Rochdale and Beyond – Part 2 Paedophile Information Exchange PIE
Rochdale and Beyond Part 2
The Legacy of Child Abuse by Anne Wade Cyril Smith network, PIE Era 1974 - 2000
PIE begins
In 1974 PIE, the Paedophile Information Exchange, was set up. Cyril Smith, Jimmy Savile and Peter Righton were all three charming, vicious, predatory paedophiles, abusing vast numbers of vulnerable children, and they were among the founding members. Paedophiles felt that secrecy had made their connections unduly slow in developing, which led them to get together with others they knew and create PIE. This brought paedophiles all over the country and in all walks of life into contact. Many of them were prestigious men, and this empowered them exponentially, enabling them to give references, appoint, and promote each other in every sector. The Rochdale network formed a strong local nexus of the national organisation.
Guy Adams, reporter and whistleblower
The national membership office operated from within the Home Office, thanks to an employee, Steven Adrian Smith, chair of PIE. Journalist Guy Adams, in 2014, pulled together 1980s news reports and a 1986 essay Steven Smith wrote about himself for one of PIE’s pseudo-academic books, The Betrayal Of Youth, edited by Warren Middleton. Steven Smith, arrogant and flamboyant, was able not just to gain employment at the Home Office, but also to spend most of his (publicly-funded) working day running PIE affairs from his desk there. He kept membership files (and child pornography) in his office cabinet, wrote PIE newsletters on his desk, and printed them on a department photocopier. He even manned PIE’s telephone hotline from his office at the Home Office’s HQ in Queen Anne’s Gate.
‘I was employed by a firm of electrical contractors, Complete Maintenance Limited, to monitor a control panel of alarm systems,’ he explained. ‘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.’
PIE’s Secretary, Barry Cutler, also worked for the Home Office, as a member of the security staff. They were both quite openly known to be members of PIE.
Charles Oxley, headmaster and whistleblower
But Smith and Cutler only lost their jobs when the News of the World headlines became too raucous in 1982, after an anti-PIE campaigner, Charles Oxley, infiltrated the group and revealed that the leader and another member of PIE were employed in the Home Office. Oxley, a teacher and headmaster, joined PIE under a pseudonym in 1976 in order to get involved and learn as much possible. He kept this up for six years, until in 1982 he realised there was suspicion in PIE about a mole. He witnessed against PIE men in court and provided masses of information to the police, which was not used as well as it should have been.
Even after the media publicity, there was reluctance to take action against Smith and Cutler. They were given time to get carloads of PIE files out of the Home Office building before anyone investigated. And they were given time to get out of the country before attempts to arrest them. Steven Adrian Smith was scheduled to stand trial with David Joy and Peter Bremner in November 1984 but he stayed in Holland, where he successfully claimed political asylum by saying he was part of a persecuted minority group. However, when he came back in 1991, expecting it all to have been forgotten, he was prosecuted and imprisoned for a few months.
In his own 1986 account of events, Steven Smith wrote of his surprise at the fact that the story was not published by most of the newspapers, attributing this suppression to the then Home Secretary, Willie Whitelaw.
In 2011 Steven Smith, who had changed his name to Steven Freeman, appeared at the Old Bailey alongside his old literary collaborator Warren Middleton, editor of The Betrayal Of Youth, who had changed his name to John Parratt. They were found guilty of orchestrating a massive child pornography ring whose members shared thousands of images of abuse along with computer games in which players had to rape as many young boys as possible. 3,000 of the images were Smith’s own drawings of children being raped. Barry Cutler and other men who had been members of PIE were also convicted. Steven Smith was given an indeterminate sentence for public protection, and remains in prison. Middleton, meanwhile, was released to live in a block of council flats in Putney, South-West London, within half a mile of four primary schools, three nursery schools and two playgrounds.
In the 1970s, the Home Office gave PIE support in other ways. PIE always claimed, and the government always denied, that they had grants of £Ks from the Home Office and the then Department of Education and Science, as well as help from the Albany Trust with translating and printing documents.
Tim Hulbert, civil servant and whistleblower
Tim Hulbert, a civil servant in the Home Office at the time, saw a report on the re-funding of PIE with £35,000 for three years in 1980, which indicated previous funding in 1977 of the same amount. Having small children, he was quick to realise what this meant. He challenged [dead link] archive, also see Appendix 1, his boss, Clifford Hindley (a covert member of PIE), who was head of the voluntary services unit, which was responsible for government grants. Hindley told Hulbert the PIE grant was in order, and that the request came from the Metropolitan Police Special Branch, which was under the jurisdiction of the Home Office. ‘Hindley gave me three reasons,’ Hulbert says. ‘One, PIE was recognised as a legitimate campaigning organisation. Two, this was a renewal of an existing grant. Three, that PIE was being funded at the request of Special Branch, who found it politically useful to keep an eye on paedophiles.’
Tim Hulbert in 2014 whistle blowing on Home Office funding of PIE
Tim Hulbert went on to have a successful career in public life, rising to head of social services at Bedfordshire County Council, before retiring in the 1990s. In 2013, however, amid growing concern about rumours of a network of paedophiles in high places, he passed on these details to MP Tom Watson. The Home Office announced a formal inquiry into Hulbert’s claims, but withheld the identity of the man carrying out the inquiry. He approached Hulbert for evidence, but according to friends, ‘did so in such a way as to make Tim feel threatened’.
Hulbert was told, for example, that he should consider having a lawyer with him when talking to the inquiry, which according to friends ‘left him thinking he might face disciplinary action if he said the wrong thing’. Hulbert also sought assurances that he would not be prosecuted for accidentally breaking the Official Secrets Act while testifying. But no such assurance was forthcoming, so he decided to give his initial evidence in writing. After carefully filing his submission, he then expected the inquiry leader to contact him confirming receipt and asking follow-up questions. No such contact was made. And despite a string of calls and messages from Hulbert, all of which went unanswered, the two men never actually spoke.
Nothing happened for several months. Then the Home Office suddenly published the investigation. Its report described Tim Hulbert’s evidence as ‘hazy’ and ‘vague’ and claimed there was no documentary evidence of payments to PIE (since this was doubtless amongst the 114 ‘missing’ files). All this was unconvincing, given that the author of the report had never bothered to cross-examine Hulbert. ‘Tim is very angry,’ says a friend. ‘He has run investigations and internal inquiries, and if someone had handed him that report, he would have thought it was a bad joke. 'As to being called vague, Tim says he’s as clear about his recollection of that meeting in 1979 as if it happened yesterday.’
Given his previous experience, Tim Hulbert can be forgiven for wondering if the Establishment really wants to get to the bottom of this affair. ‘From a political point of view, my evidence is incredibly embarrassing and dangerous, and I believe the Home Office is now interested only in burying this once and for all,’ he says. He discussed all this on Radio 4’s Today programme on 12 November 2014. The recording ‘is no longer available’ on their website. At some point he also informed Scotland Yard.
