his life when he most needs a trusted adult guide outside the confines of home and school.

That a man may take from a boy the kind of physical donation he should reserve for a girl may present us with a problem of the gravest kind, or it may not; for the Uranians maintained that the very nature of male-to-male experience of sex, with its unwritten code of impermanence, was not callous or immoral but altogether harmless. It was their bravery in throwing down this challenge which demands our attention. [10]

I will conclude this appendix with two poems, the first by Alan Stanley, the second by E. E. Bradford, both of which typified the work of the Uranians.

August Blue

Silver mists on a silver sea,
And white clouds overhead
Sailing the grey sky speedily
To where the east turns red.
And one lone boat her sails has spread,
Sails of the whitest lawn,
That seem to listen for the tread
Of the tender feet of dawn.

The risen sun now makes the sky
An arching roof of gold,
Amber the clouds turn as they fly
Uncurling fold on fold ;
The sun a goblet seems to hold
A draught of fervid wine,
And the young day no longer cold
Glows with a fire divine.

Stripped for the sea your tender form
Seems all of ivory white,
Through which the blue veins wander warm
O’er throat and bosom slight.
And as you stand, so slim, upright
The glad waves grow and yearn
To clasp you circling in their might,
To kiss with lips that burn.

Flashing limbs in the waters blue
And gold curls floating free;
Say, does it thrill you through and through
With ardent love, the sea?
A very nymph you seem to be
As you glide and dive and swim,
While the mad waves clasp you fervently
Possessing every limb.

King of the Sea, triumphant boy,
Nature itself made thrall
To God’s white work without alloy
On whom no stain doth fall.
Gaze on him, slender, fair, and tall,
And on the yearning sea
Who deigns to creep and cling, and crawl,
His worshipper to be.

(From Love Lyrics, 1894)

Boyish Beauty

See the lad, of late a child
Irresponsible and wild
Now look up with earnest eyes
Tender, passionate and wise!
Love has lent him for an hour
Beauty’s holy, awful power;
When he’s ripe for toil and pain,
Love will take it back again.

Boyish beauty comes and goes,
Like a rivulet that flows;
Woman, as a placid pool,
Long is fair if clean and cool.
Yet the running waters shine
With a splendour more divine;
So the fairest woman’s grace
Fades before a boyish face!

(From Boyhood)

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1. Among Bradford’s best known works, all of which were published by the London firm of Kegan Paul, were, THE NEW CHVALRY AND OTHER POEMS (1918); RALPH RAWDON: A STORY IN VERSE (1922); and THE KINGDOM WITHIN YOU AND OTHER POEMS (1927).

2. Carpenter’s TOWARDS DEMOCRACY, which was heavily influenced by Whitman’s LEAVES OF GRASS, first appeared in four parts at various dates, but the complete edition was published in 1905. Carpenter was also the author of many other works, among them, IOLAUS: AN ANTHOLOGY OF FRIENDSHIP (Sonnenschein, London, 1902), which was nicknamed ‘The Bugger’s Bible’.

3. Symonds was a noted classical scholar who wrote many books, among them, MANY MOODS: A VOLUME OF VERSE (Smith, Edler, London, 1878), and ANIMI FIGURA (Smith, Elder, London 1882).

4. Douglas’ best known boylove poems appeared in his SONNETS (Rich & Gowan, London, 1935), and LYRICS (Rich & Cowan, London, 1935).

5. These were included in his extremely rare book, CAPRICES: POEMS (Gay & Bird, London, 1893).

6. Nicholson, a schoolmaster, was author of the paedophilic novel, THE ROMANCE OF A CHOIRBOY (privately printed by F. E. Murray, London, 1916) and four books of boylove poems, including, A CHAPLET OF SOUTHERNWOOD (Ashover Derby, Frank Murray, Mayday, 1896), and A GARLAND OF LADSLOVE (F. E. Murray, London, 1911).

7. Corvo, the genius who died in penury in Venice, was the writer of the well known HADRIAN THE SEVENTH: A ROMANCE (Chatto & Windus, London, 1904), and the scandalous THE DESIRE AND PURSUIT OF THE WHOLE: A ROMANCE OF MODERN VENICE (Cassell, London, 1934). He was also the author of the notorious ‘Venice Letters’.

8. Poet and artist, Ralph Nicholas Chubb (Blake’s Mantle), was theauthor of several limited volumes of poems which were decorated with beautiful hand paintings of boys. Among the best were THE HEAVENLY CUPID: OR, THE TRUE PARADISE OF LOVES (Newbury, the author, 1934); and FLAMES OF SUNRISE: A BOOK [end p. 252] OF THE MANCHILD CONCERNING THE REDEMPTION OF ALBION (Newbury, the author, 1954).

9. ACHILLES IN SCYROS: A CLASSICAL COMEDY (Cayme Press, London, 1927).

10. For those wanting to know more about the Uranians, and see some of their works, read: LOVE IN EARNEST: SOME NOTES ON THE LIVES AND WRITINGS OF ENGLISH ‘URANIAN’ POETS FROM 1889 TO 1930, by Timothy d’Arch Smith (Routledge & Kegan Paul, Lonodn, 1970). FEASTING WITH PANTHERS: A NEW CONSIDERATION OF SOME LATE VICTORIAN WRITERS, by Rupert Croft-Cooke (W. H. Allen, London, 1967). SEXUAL HERETICS; MALE HOMOSEXUALITY IN ENGLISH LITERATURE FROM 1850 TO 1900, by Brian Reade (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1970). ERO; AN ANTHOLOGY OF FRIENDSHIP, by Patrick Anderson & Alistair Sutherland (Anthony Blond, London, 1961). THE PENGUIN BOOK OF HOMOSEXUAL VERSE, ed. By Stephen Coote, Penguin, Middlesex, 1983). GREEK LOVE, by J. Z. Eglinton (Neille Spearman, London, 1971). MEN AND BOYS: AN ANTHOLOGY (revised edition – the old Coltsfoot Press, New York, 1978).


PIE and the Gay Left in Britain – The Account by Lucy Robinson – plus various articles newly online

The following is the passage from Lucy Robinson, Gay Men and the Left in Post-War Britain: How the Personal got Political (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011), pp. 129-139, dealing with the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE). Whilst not without some errors (for example misdating the foundation of PIE as 1975 rather than 1974, and confusing the British National Party – not founded until 1982 – with the National Front), and also glossing over feminist and lesbian paedophilia or pro-paedophilia, this is an important and relatively comprehensive account. In the footnotes reproduced at the end, where possible I have given a link to the material in question when it is available online; in other cases I have uploaded it at the bottom of this post itself

I intend soon to complete a comprehensive bibliography of books, articles and newspaper pieces relating to PIE.


Testing times and uneasy alliances: Gay Left and the Paedophile Information Exchange

The [Gay Left] Collective’s theoretical approaches can be best assessed when tested against actual campaigns. Single-issue based campaigns continued to make unity difficult and this was particularly true of the campaigns that the Collective became involved in around PIE. By looking at the issues around PIE and the campaigns that defended it, it is possible to see how transferable Gay Left’s approaches were. This is not to say that there is an easy correlation between homosexual and paedophile experience or desire, instead it is a way of seeing how paedophile self-organisation developed with a full consciousness of the history of the gay liberation movement.

PIE coincided with the Collective’s need for a campaign through which to impact the world. The second issue of Gay Left included a letter from Roger Moody. He called for an analysis of paedophiles’ transgressive role in society, solidarity between different identity groups and a revolutionary model of sexual behaviour. [50]. From its third issue PIE ran adverts in Gay Left. Issue 7 of the journal was entitled ‘Happy Families – paedophilia examined’. Members of the Collective saw PIE, and the campaigns around it, as a new battlefield from which to extend sexual liberation. Conservative anxiety had switched its focus from homosexuality to paedophilia, so it seemed as though the lines of defence should too. Bob Cant and Steven Gee specifically addressed these issues in Homosexuality, Power and Politics. Kenneth Plummer also became involved in the debate contributing to a number of collections on the subject. [51] In acknowledgment, the chairman of PIE, Tom O’Carroll, thanks Plummer in his introduction to Paedophilia – the Radical Case. Whilst not supporters or advocates of paedophilia, the Collective argued that discussion around paedophilia and PIE could be used to challenge the idea that sexuality was ‘pre-given determined and firm’ as well as to open up debates on child sexuality. [52] However this proved to be a gross over-estimation of both society’s position on paedophilia, and of paedophilia as a political issue. The following section of this chapter explains how a paedophile identity developed in the wake of the gay liberation movement and why Plummer and others in the Gay Left Collective were overly optimistic in their assessment.

Saying the unspeakable: PIE’s development in context

As with GLF et al., paedophile self-organisation developed in an international context. In both Europe and the United States paedophiles felt that they were on the receiving end of increased aggression and also felt that they had the potential to organise against it. [53] The first UK based group was Paedophile Action for Liberation (PAL) some of whom had been involved in the GLF. PAL published the newsletter Palaver. This group were singled out in the Sunday People campaign that labelled them ‘the vilest men in Britain’ on 25 May 1975. PAL were exposed as the enemy within. Although the article contained no allegation of actual sexual assault it made it clear that PAL members represented an evil that every parent must be warned about. The manner in which the article was researched, and the treatment of those it accused was so severe that both the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL) and Gay News acted as advocates and witnesses for the PAL members. The advocates were threatened themselves. PAL’s closure was inevitable and it eventually ‘tottered to death’ in 1977. [54]

PIE, PAL’s most successful counterpart, was formed by three members of the Scottish Minorities Group. Their postal address remained that of the Group’s Glasgow headquarters. Having learnt many lessons from its early roots, PIE took its remit beyond that of support for individuals; they were the first to attempt a collective identity for paedophiles. [55] PIE began in October 1975. By November 1975 it is recorded as having 100 members. By 1977 this had risen to 250. At its peak, membership reached 450. [56] However, by the end of 1979 PIE was effectively over. Like PAL before them, tabloid exposés, this time in the News of the World and the Daily Star, precipitated its demise. All that remained were court cases and newspaper coverage, leaving the Left and the liberation movements struggling for positions. [57] On the way a number of contradictions and unmaintainable legacies were exposed.

PIE first gained public attention after The International Conference of Love and Attraction, organised by Mark Cook, and convened by Kevin Howells and Tom O’Carroll. The title of the conference, and PIE’s publicity, concentrated on paedophilia as a way of describing emotions not actions – a distinction that made little difference to the reactions that confronted them. In reality, the conference proved just how far paedophilia stood from the brink of liberation. College authorities ejected O’Carroll from the building and he was beaten in the face. Protesters also beat Daily Telegraph reporter Gerard Kemp, and Richard McCance, General Secretary of the counselling group Friend, whose appeals to the police were ignored. Elsewhere unions organised against PIE holding meetings on their premises. [58]

In today’s contemporary climate any rational public discourse relating to paedophilia seems increasingly unmanageable. [59] For a brief period however, the campaign surrounding PIE offered a possibility of learning from the GLF’s mistakes and of pushing the liberational agenda into its third and most radical stage. In the process PIE’s contradictory position was exposed. On the one hand PIE made Wolfenden type appeals to professionalism, whilst at the same time it spoke to an audience who were increasingly informed by the counter-culture’s Do It Yourself values.

O’Carroll fostered GLF’s shared history in his account of PIE’s development. The Conference was justified as an act of ‘coming out’, the first stage of liberational development. GLF veterans acted as stewards for a PIE meeting in Red Lion Square meeting in 1977 [60] and the International Gay Association made a public statement supporting PIE. [61] O’Carroll tightened the relationship between the two by concentrating on the organisational ties. By melding PAL into PIE, PIE inherited roots as a break away group from the South London GLF. He argued that PIE was one of the ‘radical blooms’ that sprouted from the ‘flourishing phenomenon’ of gay liberation. 62] This appealed to those who, following the attainment of certain concessions, were searching for a new radicalism with which to challenge wider social structures. The book produced from the conference, Adult Sexual Interest in Children, was designed to provide the factual basis for a ‘cooler and more reasoned’ approach to the issue. [63] Like the earlier GLF publications, it directed its iconoclasm at Freud and psychiatry as a whole and tried to undermine categorisation itself. It combined this with a Wolfenden style ‘rational’ argument suggesting that society’s solutions were more dangerous than the problem. [64] This double-pronged attempt to combine liberation and reform was not enough to alter paedophilia’s position. Twenty years later the News of the World still referred to this book as ‘vile’. [65]

Like the earlier homosexual law reform campaigns PIE’s immediate goals were to provide support and to collate and disseminate information. [66] In terms of support, PIE wanted to alleviate the isolation, guilt, secrecy and anguish associated with paedophilia as well as to dispel the myths surrounding it. As with reformist support organisations such as the Albany Trust, PIE used contact advertisements, magazine publication and letter writing to breakdown the strong sense of isolation felt by its members. [67] From the start PIE explained that alongside individual and collective support it wanted to educate the wider world. When PIE announced its launch in the C.H.E. Bulletin, it explained that its initial goal was the organisation of information to act as a resource. [68] It produced Perspectives on Paedophilia, which combined sympathetic research with an educational role, aimed at professionals who worked with paedophiles. PIE argued that, like homosexuals earlier, self-oppression and fear of the law meant that paedophiles felt they had no choice but to accept chemical castration or aversion therapy. [69] PIE also tried to counter the unequal distribution of sentences experienced by paedophiles. The realities of paedophile criminality meant that paedophiles received severe sentences for their first offence, suffered frequent attacks from other prisoners once in prison, and had to be placed on ‘Rule 43’. [70] Perspectives on Paedophilia reappraised psychiatric models and offered a variety of self-help alternatives to challenge the tradition façade of a choice between either treatment or punishment. [71]

In 1975, PIE made a submission to the Home Office Criminal Law Review Committee on the age of consent. In the submission, the connection between PIE’s case and the Wolfenden Report was made explicit. The submission directly quoted the Report to support PIE’s argument. [72] In reaction to the existing laws, which treated infants and adolescents the same, the main body of the submission outlined a convoluted set of age divisions as an alternative to the mechanistic age of consent. Briefly these were: Firstly, that there was no possibility of consent under the age of four years old. Then, between the ages of four and nine a parent or responsible adult should be qualified to indicate in court cases whether or not they believed the child to be able to communicate consent. The remaining years, ten to seventeen, should be treated with minimal intervention providing the child is of normal development. There should be no division between assessment of heterosexual or homosexual cases. [73] This caused considerable controversy. There had been a certain amount of debate surrounding the upper ages of consent, particularly within lesbian and gay communities. Some young people began to take the liberation movements at their word, and Kidz Lib started organising around young people’s own rights and sexual freedom. But, PIE found there was little support [end p. 131] for their plan to lower the age of consent so dramatically. Even within PIE there was little chance of publicly defending sexual contact with the younger age groups. Few in PIE would admit to interest in sexual activity with those under adolescence, which is reiterated in studies of paedophiles generally. [74] PIE had hoped to gain a level of legitimacy through the submission. However, Home Office acceptance of PIE’s submission did not extend to any sympathy for individual members. In 1979 the Home Office ensured that Steven Smith, a PIE member who was employed by a subcontractor working at the Home Office, was removed from his job. [75]

Impossible collaborations: PIE’s attempts at entryism

PIE developed its own form of entryism. In order to build alliances with other identity groups, it tried to make connections with various liberal, professional and liberational organisations. PIE contacted amongst others, GaySocs, Gay News, the National Association of Youth Officers, Peace News, groups of trainee social workers, Release, Probation Services, NCLCC, MIND as well as academic departments. The contradictory and arbitrary divisions in British law around age meant that campaigns around paedophilia fed into a variety of issues relating to young men and women. This was particularly fostered in the Gay Youth Movement, with whom PIE made public statements of solidarity. [76]

Compared with today’s possibilities, PIE was remarkably successful in building alliances. For example, its overtures to social workers’ professional organisations culminated in a four page ‘non-judgmental and neutral’ article in the trade paper Community Care. The article, ‘Should We Pity the Paedophile?’ by Mary Manning, was published in Autumn 1977. It was illustrated with stills from Death in Venice and alluded to paedophilia’s historically and culturally constructed meaning. When the Manning article described Tom O’Carroll as ‘a likeable and gentle young man who has an ongoing interest in social history’, Manning constructed a version of O’Carroll appealing to both the empathetic and the academic. [77]

