Paedophile Information Exchange.

The Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) was a UK pro-paedophile activist group, founded in October 1974 and officially disbanded in 1984.In January 2006 the Paedophile Unit finally arrested the last of its members on child pornography charges, with David Joy warned by his sentencing judge that his beliefs may preclude his release ever from jail.

Early history and activity

PIE was set up as a special interest group within the Scottish Minorities Group by founder member Michael Hanson, who became the group's first Chairman.

Since the majority of enquiries were from England, PIE relocated to London in 1975 where 23-year old Keith Hose became its new Chairperson. Hose had connections with the South London group of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF). GLF thinking questioned the family as the basis of an economic, social and sexual system and certain sections of GLF favoured the abolition of the age of consent; their youth group had staged a march in support of this demand (however, it should be noted that the age of consent for homosexuals was 21 at the time, in comparison to 16 for heterosexuals).

Paedophile Action for Liberation had developed as a breakaway group from South London Gay Liberation Front. It was the subject of an article in the  Sunday People , which dedicated its front page and centre-spread to the story. The result was intimidation and loss of employment for some of those who were exposed. It later merged with PIE.

This exposé on PAL had a chilling effect on PIE members' willingness for activism. In the PIE Chairperson's Annual Report for 1975-6, Keith Hose wrote that ‘The only way for PIE to survive, was to seek out as much publicity for the organization as possible…. If we got bad publicity we would not run into a corner but stand and fight. We felt that the only way to get more paedophiles joining P I E… was to seek out and try to get all kinds of publications to print our organization's name and address and to make paedophilia a real public issue.'

A campaign to attract media attention was not effective at that time, but Hose's attendance at the 1975 annual conference of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE) in Sheffield, where he made a speech on paedophilia, was covered at length in  The Guardian .

In the same year Hose also attended a conference organized by Mind, the national mental health organization, where it was suggested that PIE should submit evidence to the Home Office Criminal Law Revision Committee on the age of consent. PIE submitted a 17-page document in which it proposed that there should be no age of consent, and that the criminal law should concern itself only with sexual activities to which consent is not given, or which continue after prohibition by a civil court.

PIE was set up to campaign for an acceptance and understanding of paedophilia by producing controversial documents. But its formally defined aims also included giving advice and counsel to paedophiles who wanted it, and providing a means for paedophiles to contact one another.

To this end it held regular meetings in London but also had a ‘Contact Page', which was a bulletin in which members placed advertisements, giving their membership number, general location, and brief details of their sexual and other interests. Replies were handled by PIE, as with a box number system, so that correspondents were unidentifiable until they chose to exchange their own details. Since the purpose of this contact page was to enable paedophiles to contact one another, advertisements implying that contact with children was sought and advertisements for erotica were turned down. The Contact Page ultimately resulted in a prosecution for a ‘conspiracy to corrupt public morals'.

PIE produced regular magazines that were distributed to members. The original  Newsletter  was superseded in 1976 by  Understanding Paedophilia , which was intended to be sold in radical bookshops and be distributed free to PIE members. It was mainly the concern of Warren Middleton, who attempted to make the magazine a serious journal that included extracts from sensitive paedophilic literature and articles from psychologists with the aim of establishing respectability for paedophilia.

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 .

In 1976 both PIE and PAL had been asked to help the Albany Trust to produce a booklet on paedophilia which was to have been published by the Trust. This collaboration was ‘uncovered' by Mary Whitehouse, who alleged that public funds were being used indirectly to subsidize ‘paedophile groups'. The Albany Trust was partly supported by government grants. The Trustees decided not to publish the booklet, saying that it wasn't sufficiently ‘objective'. A year later a question relating to the incident was brought up in Parliament by Sir Bernard Braine but, despite a statement by Home Office Minister Brynmor John that there was no evidence of public money going to PIE, the issue was drawn out into 1978 in the letters pages of  The Guardian  and  The Times .