In the Home Office, there was evidence of further institutional failures in November 1983, when a whistleblower revealed that an employee at Queen Anne’s Gate had been caught two years earlier receiving parcels containing child pornography. One package, containing 12 obscene letters and 57 photos and projector slides, was addressed to the civil servant and discovered in his pigeon hole. But rather than call in the police, they held an internal investigation. No action was taken, the perpetrator was allowed to keep his job, and the affair was kept secret because civil servants believed that ‘the confidentiality of the recipient [of the illegal child pornography!] must be upheld’. Why was he entitled to privacy when he was involved in criminal activity for which children had been deliberately harmed? Who was this man? Who made the decision to cover up his obscene behaviour? It can only have been Willie Whitelaw in 1981 when the package was discovered, and his successor as Home Secretary Leon Brittan in 1983 when the whistleblower was ignored and the cover-up continued. Whitelaw and Brittan are both now dead, but should be named by the Inquiry.
At the same time, 1983, Home Office bosses decided to commission an internal report on the age of consent. The staff chosen to carry out this exercise were criminologists Ron Walmsley and Karen White. Their booklet, Sexual Offences, Consent And Sentencing, argued that the age of consent should be lowered to 14 – and 12 in some cases – and penalties for incest reduced. One chapter said that many girls reach puberty before their tenth birthday and may not only want sex but initiate it themselves – the paedophiles’ wet dream, without any foundation in reality. PIE’s founder Tom O’Carroll praised Walmsley and White in his book Paedophilia, The Radical Case.
It was no wonder that PIE thought they had a green light from the whole establishment, not just from the paedophiles within it. There is evidence of support from the Home Office, the Department of Education and Science, and the Department of Health, as well as the Cabinet Office.
But PIE eventually over-reached themselves in terms of what the rest of the country would tolerate.
Paedophilia was presented persuasively to the public, in a professional manner, by personable men who were attractive to many. The professions, especially social work, were particularly targeted. The tenor of their arguments was, ‘… not that I’m that way inclined myself, but really all my research shows that it’s harmless, and even normal. And you’re being oppressive to a minority if you persecute them. You must at least allow freedom of speech to discuss it.’ They tried to get it accepted on the coat-tails of decriminalisation of homosexuality, and some good people were taken in briefly by their claims that children were entitled to consensual intergenerational sexual relationships – it was just another repressive boundary that had to be swept away in an era of sexual emancipation.
Anne Goldie, social worker and whistleblower
Anne Goldie, a much loved and valued social worker and later a leading whistleblower in Islington, admitted she was initially taken in by Peter Righton. Other respected and experienced social workers, such as Barbara Kahan of the National Children’s Bureau and Daphne Statham of the National Institute for Social Work, also acknowledge they were conned in different ways by Righton. Some social workers were accused of homophobia when they made allegations of child sexual abuse against other staff.
Nettie Pollard, one of the workers at NCCL, the National Council for Civil Liberties, now Liberty, and one of the handful of women in PIE, arranged for PIE to become affiliated. She was extreme in her opinion not only that children are sexual, but that babies are, even before birth, whatever she meant by that. Many well-meaning radical activists tolerated PIE in the name of freedom of speech, to an extent that they regretted later when they became clearer about what this meant.
NCCL was exasperatingly juvenile in its acceptance of this rubbish in the name of freedom. Freedom for whom and for what? What about the freedom of the child to explore all aspects of itself and the world while being protected from extreme consequences? What about integrity, common sense, the genuine needs of a child? You encourage a child run about and climb, but you keep them safe in traffic or on cliff edges. You encourage a child to socialise, but you do not allow other adults unsupervised access to them. Could NCCL not see through the devious lies, self-interest and manipulations – see how they were being groomed, just like the children? As mother of a new baby at the time, and with years of working with abused children, I was incandescent, as angry with their dangerous naïvety as with the paedophiles.
Writings in magazines such as the NAMbLA Bulletin, MagPIE and Childhood Rights, meant for semi-confidential circulation to members of PIE and NAMbLA, the North American Man-boy Love Association, reveal their true colours.
[Link above dead. Retrieved from archive
An Investigation into Misconduct relating to Pedophilia by Peter Melzer, a Teacher at the Bronx High School of Science]
Peter Melzer, an American who joined PIE in 1978 when he was in London, wrote in nauseating detail about techniques of seduction, and how to entice and manipulate children so they would be confused and mystified, and unable to recognise and resist what was happening – so much for their constantly professed non-coercion and waiting for children to take the initiative:
How to groom little boys
"I am attracted to boys up to the age of about 16…
My first suggestion is to restrict your sexual involvement and overtures to boys who need you, boys who value you and your friendship… Before risking any direct sexual overture, you can tell a lot about a boy with a few well-placed sexual jokes or comments… Leave a pornographic magazine some place where he's sure to find it… Masturbation and pornography go hand in hand. An aroused and adventurous adolescent with a positive view of sexuality may try just about anything to get off… the best way for you to pursue boys is to emigrate from the US… to a country or culture where boy-love has greater acceptance… Weigh the pros and cons of becoming involved yourself in sex tourism overseas. Seek and find love from American boys on a platonic, purely emotional level. For sexual satisfaction, travel once or twice yearly overseas. You might get arrested overseas… but the legal consequences… will be less severe.”
Advice on performing anal and oral intercourse on minors follows. Melzer also writes about his experience as a counsellor at a summer camp:
“I… never had a shortage of cute kids eager to sit on my lap. I watched 40 boys, ages nine through 13, skinny dip during a lake-side camp out. Later, after I put them to bed, I made love on the sand to one of the finest nine year-old bodies God has ever made… I watched each day while my crew of boys dressed, undressed, and showered.” [from January-February 1993 NAMbLA Bulletin, pp. 28-30]
Peter Righton, founder member #51, was back at the National Institute for Social Work, now as director of education and, with the help of his friends in PIE, was becoming the leading social work trainer in the country. This was the sexual philosophy he taught to a generation of our social workers, leaving much of the profession in confusion until the present. He had rapidly moved from being a suicidal teacher under investigation for child sexual abuse in 1963 (see above) to what was now an impressive and extensive career as a lecturer, writer and government adviser on child care – thanks to the power of networking with other paedophiles. In turn he wrote lying references for other paedophiles like Charles Napier. Like Smith, there were several points at which Righton could and should have been stopped and prosecuted.
Righton was charismatic, manipulative and plausible, a typical gifted sociopath. Where Cyril Smith was a bullying blunderbuss, Righton was a subtle, invisible rapier. Together they seemed, for the time being, invincible. And there were many men of their calibre supporting each other in PIE, aiming at getting control of every area of life in the country – and to a horrific degree achieving this. Righton visited Smith in Rochdale, and he and Smith met in London. Even more than Savile and Smith, he was hiding in plain sight: he was quite open about what he believed, while smoothly and untruthfully denying actually acting on it.
