Margaret Hodge: Anti-paedophile campaigner?

An Islington Gazette cutting from November 1983 shows that former Islington Council leader Margaret Hodge signed a petition to ban the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE), an organisation that wanted to lower the age of consent to 4 years old.

Mrs Hodge’s anti-paedophile stance must have been the cause of constant arguments, since her husband, Henry Hodge, and her close friends Harriet Harman and Jack Dromey, were all senior officials of the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL), which was affiliated to the Paedophile Information Exchange.

Although Margaret Hodge was well aware of PIE’s activities, she says she was unaware that paedophiles wanted to work with children. During her time as leader (1982-1992), every one of Islington’s children’s homes was infiltrated by paedophiles.

She recently tried to explain her total failure to protect children in care from paedophile rings, prostitution, and trafficking by saying “All that happened when we didn’t really understand child abuse in the way that we understand it now. This was the early 90s … It was only beginning to emerge that paedophiles were working with children, in children’s homes and elsewhere”. (Guardian 27/04/13)

It’s strange that she doesn’t remember two major incidents before the 90s which proved that paedophiles were working with children in Islington children’s homes.

1983: Islington care worker John Picton was charged with kidnapping a 13 year old boy from a children’s home

1986: Former Islington care worker Abraham Jacob was jailed for running a child prostitution racket.

• Abraham Jacob
• John Picton
• Margaret Hodge
• Paedophile Information Exchange