Some organisations resisted any involvement with PIE. Bristol University’s Vice Chancellor refused PIE’s offer to provide a speaker for the Department of Social Planning. In the end the request was hypothetical, as the speaker had been sent to prison by the time the proposed date arrived. The National Association of Probation Officers took a similar approach. [78] Whereas other organisations were loosely supportive, but withdrew their support when they were confronted with either the reality of PIE’s beliefs or society’s reaction to them. Although the NCCL challenged the State’s right to intervene in post-pubescent sex, it did not directly support the PIE. A fierce internal debate ensued when PIE targeted the NCCL and applied for membership. Eventually the proposal was rejected at the organisation’s annual general meeting. Similarly, Christian Wolmar described his amazement when he joined the staff of Release in 1976 and found that they were providing a mailing address for PIE. Wolmar raised the issue at a collective meeting. A member of PIE was invited to come and justify its position. It appeared that any vague sense of commonality dissipated when faced with the perceived weakness and realities of PIE’s argument. Apparently, PIE’s ambassador talked about ‘the joy of sex with children’ and argued that there should be no age of consent. Following this meeting, Release stopped providing PIE with any resources. Wolmar was sure that if the relationship had continued for a few more months it would have coincided with the News of the World exposé and Release would have lost its Home Office funding. [79]

The real twist in the story of PIE’s attempted entryism into the rainbow coalition of liberal and liberational groups, was that PIE had been infiltrated itself, more than once. In 1977 André Thorne attended a few PIE meetings. He stole some completed membership forms, which he used to try and blackmail a highly placed PIE member. The proposed victim went to the police and Thorne was found guilty of blackmail. [80] Whilst the judge at the trial described the information in Thorne’s possession as ‘potential dynamite’, a widespread exposé did not follow. This time the only charges brought were against the infiltrator. The next series of events had far graver implications for PIE. Charles Oxley, a grandfather and headmaster, joined PIE under the pseudonym David Charlton. He had aroused some suspicions from fellow PIE members, but they had appreciated his willingness to help and he attended two executive committee meetings. He then took a number of stories to the News of the World. [81] Although none of Oxley’s accusations constituted actual criminal activity, based on his research the tabloid published the names and photographs of seven PIE members on 25 June 1978. This built on the earlier Daily Star campaign, which had named and photographed four members. [83] Following the articles, PIE could no loner find a sympathetic printer for its newssheet MAGPIE. [84] As the furore ensued, O’Carroll lost his job as a press officer for the Open University. [85] The police pre-empted the News of the World exposé by a day. The police had previously raided O’Carroll’s home, but it was this second search that resulted in arrest. [86] O’Carroll was arrested along with three other PIE members, John Parratt, David Trevor Wade and Michael Dagnall. [87]

When PIE members found themselves in court, their attempts at entryism blossomed into co-ordinated support. As with the Angry Brigade and the GLF, prosecutions built shared campaigns. The nature of the charge was central to the ways in which gay and left campaigners were able to organise support for PIE. Along with Oxley, the police had been unable to find any hard evidence of actual sexual abuse of children. They were charged with postal offences and the common law offence of conspiracy to corrupt public morals over contact advertisements in Magpie. [88] PIE’s defence at the trial rested on the argument that their function was to campaign for the recognition of the feelings of paedophiles and that this was not the same as sanctioning sex with children. To an extent, the prosecution concurred. The prosecution did not attempt to prove that PIE advocated breaking the law through sex with minors; instead they relied on statements and publications from PIE to demonstrate the conspiracy. Similarly both the defence and prosecution agreed on the ‘pathetic nature’ of the defendants. [89] The first trial resulted in one defendant being acquitted and the jury unable to agree on the others. Following a retrial, Tom O’Carroll was convicted and sentenced to two years. [90]

Beyond the trials initiated by Oxley against O’Carroll et al., a series of further charges were brought against PIE members, which resulted in guilty verdicts relating to conspiracy, obscenity and postal offences. As with the earlier accusations these prosecutions were not directly related to actual sexual offences against children. [91] However, public concerns following an attack on a six-year-old boy in Brighton [92] and two girls in Plymouth fed into the perception of PIE as dangerous. [93] Calls to ban PIE increased and the Department of Public Prosecutions opened a new dossier that included a ‘long list’ of its members’ names. [94] Leon Brittan, the new Home Secretary, made his presence known when he pre-empted one series of convictions by condemning the ‘views’ of PIE’s members. He argued that the public ‘rightly expect[ed] criminal law in this field to be effective’. [95] PIE’s argument that it was organising around the category of paedophile rather than in favour of child-abuse, was once more proved an irrelevant distinction. According to Parliament and the lower-courts, there was no paedophile identity that could be extracted from actual offences against children. Faced with this onslaught, PIE came under increasing attack. Members were evicted from their homes, groups lost the use of postal addresses and Midland Bank closed PIE’s bank account. [96] O’Carroll blamed a lack of rational debate and thought that public perceptions of paedophilia were a sign of an undeveloped society. [97] However the reasons that PIE failed went beyond timing.

A campaign too far: defensive projects for paedophilia

The type of charges brought against the PIE members and the type of people who pushed for the prosecutions, meant that sections of the Left and of the gay movement felt that they should support PIE. PIE had been attacked from two related directions, the conspiracy laws and Right. Oz, International Times and Gay Circle had all been prosecuted for the same charge. The Angry Brigade trial had showed how in particular political climates the law read loose links between groups and communications between individuals as conspiracy. Sheila Rowbotham recognised this when she explained that ‘[h]istorically the use of the notoriously vague offence of “conspiracy” has always been a sure sign that the British state was in one of its spasms of insecure authoritarianism’. [98]

The PIE prosecutions played out the relationship between the State, mainstream morality and the far-Right. Mary Whitehouse and the National Festival of Light, who had perennially attacked the counter-cultural and gay movements, spearheaded the campaign against PIE. [99] In August 1977 the Daily Mirror launched a ‘hysterical campaign’ against PIE. [100] This led to dramatic events at a public PIE meeting at Red Lion Square on 19 August. [101] The meeting was besieged by the British National Party and the British Movement who attacked; chanting ‘Kill them, Kill them’. [102] This ‘fascist violence’ was reported in the press the next day as the ‘fury of the mothers’. [103] In this context it was difficult for ‘”movement” people not to be drawn into sympathy with PIE on the old basis of “your enemy’s enemy is my friend”’. [104] After all, organisation against the far-Right had apparently been successful in attracting the young to leftist orientated events like Rock Against Racism carnivals.

Gay and Left supporters stand up . . .

In 1974 C.H.E. made statements of solidarity with PIE at its annual conference and included adverts for the group in its Bulletin, although C.H.E. frequently related paedophilia to heterosexuality rather than homosexuality. [105] IN 1975, the People implicated C.H.E. in its exposé of PAL. The broadsheet press picked up on the link, leading to concerns within C.H.E.’s rank and file over whether the issue of paedophilia had been brought onto the agenda as a ‘cause célèbre’. [106] In fact the issue had been publicly discussed at a number of C.H.E. conferences and it had been decided that C.H.E. would hold no active position on paedophilia, PAL or PIE. Although the tactic had not worked for the defendants in court, C.H.E. was able to negotiate a level of removed support of PIE by separating paedophile identity from paedophile activity. In 1983, the C.H.E. annual conference passed a resolution vehemently condemning ‘all violent attacks on children’ whilst upholding PIE’s right to ‘freedom of speech and organisation’. In so doing C.H.E. was attempting to reject the conflation of child-abuse and paedophilia. [107]

The Albany Trust’s support of PIE had more significant implications. As part of the first phase of PIE’s development, it had produced a booklet published by the Albany Trust. [108] Despite Grey’s eloquent discussion of the complexities of paedophile defence, in 1993 he still felt the need to explain the relationship between the Albany Trust and the PIE. He described a series of ‘private discussions about the counselling needs of paedophiles’. However this alone was enough to give impetus to a smear campaign by ‘moral monopolists’. Like C.H.E., both the Trust and Grey personally, were accused of ‘supporting child abuse’. The old adversary, the National Festival of Light described the Albany Trust as a ‘related body’ to PIE. [109] Although Grey made the distinction between the groups clear, the Trust paid a heavy price for its supposed connections with PIE and received the sanction that Wolmar had feared would be brought against Release. The Trust lost its public funding. [110] Even in Grey’s later account of the events he has to explicitly distance himself from personal ‘sexual interest in children’ in order to discuss the matter at all. [111] The fait accompli was such that any discussion of society’s treatment of paedophiles was assumed to have a personal motivation.

Alongside gay organisations, a broad based leftist alliance stepped in to protest against the ‘show trial’ that attacked the ‘freedom to communicate and organise’. [112] The Campaign Against Public Morals (CAPM) formed around the trial in an attempt to coalesce wide reaching support and published Paedophilia and Public Morals. [113] It argued that there should be no crime without a victim, CAPM asked, ‘Have YOU ever held radical views? Have YOU ever campaigned for social change? Because if you have it could be YOUR turn next’. [114] A number of groups answered in the affirmative: IMG, the SWP, Gay Rights at Work, Gay Noise, Revolutionary [end p. 135] Youth, German Study and Working Group on Paedophilia, Gay Rights at Work, Gay Workers in Print, the Campaign against Sexist Stereotypes and the Gay Noise Collective. [115] Like Gay Left, these groups’ support of paedophilia followed the Pastor Neimöller theory. Neimöller’s poem begins ‘First they came for the communists and I did not speak out – because I was not a communist’, and then lists other groups affected by the Nazi purges, trade unionists etc and then Jews, until ‘then they came for me – and by then there was no one left to speak out for me’. In other words if the State was not stopped from persecuting paedophiles it would not be long before there were different identity or political groups in the dock. [116] Groups related to the trial as both an immediacy in itself and also as part of a bigger challenge to the law. So the order of priorities was firstly to stop the show trial and have the charges dropped and secondly to defend the right of paedophiles to organise. The magazine Outrage! Noted that the defendants had been arrested, not for any physical abuse, but for ‘what they think’. [117] Gay Noise related PIE’s experiences to issues faced by lesbian mothers, to employment rights, the right to self-organisation, manipulation of psychiatric services and the use of the police. [118] Gay Noise also explicitly linked PIE with the context of the wider gay Left. Gay Noise saw paedophilia as important in the battle to restructure the women’s and gay liberation movement, because it could offer a socialist view of child sexuality. [119] The campaign could then be extended into a rejection of state harassment of the young and the abolition of the conspiracy laws. [120]

. . . and fade away

Beyond shared experiences of the conspiracy laws and resistance to the Right there was little common ground between PIE and the groups around the CAPM. There was not enough whole-hearted support for such a contentious issue. Paedophilia was not a class issue and the simple correlation between sexuality and political radicalism was a misnomer. In fact, in one article that contained interviews with a number of paedophiles, each one was a conservative. [121] Some sections of the Left directly attacked PIE on moral grounds. Along with the Right, the unions employed at various meeting halls and conference centres were often the most vociferous campaigners against PIE. Even those who were supportive during the trial later recanted. IMG questioned whether support for PIE was appropriate, and withdrew. [122] They refused to recognise the value of PIE’s autonomy. PIE’s right to self-organise was under attack again, although this time not in order to maintain the status quo, but to justify a left-wing focus on party organisation and class.

Some of the groups that PIE tried to attach themselves to were diametrically opposed to PIE’s agenda. There had been efforts to make links between the position of women, particularly lesbians, and that of paedophiles, but much of the women’s liberation movement did not see its role as extending grown men’s sexual liberty. The CAPM had prophesied that there would be a ‘concentrated effort to split the Women’s Movement and the Gay Movement on the question on which they have been historically the weakest; paedophila and child [end p. 136] sexuality’. [123] But women such as Spare Rib’s Susan Hemmings and Bea Campbell saw any attempt to link feminism and paedophilia as opportunistic .Hemmings argued that the connection was ‘irresponsible’, whereas Campbell dismissed it as an attempt to blackmail feminists into something they did not believe in. [124] Post-WLM feminist found paedophilia an abhorrent expression of patriarchal society. Paedophilia was ‘inherently sexist’. Adult men, not women, typified these unequal and objectifying relationships. If heterosexual men’s sexuality pathologically objectified women, then paedophilia objectified children in the same way. Following the PIE trial, feminist discourse on child-abuse took precedence over the gay Left’s call for paedophile liberation. In the divorce case following the short lived romance between the women’s and gay liberation movements, the feminists gained sole custody of the children.

Keeping identities separate: the danger of homosexual and paedophile association

It was largely feminists who were given roles as children’s advocates, but the idea that the same models would work for paedophilia and homosexuality was also beign questioned. Gilbert Herdt, Professor of Human Development and Psychology at Chicago University and leading anthropologist, asked the key question: ‘[c]an you call paedophiles a minority group who form their own subculture?’ Is there a Paedophile community from which to organise social reform let alone liberation?’ [125] The variety of personal and political approaches taken by gay men suggest that there may be contention over whether a gay community exists, but let’s assume that a concept of gay community does exist, however wrought with tensions and lacking in coherence, however artificial and conscious the act of maintaining itself may be. Plummer explained that paedophiles had a less grounded sub-cultural tradition upon which to develop a collective identity. Furthermore the gay line of development from surreptitious underground, to law reform campaigners, to public declaration of liberationist intent could not be followed when the sexual activity was still illegal and initiated such outrage in the public. [126]

Many gay reactions to PIE reiterated concerns over any assumed allegiance between homosexuality and paedophilia. The relationship between PIE and Gay News was a measurement of this. Having acted as advocates for PIE in the face of the bigotry of tabloid journalism, the association had legal implications for Gay News. Yet, despite the publication’s earlier advocacy, in reality support for PAL and PIE had consisted of printing PIE’s address and the ‘occasional sympathetic article’. [127] Gay News had favourably reviewed Paedophilia: The Radical Case, but when PIE approached the magazine with a request to be included in the help lines list, they were refused. [128] W H Smith had refused to stock the magazine. Under pressure from the news-sellers and in reaction to the growing atmosphere, Gay News eventually refused to take any adverts. This exclusion from the major gay voice piece was the death-knell for PIE. [129]

It was not just Gay News that backed out of a relationship with PIE. There was a point of retreat, whereby paedophilia was dropped consciously ‘as a hot potato, too dangerous to everybody else’. [130] Gay Left’s Stephen Gee argued that homosexuals had not been, ‘sufficiently supportive [of PIE] nor have we challenged the dominant ideology childhood and child sexuality which informs this attack’. [131] PIE representative told Gay News that:

[p]olitically, PIE feel that the division between itself and the gay movement, which is acknowledge[d] as real, is in part the product of a realistic fear by the gay movement that its own gains could be jeopardised by too close a relationship with the paedophile movement. . . . We regret the alienation we feel from the gay movement and the feminist movement in this country. [132]

Homosexuality was regarded as a privilege that could be retreated back into in order to avoid taking on any stigma of association with paedophilia. A review in Gay Times in August 1997 charted this reassessment of the period:

Gay attitudes to paedophilia have undergone a transformation. In the early days of gay liberation, ‘intergenerational’ sex seemed to occupy a legitimate place on the homosexual continuum. Homosexuals were vilified and persecuted, and so were paedophiles. Denying child sexuality seemed part of the ideology of repression. But genuine anxiety about child sex abuse has hardened attitudes. Gay law reform is a serious business nowadays. We have spent decades trying to shrug off the charge that we just want to molest children. We can do without real perverts hitching a ride on the bandwagon, thank you. [133]

Yet, PIE’s entryism seems to have been perversely successful. The unshakeable assumptions pinking homosexuality with paedophilia were used to discredit the Left and liberational movements. Liberal attitudes to inter-generational sex became metaphors for concerns over sexual liberation generally, equal opportunities, union protectionism, anti-professionalism, of the ‘politically correct’ ‘gone mad’. This was particularly true of the debates and recriminations following the children’s homes’ child-abuse scandals of the 1980s where protecting gay rights was seen as a cover for the employment of paedophiles in children’s homes. [134] Whereas PIE were not directly implicated in the children’s home abuse scandals, they were the polemic expression of the ‘general tenor of the period’. [135] By 1999 Community Care published articles condemning its earlier liberal approaches to paedophilia which it associated with union monopolies stifling complaints about child sex abuse. [136]

PIE was seen as evidence of the worst excesses of the post-1968 liberation movements, especially because of the way in which it blurred distinction between adult and child.