Smith’s friend David Higgins, or Superhig as he liked the boys to call him, erstwhile teacher at Knowl View, was one of the many hundreds who joined PIE. So did other predatory paedophiles such as Morris Fraser (consultant child psychiatrist), Charles Napier (teacher), Keith Laverack (Guardian ad litem), Peter Morrison (MP for Chester and PPS to Thatcher), and Peter Hayman (top diplomat, High Commissioner to Canada, PIE member #330)… as well as many other élite men.
Other men with less power and influence were nevertheless important cogs in maintaining the paedophile network and enabling it to expand. Mike Johnson was skipper, paedophile, and a useful patsy who took the rap in the Azimuth trial, which failed to convict the real leader, Morris Fraser, or any of his élite friends, and nearly brought down Peter Righton. This has been the only prosecution of the many paedophiles owning ocean-going yachts, apart from the 2012 conviction in Paris of Léonid Kameneff, of École en bateau, after 40 years’ pursuit all over the world.
Another of these useful PIE members was Keith Harding, #329, who ran a world-renowned workshop in Islington specialising in restoring antique mechanisms, and who kept the PIE membership list in his safe. He had been a teacher until he was convicted for indecent assault against small children in 1958. Cyril Smith used to visit him privately, with Leon Brittan and the ostentatious PIE members Tom O’Carroll and Steven Adrian Smith. They would usually be let in a side entrance to the shop by staff, and go upstairs to meetings in Harding’s office. When PIE closed down, Harding moved to Gloucestershire and re-opened his business there. He was exposed as a member of PIE in 1980 when footage emerged of him appearing alongside Jimmy Savile on a Christmas special of Jim’ll Fix It.
In 1974, after several prior verbal warnings, Tony Blair was convicted for cottaging in the Bow Street magistrates court under his middle names of Charles Lynton, and fined £50. He did not have to appear in person, but as a point of honour, he was obliged to report this conviction to the bar, which he failed to do. This happened again in 1983. Like other leading politicians, such misbehaviour gave … someone … power over him. No-one wants to sound paranoid, but we are all increasingly aware that there is much more to all this than we have begun to unravel.
It was also at this time that child sexual abuse became rife in local football teams around Rochdale and, it is becoming clear, in many other places, almost certainly as part of the spread of PIE. It has taken forty years for this abuse, mainly by coaches, to erupt into public awareness. But the same sudden delayed eruption happened with Savile.
In the 1970s Savile abused 23 girls at Duncroft School in Staines, Surrey. His abuse at Stoke Mandeville, Broadmoor and many other hospitals and other places became prolific, continuing almost until his death.
In 1976 David Higgins was dismissed from his job in Leeds and prosecuted for indecently assaulting a small boy there. He was given a conditional discharge and was able to set up as a youth worker offering outdoor activities in Skipton, again a short drive from Rochdale, 40 miles on the M65/66.
In 1976 Smith set up a second school at Underley Hall in Kirby Lonsdale, Cumbria, which lasted until 2012. John Turner, headmaster of Knowl View, moved to lead Underley Hall. Staff moved between the schools, and sports fixtures and outdoor activities were arranged between them. The regime was as brutal and abusive as Knowl View. Smith was a regular visitor.
Special Branch to the rescue… or maybe not
The deal between Conservatives and Liberals in 1974 came to nothing.
In 1976 the security services investigated Smith again when the Lib-Lab pact was mooted. (I have avoided mentioning political parties as much as possible because as far as I can tell there has been little to differentiate Liberal/Tory/Labour in the matter of child sexual abuse.) As well as abusing boys in the children’s institutions, Smith was having longer-term paedophile affairs. Special Branch carried out cleaning-up operations to protect the government from fallout from these:
In 1976 some of Smith’s more personal underage affairs were disclosed when a sergeant of Thames Valley Police CID with his detective constable Paul Foulston visited a lad at Ashford Young Offenders Centre (now Feltham) to eliminate him from a murder inquiry. They were not aware of any connection to Cyril Smith. Foulston and his sergeant were accosted outside the centre by two Metropolitan Police Special Branch officers who told them they were forbidden to interview the youth as it would ‘not be in the national interest’ to do so. ‘My sergeant was livid and told them to piss off. We were on a murder inquiry that was nothing to do with them.’ A furious row ensued. ‘They were arrogant in the extreme and treated us like a couple of yokels.’ But Foulston’s colleague dug his heels in and the Special Branch officers eventually backed down.
Or did they? Perhaps Special Branch were fed up with being used to clean up Smith’s ordure, when he treated them with such childish arrogance – perhaps the whole thing had been a charade. As they left, they gave a word of warning. ‘They said we could eliminate the suspect from our inquiries, but under no circumstances were we to ask him about Cyril Smith’ – which sounds rather like Brer Rabbit begging ‘whatever you do, don’t throw me in the briar patch.’
They duly interviewed their suspect, ruled him out of their inquiries, but then asked: ‘What do you know about Cyril Smith?’ The teenage boy had been calm and helpful, but now he lost control. ‘It turned out he was Cyril Smith’s ex-boyfriend and was furious at how he had discarded him.’ He had been ditched for a younger boy who had in turn been cast off in favour of a boy even younger - ‘when they were young and tight, they excited him [Smith] - when they became older he lost interest in them.’
In November 1976 Savile was filmed molesting a teenaged girl, Sylvia Edwards, on live TV. The video has been preserved. She complained to the BBC manager, who told her to ‘Get lost – it’s just Jimmy’. Police dropped charges against Savile seven times, in Surrey, Jersey and London – even more than Smith. He also committed many offences in Yorkshire, but too many police were corrupt so he was never charged there.
Peter Watts, 15 years old, murdered, possibly abducted
In 1976 Peter Watts, a 15 year old from Colwyn Bay with no history of running away, was found murdered in Euston underpass. The case was never solved, and his father believed he had been abducted – just another of the hundreds or thousands of kids who vanish, only, like Vishal Mehrotra (below), he happened to be missed immediately, followed up quickly and recorded.
In 1978 Peter Hayman, a high-ranking diplomat who had until recently been high commissioner to Canada and worked for MI6, came to the attention of the DPP Thomas Hetherington, attorney general Michael Havers and PM Margaret Thatcher, when he left a bundle of sensitive papers on a bus, which led to the police raiding his London flat and discovering a large hoard of incriminating letters, 45 obscene diaries and other pornography. This revealed much sordid detail of his sexual proclivities, and implicated many other establishment figures and their membership in PIE. Their homes were also raided.
