The Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) was a British pro-paedophilia activist group, founded in October 1974 and officially disbanded in 1984.Tom de Castella & Tom Heyden "How did the pro-paedophile group PIE exist openly for 10 years?" , BBC News Magazine, 27 February 2014 The group campaigned for the abolition of the age of consent. It was described by the BBC in 2007 as "an international organisation of people who trade obscene material".
Although it had a few women paedophiles as members, the organisation's membership was mainly young, professionally educated male paedophiles, including youth and care workers. Its membership in 1977 was around 250, mainly in London and the South East; the same number for membership was also reported in 1981.
Early history and activity
PIE was set up as a special interest group within the Scottish Minorities Group by founding member Michael Hanson, a student living in Edinburgh, who became the group's first chairman, and co-founder Ian Dunn, who was also the founder of the Scottish Minorities Group. Although Hanson did not identify as a paedophile, his sexual relationship with a 15-year-old, and the disparate age of consent laws for heterosexual and homosexual activity made Hanson sympathise with paedophile advocacy.
Since the majority of enquiries were from England, in 1975 PIE relocated to London, where 23-year-old Keith Hose became chairman. The group's stated aim was "to alleviate [the] suffering of many adults and children" by campaigning to abolish the age of consent thus legalising sex between adults and children. During the early days of its activism, Tom O'Carroll stated that only a small group of people were "in the know" about groups such as PIE, namely "readers of gay newspapers and magazines, and others in gay circles who had heard by word of mouth".
The Paedophile Action for Liberation had developed as a breakaway group from South London Gay Liberation Front. PAL had its own magazine, Palaver, which published material sympathetic to paedophiles. One edition of this magazine carried an article saying that "If all paedophiles in community schools or private schools were to strike, how many would be forced to close, or at least alter their regimes?" However, PAL was later the subject of an article in the Sunday People, which dedicated its front page and centre-spread to the story, headlined "The vilest men in Britain". The result was intimidation of, and loss of employment for, some of those who were exposed. It later merged with PIE.
This exposé on PAL had an effect on PIE members' willingness for activism. In the PIE Chairperson's Annual Report for 1975–1976, Hose wrote that "The only way for PIE to survive, was to seek out as much publicity for the organization as possible. ... If we got bad publicity we would not run into a corner but stand and fight. We felt that the only way to get more paedophiles joining PIE ... was to seek out and try to get all kinds of publications to print our organization's name and address and to make paedophilia a real public issue."PIE Chairperson's Annual Report, 1975–76. Quoted in
A campaign to attract media attention was not effective, but Hose's attendance at the 1975 annual conference of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE) in Sheffield, at which he made a speech on paedophilia, was covered at length in The Guardian. Peter Hain, then Honorary Vice-President of CHE, condemned PIE: "Some plain speaking is called for: paedophilia is not a condition to be given a nod and a wink as a healthy fringe activity in society – it is a wholly undesirable abnormality requiring sensitive treatment." During Hain's time as president of the Young Liberals and following his description of paedophilia as "a wholly undesirable abnormality", a fellow Liberal activist said, "It is sad that Peter has joined the hang 'em and flog 'em brigade. His views are not the views of most Young Liberals." A motion at CHE's 1977 annual conference condemning "the harassment of the Paedophile Information Exchange by the press" was passed.
In the same year, Hose also attended a conference organised by Mind, the national mental health organisation, where it was suggested that PIE should submit evidence to the Home Office's Criminal Law Revision Committee on the age of consent. PIE submitted a 17-page document in which it proposed that there should be no age of consent, and that the criminal law should concern itself only with sexual activities to which consent is not given, or which continue after prohibition by a civil court.
PIE was set up to campaign for an acceptance and understanding of paedophilia by producing controversial documents. But its formally defined aims also included giving advice and counsel to paedophiles who wanted it, and providing a means for paedophiles to contact one another.
To this end, it held regular meetings in London; however, it also had a "Contact Page" in Magpie, which was a bulletin in which members placed advertisements, giving their membership number, general location, and brief details of their sexual and other interests. Replies were handled by PIE, as with a box number system, so that correspondents were unidentifiable until they chose to exchange their own details. Since the purpose of this contact page was to enable paedophiles to contact one another, advertisements implying that contact with children was sought and advertisements for erotica were turned down. Extracts from these contact pages were republished by the News of the World. In the absence of any proof of child sexual abuse, these contact advertisements in Magpie were considered part of a "conspiracy to corrupt public morals". According to the Daily Mail, Lord Justice Fulford – then a campaigner for the NCCL (National Council for Civil Liberties) – was a founder member of "Conspiracy Against Public Morals", a group set up to defend Pie members facing criminal charges. While saying he has "no memory" of ever being a part of the organisation, Fulford said that he "attended a few meetings of the NCCL's gay rights committee ... [where] I provided some legal advice in the context of general civil liberties objections to the wide-ranging charge of conspiracy to corrupt public morals", adding that he has "always been deeply opposed to paedophilia" and pro-paedophile activists who wished to lower the age of consent below 16.