[T]he argument that a distinction could be drawn between abuse and consensual sex with children struck a chord [because[ it was fashionable to see children as autonomous beings who should have the right to liberate themselves sexually. [137]

In PIE’s submission to the government, it presented itself as a champion of children’s rights. However this had less credibility than its expression of adult sexual liberation. The pleasure principle overrode the reality of adulthood and adult responsibility. According to David Shaffer, consultant in child psychiatry at Maudsley Hospital, ‘PIE ignor[ed] a child’s other interests apart from pleasure’. In the mind of Shaffer, hedonism should have come ‘pretty low on the list’ in the lessons the liberational adults should have been teaching their children. [136] Just as celebrations of Laing had little to do with real mental illness, PIE’s posturing had little relationship with the reality of childhood.

Christian Wolmar argued that ‘the failure of supporters of greater sexual freedom to distinguish between openness and exploitation meant that for a time paedophilia almost became respectable’. [139] However at the heart of the gay left/paedophile interaction there was an equally strong dynamic working against paedophilia. Any connection between paedophilia, the counter-culture and the Left was bound to increase rather than decrease reactions against paedophile self-organisation. So rather than representing a greying of attitudes towards sexuality debates surrounding paedophilia clearly demarcated the line beyond which behaviour was unacceptable. When Ken Livingstone and his Greater London Council sought to harness the energy of lesbian and gay politics, they confronted a similar dynamic. Attaching a left-wing campaign to personal politics was not going to bring down the State, but it might help to bring down the Left.

50. Roger Moody, ‘Paedophile Politics’, Gay Left 2 (Spring 1976) p. 23.
51. Kenneth Plummer, ‘The Paedophile’s Progress: A View from Below’, in Perspectives on Paedophilia, ed. B. Taylor (Batsford, 1981). Kenneth Plummer, ‘Pedophilia: Constructing a Sociological Baseline’, in Adult Sexual Interest in Children, eds. Mark Cook and Kevin Howells (Academic Press, 1981).
52. Gay Left Collective, ‘Happy Families: Paedophilia Explained’, Gay Left 7 (Winter 1978-79).
53. Edward Brongersma, ‘An Historical Background’, The NAMBLA Bulletin 4, 2 (1983), p. 1.
54. A. Mayer and H. Warschauer, ‘The Vilest Men in Britain’, Sunday People (25 May 1975). Michael Mason, J. Grace, and C. Hill, ‘The Vilest Men in Britain’, Gay News 72 (1975). Plummer, ‘The Paedophiles’ Progress: A View from Below’, p. 128. Bob Taylor, Perspectives on Paedophilia (Batsford, 1981), p. xix.
55. Plummer, ‘The Paedophile’s Progress: A View from Below’, p. 118.
56. PIE, ‘Evidence on the Law Relating to and Penalties for Certain Sexual Offences for the Home Office Criminal Law Revision Committee’. Wolmar, Forgotten Children: The Sexual Abuse Scandal in Children’s Homes (Vision, 2000), pp. 138, 143. Plummer, ‘The Paedophiles’ Progress: A View from Below’, p. 128.
57. Anthony Bevins, ‘Labour’s Hard Left to Form New Group’, The Times (24 August 1983).[see below]
58. ‘Hotel Ban on Paedophiles’, The Times (25 August 1977). [see below]
59. E.g. Anna Gekoski, ‘Their Evil Is Incurable Says Crime Expert’, News of the World (23 July 2000). [see below]
60. O’Carroll, Paedophilia: The Radical Case (Peter Owen, 1980) p. 230.
61. Gay Noise Collective, ‘Campaign Moves into Full Swing’, Gay Noise 4 (25 September 1980).
62. O’Carroll, Paedophilia: The Radical Case pp. 208, 209, 247.
63. Plummer, ‘The Paedophiles’ Progress: A View from Below’, p. 126. ‘Hotel Ban on Paedophiles’ [See below]. Cook and Howells, Adult Sexual Interest in Children, p. viii.
64. Kevin Howells, ‘Adult Sexual Interest in Children: Considerations Relevant to theories of Aetiology’, Adult Sexual Interest in Children, eds. Mark Cook and Kevin Howells (Academic Press, 1981). Kenneth Plummer, ‘Paedophilia: Constructing a Sociological Baseline’, Adult Sexual Interest in Children. D.J. West, ‘Implications for Social Control’, Adult Sexual Interest in Children. [See here for more on West]
65. Mazher Mahmood, ‘Caught in the Act’, News of the World (5 August 2001). [See below]
66. Plummer, ‘The Paedophile’s Progress: A View from Below’, p. 116. C.H.E., Bulletin (Harverster, 1974).
67. Plummer, ‘The Paedophile’s Progress: A View from Below’, pp. 119, 116, 117.
68. C.H.E., Bulletin, 11 & 12 (Harvester, 1974).
69. C.A.P.M., Paedophilia and Public Morals (no date HCA). PIE, ‘Evidence on the Law’.
70. Richard Card, ‘Paedophilia and the Law’, in Perspectives on Paedophilia, ed. B. Taylor (Batsford, 1981) p. 21.
71. Taylor, Perspectives on Paedophilia, p. vii.
72. PIE, ‘Evidence on the Law’. Plummer, ‘The Paedophile’s Progress: A View form Below’, p. 122.
73. PIE, ‘Evidence on the Law’.
74. Wolmar, Forgotten Children, p. 143. Christian Wolmar, ‘Home Truths’, Independent on Sunday (8 October 2000).
75. ‘PIE is in the Wars Again’, Gay News, August (1979).
76. North-Western Homosexual Law Reform Committee, Bulletin January (Harvester). O’Carroll, Paedophilia: The Radical Case, p. 232. Grey, Speaking of Sex: the Limits of Language (Cassell, 1993) p. 91. C.A.P.M., Paedophilia and Public Morals, p. 21. Peter Tatchell, ‘Letter to the Editor’, The Guardian Weekend (17 February 2001). Wolmar, Forgotten Children, p. 140. ‘PIE is in the Wars Again’.
77. Mary Manning, ‘Should We Pity the Paedophiles?’, Community Care, Autumn (1977). Wolmar, Forgotten Children, p. 144.
78. Wolmar, Forgotten Children, p. 140.
79. Wolmar, Forgotten Children, pp. 139-40.
80. ‘PIE Blackmail Case’, Gay News (1977).
81. David Nicholson-Lord, ‘Government “Apathy” on PIE Criticised’, The Times (31 August 1983). ‘PIE is in the Wars Again’.
82. O’Carroll, Paedophilia: The Radical Case, p. 233.
83. ‘PIE is in the Wars Again’.
84. Plummer, ‘The Paedophile’s Progress: A View from Below’, p. 128.
85. Mahmood, ‘Caught in the Act’ [see below], ‘Open University Man Suspended’, The Times (23 September 1977) [see below].
86. O’Carroll, Paedophilia: The Radical Case, p. 9.
87. Brian Deer, ‘Paranoid About PIE’, Gay News 185 (1980). Dr. T. Stuttaford, ‘Everett Picture Gives Credence to Dangerous Myth’, The Times (7 April 1995) [see below].
88. C.A.P.M., Paedophilia and Public Morals, p. iii. Wolmar, Forgotten Children, p. 142. Outcome, Outcome 7 (1978).
89. Gay Noise Collective, ‘The Paedophile Information Exchange Trial’, Gay Noise 12 (12 December 1981).
90. ‘File on Child Sex Group for DPP’ [see below]. Wolmar, Forgotten Children, pp. 142-3.
91. Gay Noise Collective, ‘The Paedophile Information Exchange Trial’. Gay Youth, ‘Editorial’, Gay Youth 11 (Summer 1984). Bevias, ‘Labour’s Hard Left to Form New Group’. David Nicholson-Lord, ‘Child Sex Group Men Arrested’, The Times (9 September 1983) [see below].
92. Peter Evans, ‘Minister Condemns Paedophile Views’, The Times (2 September 1983). ‘Telephone Caller Says He Knows One of the Men Who Assaulted Boy’, The Times (25 August 1983). Nicholson-Lord, ‘Police Hunting Men Who Assaulted Boy Lack Vital Computer Software’, The Times (25 August 1983) [see below].
93. Nicholson-Lord ‘Government “Apathy” on PIE Criticised’. Nicholson-Lord, ‘Police Hunting Men Who Assaulted Boy Lack Vital Computer Software’ [see below]. ‘Hysterical Attacks on Paedophiles’. C.H.E., Annual Conference Report, September (1983).
94. ‘File on Child Sex Group for DPP’ [see below]. ‘MP Seeks to Ban Child Sex Group’ (23 August 1983). Nicholson-Lord, ‘Government “Apathy” on PIE Criticised’.
95. Evans, ‘Minister Condemns Paedophile Views’.
96. ‘Hysterical Attacks on Paedophiles’.
97. O’Carroll, Paedophilia: The Radical Case, p. 220.
98. Sheila Rowbotham, Promise of a Dream (Allen Lane, 2000) p. 70.
99. ‘Leaders of Paedophile Group Are Sent to Jail’, The Times (5 November 1984). ‘PIE Member Faces Child Pornography Charge’, The Times (17 November 1984) [see below].
100. Derek Cohen and Richard Dyer, ‘The Politics of Gay Culture’, in Homosexuality: Power and Politics, pp. 172-86.
101. ‘Three Men Fined after Paedophile Meeting’, The Times (21 September 1977) [see below].
102. O’Carroll, Paedophilia: The Radical Case, p. 230.
103. Cohen and Richard, ‘The Politics of Gay Culture’, p. 198. The far-Right continued this entryist relationship with the public campaigns pertaining to paedophilia. For example the National Democrat’s ‘Help Our Children’ campaign. (The Flag: The National Democrats, Help Our Children [website] (www.natdems.org.uk/the_flag.htm, August 2001 [cited 21 August 2001]).
104. Wolmar, Forgotten Children, p. 142.
105. O’Carroll, Paedophilia: The Radical Case, p. 210. C.H.E., Bulletin, p. 129. Plummer, ‘The Paedophile’s Progress: A View from Below’. C.H.E., Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Homosexuality (C.H.E., 1975).
106. C.H.E., ‘CHE’s Reply to the Guardian’. C.H.E., ‘Minutes of the Meeting of the Executive Committee Held on 12th, 13th & 14th September 1975’ (Harvester, 1975). C.H.E., ‘Minutes of the Meeting of the Executive Committee Held on 14th June 1975’ (Harvester, 1975). Glenys Parry, Letter from Glenys Parry to Local Group Chairpeople, C.H.E. (Harvester, 17/09/1975).
107. C.H.E. Committee, Annual Conference Report, Annual Conference Report (Harvester, September 1983).
108. O’Carroll, Paedophilia: The Radical Case, p. 234.
109. NFOL, ‘Paederasty and the Homosexual Movement’, Broadsheet (1977) p. 20. Grey, Speaking of Sex, p. 90.
110. Grey, Speaking of Sex, p. 95.
111. Grey, Speaking of Sex, p. 91.
112. Wolmar, Forgotten Children, p. 142. C.A.P.M., Paedophilia and Public Morals, p. iii.
113. C.A.P.M, Paedophilia and Public Morals, p. iii.
114. C.A.P.M, Paedophilia and Public Morals, p. iii.
115. Graham Mckerrow, ‘Judge Orders PIE Retrial’, Gay News (1981).
116. Gay Noise Collective, ‘The Paedophile Information Exchange Trial’.
117. ‘Hysterical Attacks on Paedophiles’, Outrage 3 (1983).
118. Gay Noise Collective, ‘Demonstrations against State Repression’, Gay Noise 13 (12 February 1981).
119. Gay Noise Collective, ‘Campaign Moves into Full Swing’.
120. Gay Noise Collective, ‘Editorial: The IMG and Paedophilia: the Wrong Initiative at the Wrong Time’, Gay Noise 12 (12 February 1981). Deer, ‘Paranoid about PIE’.
121. ‘Hotel Ban on Paedophiles’. Maurice Yaffe, ‘Paedophilia: The Forbidden Subject’, New Statesman (16 September 1977) p. 362. Dea Birkett, ‘Monsters with Human Faces’, The Guardian (27 September 1997).
122. Gay Noise Collective ‘Editorial: The IMG and Paedophilia: the Wrong Initiative at the Wrong Time’, Gay Noise 12 (1981) p. 2.
123. C.A.P.M, Paedophilia and Public Morals, p. 6.
124. Deer, ‘Paranoid about PIE’.
125. J. Geraci, Dares to Speak (GMP, 1997) p. 30.
126. Plummer, ‘The Paedophile’s Progress: A View form Below’, p. 130.
127. Mason, Grace, and Hill, ‘The Vilest Men in Britain’. Cohen and Richard, ‘The Politics of Gay Culture’, p. 198. Julie Bindel, ‘Rather Than Campaign on the Age of Consent. . .’, The Guardian Weekend (3 March 2001).
128. Wolmar, Forgotten Children, p. 140.
129. Plummer, ‘The Paedophile’s Progress: A View form Below’, pp. 128-9.
130. Lucy Robinson, Interview with Peter Burton, unpublished (1 June 1999).
131. Gee, ‘Gay Activism’, p. 199.
132. ‘PIE is in the Wars Again’.
133. Gay Times (August 1997).
134. Wolmar, Forgotten Children. Wolmar, ‘Home Truths’. Margaret Hodge, ‘Not Quite, White’, New Statesman (16 June 1995). Wendy Parkin and Lorraine Green, ‘Cultures of Abuse within Residential Care’, Early Child Development and Care 1333 (1997) p. 75. S. Payne and E. Fairweather, ‘Minister Acts over Our Child Abuse Revelations’, Evening Standard (7 January 1992) [see below]. Polly Neate ‘Too Tolerant a Past?’, Community Care (15-21 July 1999).
135. There is a proven relationship between one member of the PIE and the children’s home scandals. Peter Righton was senior lecturer at the National Institute for Social Work, senior tutor at Open University, and sat on many committees including the Central Council for Education in Training and Social Work (Peter Righton, ‘Positive and Negative Aspects in Residential Care’, Social Work Today 8, 37 (1977)). He was charged with possession of books, videos and photos of young men (Peter Burden and Peter Rose, ‘Porn Squad Quiz Child Care Expert’, Daily Mail (28 May 1992) [see below]. He was later found to be PIE member number 51. Righton had used his professional position to assist a banned teacher, Charles Napier, who he had met through the PIE. Through Righton’s influence Napier was able to return to Britain and have the ban lifted (BBC, Children at Risk: Inside Story, 1 June 1994). Edward Pilkington, ‘Shadow of the Attic’, The Guardian (1 June 1994).
136. Polly Neate, ‘Too Tolerant a Past?’, p. 14
137. Pilkington, ‘Shadow of the Attic’.
138. Tim Gospill and Duncan Campbell, ‘Untouchable Subject’, Time Out (9 September 1977).
139. Wolmar, Forgotten Children, p. 153.



‘Hotel ban on paedophiles’, The Times, August 25th, 1977

Times250877 - Hotel ban on paedophiles

‘Three Men Fined after Paedophile Meeting’, The Times, September 21st, 1977

Times 210977 - Three men fined after paedophile meeting

‘Open University man suspended’, The Times, September 23rd, 1977

Times 230977 - Open University Man Suspended

Anthony Bevins, ‘Labour’s hard left to form new group’, The Times, August 24th, 1983

Times 240883 - Labour's hard left to form new group 1

Times 240883 - Labour's hard left to form new group 2

‘File on child sex group for DPP’, The Times, August 24th, 1983

Times 240883 - File on child sex group for DPP

David Nicholson-Lord, ‘Police hunting men who assaulted boy lack vital computer software’, The Times, August 25th, 1983

Times 250883 - Police hunting men who assaulted boy lack vital computer software

David Nicholson-Lord, ‘Child sex group men arrested’, The Times, September 9th, 1983

Times 090983 - Child sex group men arrested

‘PIE member faces child pornography charge’, The Times, November 17th, 1984

Times 171184 - PIE member faces child pornography charge

Dr. T. Stuttaford, ‘Everett Picture Gives Credence to Dangerous Myth’, The Times, April 7th, 1995

Times 070495 - Everett picture gives credence to dangerous myth


Daily Mail (London)

May 28th, 1992, Thursday

PORN SQUAD QUIZ CHILD CARE EXPERT
By Peter Burden,Peter Rose

A LEADING consultant on children’s homes has been arrested after police raided his house and seized videos featuring young males.

The action came after Customs at Dover intercepted a magazine and a book sent from the Continent to 66-year-old Peter Righton.

A major police inquiry has been launched to establish the identities and ages of those involved in the videos, where they were taken and by whom.

Books and magazines were also seized. It is an offence to possess an obscene picture showing under-16s.

Mr Righton, who has worked for several publicly-funded bodies, was on police bail last night waiting to hear whether or not he will be prosecuted.