Five other men were prosecuted for placing adverts in a PIE magazine ‘calculated to promote indecent acts between adults and children’ while others got lesser charges if they gave evidence against them. Some letters discussed extreme sexual torture and murder of children. There was frantic insistence within government and by the men that these were only fantasies. Who knows? Rumours about snuff movies abound, many possibly false and designed to put us off the track of real ones. The case against Hayman, who went under the pseudonym of Henderson in PIE and was at the centre of the correspondence, was quietly dropped.
In 1978 Cyril Smith molested an 11-year-old boy at the National Liberal Club in London; and a teenager in the House of Commons in 1979 and 1980:
Smith took a 16 year-old youth, with an unhappy family background, under his wing and groomed him. The boy was a young liberal and Smith encouraged his political activity, impressed him with his contacts and implied that he could help the boy further his political career. He also began to sexually molest the youngster, including on one occasion in his office in parliament, while senior politicians, including then leader of the labour party, Michael Foot passed by on the other side of the closed door. In the course of the abusive relationship, Smith bragged to the young man that he had evaded conviction over the Cambridge House assaults, which the man took to imply that it would be a waste of his time if ever he complained about Smith. (Guardian 30 November 2012). The abuse was not reported, or acted upon, at the time, although the man in question, now a Greater Manchester businessman with four children, has now given statements about it to the Greater Manchester police and Rochdale MP, Simon Danczuk.
Martin Digan, a social worker, began working at Knowl View School at this time. He complained that Smith and his friend Councillor Harry Wild, chair of the board of governors at Knowl View, would enter the school for no apparent reason but to look at the boys. Digan put in several complaints but was threatened with disciplinary action by the Head. Digan was warned not to complain about Smith again or else he would face dismissal. As John Turner had transferred to Underley Hall in 1976, this must have been a different, equally corrupt, headmaster.
In 1979 the Rochdale Alternative Press published The strange case of Smith the man, disclosures by 10 adult ex-residents of Cambridge House and one non-resident, with full details of how Smith abused them. RAP took affidavits and supported the men to go to the police. Some of the police who had been blocked in taking their cases forward over the years gave RAP information. This was also reported in Private Eye, the New Statesman and Northern Voices. Northern Voices revisited this in 2010. The mainstream press were too scared to report it, because Smith threatened an injunction against RAP, and to sue them for libel, though he never actually pursued this. Also Jeremy Thorpe took steps to ensure that all these disclosures were stifled, because he was about to stand trial over his own scandal and did not want another sex scandal in his party.
Everyone in Rochdale read the story. When asked, the DPP ‘could not remember’ whether the case had come to his office. The retired chief constable William Palfrey ‘could not remember’ anything about the case. David Steel asked Smith about it, and he blatantly confirmed it, claiming it was about old-fashioned discipline, despite RAP giving explicit sexual details. Steel did not take it further, commenting ‘It’s not a very friendly gesture, publishing that, all he seems to have done is spank a few bare bottoms.’ (David Steel’s Press Office, 22 April 1979). He said later it was only what happened in every boarding school in England. (And the obsession of men from public schools with being spanked and caned used to be known in brothels throughout Europe as the English disease.)
Albert Laugharne, chief constable of Lancashire Police from 1978, said in 2015 that in the 1970s he and his assistant chief constable Joe Mounsey were asked to lie about Smith’s abuse and to deny a file on him had been sent to the DPP. This request came from ‘a very senior official working in the London office of the Director of Public Prosecutions’. Laugharne and Mounsey refused to lie about Smith’s file. This may tell us who was leaning on Ross, Palfrey and other senior police all over the country, though there is obviously a lot more we need to learn.
Laugharne went on to become deputy commissioner to the Met under Kenneth Newman. Together they wrote The Principles Of Policing And Guidance For Professional Behaviour – the so-called ‘little blue book’ – which was to guide the force’s approach to policing and renew its integrity after a series of controversies over the 1981 Brixton riots and Scotland Yard corruption during the David McNee era and before. A particularly telling piece in it is that a police officer ‘is not answerable to any government official or to the Home Office or to Parliament. He is answerable to the law and holds his office independently of anyone else’. So why do the police have to swear to be bound by the Official Secrets Act?
Perhaps instead of asking that Parliament allow exemption from the Official Secrets Act for anyone helping IICSA, we should demand that the police be truly independent and not have to sign it in the first place – especially when, as we see in this account, it is misused by the establishment to cover up child abuse and corruption.
Jeff Edwards reporter and whistleblower
Another example of abuse of the Official Secrets Act occurred in July 1980, when Jeff Edwards published in the London Evening News a report that police had passed information to the DPP about 12 men sexually assaulting 40 boys from the age of six, and procuring them for a VIP paedophile network which included politicians, prominent lawyers and film stars. The DPP was pursuing 350 offences. Home Secretary William Whitelaw allegedly demanded that a senior Metropolitan Police boss quash the year-long investigation into this gang and ensure that nothing further was printed. Edwards was summoned to an interview and threatened with prosecution under the Official Secrets Act. His police source was disciplined and fined six months’ pay.
Jeff Edwards has reported this recently and hopes to be able to give his account to IICSA.
Chris Marshall survivor and whistleblower
In about 1980, as a seven or eight year old, Chris Marshall was made to perform oral sex on Smith. He recalls this in a later Channel 4 Dispatches film, The Paedophile MP: How He Got Away With It, [dead link/ google wall] After this he asked staff for his own room, and slept with a chair under the door-knob so no-one could get in. ‘Our lives were a living hell. Teachers would take pupils to a public toilet in Manchester where the boys would have sex with men who had travelled from all over the North.’ (Like Higgins?) ‘Men would come to the school and we were made to have sex with them. I was forced to perform a sex act on the late MP Cyril Smith who we called the Fat Man. It had such an effect on us that some of the boys have either committed suicide or are in prison. I feel let down by the council because we were vulnerable children and they were supposed to be taking care of us but instead we were exposed to the most horrible acts of depravity.’
Smith was arrested for cottaging in Birmingham, and in the public toilets in St James Park, close to the junction of Marlborough Road and the Mall, in London. Ron Foynes, a member of the Royal Military Police Company based in central London says that Smith was detained on a number of occasions by the Royal Parks Police after he was caught ‘in acts of gross indecency with young lads’ at these toilets. Smith was grandiose and flaunted his immunity from prosecution. True enough, on each occasion they were told to discontinue their inquiries due to Smith’s status. He was crude and without shame, and they were out-spoken about their anger at his arrogance in enjoying seeing them impotent, and at the way they were misused in such demeaning tasks.
Does the establishment really think it can get away forever with using MI5, Special Branch and the Royal Parks Police to cover up these offences for anyone with status? They should be worried about the time bomb they have created. It is reminiscent of the aristocracy assuming their servants would be endlessly discreet and pretend not to see what they got up to.
