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Paedophile Information Exchange is back in the news as a BBC radio documentary explores a list of more than 300 members

RHODA WILSON

Dark revelations about the Paedophile Information Exchange (“PIE”) have resurfaced, drawing renewed attention to the group’s activities and affiliations in the 1970s and 1980s.

PIE, founded by Ian Dunn and Tom O’Carroll, was a controversial organisation that campaigned for the legalisation of adult-child sexual relationships and sought to lower the age of consent. The group disbanded in 1984 after two of its executive committee members were convicted of child pornography offences, and its leader fled the UK while on bail.

Investigations and media coverage in 2014 highlighted the group’s connections to the National Council for Civil Liberties (“NCCL”), now known as the human rights watchdog Liberty. Between 1977 and 1980 NCCL’s general secretary was Patricia Hewitt, and its legal officer was Harriet Harman; both were implicated in NCCL’s affiliations with PIE. Patricia Hewett was the Labour Health Secretary (2005-2007) and Harriett Harman was the Deputy Labour Leader and Chair of the Labour Party (2007-2015) and is now a member of the House of Lords.

In response to the revelations, Hewitt apologised for the NCCL’s involvement with PIE, stating that the organisation was “naive and wrong” in allowing itself to become affiliated with the group. Harman, however, expressed regret but refused to apologise, claiming that the allegations were part of a “politically motivated smear campaign.”

A whistleblower claimed that PIE received funding from the Home Office, with grants totalling approximately £70,000 (equivalent to about £400,000 in 2014) between 1977 and 1980.

Fast forward to 2025 and PIE is back in the news. Journalist Alex Renton has recently uncovered a secret membership list of PIE, leading to further revelations about the group’s activities and the identities of its members. Renton’s investigation has shed light on the criminal activities committed by some of PIE’s members, including teachers, clergy, social workers and government advisors.

A secret list of more than 300 PIE members was handed to the BBC.

“A small number of those named on the list may still have contact with children through paid work or volunteering,” the BBC said. “Most PIE members were based in the UK – but there are also details of people in other parts of western Europe, Australia and the US.”

“The list – and dozens of other documents relating to PIE members – were given to the BBC team and journalist Alex Renton, who has written extensively about historical institutional child sexual abuse and presents the BBC podcast, ‘In Dark Corners‘,” the BBC added.

Renton, a victim of child abuse himself, has been tracking allegations of abuse in British schools and has logged over 1,600 allegations at 700 schools, involving over 400 staff members that have been reported to him since he first wrote about child sex abuse in a newspaper article. He believes that Britain has an “institutional addiction to cover-ups” and that many institutions, including the BBC, the Church of England and the NHS, have prioritised reputation over child safety.

Two years ago, he made a Radio 4 series, ‘In Dark Corners’, about the problem in Britain’s elite schools. His work has led to a second Radio 4 series, ’In Dark Corners, Series 2’, which investigates the people on the PIE list and explores why many of them were able to continue abusing children despite being known to the authorities. Approximately 65 members of PIE worked in regulated professions that involved contact with children, including 30 teachers, social workers, clergy, doctors, psychologists and youth workers such as scouts and football coaches.

His second radio series, which began last week, also explores how PIE managed to infiltrate and fool many liberals into thinking that “free love for children” was a logical next step after the success of other liberation movements in the 1970s. In particular, if it was okay to be gay, it was fine to be a paedophile.

PIE presented itself as a respectable campaigning organisation, but many of its members were active child abusers, with around half of the 143 tracked-down members having been sentenced, cautioned or charged for abuse offences.

Prominent founding member Peter Righton made unchallenged media appearances and produced well-written pamphlets arguing that children were oppressed by parents unwilling to allow them to express their sexuality.

Righton, who was convicted of distributing child abuse images in 1992, advised Virginia Bottomley when she was the Conservative Health Secretary on the safety of children in residential care and infiltrated charities designed to help vulnerable and homeless gay youth. Righton was under police investigation for assaults when he died in 2007.

PIE targeted organisations such as the Campaign for Homosexual Equality (“CHE”) and the NCCL. PIE’s chairman Tom O’Carroll, who sat on NCCL’s gay rights committee in the late 1970s, successfully lobbied against tightening laws on “indecent” images of children.

The group’s tactics also included sending prominent activists to speak at meetings – such as CHE’s annual general meeting, where a PIE speaker brought a prepubescent boy to press their case – and targeting young groups, such as a young gays’ self-help organisation, where some members became victims of sexual abuse.

There are some troubling elements to the story such as the grant given by the Home Office. “There’s a retired civil servant we’ve spoken to, quite senior in the Home Office in the ‘70s, who said that he questioned a £70,000 grant from the Home Office to PIE. And his boss said, ‘Don’t question this, Special Branch have asked us to do it’.” Renton said.

Sources and resources:

In the Dark Corners, Series 2, BBC Radio 4
Paedophile Information Exchange, NewgonWiki
How 1970s paedophile lobbying group campaigned to reduce age of consent to FOUR while its leaders carried out sickening abuse of children, Daily Mail, 8 January 2025
‘Britain has an institutional addiction to cover-ups’: the scandal of the Paedophile Information Exchange (archived copy), The Telegraph, 8 January 2025
The shocking truth about the Paedophile Information Exchange (archived copy), The Spectator, 11 January 2025

Featured image taken from ‘The shocking truth about the Paedophile Information Exchange’, Anglican Mainstream, 11 January 2025

This article (Paedophile Information Exchange is back in the news as a BBC radio documentary explores a list of more than 300 members) was created and published by The Expose and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Rhoda Wilson

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