He denied making any of the videos himself and said: ‘I am sure there will be a satisfactory outcome.’

He added: ‘It is no secret that I am gay. It’s not an offence, although one is made to feel it is.’

Mr Righton is widely regarded as the leading authority on council residential care of children.

The Department of Health’s social services inspectorate has been told of the raid at his home in Evesham, Hereford and Worcester, and a report is expected to go to Health Secretary Virginia Bottomley.

She is a patron of the National Children’s Bureau, a highly-respected charity for which Mr Righton has worked as a senior consultant.

The bureau, which monitors children’s welfare, receives £1million for administration from the Health Department and a series of grants for Government work such as providing training packages and videos for social services managers and social workers.

Mr Righton’s credentials include having been senior lecturer at the National Institute for Social Work in Tavistock Square, Bloomsbury, which was established by Ministers in 1961.

It has an annual income of £2million, mostly from the Health Department.

He is also a senior tutor with the Open University, where his work includes advising social work managers from all over the country on the the rights of children in care.

Mr Righton has served on many committees including the Central Council for Education in Training and Social Work. He began his career working in approved schools and residential homes.

As part of his various jobs he has regularly visited children’s homes.

Chris Andrews, of the British Association of Social Workers, said: ‘He is a highly respected figure within the residential field, particularly working with highly disturbed children. He is very much concerned with therapeutic work in child care.’

Mr Righton stressed last night: ‘I have not been charged with any offence. I cannot see what offence they can charge me with.’

At the former farm cottage he shares with Mr Richard Alston, headmaster of a school for disturbed children, he insisted that none of the seized items featured under-age boys.

The raid by police and Customs officers took place on May 12. Mr Righton was released on bail after lengthy questioning and has been ordered to report back next month.

A full police report is expected to be sent to the Crown Prosecution Service soon.

Mr Righton was involved in controversy in 1977, when he called for a more liberal attitude to sex in children’s homes.

He said in the magazine Social Work: ‘Provided there is no question of exploitation, sexual relationships freely entered into by residents – including adolescents – should not be a matter for automatic inquiry.’

But last night he said he had been misrepresented in a part of the article appearing to condone sex between staff and adolescents in care. He was in fact against that.

Mr Righton, dressed in a T-shirt and slacks, added: ‘In the course of my work I did visit children’s homes but not many times.’

Of his relationship with Mr Alston, he said: ‘Yes, I do live here with Mr Alston, but what is wrong with that? We are consenting adults.’


Evening Standard (London)

October 7th, 1992, Wednesday

Minister acts over our child abuse revelations
By Stewart Payne, Eileen Fairweather

HEALTH SECRETARY Virginia Bottomley today ordered Islington Council to provide a swift response to the ‘serious and worrying allegations’ of abuse revealed in an Evening Standard investigation into its children’s homes.

Yesterday the Standard printed the disturbing stories of children in care who have been exposed to paedophiles, pimps and prostitution.

Today, beginning on Page 15, we examine the cases of two former Islington residential workers alleged to have abused boys in their care and how fears of a child sex ring were dismissed by management.

Following yesterday’s publication, Mrs Bottomley issued a statement saying she had instructed Islington Council to explain its actions ‘as soon as possible’.

‘To take advantage of the most vulnerable children in our society in the ways alleged in the Evening Standard article is despicable,’ she said.

‘I know that Islington Council will be looking very closely at their services for children and the people who provide them. I have asked the Social Services Inspectorate to give me a full report on Islington’s response.’

She added that she had recently urged new measures to strengthen independent inspection of children’s homes ‘in order to protect children from abuse and exploitation.

‘I intend to make sure that we have in place reliable systems that will pick up early warning signs.’

Islington Council confirmed that Mrs Bottomley had asked it to produce a report commenting on the Standard articles. ‘Its author will be independent of the social services department,’ said a spokesman.

The council also issued a statement from Labour councillor Sandy Marks, who chairs the social services committee. This ignores the central concerns raised by yesterday’s articles but takes issue on several points of detail. It says:

* ‘The circumstances of these young people are known to us and have been the subject of casework or detailed investigation.’

We reply: We do not dispute this. But, as the children’s stories showed, it was clearly ineffective. Some of our sources were involved in this casework and appealed to us because they felt it had not been resolved properly.

* ‘All our homes are inspected monthly and reports provided to management and councillors.’

We reply: We do not challenge the regularity of inspections, merely their efficiency.

* ‘The Standard has been asked for three months to furnish us with any new evidence. They have singularly failed to do so.’

We reply: We completed our inquiries and gave the council two weeks to prepare their reply. We do not claim to have found ‘new evidence’. What we have done is to expose how Islington failed to act properly on the evidence already given by parents, children and worried staff.

* ‘Neville Mighty, a key informant of the Standard, was the subject of allegations of gross sexual misconduct by young people in his care, was investigated and subsequently dismissed.’
We reply: Mighty was charged with sexual harassment but was found guilty only of using inappropriate language of a sexual nature. The matter is now under appeal. Twelve members of staff gave evidence on his behalf, including nine women. He is only one of our many sources.

* ‘The case of Roy Caterer was the subject of a Hertfordshire police investigation. No evidence or information was passed to the council.’

We reply: This is clearly wrong. Caterer was only imprisoned for sexually abusing children in care when a determined Islington social worker found some of his victims and went to local police. They liaised with Hertfordshire police.

That social worker wrote a report for her superiors and no action was taken on it.

Councillor Marks also claimed children interviewed by the Standard were paid.

And Mrs Margaret Hodge, leader of Islington Council, alleged in a radio interview with LBC Newstalk Radio that our reporters sat outside childrens home enticing children with £50 bribes for stories.

We reply: These allegations are absolutely untrue. Only one girl, no longer in care and unemployed, was paid £90 with her parents’ approval. This was for the time she spent helping reporters trace children who suffered in Islington’s care during the 12-week inquiry.

It is most unfortunate that Islington Council should seek to deflect the substance and seriousness of the situation revealed by the Standard’s inquiry by making inaccurate statements. We believe the council should concentrate its energies on reforming its inadequate social services procedures.

News of the World

July 23, 2000

Their evil is incurable says crime expert; Interview; Ray Wyre; NOW campaign; For Sarah Campaign against paedophiles
By Anna Gekoski

THE monster who murdered Sarah Payne will kill again unless he is caught, warns a senior sex crime psychologist.

Ray Wyre, an expert on cases of child abduction, explained that many paedophiles are incurable. “Research shows that once a paedophile starts to offend they have urges that don’t go away.

“Such behaviour will have its seeds in childhood where the person will most probably have been sexually abused himself. This will start a cycle of fantasy which spills over into reality in small ways at first.

“The offender may begin with indecent exposure before moving on to indecent assault, then attempted rape and then rape. In a small number this then leads to murder.”

Mr Wyre has worked with child sex killer Robert Black, convicted in 1994 of the murders of five-year-old Caroline Hogg, Sarah Harper, ten, and 11-year-old Susan Maxwell.

“Black had abducted and sexually assaulted a little girl when he was just a teenager,” he said. “The attack was so severe that she nearly died. Yet he was simply admonished for that offence. The authorities said at the time he’d grow out of it and it would be wrong to label him.

“I firmly believe that if he had been put away then, Sarah, Caroline and Susan would be alive today.” Mr Wyre believes that even where paedophiles are jailed for less than life the authorities should have the power to keep them in for the rest of their days if the prisoner is still considered dangerous at his release date..

Treatment

“There are paedophiles I’ve worked with in prison who say they’ll offend again, some who even say they’ll kill,” he said. “Yet they’ve been given a fixed sentence and the law has no provision to deal with future danger.”

Another problem, he says, is that under current law the psychological treatment of paedophiles in prison is voluntary. “Many of the worst offenders, those who need treatment the most, choose not to undergo the treatment programmes,” he added. “We need a new system whereby treatment is mandatory.”

Meanwhile the hunt goes on for Sarah Payne’s killer. Mr Wyre added: “Men who abduct, sexually abuse and kill are men with a history. Tragically they are also men with a future. At some time he will do it again.”


News of the World

August 5, 2001

CAUGHT IN THE ACT

By Mazher Mahmood Investigations Editor, in Barjac, France

We find leering child sex perverts befriending kids at nudist camp

A NAKED grey-haired man brushes past children playing around a swimming pool at a nudist camp.

Grinning broadly, he stops to chat to the bare youngsters-many of them British-as they frolic in the sunshine.

Their unsuspecting parents smile politely at the scene. They have no idea that their children’s new playmate is one of the most infamous perverts on earth.

For the man is Thomas O’Carroll-founder of the evil Paedophile Information Exchange which campaigned for the legalisation of sex with children.

News of the World undercover reporters tracked 55-year-old O’Carroll-who has avoided being photographed for 20 years-to the family naturist resort in the south of France. And we discovered he was not the only paedophile lurking at the poolside.

Nearby, former teacher Simon St Clair Terry-once jailed for indecently assaulting a 12-year-old girl pupil-sat rubbing oil into the back of a naked 14-year-old he first befriended at the camp six years ago.

Both fiends spent the day mingling among families and wandering around the tents at the La Sabliere camp set in acres of woodlands in Barjac.

“I’m really enjoying myself here. It’s a fantastic place,” leering O’Carroll told a reporter posing as a tourist. “It’s full of children because of the school holidays.

Ogle

“This place was highly recommended and it’s living up to all expectations! I’m going to Blackpool next week, although I don’t think that will be this good!”

O’Carroll-who served two years in jail for corrupting public morals–ate lunch by an underwater window in the side of the swimming pool.

Designed so that parents could keep an eye on their children, it was the perfect place for him to ogle naked tots as they swam past. “It’s more like an aquarium than a swimming pool,” he drooled.

Twisted O’Carroll bragged to our reporters that he was an academic.

But the former Open University press officer failed to mention that he was sacked after forming his infamous ring of child molesters.

The Paedophile Information Exchange boasted more than 300 members before police smashed it in the Eighties with a string of arrests following a News of the World investigation. Monster O’Carroll also made no mention of the vile book he wrote on the “myths of childhood innocence” in which he said: “Consenting children and adults have a right to private intimacy together just as lesbians and gay men do.”

Now O’Carroll-who owns a house in Leamington, Warwicks-is part of a sick new gang of 200 paedophiles called GWAIN-Gentlemen Without An Interesting Name-which is being watched by Scotland Yard detectives.

The highly organised group hold clandestine meetings at homes and members are in touch via e-mails. One of the group’s officials was arrested last year on suspicion of raping a 10-year old boy.

As O’Carroll wandered off to chat to an eight-year-old he had befriended, disgraced teacher Terry returned to the caravan he is sharing with a Belgian single mum.

She met the molester when he first came to the camp in 1995. Then her daughters were eight and 11.

Jail

He has been joining her for holidays there ever since, and also visits her at her home in Antwerp.

It is not known whether she is aware of his disturbing past-that he spent six months in jail in 1991 for assaulting a pupil. And that he kept a stomach-churning diary of his obsession with the youngster.

“I’m here for a month. I’m really lucky with my work. I get a lot of holidays,” 42-year-old Terry told our reporters.

“I’ve been coming here for years-it’s a great place.”

Terry-who works as an account manager for Waterstones’ bookshop in Canterbury, Kent-has a history of targeting young girls.

He has had involvement with the Girl Guides and once set up a club for 11 to 12-year-olds called the Pig Tin Club.

After sitting naked with two youngsters outside his tent at La Sabliere, Terry then joined in a ball game with a group of naked girls and boys.

Today both paedophiles can expect to be thrown out of their perverts’ paradise. Our dossier is available to the authorities in Britain and France.

DO you know a scandal that should be exposed? Call Maz on 0207 782 4402 or e-mail him at mazher.mahmood@news-of-the-world.co.uk


Colet Court School and St Paul’s: A Collection of Articles from The Times

Since the initial appearance of my first article from 7/3/14 on Alan Doggett (the updated version can be found here), there has been a steady stream of articles, mostly from Andrew Norfolk at The Times, revealing a wider range of revelations from both Colet Court and St Paul’s Schools, leading to the initiation of Operation Winthorpe, headed by Detective Inspector David Gray, who had formerly run Operation Yewtree, into celebrities in the entertainment industry. As Norfolk’s articles are not generally available for all to view online, I am reproducing all the relevant pieces here. See also Benjamin Ross’s account of life at Colet Court.


130 private schools in child abuse scandal (20.01.14)

The Times, 20th January 2014

by Andrew Norfolk

Teachers at 130 independent schools have been implicated in sex crimes against hundreds of children, an analysis by The Times reveals today. Experts warn of a looming scandal over the abuse of boys in boarding schools during the past half century.

The list features dozens of Britain’s leading public schools well as 20 elite prep schools that regularly send children to Eton College. Included are 64 mainstream private-sector establishments, most of them boarding schools, where at least one male teacher has been convicted of sexually abusing boys, and a further 30 at which a member of staff was sentenced for possessing child abuse mages.

Analysis of past crimes, scandals and police investigations at 130 schools reveals a significant surge in criminal prosecutions since 2012, often for offences that happened many years ago. Should the pattern continue, it is likely to damage schools’ reputations and finances. With annual boarding fees averaging £27,000, many are increasingly reliant on income from the 25,400 foreign pupils who occupy more than a third of boarding school beds.

Across the UK, about 6.5 per cent of schoolchildren are educated in the independent sector. Fifty of the 253 independent schools that make up the Headmasters and Headmistresses’ Conference (HMC), Britain’s private-sector elite, have been connected with child abuse.

One specialist linked the significant growth in complaints to an increasing national awareness of the lasting damage caused by such crimes. Britain’s middle classes had belatedly decided that it is “socially respectable” to discuss childhood abuse, it was claimed while the head of a victims’ campaign group suggested that traditional male “stiff upper lip” attempts to shrug aside sexual trauma were increasingly viewed as outdated.

In the past 20 years, one or more men who taught at 62 independent schools, including Haberdashers’ Aske’s, Ampleforth, Wellington College, King Edward’s School Birmingham and The Oratory School, Reading, have been convicted of sex crimes – from indecent assault to gross indecency and buggery – against 277 male pupils.

Prosecutions involving 18 of those 62 schools came to court in the past two years. Former teachers from a further four independent schools have been charged and are awaiting trial.

Eton, Marlborough, Millfield, Oundle and Tonbridge are among 30 other schools where a male teacher has been convicted of possessing child abuse images. Downside School, Somerset, features in both categories.

Another 36 private-sector schools have been linked to child abuse. They include as yet unresolved prosecutions, civil actions for damages following an alleged abuser’s death, teachers convicted of abusing boys unconnected to their school, and police investigations that led to arrests but no charges.

In this category are Harrow, Sedbergh and Durham schools, all raided in the late 1990s during a nationwide investigation into an alleged paedophile network of teachers at six leading public schools. A teacher at each school was questioned and material including photographs, videos, letters and computer equipment was seized. No one was prosecuted due to lack of evidence.

In several cases that led to convictions, it later emerged that independent schools sought to protect their reputation by covering up potential scandals, allowing teachers to move to other schools where their crimes continued.

In a few cases, schools where teachers abused boys cannot be named, even years later, because court orders prohibit their identification. They include two leading London public schools.

Keir Starmer, QC, until last year the Director of Public Prosecutions, said that the list would strengthen the case for a mandatory requirement that schools to report all suspected abuse. The move is being resisted by the Government.

Mr Starmer said: “During the past 18 months we spread the message that those who report such crimes will be listened to by police and prosecutors. I sense that people today feel they will be taken more seriously.”

Peter Saunders, chief executive of the National Association for People Abused in Childhood (NAPAC), said the organisation has received “many dozens” of calls from former public schoolboys “who have finally acknowledged what happened to them and want to do something about it”.

“There’s a particular vulnerability in boys’ boarding schools. Boys find it more difficult than girls to talk about their feelings. They’re brainwashed into believing that boys don’t cry. A barrier goes up but finally, in some cases 10 or 20 years after they left school, it seems to be coming down.”

Richard Scorer, a partner at Pannone Solicitors, which specialises in child abuse cases and currently represents former pupils of “at least 20″ independent schools, said the Jimmy Savile scandal “has made talking about childhood abuse more socially respectable. That’s particularly true for the middle classes.”

The Independent Schools Council (ISC), whose 1,223 schools, including HMC schools, educate 80 per cent of Britain’s private-sector pupils, said the “abuse of trust by a small number of predatory individuals” in its schools was “a matter of the very deepest regret”. A spokesman said: “While these cases are largely historic, this does not in any way lessen the anguish felt by the innocent victims.”