Motorway police found child pornography in Smith’s car when they stopped him near Northampton. Simon Danczuk tells a detailed story about what happened next. Investigations by the local police force were stopped by Special Branch officers who drove up at high speed from the Met to get him released. Again, Smith’s bare-faced arrogance left the local police furious, and like so many of these episodes with various politicians like Mr Eddy (Heath), Greville Janner and Uncle Leon (Brittan), the story got out, official secret or not.
Recently senior Northampton police have insisted that they have searched their archives and assure us, somewhat ridiculously, that this never happened because there is no record of it. To misquote Mandy Rice-Davies, ‘Well there wouldn’t be, would there?’ They have begged any retired officers with knowledge of the episode to come forward. They do not offer exemption from the Official Secrets Act, so anything they revealed would be concealed all over again.
From 1977 and into the 1980s, Smith was a well-known guest at the notorious monthly parties at the Elm Guest House in SW London. He also used to visit Grafton Close, the children’s home run by Richmond Borough, which trafficked children for these parties. They were made drunk, drugged, raped and made to participate in sadistic sexual dramas for the gratification of the élite. Smith attended similarly disreputable parties at other London addresses, including Dolphin Square, the luxury flats by the Houses of Parliament; a flat in Coronation Buildings, a mile from the Houses of Parliament, across the river in Lambeth; care homes in other boroughs particularly in Islington; and a house in Streatham.
In 1981 police installed hidden cameras, with the help of a caretaker (who was murdered for it eight years later, see below), in all the places hosting these parties, as part of a major operation. Smith was arrested [dead link] archive at one of these venues after taking part in a lewd party there. He was released the same night, and the sergeant who wanted to keep him in custody was reprimanded. It was said that Smith could not be charged because he would reveal too many other names in court. The officers were then ordered to hand over all of their evidence, including notebooks and video footage, warned under the Official Secrets Act, and assured that those who had been caught ‘would not be playing a role in public life any more’. But that was a lie. Smith continued as an MP until 1992.
Police sign the Official Secrets Act, and have to take it very seriously. If they are found to have broken it, they lose their career and pension, and will probably be imprisoned. This actually happened over Kincora, the notorious children’s home in Northern Ireland. The police are having their allegiance abused by the establishment.
In Islington murderer and paedophile pimp Sidney Cooke supplied boys for this elite group. Photos were collected by Operation Orchid. The Times on 14 February 1986 said that MP Geoffrey Dickens had given Scotland Yard information and called on the Home Secretary to prepare a full report on allegations of the existence of child brothels in Islington. Scotland Yard was now investigating claims that such brothels were being run on an estate in the Archway district, he said. Dickens said: ‘My informant, whose name I shall, of course, keep secret, has told me that some 40 children are involved. He has passed on to Scotland Yard tapes purporting to depict the voices of children clearly taking part in unsavoury activities. Scotland Yard has told me it is treating these allegations seriously. I hope that urgent action will be taken to stamp out this evil trade.’
The borough of Islington became notorious for every children’s home having paedophiles on the staff, often being a paedophile brothel, and exchanging children with similar children’s homes in other parts of the country, especially the equally notorious Haut de la Garenne in Jersey, where Savile and Heath were also involved. Margaret Hodge, who was leader of Islington council through all this, has the effrontery to blame her staff for failing to keep her informed, after refusing to take action when Liz Davies, Demetrious Panton, the Evening Standard and others kept telling her what was happening. And yet Tony Blair made her, of all things, his ‘minister of children’. What secrets does she have on powerful people?
PIE in the universities
In 1981 a pseudo-academic book, Perspectives on paedophilia, edited by Brian Taylor, a sociology lecturer at Sussex University, aka Humphrey Barton when writing for PIE, was published. Taylor continued at Sussex, and died recently – his obituary had no mention of his advocacy of paedophilia. This book was a collection of essays by members of PIE, including one by Peter Righton. Similar books followed, such as The Betrayal Of Youth discussed above, and Children’s sexual encounters with adults, by CK Li, DJ West and TP Woodhouse in 1990, in a systematic attempt to make paedophilia academically respectable, although the British Library still catalogued such books as ‘Children. Sexual abuse by adults’.
Children were portrayed in these books not only as enthusiastic and equal, but, like Lolita, as initiating the sex, which is no more than a paedophile’s favourite fantasy. Another misperception is that manipulation of a child’s body, producing a physical response, means they are enjoying it and are consenting. The David Wade Correctional Facility in Homer, Louisiana USA, has done some interesting work on such cognitive distortions and how to challenge them effectively. But in the UK in the 1980s these perverted academics were able to get away with propagating them unchallenged.
Other universities are still implicated, though most have dismissed anyone who engaged in or promoted paedophilia. But Essex and Cambridge have been and still are blatant in their support of discussion of child sexual abuse on grounds of freedom, like NCCL in the 1970s. But what they do is promotion, not balanced academic debate. Essex University is notorious for subsidising emeritus professor of sociology Ken Plummer, PIE #236 to promote paedophilia throughout his career. Cambridge allowed emeritus professor of clinical criminology Donald West the same licence, most recently letting him and others of their many younger pro-paedophile staff hold a conference promoting paedophilia in 2013. Tom O’Carroll, the jailbird who had written Paedophilia: The Radical Case in 1980, was ‘very happy to attend’.
All these men promote the idea that paedophilia is normal and harmless, apart from a few sadistic abusers, and that the only thing that does harm is the outrage of other adults when they discover it. This formed a supportive background to PIE’s discussions. For many of the men in PIE, this deviant culture became the self-evident norm, to such an extent that they began to believe their battle was won and that everyone really accepted paedophilia, even if the law hadn’t yet quite been changed. However, a lot of men were undone through believing their own hype.
Another link PIE had was with Freemasonry. The New Welcome Lodge, No. 5139, is a British Masonic lodge based in the Palace of Westminster open to all MPs and peers. Hundreds of MPs currently appear in the Masonic Year Book, along with the names of judges, senior police commanders and top Whitehall civil servants. We keep hearing about how it works in a similar way to PIE, with many of the same men. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to reverse that: PIE seems to have been set up along similar lines to Freemasonry, using their confidential communications.
In the early 1990s David Crane, a lecturer in Durham University English department, with a wife and family, believed PIE’s self-delusions and naïvely wrote in a university magazine of the joy of being seduced himself at seven, and how he wanted nothing more than to pass on that joy. He was surprised when he was dismissed by the university, investigated by the police, prosecuted and convicted for abusing a series of distinctly unjoyful small boys.
Stafford University had staff lockers cleaned out one summer vacation, and pornography was found in that of Roger Joy, a lecturer and member of PIE. He was dismissed and prosecuted, and convicted. And in 1998 Chris Brand, lecturer in psychology at Edinburgh University, was removed from his post after claiming publicly that consensual paedophilia with an intelligent child was acceptable.