Affiliation to the NCCL

Patricia Hewitt  – Former Secretary of State for Health

By 1978 PIE and Paedophile Action for Liberation had become affiliated to The National Council for Civil Liberties, later rebranded as Liberty, with members attending meetings. The organisation was headed by future government Minister Patricia Hewitt (pic above) and it campaigned against newspapers' treatment of the Paedophile activist groups. Whilst affiliated with NCCL, PIE also campaigned to reduce the age of consent, arguing that “childhood sexual experiences, willingly engaged in, with an adult result in no identifiable damage”. The organisation also argued for incest to be decriminalised and argued that sexually explicit photographs of children should be legal unless it could be proven that the subject had suffered harm or that the an inference to that effect or to the effect that harm might have been caused could reasonably be drawn from the images themselves. NCCL excluded PIE in 1983

Before she became an MP, Harriet Harman (pic above) was the legal officer in the late 1970s for the National Council for Civil Liberties. When Harman joined NCCL in 1978, PIE, the Paedophile Information Exchange, had already been affiliated for three years. Another group, Paedophile Action for Liberation, a Gay Liberation Front offshoot, had also been affiliated to NCCL until it was absorbed by PIE. PIE, which campaigned for adults to have sex legally with children, only broke off its relationship with NCCL when it went undercover in 1982, the same year that Harriet Harman left her NCCL post to become Member of Parliament for Peckham.

So when the Protection of Children Bill was put before Parliament in order to tighten the laws on child pornography by banning indecent images of under-16s Harriett Harman was at the forefront of the NCCL response.  Signed by Harriett Harman in April 1978, the NCCL's formal response to the Government proposals to reform sex laws dubbed a “Lolita's Charter” was unbelievable.

Harman argued that,  “… childhood sexual experiences, willingly engaged in, with an adult result in no identifiable damage…Although this harm may be of a somewhat speculative nature, where participation falls short of physical assault, it is none-the-less justifiable to restrain activities by photographer which involve placing children under the age of 14 (or, arguably, 16) in sexual situations. We suggest that the term ‘indecent' be qualified as follows: – A photograph or film shall not for this purpose be considered indecent (a) by reason only that the model is in a state of undress (whether complete or partial); (b) unless it is proved or is to be inferred from the photograph or film that the making of the photograph or film might reasonably be expected to have caused the model physical harm or pronounced psychological or emotional disorder.”

NCCL people were earlier involved in keeping the name of an NCCL council-member, Jonathan Walters, out of the People newspaper when it ran an exposé of Paedophile Action for Liberation, of which he was secretary, in 1975. The People still ran the story, but Walters was not named. Even more extraordinary is the fact that a current Cabinet Minister was running the National Council of Civil Liberties at the time all this was going on.

Here are her Motoring convictions, which proves she is certainly being “looked after”

In 2003, Harman was fined £400 and banned from driving for seven days after being convicted of driving at 99 mph (159 km/h) on a motorway, 29 mph (47 km/h) above the speed limit.

In 2007, Harman was issued with a £60 fixed penalty notice and given three penalty points on her licence for driving at 50 mph (80 km/h) in a temporary 40 mph (64 km/h) zone. Harman paid the fine several months late and avoided appearing at Ipswich magistrates court. Harman was again caught breaking the speed limit the following April, this time in a 30 mph zone, receiving a further 3 points on her driving licence.

In January 2010, Harman pleaded guilty to driving without due care and attention in relation to an incident on 3 July where she struck another vehicle whilst driving using a mobile phone, she admitted the offence in court becoming the first serving Cabinet minister in memory to plead guilty to a criminal offence. Harman was fined £350, ordered to pay £70 costs, a £15 victim surcharge and had three points added to her licence. Road safety organisations such as Brake condemned the leniency of the punishment and decision to drop the charge of driving whilst using a mobile phone. The judge defended the decision stating “Ms Harman's guilty plea to driving without due care and attention included her admitting that she had been using a mobile phone at the time”

Jack Dromey, (pic above) whom Harriet Harman married in 1982, and who was Treasurer of the Labour Party, was also involved with the NCCL. He served on its Executive Committee from 1970 to 1979, so he was there when the decision to invite the two paedophile groups to affiliate was made. NCCL also set up a gay rights sub-committee at the same time, members of which included prominent paedophiles Peter Bremner (alias Roger Nash), Michael Burbidge, Keith Hose and Tom O'Carroll. And of course Walters and Locke were on the Executive.

Legal action against members

In the summer of 1978, the homes of several PIE committee members were raided by the police as part of a full-scale inquiry into PIE's activities; as a result of this inquiry, a substantial report was submitted to the Director of Public Prosecutions and the prosecution of PIE activists followed.

In particular, five activists were charged with printing contact advertisements in  Magpie  which were calculated to promote indecent acts between adults and children.