Parents tell of tragedies after private school child abuse; Scandal may be ‘Just tip of the iceberg’ (21.1.14)
(also printed as Teacher’s letter that told abuse victim he had ‘worn out’ video of the attack)

The Times, 21st January 2014

By Andrew Norfolk and Rosemary Bennett

The teachers at 130 independent schools named by The Times as having links to child abuse represent merely “the tip of a very large iceberg”, it was claimed last night.

Dozens of readers contacted the newspaper yesterday to speak from personal experience of sex crimes committed against boys in boarding schools as long ago as the 1950s.

Their accounts, some harrowing, included details of abuse said to have taken place in 23 schools, including 17 that did not feature in yesterday’s list. Some expressed astonishment that no teacher at their former school had yet been convicted. In two separate cases, the parents of boys who each committed suicide in their 20s said that their sons had been damaged beyond repair by events that took place at a Home Counties prep school and a leading English public school.

One of those children was abused during the 1980s by his prep school cricket coach, who was later jailed for sex offences against children at another school. His crimes included making indecent videos of his victims.

The boy’s mother said that her son had never felt able to discuss what happened to him when he was at school. After his death, she found three private letters written to the child by his abuser, one of which made reference to “that video”, which the coach described as having worn out through being watched so many times.

“During the period when he was being abused, my son’s behaviour changed dramatically from that of a happy, outgoing child to that of a depressed, fearful individual,” his mother wrote. “Thank goodness our attitude is changing and more is understood about how devastating this sort of abuse can be. Maybe if we knew then what we know now, my son would still be alive.”

The list published by The Times this week identified 64 mainstream British private sector schools at which teachers have been convicted of sexual offences against boys, with prosecutions involving 18 of the schools being brought to court in the past two years.

At an additional 30 schools, including Eton, Marlborough, Millfield, Oundle and Tonbridge, teachers were found guilty of possessing child-abuse images. A further 36 schools had links to child abuse, including those where teachers are awaiting trial or have been convicted of crimes against boys who were not pupils at the school.

One school unintentionally omitted from the list was St Martin’s prep school in Northwood, London, a former teacher of which was jailed for five years in 2010. Michael Cole, who taught at the boys’ school from 1988 to 1991, was convicted of five charges of indecent assault on pupils during “health checks” when children were ordered to strip then abused. He separately admitted possessing indecent images of children.

One Times reader, a pupil at a public school in southwest England during the late 1950s and early 1960s, provided a detailed account of serial abuse committed against boys by their housemaster and the school’s chaplain. He said that the schools named yesterday, which did not include his former school, were merely “the tip of a huge iceberg, some of which will remain hidden forever”.

The man said that as a child he complained of the sexual abuse to his father and was told not to be “silly”.

In several cases that resulted in prosecutions many years later, scandals were covered up to protect a school’s reputation. Teachers were quietly required to resign and went on to abuse boys at other schools. Such examples, say child-protection campaigners, strengthen the case for the introduction of a mandatory reporting requirement that would force schools to report any suspected case of child abuse.


The scandal of child abuse at elite schools; Letters to the Editor (22.1.14)

The Times, 22nd January 2014

Sir, This disclosure of abuse in schools is welcome, for boarding schools are very “closed worlds” and children as young as 7 are still being sent into the care of strangers solely because it is “the done thing”. Abusers can find it easy to groom children who are very lonely and vulnerable as they move into the strange life of an institution.

Paedophiles often blame the children. Of course they can be condemned whatever their age, as all abusers have always known the damage they cause. This is why they work in a dark world of secrecy, lies or threats to silence their victims.

Andrew Norfolk (report, Jan 20) is absolutely right in saying that no one can be confident that abuse does not exist today. Two things would help reduce the risk.

Firstly, schools need to be truly open and honest about the nature of abuse instead of repeating that it is a thing of the past and all boarding is now safe. It is not, and some in authority collude in the abuse as they silently let known paedophile teachers move to other schools without telling the police.

Secondly, the government has to take this issue seriously. There is no such thing as “mild paedophilia”. Urgent action is needed to change the law, making it mandatory to report all abuse.
Margaret Laughton, Boarding Concern

Sir, Your report on child abuse raises important issues, and no one involved in education would wish to ignore, still less condone past incidents. However, it does seem spiteful to put on an interactive map schools where teachers were acquitted, or where no case was found to answer. A zealous attitude of “no smoke without fire” risks undermining trust in such reports. Not all those accused of a crime are guilty.
Chris Ramsey, Headmaster, The King’s School Chester

Sir, You imply that schools are to blame if the abuse does not lead to prosecution for many years. I’ve twice taught in schools where such a case occurred. In both the school acted promptly when the abuse came to light. In neither was there enough evidence for prosecution though both tried to have the perpetrator included on the sex offenders list. One attempt failed for want of evidence, though the headmaster took the risk, when later he learnt that the man was applying to another school, of warning its head. Schools are natural targets for paedophiles, boarding schools offer more opportunities and victims often can’t speak about the abuse for years. For most of your 130 you list only one offender. In how many of those cases do the victims blame the school?
Tom Mcintyre, Frome, Somerset

Sir, All criminal acts within schools are deplorable. Modern communications do indeed render children less vulnerable to such abuse (letter, Jan 21). Far more significantly, however, extensive legal, regulatory and educational safeguards are now required, including rigorous inspection.

The events of the past cannot, alas, be undone, but the concerns and actions of the present will continue to ensure ever safer and more rewarding educational experiences in the UK schools of the future.
Dr Tim Hands, Chairman, Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference


Teachers ‘abused boys at Osborne’s old school’ (25.03.14)

The Times, 25th March 2014

by Andrew Norfolk

At least six teachers at one of Britain’s most famous and successful public schools are suspected of sexually abusing boys as young as 10 over two decades.

The schoolmasters, all of whom taught at St Paul’s School or its junior division, Colet Court, are implicated in numerous alleged sexual assaults against pupils between the 1960s and the 1980s, an investigation by The Times has established.

One, a close friend of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber, became a member of the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE), the pro-paedophilia pressure group that has been linked to senior Labour Party figures.

Alan Doggett, director of music at Colet Court, was allowed to resign after suspected serial abuse of a young pupil was exposed. He went on to teach at another leading institution, the City of London School, and became director of an acclaimed boys’ choir. He later committed suicide after being charged with indecently assaulting another boy.

An ex-pupil yesterday accused St Paul’s of exposing hundreds of boys to the risk of abuse by “hushing up” the offending that led to the teacher’s departure.

Dominic Grieve, QC, the Attorney General, was a Colet Court pupil when Doggett was asked to leave.

George Osborne, the Chancellor, also attended the prep school, which shares a 45-acre campus with St Paul’s in Barnes, southwest London. He attended the senior school in the 1980s. There is no suggestion that either was abused as a schoolboy.

On at least two more occasions in the 1960s and 1970s, St Paul’s is understood to have failed to contact police when concerns about masters’ inappropriate sexual conduct towards boys were raised by parents or members of staff. Former teachers at St Paul’s have been the subject of at least four child abuse investigations since the late 1970s. None was initiated by the school.

The most recent criminal case began last month into sexual offences allegedly committed by Patrick Marshall, 65, who taught geography and coached rowing at St Paul’s. He was arrested four weeks ago over the suspected abuse of a boy, aged 15, in the late 1970s. Police hope to speak to more ex-pupils as the inquiry continues.

Mr Marshall, who denies wrongdoing, has been released on bail. Police have previously investigated an unnamed St Paul’s teacher alleged to have abused a pupil in the 1980s. The suspect was arrested in 2000 and a file sent to the Crown Prosecution Service, which ruled there was insufficient evidence to bring charges.

Another inquiry was held in 2000 into a Colet Court teacher, Paul Topham, said to have committed offences against a boy in the late 1960s. He also was not prosecuted, and died in 2012 aged 80.

A former housemaster at the prep school, known as “Alex” Alexander, is today accused by a former pupil of serial indecent assaults during the same decade.

A sixth, unidentified teacher agreed to leave St Paul’s after a school cleaner found sado-masochistic pornography in his room, alongside a personal register of pupils subjected to private spanking sessions. Parents were told that he left for “family reasons”.

A seventh teacher, 70-year-old Keith Perry, St Paul’s “inspirational” former head of history, received a two-year suspended prison sentence last month after collecting hundreds of extreme images of naked boys.

The school at which he taught for 38 years was not named at Southwark Crown Court, where he admitted 17 offences of making and distributing child abuse images “over a substantial period of time”. In internet chat rooms, he wrote of being “obsessed” with boys as young as 8. It is not suggested that any of Perry’s crimes involved pupils at St Paul’s.

In a statement, St Paul’s stressed that none of the alleged abuse concerned staff or pupils currently at the school. It added that three of the alleged offenders were dead but called for living suspects to be “investigated and subjected to the proper processes of justice”.

“Any sexual abuse of children by an adult, and particularly by a teacher, is abhorrent, a serious violation of trust and an affront to the value of any caring community. The school deals quickly, sensitively and resolutely with any concerns or allegations of abuse. This commitment applies equally to allegations of historic abuse. Pupil welfare and safeguarding are our highest priority.”

Professor Mark Bailey, the school’s High Master, said he was “grateful to The Times for bringing these allegations to our attention”. He promised that St paul’s would co-operate fully with any investigation.


‘The teacher sat us on his lap until his face went very red’ (25.03.14)

The Times, 25th March 2014

by Andrew Norfolk

Doggett at Colet Court

Alan Doggett, Colet Court’s director of music, was forced to resign from the school. There is no suggestion that any of the boys in the picture were abused

By the age of 12, Luke Redmond had been sexually assaulted by three men. All were teachers at a prestigious school paid handsomely by his parents to give their son the best possible start in life.

One was a “gifted colleague” of the West End giants Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber; another became an Anglican clergyman. The third sat boys on his lap until he went “very red in the face”. Such were the hazards of 1960s life in an English preparatory school.

Last year The Times revealed that five teachers at another prep school, Caldicott, in Buckinghamshire, abused more than 30 boys over two decades. Caldicott was among 130 British independent schools, later identified by this newspaper, where staff had been linked to sex crimes involving boys. Teachers at 64 of them were convicted of sexual offences against male pupils.

Luke was outraged that his school was not on the list. He was not the only former pupil of St Paul’s and its prep school, Colet Court, to contact The Times to set the record straight.

Now 59, married and with adult children, he had set out to build a life that wasn’t defined by what happened to him at school. For years he blocked out all recollection of childhood abuse, but psychological wounds festered and 14 years ago the dam burst. Memories erupted and with them came a desire for justice. Luke contacted the police.

By 2000 only one of his three abusers was still alive. Paul Topham was by now an Anglican priest. In a police interview, Luke described lying in his dormitory bed on evenings when Topham was duty master. As dorm monitor, Luke’s bed was closest to the door and the light switch. Topham invariably entered the room, switched off the lights and then sat on Luke’s bed. In the dark, his hand reached under the boy’s bedclothes.

The child lay frozen with shame and confusion. He told no one, nor was there any discussion among the boys of Topham’s far more public assaults when Colet Court boarders were sent at weekends to use the senior school swimming pool. Swimming naked was compulsory. “If Topham was supervising, he’d be in the water in his turquoise shorts. If you rested against the side of the pool, he’d swim up from behind and rub himself against you.”

His abuser set out to befriend Luke’s parents. During school holidays he would often “pop by for a sherry”. Luke said: “He tainted the only safe place I had.”

The officer investigating his complaint of abuse told Luke that Topham was questioned under caution in 2000. He denied every allegation. No charges were brought. He died in 2012.

It was already too late to hold a second abuser to account: Luke’s former housemaster, known as “Alex” Alexander, was dead. Naughty boys were summoned to his study for a beating, then asked to select the weapon — a slipper, hairbrush or plimsoll. Boys pulled down their pyjamas, then bent over a chair. Afterwards, the housemaster would sit the miscreant on his lap, give him toffees as a treat, then shower the child with physical affection. “At the time, I didn’t realise what was happening. I just remember being cuddled and feeling puzzled because he’d always end up going very red in the face.”

Luke’s abuse by Alan Doggett, Colet Court’s director of music, was a once-only indecent assault during the boy’s compulsory audition for the choir.

A far worse fate awaited another boy in his dormitory, a year younger than Luke, who was angelic in both voice and looks. He was Doggett’s chosen one, summoned far too often from their dormitory to spend long hours at night in the choirmaster’s bedroom.

A year later, another boy cried foul and Doggett was forced to resign, though his crimes are understood to have gone unreported by St Paul’s. As a result, it was a decade before he finally appeared in court, charged with offences against a ten-year-old choirboy, born in the year the teacher left Colet Court.

Twice, in 2000 and earlier this year, Luke contacted St Paul’s to ask if it had support mechanisms for victims of historical abuse at the school. Each time, he says, he was told there was no such provision, though St Paul’s last week suggested a meeting to discuss how he might be helped to achieve “closure”.

The former pupil’s name has been changed to protect his identity.


Friends to stars had easy access to boys (25.03.14)

The Times, 25th March 2014

by Andrew Norfolk

Colet Court building

Colet Court building in West London

Many hundreds would be a modest estimate of the number of young boys with whom Alan Doggett was allowed close contact after his suspected abuse of a pupil came to the attention of St Paul’s School.

Quietly removed from his post at Colet Court, the future member of the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) went on to teach boys at a second independent school before working as a choirmaster with boys from more than 30 London schools.

A decade after his departure from Colet Court, the 41-year-old threw himself in front of a train a few hours after appearing in court, accused of twice indecently assaulting a child aged 10. Doggett’s bail conditions barred any further contact with his choirboys.

In the 17 years preceding his 1978 suicide, he worked almost daily with pre-adolescent boys. He was a gifted but weak man, surrounded by temptation.

Doggett was a former pupil of Colet Court and St Paul’s who returned to the prep school as director of music from 1963 to 1968, having previously taught the cellist Julian Lloyd Webber at Westminster Under School, the junior division of Westminster School.

A regular guest at the Lloyd Webber household, he became friendly with Julian’s elder brother, Andrew, and in the summer of 1967 invited the fledgeling Tim Rice-Lloyd Webber songwriting partnership to pen a pop cantata for an end-of-term school concert.

Rice was then 22, Lloyd Webber 19, and from that invitation Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat was born. Its first performance was in March 1968 at Colet Court. Four months later, Doggett conducted the first recording of Joseph, at EMI’s Abbey Road, again featuring boys in the prep school choir.

Allegations of sexual misconduct with a pupil led to his dismissal in the same year but by 1969 he was again teaching music to boys, this time at the City of London School.

Doggett’s association with Rice and Lloyd Webber continued until 1976. He was principal conductor on the original recording of Jesus Christ Superstar and directed the London Boy Singers — a choir whose first president was Benjamin Britten — in his role as “musical co-ordinator” for the first Evita album. As the choir’s reputation grew, he took his boys on European tours. They performed for the Pope, appeared on radio and television, recorded albums and performed in films. Doggett’s death came 15 days before he was due to conduct a massed choir of 1,000 schoolboys — all personally selected and coached — at the Royal Albert Hall. Police had been planning to interview every boy.

A farewell letter explained that in life he had chosen “the way of the Greek”, which “though hard is best”. Days later, Rice and Lloyd Webber issued a joint statement: “Alan was a music and singing teacher of extraordinary talent. We have lost a gifted colleague and a dear friend.”

Rice spoke at the funeral. In his 1999 autobiography, he wrote: “I cannot believe that Alan was truly a danger, or even a minor menace, to the many boys he worked with over the years. It has been known for young boys . . . to manufacture or exaggerate incidents when they know and disapprove of a teacher’s inclinations.”

Lloyd Webber was said by a biographer to remain convinced that “Doggett would never have been guilty of taking advantage of any young person in his charge”.

After his death, an edition of Magpie, the newsletter for the PIE pressure group that campaigned on behalf of paedophiles, revealed that a requiem Mass was said for Doggett by a Catholic priest, Michael Ingram, at a church in Leicester. Twenty-four years later, in 2002, Ingram was convicted of multiple sex offences between 1970 and 1978 against six boys aged from 9 to 12.

PIE’s treasurer, Paul Andrews, wrote that Doggett killed himself after being “accused of indecency with a 10-year-old boy”, adding that he could “well imagine the innocence with which this act of love and affection had taken place”.

Ian Pace, a professional pianist, City University lecturer and campaigner against abuse in musical education, last night demanded a “proper investigation” of Doggett’s continued access to boys after his offending was first exposed at the prep school. “It is rare for such abusers to have merely a few isolated victims,” he said. “The potential implications of this are alarming.”