There is no shortage of evidence now of the harm done by child sexual abuse. Paedophiles should be exposed in group therapy or restorative justice to the pain and fury of survivors until they understand how wrong they are about this, and how sexual relationships with adults hurts children – with a leader strong enough to keep the group under control. Maybe IICSA can recommend this.
In the 1980s Derek Smith, an instructor with Sussex Police, described how one of his colleagues used Cyril Smith’s case as part of a training session for other officers about cases of child abuse, as an example of how you had to get as much evidence as possible if you wanted to charge someone with important social status. She was disciplined, and all other instructors were threatened with dismissal if they mentioned Cyril Smith again. Who authorised this?
What was wrong with senior police all over the country that they behaved like this? Why did they not stand up against the establishment, as Albert Laugharne and Joe Mounsey and others did? Presumably they are not all as bad as Gordon Anglesey. But a significant number of senior police officers appear to have been either corrupt or too weak to stand against it. Who was orchestrating this? The attorney general and the CPS? Who else?
By the late 1980s, copies of the file that had been sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions in 1970 containing allegations of Cyril Smith’s abuse had been distributed to officers all around the country – a remarkable effort in the days before the internet. Such was their disgust that many were part of a letter-writing campaign to High Street banks, urging them to remove Smith as the public face of an ad campaign for Access credit cards. He was dropped. As I said earlier, this is a file which IICSA should be able to get hold of.
Geoffrey Dickens, MP and whistleblower
In 1981 MP Geoffrey Dickens named Peter Hayman in the House under parliamentary privilege, despite strenuous efforts to dissuade him by AG Michael Havers. Dickens ignored his advice, and was publicly condemned by Havers, who said “All Mr Dickens has done is make certain that Sir Peter’s shame and embarrassment is known to the world. There cannot be any justification whatsoever for what has happened. How can the public have gained by this? How can it be in the public interest to name this man?” Havers defended the decision not to prosecute Hayman despite his possessing a huge collection of images of child abuse including babies being abused in their prams, and diaries indicating actual abuse.
Dickens quite rightly accused Havers of taking part in a “whitewash and the cover-up of the century”. Havers still refused to prosecute Hayman. Tom O’Carroll, lower class and not part of the establishment, who had been arrested as part of the follow-up to Hayman’s negligence in losing incriminating material, was sentenced to two years.
Like Smith, neighbouring Chester MP Peter Morrison was arrested several times for cottaging in London and in Crewe railway station, and always let off by senior police officers. In 1982 a 14 year old boy in Harting, Surrey, helped a man with a posh car which wouldn’t start, was befriended, groomed and invited for a weekend in London. The family reluctantly allowed this after many invitations as he seemed such a respectable gentleman. The boy was taken to Elm Guest House, made drunk and raped but escaped, {dead link] archive. The boy’s father reported it to the police, and they were visited by officers from Scotland Yard who eventually assured them that the man had been caught and convicted and would not be bothering him again. Much later the boy realised it was Peter Morrison, and that he had not been prosecuted at all. Harting [dead link] is less than 3 miles from where the abducted child Vishal Mehrotra’s dismembered body was found at that time.
In 1983 Smith’s friend David Higgins was again convicted, this time in Skipton, of indecent assault against two little boys. He failed to declare the previous conviction in Leeds. He was only sentenced to probation.
In 1983 MP Geoffrey Dickens gave Home Secretary Leon Brittan the infamous dossier on MPs who were part of the parliamentary paedophile ring. The 30 minute meeting is recorded in Hansard. Brittan wrote to Dickens acknowledging receipt of the file, and implying that the police had been informed. Copies of this file are still thought to exist: IICSA could make it known they would receive it anonymously. Or it can be passed via the Guardian through SecureDrop.
Don Hale, editor and whistleblower
In 1983 Barbara Castle gave her own dossier to Don Hale, editor of the Bury Messenger and experienced in whistle blowing. It was said to name 16 paedophile MPs including Edward Heath, and another 40 who were supportive of PIE. It also contained details of Elm Guest House and a Home Office investigation into Dickens' allegations. Hale notified MPs and asked for their comments, and asked the Home Office where the investigation stood. Cyril Smith stormed into the newspaper office, demanding that a planned article not be published and all documents be handed over. Hale refused. The next day, Special Branch raided the office, with 3 plain clothes men and 15 uniformed officers, and confiscated Castle’s dossier.
A D-notice was produced and shown to Don Hale. This was supposed to be an advisory notice that something an editor was considering publishing would harm national security because it would compromise UK military and intelligence operations and methods, or put at risk the safety of those involved in such operations, or lead to attacks that would damage the critical national infrastructure and/or endanger lives. This was obviously corrupt misuse of a D-notice.
Copies of Castle’s dossier are still said to exist, and IICSA should be able to get hold of it.
Heath’s file showed he was present at Westminster meetings with paedophile rights campaigners from the PIE group. He is said to have attended at least a quarter of the 30 or so monthly or bi-weekly meetings. His name is said to have appeared on minutes of the private gatherings, also apparently attended by other MPs, along with scoutmasters and head teachers.
In July 2014 Dickens’ dossier could not be traced in the Home Office. Leon Brittan changed his story twice: first he denied all knowledge, then he ‘could not remember’ having received this explosive material – which his department had investigated and reported on – and then he said he had passed it to civil servants to deal with.
More recently Don Hale gave Operation Midland information about all this – and they said they were ‘being prevented from interviewing Brittan’.
Now we are told that Brittan is ‘cleared of all allegations’, when all that has been even considered by the CPS is an alleged rape of a 19 year old girl in 1967. She was still technically a child as the age of majority was only lowered to 18 in 1970. When she went to the police more recently, she was subjected to hostile questioning. This was inappropriate and bullying, and also pointless as there was no evidence and nothing was or could have been investigated. They should have advised her that if the alleged rape did take place, Brittan had ensured there was not enough evidence to try to take it to court. All that could be claimed about this case was that there was no evidence to substantiate her allegation – not that Brittan was cleared.
This alleged rape was a different issue from the child sexual abuse allegations against Brittan, which were never investigated, or the clumsy pro-paedophile support by Brittan, which was well-known, and being covered up by the government – eg by ‘losing’ files, blocking disclosures from the Home Office, and stopping Operation Midland from interviewing him.
It was extremely sharp practice of the government to conflate all this and try to claim, with blatant dishonesty, that Brittan had been exonerated.
A little later in 2014, Home Office permanent secretary Mark Sedwill claimed that 114 files relating to historic allegations of child sex abuse, from between 1979 and 1999, had disappeared from the Home Office. Interesting choice of verb: that which has ‘disappeared’ can always reappear if it becomes expedient, unlike ‘shredded’ or ‘burned’.