Others were offered lesser charges of sending indecent material through the mail if they testified against the five. These charges related to letters that the accused exchanged detailing various sexual fantasies. It eventually became clear that one person had corresponded with most of the accused but had not been tried. After the trial, it emerged that there had been a cover-up: Mr “Henderson” had worked for MI6 and been a high commissioner in Canada.

Steven Adrian Smith was Chairperson of PIE from 1979 to 1985. He was one of the PIE executive committee members charged in connection with the contact advertisements; he fled to Holland before the trial.

In 1981 the former PIE Chairperson, Tom O'Carroll, (PIC BELOW) was convicted on the conspiracy charge and sentenced to two years in prison. O'Carroll had been working on  Paedophilia: The Radical Case  in the period between the initial police raid and the trial. While the charges did not relate in any way to the publication of the book, the fact that he had written it was listed by the judge as a factor in determining the length of his sentence.

In 1984  The Times  reported that two former executive committee members of PIE had been convicted on child pornography charges but acquitted on charges of incitement to commit unlawful sexual acts with children and that the group's leader had fled the country while on bail. It was announced that the group was closing down in the PIE  Bulletin  as of July 1984.

Surveys

In 1978-9, the Paedophile Information Exchange surveyed its members and found that they were most attracted to girls aged 8–11 and boys aged 11–15. In 1978, Glenn Wilson and David Cox approached Mr O'Carroll with a request to study the PIE membership. A meeting was held with the PIE leadership to vet the survey instruments and, after approval, these were distributed to PIE members in the course of their regular mailing. Wilson and Cox went on to use the data in writing their book,  The Child-Lovers – a study of paedophilies in society .

The EPQ and a lifestyle questionnaire were completed by 77 members of the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE), a self-help club for men who are sexually attracted to children. Compared with control males the paedophiles were significantly introverted and high on P and N. Examination of individual items revealed that PIE members were more likely to be shy, sensitive, lonely, depressed and humourless, but they were not particularly troubled by guilt, obsessionality or worry about their looks. Individual variations within the paedophile sample were also found. Those who were high on P and low on E were interested in younger children and were less able to contemplate sex with adults. Paedophiles high on N were less happy about their sexual preference and were more likely to have sought treatment.

Members/Activists of P.I.E

December 2007 - Paedo's ‘life' term slashed

A PERVERT who led a campaign to legalise sex with kids was smirking behind bars last night after his “indefinite” jail term was slashed to A YEAR.

David Joy, 66 – once No2 in the notorious Paedophile Information Exchange or PIE – was warned earlier this year he may die in prison after admitting child porn offences. But three Court of Appeal judges ruled the indefinite sentence was inappropriate – as Joy had only accessed porn for himself and was not a serious danger to the public.

Leo Adamson, left, helped set up Pie to distribute obscene pictures of young boys while John Parratt, right, was a former vice-chairman of the organisation

July 2011

John Parratt, 63, a former vice chairman of Pie, also known as Warren Middleton, was jailed for 12 months for having indecent images

 Leo Adamson, 49, a former executive member of Pie, was found guilty of failure to disclose a computer password and was jailed for a year at an earlier hearing.

The former leader of the paedophile pressure group Pie was jailed after becoming the first person to be convicted for making drawings of children being raped. 

Detectives found 3,000 drawings at Steven Freeman's home, where he held weekly meetings to view and trade images of child abuse. The images were described at the Old Bailey as “vile and disgusting” and were amongst the worst seen by police, they said. Some 14,500 pictures and films were found on computer discs there and at the address of two of his paedophile ring

Freeman, 57, previously known as Smith, the chairman of Pie, was given an indeterminate term for public protection. He was given a minimum term of 30 months after pleading guilty to specimen charges of possessing indecent images, having prohibited drawings, distributing indecent images and failing to disclose the password for an encrypted computer.

John Morrison, left, and Barry Cutler, right

John Morrison, 44, was jailed for 24 months after he admitted having indecent images and failure to disclose a computer password.

Barry Cutler, 60, pleaded guilty to three offences of having indecent images and failure to provide a password, and was jailed for 15 months

Geoffrey Prime – Hereford

A KGB spy whose perverted actions in Hereford led to his downfall, is back in the news.

Moscow's key British agent, Geoffrey Prime, was jailed for 35 years in November 1982 after admitting he had been selling secrets to the Russians for 14 years.

Prime was also a member of the Paedophile Information Exchange and had a card index of 2,287 young girls whom he targeted by phone.

Imprisoned for three years for indecently assaulting three young girls, including a 14-year-old Herefordshire girl – Released in 2001.