Boys punished for telling of abuse by teacher (28.3.14)

The Times, 28th March 2014

By Andrew Norfolk

The headmaster of an elite preparatory school punished two pupils for their “wickedness” in reporting serial sexual abuse by a paedophile schoolmaster.

Both were given detention after complaining of indecent assaults regularly committed against boarders at Colet Court, the junior division of St Paul’s School, by its director of music, Alan Doggett.

Doggett, a close friend of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber, later became a member of Paedophile Information Exchange, which campaigned in the 1970s to lower the age of consent to 4. Doggett committed suicide when he was charged with sex crimes against another boy, ten years after leaving the prep school.

Many former pupils of Colet Court and St Paul’s, which share a campus in Barnes, southwest London, contacted The Times this week after it was revealed that at least six former teachers, including Doggett, were implicated in numerous sex crimes from the 1960s to the 1980s.

One suspect, Patrick Marshall, 65, who taught at St Paul’s in the late 1970s, was arrested last month and has been bailed pending further police inquiries. He denies any wrongdoing.

Several ex-pupils described Doggett’s routine “fondling” of boys in their beds. Three said they were abused by the choirmaster, who was conductor on the first recordings of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita. Doggett resigned after his abuse was exposed in 1968, but it is understood that St Paul’s did not report the allegations to police or to education officials, which was required by law.

He went on to teach at City of London School and became director of an acclaimed choir before killing himself in 1978.

Stephen (his surname is withheld), the pupil who ended Doggett’s Colet Court career, said that he and a friend decided to speak to the school’s headmaster, Henry Collis, after Doggett indecently assaulted both 11-year-olds as they sat on each side of him during a televised football match in May 1968.

“It was the Manchester United v Benfica European Cup Final. We were sitting on the floor and Doggett’s hands were groping inside our pyjama bottoms.

“He wouldn’t leave us alone. He’d already had a go at me in the dormitory on quite a few occasions,” Stephen said. After the match, the two pupils decided that “he’s got to be stopped”. They informed Mr Collis, who was headmaster of Colet Court from 1957 to 1973 and served as chairman of the Independent Preparatory Schools Association.

Stephen said: “When I next went home on exeat that weekend, the school had telephoned my father to complain that I’d made up terrible stories about Doggett. Dad asked me what had been going on. When I told him, he said he believed me and I’d done the right thing in speaking out, but when I got back to the school the two of us were summoned to Mr Collis’s study.

“I can still see us standing in front of his desk on the Monday morning.He was furious. He said we were wicked for making up such awful lies. Mr Doggett was so appalled and embarrassed by the disgraceful things we’d said that he’d decided to leave the school. We should be thoroughly ashamed of ourselves. He gave us detention.”

Stephen said that another boy in their year suffered far worse crimes at Doggett’s hands: “He had one particular favourite who received regular visits in the dormitory at night. He’d abuse the poor boy without seeming to care that we could all see and watch what was happening.”

Other ex-pupils spoke this week of open gossip among the boys that “half a crown” was the “going rate for a session with Doggett”. One said that his year group even coined a new verb: to be “Doggoed” was to be groped and fondled.

Doggett’s resignation was one of several occasions when St Paul’s allegedly failed to inform police after concerns were raised about sexual misconduct by teachers. Three ex-pupils named Stephen Hale, who taught at Bedford School before joining St Paul’s in the mid-1980s, as the unidentified teacher who was forced to resign after sado-masochistic pornography and a spanking register were found in his room by a school cleaner. The incident was reported in this newspaper on Tuesday.

Inquiries have established that Mr Hale, a maths teacher and boardinghouse tutor, left the school in June 1987, a day after the discovery. St Paul’s merely told the Department for Education that Mr Hale agreed to resign after breaking its rules on corporal punishment. No suggestion was made of any sexual impropriety. As a result, he was not placed on the national list of teachers barred from working with children. His whereabouts are unknown In a statement earlier this week, St Paul’s described all child abuse as abhorrent and stressed that its current arrangements for pupil safeguarding and welfare are rated as excellent by the Independent Schools Inspectorate.

The school has pledged full co-operation with any investigation into past crimes allegedly committed by teachers who are still alive.


Police look into ‘decades of abuse’ at top school; Teacher arrested as police look into ‘decades of abuse’ at school (9.4.14)

The Times, April 9th 2014

By Andrew Norfolk

Police have begun a criminal inquiry into decades of alleged sexual abuse at a top boys’ public school, as it emerged that a current teacher was arrested just six months ago for possessing indecent images of children.

The inquiry into St Paul’s School in London, and its prep school, Colet Court, come after revelations in The Times last month that prompted former pupils to contact police.

So many complaints have been made during the past fortnight that officers are investigating more than six “persons of interest” who taught at the school, whose alumni include George Osborne, the Chancellor.

The officer leading the inquiry said that it had spiralled rapidly into “a complex investigation with further victims, witnesses and suspects being identified on an almost daily basis”.

Detective Inspector Jon Rhodes also appealed for more witnesses to “come forward if they have information”.

The Metropolitan Police said in a statement: “We can confirm that the child abuse investigation team is investigating historic allegations of sexual abuse alleged to have taken place between the 1960s and 1980s. We are aware of a number of potential victims and witnesses we wish to speak to over the course of the investigation.”

It can be revealed that Colet Court’s director of administration, a classics teacher at the preparatory school for more than 20 years, resigned during the current academic year after his arrest on suspicion of possessing child abuse images.

Anthony Fuggle, 57, has been questioned and released on bail. Police were alerted in September after photographs of boys and “inappropriate written material” were found on a school computer during routine IT checks.

A file on the case is with the Crown Prosecution Service. Mr Fuggle was unavailable for comment.

A meeting was held on Friday between police and the school’s current leadership team, at which St Paul’s pledged its full co-operation to the inquiry and its belief that any former employee guilty of child-sex offences should face justice. Letters and e-mails Continued on page 8, col 3 Continued from page 1 were sent last week to parents of boys at St Paul’s and Colet Court and also to former pupils who are members of the Old Pauline Club.

Two weeks ago, this newspaper revealed that six former teachers at St Paul’s and its prep school, which share a campus in Barnes, southwest London, were suspected of sexually assaulting boys from the mid 1960s to the late 1980s.

Students in that era included Mr Osborne, who was at Colet Court and St Paul’s in the 1980s, and Dominic Grieve, QC, the Attorney-General, a pupil at the prep school in the 1960s. There is no suggestion that either was abused as a schoolboy.

Former pupils subsequently contacted this newspaper to accuse more ex-members of staff of sexual misconduct. In total, abuse allegations have been made to The Times against 13 schoolmasters, five of whom taught at St Paul’s and eight at Colet Court. Six of the men are known or thought to be dead.

Offences are said to have been committed against pupils aged 9 to 17, ranging from indecent assaults, voyeurism and sexually motivated beatings to boys being groomed by a teacher who later paid them for penetrative sex.

In two of the 13 cases, at least five ex-pupils have separately made allegations against the same teacher. Former pupils initially came forward in January after St Paul’s was not named in a news article listing 130 British independent schools linked to the abuse of hundreds of boys.

A month later, police began a criminal inquiry into a complaint made by an ex-pupil against a former teacher, Patrick Marshall, alleging sexual offences in the late 1970s.

Mr Marshall, 65, who taught geography and coached rowing at St Paul’s, was arrested and released on bail pending further inquiries. He denies wrongdoing.

Liz Dux, a lawyer specialising in abuse cases, said that no independent school of St Paul’s status and academic reputation had faced such wide-ranging allegations.

Her firm, Slater & Gordon, whose clients include more than 140 alleged victims of Jimmy Savile, represents an ex-pupil who claims to have been sexually abused at St Paul’s in the 1970s.

Ms Dux said that it was “already clear that some of these complaints were known about by other members of staff at the time”. She voiced concern about the adequacy of the school’s response when allegations were brought to its attention during the years that are under police investigation.

The school said yesterday that it was working with the police to ensure that any former teachers who failed in their “heavy duty of responsibility for the well-being of pupils” were held accountable, whether for offences “50 years ago or more recently”.

A spokesman said: “We have direct access to the investigative team, and all allegations of historic abuse which are brought to our attention are forwarded immediately to them.”


Abuse claims against 18 teachers by ex-pupils at top public school; St Paul’s co-operates with police inquiry led by head of Savile investigation (1.5.14)

The Times, May 1st 2014

By Andrew Norfolk

A team of specialist Scotland Yard detectives led by the officer who headed the Jimmy Savile inquiry is to investigate claims that up to 18 paedophile teachers may have abused dozens of boys for several decades at one of Britain’s most famous public schools.

The move comes after a series of complaints from former pupils who say that they fell victim to sex crimes by staff at St Paul’s School, in London, or its preparatory school, Colet Court.

Triggered by revelations in The Times, multiple allegations have been made to police in recent weeks against numerous former schoolmasters, ten of whom taught at Colet Court and eight at St Paul’s. Some are no longer alive.

Detectives have compiled a list of more than 100 victims, suspects and potential witnesses.

Alleged sex offences at the two schools span five decades, from the mid-1960s to last year. A source close to the inquiry, Operation Winthorpe, described its scope as huge.

The new investigation will be under the command of Detective Superintendent David Gray, who led the Metropolitan Police’s Operation Yewtree investigation into the alleged sex crimes of Savile and other celebrities, including Max Clifford.

Mr Gray, head of Scotland Yard’s paedophile unit, said that police intended to carry out “a thorough and transparent review of non-recent offending at the two schools”, which share a campus in Barnes, southwest London.

“The investigation will be conducted by a dedicated team of specially trained officers who have experience of historic child abuse investigations and are sensitive to the needs of victims.” A telephone hotline and email address have been set up, to enable former pupils to contact the inquiry team.

Pat Marshall, 65, a former St Paul’s master, was arrested in February on suspicion of indecently assaulting a pupil in the 1970s. He denies any wrongdoing. His ex-colleague, Keith Perry, 70, received a suspended prison sentence in the same month for possessing hundreds of extreme child abuse images.

A Colet Court teacher, Anthony Fuggle, 57, was arrested last September on suspicion of possessing indecent images of boys, said to have been found on a school computer. He is on bail.

It can be revealed today that a second teacher at the prep school was also arrested last year, on suspicion of sexually grooming a child. Tim Harbord, 61, was not charged with any offence and denies any misconduct. He and Mr Fuggle both resigned during the current academic year.

Crimes, ranging from indecent assaults to penetrative sex, are said to have been committed by 18 teachers against boys aged from 9 to 17, in dormitories, classrooms, a swimming pool, inside a car and at teachers’ private homes. Much of the offending is alleged to have happened between the 1960s and 1990.

Pupils at one or both schools during the era under investigation included the chancellor, George Osborne, the attorney general, Dominic Grieve, QC, and the actor, Eddie Redmayne. There is no suggestion that they were abused as schoolboys.

Detective Sergeant James Townly, who has day-to-day control of Operation Winthorpe, said that former pupils who were the victims of sexual abuse were being placed “at the centre of our work”. Anyone who comes forward will “receive assistance and appropriate support”.

“We’ve already spoken to a number of complainants and there are many other people we need to contact to build a full picture of the alleged offending over several decades. It will obviously take some time for the police to work through all those names.”

St Paul’s, founded in 1509, says that the safeguarding and welfare of pupils is its highest priority.

The school has pledged full co-operation with the investigation and called for all living suspects to be “subjected to the proper processes of justice”, whether for offences 50 years ago or more recently.


Accused teacher kept on working for 24 years

The Times, May 1st 2014

By Andrew Norfolk

A teacher kept his job at a leading school for 24 years after he was accused of fondling a young boy in a classroom, it has been alleged.

Tim Harbord, who taught at Colet Court, the junior division of St Paul’s School, London, finally left at Christmas after a criminal investigation was triggered by a complaint from the parents of a current pupil. They contacted the preparatory school’s headmaster last year to return a jacket sent by the teacher to their son as a present.

Mr Harbord, 61, was arrested and questioned by police in June on suspicion of the sexual grooming of a child. He was not charged with any offence but resigned after receiving a final written warning from the school.

The Times has been told that more than two decades earlier, in 1990, a former Colet Court headmaster failed to take action against the teacher when a mother disclosed her ten-year-old son’s alleged ordeal at his hands. The former pupil, now 34, recently contacted police to add his complaint to a list of allegations against former teachers at St Paul’s or Colet Court.

Mr Harbord, who denies any sexual misconduct, is the second Colet Court master to leave abruptly during the current academic year. Anthony Fuggle, 57, a classics teacher for more than 20 years, resigned in September after being arrested on suspicion of possessing indecent images of children. Photographs of boys were said to have been found on a school computer.

Mr Fuggle remains on bail, pending further police inquiries. Mr Harbord, who coached sport and taught English and history during 28 years at the school, resigned before the start of its spring term in January.

In each case, the current leadership at St Paul’s contacted police and social services when concerns were raised last year. The school allegedly failed to inform child-protection authorities on at least three occasions in the 1960s and 1970s when sexual abuse claims were made against teachers.

The former pupil has told police that on a summer afternoon in 1990, aged ten, he returned to a classroom after lessons to collect a tennis ball and found himself alone with Mr Harbord.

He alleges that the teacher cuddled him before asking him to sit on his lap. He said Mr Harbord began stroking his hair and then his thigh, at which point the child panicked and fled the room.

The ex-pupil said he was so troubled by the incident that he later confided in his sister, swearing her to secrecy. She told their mother, who contacted Billy Howard, the headmaster at the time.

His mother said she gave Mr Howard details of the “totally improper” incident and demanded an assurance “that Mr Harbord was never again going to do anything like that to my son or to anybody else”.

She remembers his response: “He told me that it was very difficult to get male staff in London prep schools who weren’t homosexual. Even at the time, it seemed an extraordinary thing to say. He didn’t propose any action and that seemed to be the end of it as far as he was concerned.” The woman’s son said that until the classroom incident he was very fond of Mr Harbord. “I looked up to him. We all did. He was a ‘cool’ teacher. At the time, people were incredibly naive. What he did to me was brazen but it was completely brushed under the carpet. I’ve never forgotten it.”

Mr Howard’s wife, Heather, told The Times that her husband, 81, “has absolutely no recollection whatsoever” of receiving a complaint of sexual misconduct against Mr Harbord, who was adamant that no such offence took place. Mr Harbord said: “This is so untrue. Nothing happened like this. I’d never sit a boy on my lap in the classroom, stroke his hair. That’s a terrible thing to say.”

He insisted that at no stage of his Colet Court career was he told of any complaint of sexual misconduct against him, but accepted that he had recently been guilty “of naivety” in developing a close relationship with the boy’s family. “I got to know this family well. We did things together, as a family. I shouldn’t have got so close, but nothing sexual went on.”

He said the boy’s mother once sent a card thanking him “for all the affection you’ve shown”, but thought she might have subsequently felt that he was “getting a little bit too close”.

He added: “I was interviewed by the police. They went through all sorts of questions. It was the most despairing time of my life, but then I got a call to say the matter wasn’t going any further.

“There was a formal disciplinary meeting with the headmaster and I had to accept the school policy about gifts and seeing children outside school, and that I mustn’t contact the family. It was very sad because we were very close.”

Mr Harbord said he had no sexual interest in boys. “I’ve always wanted to be married with a family, but I was married to the school.”

In a statement, the school said that Mr Howard, headmaster of Colet Court from 1973 to 1992, “categorically denies any knowledge of the allegations relating to Mr Harbord. He further denies making any remarks about the recruitment of homosexuals to teach in London prep schools.”


Teacher kept job for 16 years after pupils found sex tapes (20.05.14)

The Times, 20th May 2014

By Andrew Norfolk

A paedophile teacher kept his job at a top public school for 16 years after pupils found his collection of indecent videos. Keith Perry taught for 38 years at St Paul’s School, in west London, where a police inquiry began last month into sex crimes allegedly committed against boys by 18 teachers since the 1960s.
Perry was convicted this year after police raided his home last summer and found almost 600 films and photographs showing the abuse of children. In online chat rooms, the “inspirational” former head of history spoke of being sexually obsessed with boys as young as eight.

Perry, 71, who retired in 2003, escaped a jail sentence after it was claimed in court that his addiction to the “utterly repellent” images was a recent lapse by a man of “exemplary character”.

It can be revealed today, however, that Perry’s viewing tastes were discovered in 1986, when boys in a St Paul’s boarding house found a collection of videos hidden behind a row of books in his study, where he often entertained pupils. It was always kept unlocked.