Norman Tebbit commented on BBC1's The Andrew Marr Show, 6 July 2014, that there may well have been an establishment cover-up: ‘At that time I think most people would have thought that the establishment, the system, was to be protected and if a few things had gone wrong here and there that it was more important to protect the system than to delve too far into it. That view, I think, was wrong then and it is spectacularly shown to be wrong because the abuses have grown.’
Hilton Tims, editor and whistleblower
In 1984 another local journalist, Hilton Tims, news editor of the Surrey Comet, was also threatened with a D-notice in the same way as Don Hale, when he investigated Elm Guest House.
The Guardian asked the government if these D-notices had actually been issued. They reported that ‘Officials running the D-notice system, who work closely with MI5 and MI6 and the Ministry of Defence, said they did not believe that such a notice would have been issued, but admitted that some records relating to official requests for media blackouts in the early 1980s have been destroyed.’ Unless a retired member of Special Branch tells us, it is impossible to know if these were real D-notices, or if SB was brandishing false documents.
In 1984 Dickens gave Brittan another, entirely new, dossier of paedophilia, this time purely relating to Peter Morrison, the MP who abducted and raped the boy in Harting near where part of Vishal Mehrotra’s body was found. This dossier was entrusted to Dickens because of his courage over the first one. Dickens was ostracised and disparaged by some MPs from the start of his campaign against child sexual abuse, not because he was wrong but for breaking ranks within the establishment. This was another of the dossiers that Brittan ‘could not remember’ receiving later – as if any Home Secretary could forget such episodes. This dossier also disappeared.
John Mann, MP and whistleblower
But 30 years later, in October 2015, a copy of this second file was handed to John Mann by the same individual who had provided it to Geoffrey Dickens in 1984, after it had been compiled by former Tory MPs Sir Victor Raikes and Anthony Courtney – both now dead.
In 1984 retired diplomat Peter Hayman was again in trouble. This time he was convicted of gross indecency in a public lavatory but was let off with a caution. He had become a liability in public life, as revealed in files in the National Archives in 2015, and in any case was now 70. He transferred to MI6 as a deputy director, which perhaps was something of a sinecure. He was an old school friend of Baron John Henniker, and they had led parallel lives in the army, diplomatic and now the secret service. Hayman died in disgrace in 1992. Henniker was influential in the British Council, and in the appointment of notorious paedophile Charles Napier to teaching posts abroad with them, despite his being on the DES list 99. Henniker’s name comes up again in 1992 in connection with giving refuge to Peter Righton.
PIE closes down – in theory
In 1984, after being in existence for ten years, PIE found it expedient to close down. They realised they had miscalculated. Some police forces were not corrupt, were not pro paedophile and did not contain paedophile networks. Some senior officers were not pathetic yes-men in thrall to their masters. Some police forces were resisting élite influence and pressure from above, and prosecuting paedophiles. Gay groups had dissociated themselves from PIE. The public, as opposed to some sophisticated politicians and naïve professionals, were not taken in by their specious arguments. They were quite simply horrified at such a threat to their children. Most people saw paedophiles as total monsters, which was unhelpful in identifying them, and they would have none of PIE’s arguments. There had been some violent demonstrations against PIE as well as reasoned campaigns.
PIE realised that they were not going to be able to abolish or lower the age of consent or get control of child employment law – they had wanted to create a loophole which would allow children to be paid to act in child porn films. And men all over the country, though still not those who were members of the establishment, were being imprisoned, which was not what they had bargained for.
On the other hand, PIE were now in every profession, hiring and promoting other paedophiles so they themselves would be protected as they aged. PIE, along with its brother organisation in America, NAMbLA, and a variety of European paedophile organisations had established a self-perpetuating underground network that is now a permanent parasite on national and international life.
To be continued
Previous Post on Rochdale
2025 Jan 10 foxblog3 Rochdale and Beyond – The Legacy of Child Abuse by Anne Wade Part 1 [50]
Possible Helpful PIE and Cyril Smith Links
[1] 2025 Jan 8 Mail How 1970s paedophile lobbying group campaigned to reduce age of consent to FOUR while its leaders carried out sickening abuse of children https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14247601/How-1970s-paedophile-lobbying-group-campaigned-reduce-age-consent-FOUR-leaders-carried-sickening-abuse-children.html #PIE
[2] BBC Alex Renton In Dark Corners "The List" https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00272c5 PIE List
[2a] BBC Alex Renton In Dark Corners "The List" https://t.me/EndChildAbuse/11465
[3] Rochdale Alternative Press Cyril Smith
[4] Manchester City Enquirer Cyril Smith
[32] 2014 May 14 foxblog1 Rochdale Alternative Press on Cyril Smith, Number 78, May 1979 https://cathyfox.wordpress.com/2014/05/14/rochdale-alternative-press-on-cyril-smith-78-may-1979/
[33] 2014 May 15 foxblog1 Manchester City Enquirer, Issue 30, Cyril Smith https://cathyfox.wordpress.com/2014/05/15/manchester-city-enquirer-issue-30-cyril-smith/
[34] 2018 Mar 24 foxblog1 Child Abuser Morris Fraser, Factual Errors by NI Child Abuse Inquiry https://cathyfox.wordpress.com/2018/03/24/child-abuser-morris-fraser-factual-errors-by-ni-historical-abuse-inquiry/
[35] 2015 Jan 30 foxblog1 Peter Haymans Prosecution File Destroyed in 2006 https://cathyfox.wordpress.com/2015/01/30/peter-haymans-prosecution-file-destroyed-in-2006/
[36] 2015 Jul 26 cathyfoxblog Brandreth on the child abuser Peter Morrison MP https://cathyfox.wordpress.com/2015/07/26/brandreth-on-the-child-abuser-peter-morrison-mp/
[37] 2015 Mar BBC Cyril Smith child abuse inquiry 'scrapped after his arrest' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31908431 https://t.me/mindcontrolmonarchmkultra/10470 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31908431
[50] 2025 Jan 10 foxblog3 Rochdale and Beyond – The Legacy of Child Abuse by Anne Wade Part 1 https://foxyfox.substack.com/p/rochdale-and-beyond-the-legacy-of #rochdale #childabuse #cyrilsmith
2025 Jan 12 Photo updated as last one appeared to be a composite
Appendix 1 2014 Jul 10 Telegraph Westminster whistleblower told to 'back off' over paedophiles https://web.archive.org/web/20140711054813/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/10959997/Westminster-whistleblower-told-to-back-off-over-paedophiles.html
Former Home Office employee Tim Hulbert reveals that he was told to back off after raising concerns over Government grants to paedophiles
Fresh claims have been made that taxpayers' money was used to fund a notorious group that campaigned to legalise sex with children, with a whistleblower claiming the payments were made at the request of the Metropolitan Police's Special Branch.
Former civil servant Tim Hulbert said he raised concerns about the grant to the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) with his manager because it seemed "crazy" to be giving the group money.