PIE used the offices of Release (1 Elgin Evenue, London W9) as a holding address; this was ended when Christian Wolmar joined Release's staff in 1976.
PIE produced regular magazines that were distributed to members. The original Newsletter was superseded in 1976 by Understanding Paedophilia, which was intended to be sold in radical bookshops and be distributed free to PIE members. It was mainly the concern of Warren Middleton, who attempted to make the magazine a serious journal that included extracts from sensitive paedophilic literature and articles from psychologists, with the aim of establishing respectability for paedophilia.
In 1976, both PIE and PAL had been asked to help the Albany Trust, which received financial support from the government, to produce a booklet on paedophilia which was to have been published by the Trust. Mary Whitehouse referred to this collaboration in a speech, asserting that public funds were being used to subsidise paedophile groups. PIE itself did not receive public funding. The Albany Trustees decided in 1977 not to continue with the project. A year later, a question relating to the incident was asked in the House of Commons by Sir Bernard Braine but, despite a statement by Home Office Minister Brynmor John that there was no evidence of public money going to PIE, the issue was drawn out into 1978 in the letters pages of The Guardian and The Times.
When Middleton ceased active work with PIE, Understanding Paedophilia was replaced by the magazine Magpie, which was more of a compromise between the proselytising of the earlier publication and a forum for members. It contained news, book and film reviews, articles, non-nude photographs of children, humour about paedophilia, letters and other contributions by members.
In 1977, PIE produced another regular publication called Childhood Rights. When the editor ('David') retired, this content was assimilated into Magpie. The Conservative member of parliament, Cyril Townsend, during the second reading of his Protection of Children private members' bill in February 1978, reported that PIE claimed to have 250 members.See Cyril Townsend's speech at the second reading of his Protection of Children bill, Hansard, House of Commons Debate, 10 February 1978, vol 943, cc1826-922, 1833
In 1978 and 1979, the Paedophile Information Exchange surveyed its members and found that they were most attracted to girls aged 8–11 and boys aged 11–15. In 1978, Glenn Wilson and David Cox approached O'Carroll with a request to study the PIE membership. A meeting was held with the PIE leadership to vet the survey instruments and, after approval, these were distributed to PIE members in the course of their regular mailing. Wilson and Cox went on to use the data in writing their book, The Child-Lovers – a study of paedophiles in society.
Public protests and reactions Once the guests of the hotel where a PIE public meeting was to be held learnt about the event, they cancelled $2,500 worth of hotel room reservations and physically threatened the manager, who was also faced with a walkout by the angry staff. The PIE members were also subsequently pelted with rotten fruit and vegetables by "angry mothers" and required protection from the police. The far-right British National Front also protested in front of PIE's conferences in the 1970s."Paedophiles Jeered and Pelted by Angry Crowd", The Times (20 September 1977), cited in
In March 2014, a whistleblower told police he witnessed a successful three-year grant renewal application to the Home Office for £35,000 in 1980, implying that a similar grant had been made in 1977. A review conducted later that year found no evidence that the group had received funding from the Home Office, even if they had given cash to organisations with connections to PIE.
Legal action against members
In the summer of 1978, the homes of several PIE committee members were raided by the police as part of a full-scale inquiry into PIE's activities; as a result of this inquiry, a substantial report was submitted to the Director of Public Prosecutions, and the prosecution of PIE activists followed.
In particular, five activists were charged with printing contact advertisements in Magpie which were calculated to promote indecent acts between adults and children.
Others were offered lesser charges of sending indecent material through the mail if they testified against the five. These charges related to letters that the accused had exchanged detailing various sexual fantasies. It eventually became clear that one person had corresponded with most of the accused but had not been tried. After the trial, it emerged that there had been a cover-up: Mr "Henderson" had worked for MI6 and had been a High Commissioner in Canada. Mr "Henderson" was revealed in November 1980, in the magazine Private Eye, to be Sir Peter Hayman.Part 1, Part 2. (Private Eye newspaper clippings)