A former pupil told The Times that in Perry’s absence he and a small group of boarders watched an excerpt from one of the films. He said it showed a weeping boy, aged about 13, sitting naked on a chair. The child was instructed to perform a sex act.

Inquiries by The Times confirm the boy’s recollection of having been so disturbed by the video that he reported it to a teacher, who told the school’s senior management of the alleged discovery of “homosexual pornographic videos” in the assistant housemaster’s study.

The teacher said the pupil did not give him a detailed description of the video’s content and the school remained unaware of the allegation that some footage included the abuse of children. No investigation was conducted and no formal disciplinary action was taken against Perry.

It is understood that discussions led to Perry being “quietly advised” to move out of the boarding house, which housed 60 pupils aged from 13 to 18. He taught at St Paul’s for a further 16 years.

Operation Winthorpe, a criminal inquiry led by specialist detectives from the Metropolitan police’s paedophile unit, began work last month after former pupils of St Paul’s and its preparatory school, Colet Court, contacted The Times to allege past sexual abuse by a host of teachers.

Crimes under investigation are said to have taken place between the mid-1960s and last year. It is alleged that on several occasions the school failed to report sexual misconduct by staff. Teachers who were asked to leave found jobs at other boys’ schools.

A former St Paul’s teacher told The Times that the school’s child protection failings in past decades reflected “the rather depressing culture of the day” in many British independent schools. Another said: “In those days, protecting the institution from scandal was all-important.”

Perry admitted last week that he kept pornographic films in his study but denied that any featured children. He also denied being asked to leave the boarding house.
St Paul’s said that it was “co-operating fully with the police investigation”.
The possession of indecent images of children did not become a criminal offence in England and Wales until 1988. The police hotline for Operation Winthorpe is 020-7161 0500.


Colet Court and St Paul’s: a culture of child abuse; Andrew Norfolk on how the closed world of Colet Court and St Paul’s schools made possible decades of abuse against boys (20.5.14)

The Times, May 20th 2014

By Andrew Norfolk

SECTION: LIFE

LENGTH: 1740 words

At the height of the 1960s, when London’s pulse was a planet’s heartbeat, sex had just been invented and blessed were the young for they had inherited the world and all the LSD it contained, a nightly ritual was performed within the walls of a large Victorian building on Hammersmith Road whose values belonged to an older, more monotone land, one in which Britain still ruled an Empire, everyone knew their place and good boys did as they were told.

Here, after lights-out, a middle-aged bachelor schoolmaster descended from his room to deliver a cup of tea to his 14-year-old beloved, a child angelic of looks and voice. The teacher would scan the boys’ dormitory before selecting at random another pupil upon whom fell the task of returning the empty cup and saucer to the master’s room once Ganymede’s thirst was quenched.

This was School House, one of two boarding houses at St Paul’s School, an institution that since 1509 had steadily forged an unchallenged reputation for its ability to mould, from the bright offspring of the capital’s aspirational middle classes, young gentlemen fit for Oxbridge and a glittering future.

Across the road from School House stood Colet Court, the junior division of St Paul’s, where director of music Alan Doggett was also fond of nocturnal dorm visits. Here was no faux romance. The same 11-year-old boy lay back passively each evening as the teacher lifted his bedsheets and set busily to work. Fellow pupils sat quietly in the dark, watching. Everyone knew; no one said a word.

A few miles and a million light years away, Carnaby Street may have been swinging as old roads aged rapidly, yet some pillars of the British establishment held firm. None was more a bastion of tradition than the English public school. It inspired fierce loyalty, worshipped the team ethic and demanded high standards of children from whose parents submissive gratitude was expected at their son’s good fortune in winning admission to the hallowed privilege for which they were paying so handsomely.

Delight was taken in arcane terminology and age-old customs, their purpose long since lost to the mists of time. In classroom, playing field and dormitory, a master’s word was law, sneaking was for plebs and outsiders were viewed with polite but barely concealed contempt. Girls were a foreign country and secrets, even the darkest, were made for keeping. A man could do mischief here; some did.

Attitudes towards child sexual abuse in Britain are a long road slowly travelled. There was a time when no one looked behind a family’s front door; when a Catholic priest’s moral conduct was deemed irreproachable; when children in care were invisible; when what some celebrities did to underage girls was par for the course; when a pro-paedophile group won affiliation to a civil rights organisation while seeking to lower the age of consent to four; when men in the back streets of towns such as Rochdale groomed and sold children for sex while police and social services stood by and shrugged their shoulders.

Conspiracies of silence and complacency were eventually broken, lids lifted, victims given a voice. Eventually, sometimes decades after they plundered childhoods, guilty men were held to account. As each abuse model was exposed, it was asked how such crimes could have run unchecked for so long. In part the answer was chillingly simple: child abuse will flourish when there is an imbalance of power, a setting free from external scrutiny and a culture that plays by its own code. Small surprise, perhaps, that a famous independent school has joined those institutions stung by a long-overdue reckoning for alleged past sins.

There have been public-school scandals in the past, of course, notably those involving England’s three best-known Catholic boarding schools, Ampleforth, Stonyhurst and Downside, and in recent years there has been a steady rise in criminal investigations. In January The Times listed 64 fee-paying boys’ schools at which a male teacher has been convicted of sexually abusing a pupil. The offences dated back to the 1950s, but 62 of the 64 cases were brought to court in the past 20 years, 18 of them since 2012.

The article triggered long-buried memories. Men aged from their thirties to their seventies wrote and phoned in large numbers, seemingly compelled to share their own story. Some spoke of their abuse for the first time; a few broke down. Here were decades of unresolved shame, anger and confusion. Allegations were made against staff at 41 independent schools, of which 26 were not on our original list of 64. There was usually one alleged offender but the case of St Paul’s – two former pupils separately named four teachers – seemed on a different scale.

In March The Times implicated six former teachers at Colet Court or St Paul’s in alleged sex crimes against boys. By then a low-key police investigation was already in progress into a complaint by an ex-pupil against one teacher. The article prompted a surge of calls to the newspaper, the school and the police. Last month, a specialist team of detectives was set up to lead Operation Winthorpe. They have already recorded complaints against 18 former members of staff at the two schools, some no longer alive. The number of victims, suspects – spanning 50 years, from the mid-1960s to last year – and potential witnesses has passed 200.

Handed a list of England’s oldest and most famous public schools, few would have tipped St Paul’s to be the one to face such extensive allegations. A boarding establishment in a remote rural setting more easily fits the profile than a big London school with a rapier-sharp academic reputation and very few boarders.

Yet it was here, along Hammersmith Road until 1968 and since then at the school’s current location in Barnes, southwest London, that a culture is said to have arisen in which some masters, no matter how effective in sculpting young minds for examination success, treated children shamefully. Tales abound until the 1980s of sadistic violence, cruel bullying and of sexual attacks ranging from minor indecent assaults to extended, intimate relationships.

Teachers are accused of offences in dormitories, classrooms, the swimming pool, their own homes, even in cars. There was a period in the late Sixties and early Seventies when, if several former pupils are to be believed, to emerge after five years as a Colet Court boarder without once becoming the means of a teacher’s sexual gratification was to be distinctly fortunate. Some parents were warned that one endured the prep school because the prize was worth it: a place at St Paul’s.

At the senior school, police are examining whether tolerance of adult homosexuality may sometimes have edged dangerously close to turning a blind eye to pederasty. One boy remembers being assured by an avuncular master that homosexuality was a youth cult. In a 1978 suicide note after he was charged with abusing a choirboy, Doggett wrote that he had chosen “the way of the Greek”.

Doggett is one of six Colet Court or St Paul’s teachers who quietly resigned between 1967 and 1987 after suspected sexual misconduct came to light. Not once, it is alleged, did the school call in the police. The late Warwick Hele, high master of the senior school from 1973 to 1986, is remembered by a colleague as “a very good man but not one to stir up trouble unless he had to”. Another described an era when “protecting the institution from scandal was all-important”. For any fee-paying school, gaining a bad reputation could be extremely costly.

That remains the case today, but many outsiders would feel a degree of sympathy for Mark Bailey, St Paul’s highly regarded high master since 2011. His school is suddenly under fire, hit by a blizzard of alleged past misconduct, yet on the two occasions that concerns about teachers are known to have been raised since Bailey has been in post, the school responded swiftly and contacted external child-safeguarding authorities.

Investigations subsequently led to the arrest in 2013 of two long-serving Colet Court teachers, Anthony Fuggle and Tim Harbord, on suspicion of possessing indecent images and of sexual grooming respectively. Each resigned. Harbord has strongly denied any wrongdoing. Neither man has been charged with any criminal offence.

Had such decisive action been taken in response to pre-2011 complaints against teachers, St Paul’s would not be as vulnerable to the damning charge that it formerly seemed less concerned with the protection of children than with the protection of its own good name. The school, which says it is co-operating fully with the police, has described all child abuse as abhorrent and called for anyone guilty of past offences to be held to account. Its current standards of pupil safeguarding and welfare have been rated by inspectors as excellent.

Public reaction to the police inquiry has been instructively varied. Adults whose school years were not spent in similar institutions seem baffled that a world so seemingly careless of child welfare could have existed so recently. Many who were shaped by similar schooling in the same era know only too well that it did; most are nonetheless taken aback by the sheer scale of what is alleged at St Paul’s.

From some ex-public schoolboys, though, comes irritation that such a fuss is being made by chaps who really ought to “man up” and stop making such a hue and cry about a little mild spanking at schools that delivered a first-class education and bred resilience, independence and loyalty into boys who went on to become life’s winners. Some of them now run the country.

Such critics should rewind to the 1970s and a flat near St Paul’s owned by the late Rev Dr Edward Ryan, the school’s under-chaplain and a man who took a close pastoral interest in the vulnerable among his young flock. Boys invited to his home for a chat are said to have been plied with alcohol, then offered cash for penetrative sex. Those who tried to escape sometimes found their way barred.

One of “Doc” Ryan’s junior colleagues, who knew of his regular invitations to pupils but not of any sexual allegations, said he bore all the hallmarks of a predatory paedophile: “I would not have trusted Edward Ryan in the company of a young boy any farther than I could throw him.”

Should Ryan’s victims, some haunted to this day, be expected easily to forgive the school that for so many years gave him such unrestricted access to adolescent boys?


Former Colet Court teacher charged over abuse images (4.6.14)

The Times, June 4th 2014

By Andrew Norfolk

A former teacher at one of England’s most prestigious prep schools is to appear in court accused of possessing child-abuse images.

Anthony Fuggle was a senior classics master at Colet Court, the junior division of St Paul’s School, until he resigned after his arrest last September. Mr Fuggle, 57, who was also the prep school’s director of administration, was charged last night with 11 offences of making indecent images of children and six of possessing indecent images of children. He becomes the first former teacher at St Paul’s or its prep school to be charged under Operation Winthorpe, a criminal inquiry led by a specialist team of Scotland Yard detectives that was launched in April to investigate alleged sexual misconduct involving more than 20 members of staff.

Eighteen ex-teachers, not including Mr Fuggle, have been accused by former pupils of sexually abusing boys at the school over a 50-year period since the mid-1960s. Some are no longer alive. St Paul’s and its junior school share a campus in Barnes, southwest London.

Mr Fuggle was one of two Colet Court teachers to resign during the current academic year. Tim Harbord, 61, left at Christmas after he was arrested on suspicion of sexually grooming a boy. He was released without charge and has strongly denied any wrongdoing.

A former master at St Paul’s, Patrick Marshall, 65, who taught geography and coached rowing, was arrested in February over the suspected abuse of a pupil in the 1970s. He remains on bail.

Mr Fuggle was arrested last autumn after child-protection authorities were contacted by the school. Photographs of young boys were said to have been found during a routine IT check on Colet Court’s computers. He remains on bail and is due to appear before Wimbledon magistrates on June 20.


New Cross-Party Group of MPs calling for Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse

[Since first publishing this article online a number of further MPs have indicated their support for a national inquiry in line with the express wishes of the original seven. For details of this, and how to write to your MP to ask them to support, please see this post]

The pioneering news organisation Exaro have published two important articles today by David Hencke relating to a cross-party group of seven MPs who have written jointly to Home Secretary Theresa May called for a proper inquiry into child abuse, citing the Hillsborough inquiry as a model (see Hencke, ‘Police keep failing ‘to follow evidence’ in abuse cases, say MPs: Call for wide inquiry into ‘schools, churches, children’s homes, politicians and celebrities’, 3/6/14, and ‘MPs call on Theresa May to set inquiry into child sex abuse: Tim Loughton and Zac Goldsmith in cross-party group that highlights failures by police’, 3/6/14; see also Jason Beattie, ‘MPs demand inquiry into historic claims of child sex abuse by Cabinet Ministers’, Daily Mirror, 4/6/14).

The seven MPs in question (who Hencke has elsewhere called the ‘Magnificent Seven’) are:

Conservatives:
Zac Goldsmith, MP for Richmond Park, whose constituency contains Elm Guest House, Grafton Close Children’s Home, and Colet Court and St Paul’s Schools (Twitter @ZacGoldsmith ).
Tim Loughton, MP for East Worthing and Shoreham and former Children’s Commissioner, who spoke powerfully in the House of Commons in September 2013 about many ongoing revelations of abuse (Website here; Twitter @timloughton ).

Liberal Democrats:
John Hemming, MP for Birmingham Yardley, who made representations on behalf of financial journalist Leah McGrath Goodman on the grounds of her being banned from the UK following investigation into child abuse at Haut de la Garenne, Jersey, but has also been critical of UK family courts when dealing with allegations of abuse against parents. (Website here; Twitter @johnhemmingmp )
Tessa Munt, MP for Wells, who as a member of the Education Select Committee has taken a special interest in child safeguarding, and whose constituency contains Wells Cathedral School, one of the five specialist music schools, all of which have been connected to abuse (Website here; Twitter @tessamunt )

Labour:
Tom Watson, MP for West Bromwich East, who has been indefatigable in his commitment to this issue ever since raising in Westminster in October 2012 the issues of a high-level paedophile ring (see Watson’s blog and articles here and many other places online; Twitter @tom_watson ).
Simon Danczuk, MP for Rochdale, co-author with Matthew Baker of Smile for the Camera: The Double Life of Cyril Smith (London: Biteback, 2014), who has written of how Smith was connected to Peter Righton and also a wider paedophile ring including prominent politicians (see this article by Watson in praise of Danczuk) (Website here, Twitter @simondanczuk )

Green:
Caroline Lucas, MP for Brighton Pavilion. (Website here; Twitter @carolinelucas ).

These seven MPs are concerned about how important files, surveillance videos and other material have gone missing, lack of charges brought as a result of Operation Fernbridge, and in general an apparent reluctance on the part of the police and others to pursue cases of serious abuse. Watson has written to the Director of Public Prosecutions naming a former cabinet minister alleged to have raped a woman going by the name of ‘Jane’ (see also the detailed five-part account linked to at the bottom of this article and the video interview with ‘Jane’); this is the same senior cabinet minister who has been linked to the VIP paedophile ring related to Elm Guest House (as confirmed by Mark Watts on Twitter on 18/5/14). The Metropolitan Police have chosen not to pursue Jane’s allegations further, nor even interview the alleged perpetrator, raising serious questions about whether proper procedure has been followed; Exaro have also claimed that there was a shocking concerted police smear campaign aimed at discrediting ‘Jane’. Furthermore, there are serious questions about the whereabouts of a series of documents submitted to the Home Office by the late Geoffrey Dickens MP (see here, here and here), one of the few MPs who continued to pursue this issue in the 1980s. Loughton has spoken of his alarm at consistent ‘reluctance, or more worryingly, the seeming complicity of police and other agencies to investigate the allegations seriously, and pursue the perpetrators rigorously’, and how ‘Documents go missing and investigations are curtailed with a chilling frequency, and that now threatens a serious undermining of the public’s confidence in our current child-protection system despite all the progress that has undoubtedly been made in recent years’.