A Whitehall investigation into the claims grants were given to PIE, which was published earlier this week, found that there was no evidence that the group was funded "directly or indirectly" by the taxpayer.
But Mr Hulbert, who worked at the Home Office unit charged with allocating money to voluntary groups, told ITV News he become aware of the grant to PIE during the first year of the Thatcher administration.
Speaking publicly for the first time he said he raised the issue with his superior at the Voluntary Services Unit (VSU): "I have a very clear recollection, not of who tipped me off, but of being sufficiently aware of it to go to my then boss, the head of the unit Clifford Hindley and to say 'look Clifford what the hell are we doing funding an organisation like PIE?' and the reason for that was firstly I had young children at that time and PIE were openly campaigning for the reduction of the age of consent to four.
"Secondly we were also responsible for funding across government departments including the Department of Health and it seemed crazy that we should be funding an organisation that was advocating, certainly a lessening of the constraints around child abuse, when one of our constituent organisations was the Department of Health, which was spending a lot of money trying to prevent child abuse."
But he claimed his boss told him that the money was going to a "legitimate" organisation and that the funding was "at the request of Special Branch".
He told ITV News: "The meeting was in his office. I remember having a frank exchange with him about this and his arguments (for continuing payments) were one, it was an organisation which was recognised as a legitimate if not necessarily appropriate campaigning organisation and secondly, I have a very clear recollection that he told me it was being funded at the request of Special Branch and thirdly, he told me it was a renewal of a grant, which I already knew, and therefore it didn't require a consultant's input and the significance of that is that all new grants were normally accompanied in the submission to the minister by a consultant's report.
"On renewal that didn't necessarily happen."
A Whitehall investigation into VSU's activities between 1973 and 1985 found "no evidence" of direct funding being provided to PIE.
More than £475,000 was provided to two groups with connections to PIE, but the review concluded: "It is impossible to determine whether VSU funding provided to either of these organisations was indirectly used to support the work of PIE, but no evidence was found to conclude that it did."
The Government has appointed National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children chief executive Peter Wanless to lead a review into the Home Office's handling of abuse claims and how 114 files deemed potentially relevant went missing.
PA
Appendix 2 2015 Jun 15 Telegraph Thatcher confidant raped boy and police covered crime up https://web.archive.org/web/20150616151515/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/11323146/Thatcher-confidant-raped-boy-and-police-covered-crime-up.html
Thatcher confidant raped boy and police covered crime up
Exclusive: Former Conservative minister Sir Peter Morrison allegedly lured 14-year-old to London and sexually abused him in a guesthouse reportedly used by a Westminster paedophile ring
One of Margaret Thatcher’s closest confidantes raped a teenage boy 30 years ago but escaped justice when Scotland Yard covered up the crime, it has been alleged.
Police are investigating claims that Sir Peter Morrison lured the 14-year-old to London and sexually abused him in a guesthouse reportedly used by a Westminster paedophile ring.
A former Conservative minister, Morrison was first exposed as a serial child abuser in 1998, three years after he died from a heart attack. But the MP for Chester was never charged with any crime during his lifetime.
Speaking to The Telegraph, the alleged victim, now aged 46, said he and his family reported Morrison to Scotland Yard in 1982, hours after the teenager had escaped the MP’s clutches.
Yet after he gave a statement and was examined by doctors, the family say they heard nothing for months.
Finally, the boy’s father says he was informed by Scotland Yard that the abuser had been sent to prison for assaulting his son, and that no further action was needed.
However it was only years later, the family claim, that they discovered the culprit's true identity. They then discovered Morrison had never in fact been jailed for any crime, and that police had apparently duped them into dropping the allegation.
The man, now a married businessman, is the first of Morrison’s alleged victims to speak publicly. His disturbing story is backed up by his parents and is being investigated as part of Operation Fairbank, set up by the Met two years ago to probe suggestions that high profile political figures had been involved in organised child sex abuse.
He is now preparing to take legal action against the force, who he claims “hushed the whole thing up”.
The man said: “I believe that Morrison was a high-profile guy so he got away with it. Either the police were paid off or they hushed it up because he was an MP.
“I was never the same after what happened - he ruined my life really. I left school soon afterwards because I lost all my confidence. I couldn’t handle what had happened to me."
An Old Etonian and barrister by background, Peter Morrison was Lady Thatcher’s trusted parliamentary private secretary and deputy chairman of the Conservative Party. In 1990, he led Thatcher’s disastrous leadership campaign team when she lost power.
It was first reported in 1998 that Morrison had been arrested for molesting underage boys during his career, but had been let off with a police caution. In 2002, Edwina Currie, the former Tory minister, revealed that Morrision was a “noted pederast” in her diaries. He has also been linked to the child abuse scandal at care homes in North Wales.
Earlier this year, Thatcher’s former bodyguard Barry Strevens claimed the former prime minister was told about Morrison’s alleged penchant for under-age boys but appointed him deputy party chairman despite the rumours.
Norman Tebbit has also admitted that “rumours had got to my ears” that Morrison was a paedophile more than a decade before the truth was exposed.
The new allegations against Morrison and Scotland Yard come after the father of an eight year old boy murdered in 1981 told The Telegraph in November that his son may have died at the hands of a Westminster paedophile ring, and that police covered it up.
Vishambar Mehrotra, a retired magistrate, recorded a male prostitute saying in a telephone call that his son may have been abducted and taken to the Elm guesthouse in 1981, the same location where the new victim claims Morrison raped him.
Mr Mehrotra took the recording to police at the time but claimed they refused to investigate an allegation implicating “judges and politicians”.
Vishambar Mehrotra told The Telegraph he believed police had covered up the murder of his son Vishal
Last month, the Met announced it is investigating the alleged murder of three young boys linked to a Westminster paedophile ring active in the late seventies and early eighties.
Officers are probing claims that up to five paedophile rings operated at the heart of Westminster with the involvement of “highly influential” politicians.
A Labour MP said it was “inconceivable” that police would not now arrest and interview some of the politicians he has named in a list handed to detectives.
John Mann, who spent months sifting evidence from members of the public, handed over evidence on 22 politicians including three serving MPs and three members of the House of Lords.
Although some on the list are now dead, it also contains the names of other figures who are still alive but no longer active in Westminster, Mr Mann said.
“There are at least five paedophile rings which involved MPs,” he said.
“Each of them involved at least one MP, some involved more, and these were groups of people who knew about the activities of one another.
“In some cases I believe they committed abuse together.”
A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said the force was investigating the alleged victim's claims.
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Excellent research back into it proving that the theistic Satanism that has a stranglehold over Britain is very old and generational. The question or thought then becomes, how many of these same "religious" men were stowaways within occult Freemasonry and brought themselves over to what became the United States from its inception? 1776 was indeed a banner year for the illumined ones, as it were. Hmmm.