The range of areas of public life in which there have been major allegations of abuse is frighteningly large: these include children’s homes in Islington (see also here and this article by whistleblower Liz Davies), Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Lambeth, Lewisham, Southwark, Haute de la Garenne in Jersey, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Suffolk, Staffordshire (the ‘Pindown’ scandal) Birmingham, Leicestershire, North Wales, South Wales, Cheshire, Leeds, Sunderland, Northumberland, Lothian, Renfrewshire, Isle of Lewis, the Kincora Boy’s Home in Belfast, Stockgrove Park School, Buckinghamshire, Stanbridge Earls School near Romsey, Hampshire, New Barns School, Gloucestershire, Castle Hill School, Shropshire, St George’s School, Suffolk, Knowl View School in Rochdale, in Cleveland, many of the leading public schools (see also the range of articles here), the Catholic Church, not least in Scottish abbeys, the Church of England, the entertainment industry (not least involving Jimmy Savile), grooming gangs in the North West and Oxford, music education, a ring around Piccadilly Circus, major networks trading images of child abuse, and more. Some of these cases have been investigated, with some prosecutions, but there is good reason to believe some of these investigations have been half-hearted, whilst other cases have simply been ignored. There are many individuals linked to multiple networks (not least the sinister figure of Peter Righton), continuing talk of the VIP paedophile ring connected to Elm Guest House and elsewhere, major information concerning late MPs Cyril Smith and Peter Morrison and serious allegations about others who are living (not least the severe claim that a Blair era cabinet minister was being investigated for abusing children in a home in Lambeth, leading to a detective being taken off the case, and even that a council official looking to expose a ring involving the minister was murdered). The activities of members of the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE), about whom I have blogged in detail, remain shady, and there are many suggestions that this organisation might be linked to a great number of cases of abuse. Furthermore, it is now clear that PIE had deep links to the Home Office, receiving large amounts of money from the organisation, with at least three members working on its premises (with a phone line there), its magazine printed there, and some civil servants receiving images of child abuse delivered to the building!

It is heartening to see such a diverse cross-party group of MPs coming together on this issue. Yet it is more than a little disappointing that there are not more, and that the most senior politicians in all the major parties do not appear to be taking seriously what can only be called an epidemic (if even less than half of the allegations were true). I would urge everyone reading this to write to their own MP and implore them to support the seven courageous figures above (any of whom I would gladly vote for). I have earlier blogged on the need for Ed Miliband, the leader of the party to which I belong (Labour), to put all of his weight behind calls for a proper inquiry, but also how there is near-silence from the upper echelons of Labour, perhaps related to the fact that senior Labour politicians are under investigation and also that the current Deputy Leader, Harriet Harman, has been linked to PIE during her time as Legal Officer at the NCCL, during which period NCCL took out an advert in PIE’s journal Magpie and also their policy on images of children reflects aspects of PIE thinking. But this should not be stopping Miliband, nor should worries about the former Thatcher era cabinet minister, and Peter Morrison and others, be stopping David Cameron (and in light of revelations about Cyril Smith, Nick Clegg should be firmly behind this).

Leading experts, researchers and campaigners on child abuse Peter McKelvie and Liz Davies met recently with Home Office minister Norman Baker. They were granted a mere ten minutes of time, despite having built up huge bodies of evidence about child abuse, but it was made clear that there was no intention to undertake either a national police investigation (absolutely necessary because so many complex cases are interlinked) nor a public inquiry. I would urge people to read the account above. Nonetheless, I have been informed that both individuals spoke very highly of Zac Goldsmith’s commitment to the issues in particular.

The media have reported much about the relatively small number of cases coming to court as a result of Operation Yewtree. But these are just a tiny fraction of the wider allegations of serious and sustained abuse (and non-sexual abuse should not be treated any less seriously). All credit to these seven MPs, but as for the others – if our MPs do not care about protecting children in the most vulnerable situations, what do they care about?


Index of major original articles on abuse

I am in the process of preparing longer bibliographies of both published and online articles relating to issues of institutionalised abuse, specifically the areas on which I have concentrated – abuse in music schools and private schools, the Paedophile Information Exchange, and abuse involving politicians. Having recently reblogged a large number of articles from the Spotlight blog, I realise my site may not be so easy to navigate, so I am providing here a list with links of all my significant original articles.


General

New Cross-Party Group of MPs calling for Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse (3/6/14)

Please contact your MP to ask for their support for a national inquiry into child abuse (5/6/14)

The stock government reply to queries about a national inquiry into organised child abuse (15/6/14, also regularly updated)

British Association of Social Workers contacts its 14K members calling for them to support organised abuse inquiry (20/6/14)

House of Commons debate 26/6/14 following publication of Savile reports (26/6/14)

On the Eve of Possible Major Revelations – and a Reply to Eric Joyce (1/7/14)


Abuse in Musical Education and the Music World

Reported Cases of Abuse in Musical Education, 1990-2012, and Issues for a Public Inquiry (30/12/13) (this post is in need of some updating to mention other cases during the period in question)

The Trial of Michael and Kay Brewer and the Death of Frances Andrade, and the Aftermath, 2013 (12/8/14)

Proposed Guidelines to protect both Music Teachers and Students – a starting point for discussion (21/2/15)

New stories and convictions of abuse in musical education, and the film of the Institute of Ideas debate (11/1/14) (also in need of updating)

Petition for an inquiry into sexual and psychological abuse at Chetham’s School of Music and other specialist institutions (original version – each version has a different long list of comments) (16/2/13)

Petition for an Inquiry into Sexual and other Abuse at Specialist Music Schools – The List of Signatories (19/2/13)

Re-opened until May 31st, 2013 – Petition for an Inquiry into Abuse in Specialist Music Education (9/5/13) (the final version)

A further call to write to MPs to support an inquiry into abuse in musical education (26/11/13)

In the Aftermath of the Brewer Sentencing – A Few Short Thoughts and Pieces of Information (27/3/13)

Michael Brewer – a powerful Director of Music, not just a provincial choirmaster or music teacher (28/3/13)

Reports from the Malcolm Layfield Trial (2/6/15)

Chris Ling’s Views on Sexing Up Classical Music (11/2/13)

Robert Waddington, Former Dean of Manchester Cathedral, and Chetham’s School of Music (12/5/13)

The 1980 Department of Education and Science Report into Chetham’s School of Music, National Archives ED 172/598/2 (20/9/15)

Contact details for Greater Manchester Police relating to Chetham’s (11/4/13)

Publication of Reports into Chetham’s by ISI and MCC – Senior Management and Governors should consider their position (3/4/13)

New Surrey Safeguarding Report on suicide of Frances Andrade draws attention to dangers of music education (10/4/14)

Alun Jones to be new Head of Chetham’s – and a list of SMS Heads and Music Directors (13/12/15)

Marcel Gazelle and the Culture of the Early Yehudi Menuhin School (7/5/13)

Craig Edward Johnson, the Yehudi Menuhin School, Adrian Stark, and wider networks? (8/4/14)

Contact Details for Surrey Police, in relation to the Yehudi Menuhin School (11/5/13)

Philip Pickett arrested on 15 charges, and interview with Clare Moreland in The Times (14/2/14)

The case of Ian Lake, and reflections on the year (30/12/13)

Clifford Hindley: Pederasty and Scholarship (3/3/14)

Abuse minimisation as an example of the writing of history as kitsch (14/7/13)

New article in Times Educational Supplement on abuse in musical education – and public debate on October 19th, Barbican Centre (3/10/13)

A message from another victim of abuse at a UK music school, calling for others to come forward (25/11/13)

Call to speak out on bullying and psychological/emotional abuse in music (9/1/14)

Alan Doggett, first conductor of Joseph and Jesus Christ Superstar, and the Paedophile Information Exchange (28/3/14) (an updated version of original post from 7/3/14)

New revelations on Alan Doggett, and Colin Ward’s 1981 article on Doggett and Tom O’Carroll (25/3/14)

Further on Alan Doggett – child prostitution and blaming victims at Colet Court School (28/3/14)

Peter Righton’s Diaries: Benjamin Britten, Peter Pears and Michael Davidson (11/5/14)

Benjamin Britten and Peter Righton – A Response from the Britten-Pears Foundation (12/9/14)

Geoff Baker on El Sistema: sexual and other abuse in an authoritarian, hierarchical, archaic music culture (15/11/14)


The Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) and associated areas

NCCL and PIE – documentary evidence 1 (25/2/14)

NCCL Documentary Evidence 2 – Sexual Offences – Evidence to the Criminal Law Revision Committee 1976 (7/4/14)

PIE – documentary evidence 2 – from Magpie 1-8 (trigger warning – contains disturbing material) (26/2/14)

PIE – documentary evidence 3 – from Magpie 9-17 (trigger warning – contains disturbing material) (26/2/14)

PIE – documentary evidence 4 – UP, ‘Childhood Rights’, and Paedophilia – some questions and answers (27/2/14)

PIE – Documentary Evidence 5 – Contact Ads (9/3/14)

PIE – Documentary Evidence 6 – Chairperson’s Report 1975/76 (16/3/14)

PIE – Documentary Evidence 7 – Steven Adrian Smith’s History of the Movement (31/3/14)

PIE – Documentary Evidence 8 – Mary Manning in Community Care and Auberon Waugh in The Spectator, 1977 (16/7/14)

The PIE Manifesto (6/3/14) (link to Spotlight blog from 18/4/13)

PIE and the Home Office: Three+ members/supporters on inside, funded, magazine printed and phone line (15/3/14)

PIE and the Gay Left in Britain – The Account by Lucy Robinson – plus various articles newly online (29/6/14)

Antony Grey and the Sexual Law Reform Society 1 (26/8/14)

Antony Grey and the Sexual Law Reform Society 2 (29/9/14)

Tim Tate – Chapter on Paedophiles from book ‘Child Pornography: An Investigation’ (4/8/14)

The File on Peter Hayman in the National Archives (30/1/15)

Two Obituaries of Peter Hayman, Senior Diplomat, MI6 Officer and PIE Member (6/3/14)

Clifford Hindley: Pederasty and Scholarship (3/3/14)

Peter Righton – His Activities up until the early 1980s (21/8/14)

Letter to Guardian from 1963 from a Peter Righton on Books dealing with Sex for 14-year olds (20/8/14)

Peter Righton – Counselling Homosexuals (1973) (2/9/15)

Peter Righton’s Articles for Social Work Today (5/6/14)

Peter Righton and Morris Fraser’s Chapters in ‘Perspectives on Paedophilia’ (5/6/14)

Peter Righton’s writing on child abuse in Child Care: Concerns and Conflicts – his cynical exploitation of a post-Cleveland situation (28/8/15)

Peter Righton, Antony Grey and Kevin O’Dowd in conversation on therapy (26/8/14)

Peter Righton was questioned about child sex offences in May 1993 and November 1994 (21/8/14)

The Larchgrove Assessment Centre for Boys in Glasgow that even Peter Righton found to be cruel (20/8/14)

Brian Taylor and Ken Plummer’s Chapters, and Bibliography, from ‘Perspectives on Paedophilia’ (29/6/14)

Peter Righton’s Diaries: Benjamin Britten, Peter Pears and Michael Davidson (11/5/14)

Benjamin Britten and Peter Righton – A Response from the Britten-Pears Foundation (12/9/14)

Peter Righton – Further Material (12/6/14)

Peter Righton obituary in Ardingly College magazine (16/7/14)

Reports from the Richard Alston Trial (20/8/15)

From the memoirs of John Henniker-Major, 8th Baron Henniker (1916-2004) (3/3/15)

Dr Morris Fraser, Belfast, Long Island New York, Islington (17/10/14) (This is a link to a post on Charlotte Russell’s blog, but so important I wanted to include it here)

The Love and Attraction Conference (1977) and Book (1979) (7/7/14)

Betrayal of Youth (1986) – including the contributions of Middleton, Owens, Faust, Tatchell (5/7/14)

Academia and Paedophilia 1: The Case of Jeffrey Weeks and Indifference to Boy-Rape (29/9/14)

The Uranians #1 – the nineteenth/early twentieth century PIE? (24/5/14)


Public Schools

Alan Doggett, first conductor of Joseph and Jesus Christ Superstar, and the Paedophile Information Exchange (28/3/14) (an updated version of original post from 7/3/14)

New revelations on Alan Doggett, and Colin Ward’s 1981 article on Doggett and Tom O’Carroll (25/3/14)

Further on Alan Doggett – child prostitution and blaming victims at Colet Court School (28/3/14)

Craig Edward Johnson, the Yehudi Menuhin School, Adrian Stark, and wider networks? (8/4/14)

Extraordinarily powerful article by Alex Renton on the abusive world of British boarding schools (4/5/14)

Colet Court School and St Paul’s: A Collection of Articles from The Times (8/5/14)

Benjamin Ross’s account of Colet Court School (8/5/14)

Criminal abuse in the classroom as portrayed by D.H. Lawrence (4/5/14)


Politicians, Government and Abuse

General

Call for All Political Leaders and Leadership Candidates to Pledge Full Co-operation with Abuse Inquiry (9/7/15)

What leading UK politicians should pledge about organised child abuse (17/10/14)

The Meeting with the Abuse Inquiry Secretariat at Millbank Tower, Friday October 31st, 2014 (1/11/14)

Labour’s nominees for inquiry chair, and a left ‘establishment’ (6/11/14)

Please contact your MP to ask for their support for a national inquiry into organised child abuse (5/6/14, regularly updated).

The stock government reply to queries about a national inquiry into organised child abuse (15/6/14, also regularly updated)

British Association of Social Workers contacts its 14K members calling for them to support organised abuse inquiry (20/6/14)

House of Commons debate 26/6/14 following publication of Savile reports (26/6/14)

On the Eve of Possible Major Revelations – and a Reply to Eric Joyce (1/7/14)

A few good politicians – Becky Milligan at the office of Simon Danczuk, with Matt Baker, and the personal impact of abuse campaigning (18/7/14)

Ed Miliband should be leading the calls for a wide-ranging abuse inquiry (3/5/14)

Article from Telegraph – Simon Danczuk on child sex allegations involving senior Westminster figures (15/5/14)

PIE and the Home Office: Three+ members/supporters on inside, funded, magazine printed and phone line (15/3/14)

Sir Maurice Oldfield, Sir Michael Havers, and Kincora – guest blog post from Brian Merritt (10/7/14)

William Malcolm, the murdered paedophile who may have been about to expose a VIP ring (21/7/14)

 

Peter Morrison

Peter Morrison – the child abuser protected by MI5, the Cabinet Secretary, and Margaret Thatcher – updated July 2015 (26/7/15)

Peter Morrison and the cover-up in the Tory Party – fully updated (6/10/14)

Yes, Labour politicians need to answer questions about PIE and NCCL, but so do the Tories about Morrison, and the Lib Dems about Smith (25/2/14)

Tim Tate’s Questions to Lord Armstrong, and Armstrong’s Answer (26/7/15)


Fiona Woolf

Fiona Woolf, Leon Brittan and William Hague – conflicts of interest (11/9/14)

Fiona Woolf – the untruth in her letter to the Home Secretary (21/10/14)

 

Greville Janner and Frank Beck

Judge in 1991 Leicestershire sex abuse case on ‘people in high places’ (24/5/14)

Decision not to arrest Greville Janner in 1991 – then Attorney General and DPP need to answer questions (8/8/14)

The documents in the Andrew Faulds archives on Greville Janner (4/10/14)

Greville Janner’s view on a 1997 case of Nazi War Criminal with dementia (16/4/15)

And another case with Janner calling in 2001 for extradition of war criminal with dementia (16/4/15)

Greville Janner and Margaret Moran – trial of facts more likely for expenses fiddling than child abuse? (27/6/15)


Other

Anne Lakey didn’t ‘seduce’ or ‘take the virginity’ of a 13-year old boy – she sexually abused them (24/6/15)

Gore Vidal – paedophile, literary lover of child rape (11/8/14)

Germaine Greer’s Apologia for Child Abuse (27/6/14)

More pro-child sexual abuse propaganda from Germaine Greer (12/11/14).

Academia and Paedophilia 1: The Case of Jeffrey Weeks and Indifference to Boy-Rape (29/9/14)

The Uranians #1 – the nineteenth/early twentieth century PIE? (24/5/14)

Simon Callow on the paedophile exploits of André Gide, Oscar Wilde, Lord Alfred Douglas and others (31/7/14)

Liz Davies’ Open Letter to Margaret Hodge (3/8/14)

Paul Foot on Kincora Boys’ Home, and Recent Kincora Articles (1/8/14)

Paul Foot on Kincora – Appendix with Colin Wallace documents, and mention of Morris Fraser (9/8/14)

Claire Prentice in 1998 on Jimmy Savile, Cyril Smith, and Mummy’s Boys (30/6/14)

Mary Whitehouse’s Favourite TV Programme – Jim’ll Fix It (7/7/14)

Decision not to arrest Greville Janner in 1991 – then Attorney General and DPP need to answer questions (8/8/14)

Be very sceptical about online communications laws which protect the powerful – social media and the right to offend (20/10/14)