‘A number of top public figures’ were protected from prosecution for child abuse images

Sunday People, 22nd March 1981

The same issue of the Sunday People carried this editorial:

The ‘Old Harrovian’ and ‘ex-City stockbroker’ who ran the paedophile mailing list which included many prominent people is almost certainly John Risely-Prichard (Old Harrovian and former Lloyds underwriter), who was ‘on the run from Scotland Yard for ten years’ and was exposed in 1994 by Roger Insall, one of the three journalists who wrote the 1981 article.

John Risely-Prichard

The full 1994 article on John Risely-Prichard can be found here

On 22nd March 1981, the same day as the Sunday People reported that public figures had escaped prosecution, the News of the World revealed that the Scotland Yard investigation into the Paedophile Information Exchange did not take the trouble to examine the post office boxes of PIE members.

Paedophiles hadn’t always been protected from investigation and prosecution. A 1977-78 investigation which centred on a magazine called Mailbox Boys resulted in dozens of successful prosecutions. This was a mainly London-based network which operated out of a South-East London bookshop. If the Paedophile Information Exchange had been investigated in the same way then the number of prosecutions could have been huge. For more on the Mailbox Boys case, see News of the World 09.10.77 and News of the World 02.04.78

In 1984, paedophiles receiving child abuse images in the post were offered another layer of protection by the Home Secretary, Leon Brittan, who wrote:

“I do not think Customs should supply to police names and addresses of everyone receiving obscene or indecent articles, regardless of whether an offence has been established” (Source: The Mirror 12.11.14)

 

Transcript:
‘TOP PEOPLE ESCAPE CHILD PORN SCANDAL’ (Sunday People, 22nd March 1981)

A number of top public figures besides Sir Peter Hayman, have escaped possible prosecution as child pornography offenders.
They are on a list of about 500 people given to the police by an informant who claims to have supplied them with obscene material involving boys.
Several convictions followed. But, a senior Scotland Yard detective told the Sunday People, only “small fry” were put in the dock.
“We could have netted some very big fish,” he said, “people in the top echelons of society.”
But at a meeting with officials in the department of the Director of Public Prosecutions, police were told to concentrate on certain practising paedophiles, photographers and printers of child sex magazines.
Against them the police already had a good deal of evidence thanks to their informant, an ex-City stockbroker who had been a pupil at Harrow public school and became a dealer in pornography.
It would have needed a more extensive investigation to nail the top people on the list.
The decision to limit their inquires angered detectives.
They told the Sunday People that they were concerned with the extent of the child pornography network they had discovered and the prominence of some of the people involved.
When the Sunday People first exposed the paedophile scandal six years ago evidence was lacking against men in public life.
That evidence began to surface with the Old Harrovian’s list of his 500 customers.
Some of the names on the list were pseudonyms, he told the Sunday People.
“But the real identities could have been established,” he said.
Certainly Sir Peter Hayman’s identity was easily established in the separate police investigation into the Paedophile Information Exchange.
He used the name “Peter Henderson” when he dabbled in child pornography circulated through the Exchange.
Though the police knew who he was his name never appeared in the proceedings that culminated in last week’s trial.
The Director of Public Prosecutions decided not to charge Sir Peter.
And though offensive material involving Sir Peter figures in the original charges against officers of the Paedophile Exchange, that material was not included at the trial itself.
Sir Peter’s involvement created a storm when Mr Geoffrey Dickens M.P. brought out his name in a Commons question.
In his answer the Attorney General backed the D.P.P’s decision not to prosecute Sir Peter.
But detectives who received the Old Harrovian’s list of 500 alleged paedophiles believe that prosecutions under the Protection of Children Act should be allowed to go forward without having to consult the D.P.P.
And they have recommended that a special squad of hand-picked investigators should be set up by Scotland Yard to halt the growth in child pornography.
They claim that the American Mafia was aiming to export child porn to Britain.
One of the detectives told the Sunday People: “We were alarmed because paedophiles in the States took up a new craze—sexually abusing boys, then strangling them.”
So far the Yard has not created a special child sex squad.
Mrs. Mary Whitehouse, the anti-porn campaigner, said yesterday that in dealing with the problem of combating pornography she had “come up against a blank wall, not at ministerial level but among the permanent civil service.”
The police should have more manpower, “but what is the use of that if their evidence is pushed aside?
“I think the D.P.P.’s department and the Attorney General have far too much power in their hands.”

Transcript:
SCANDALOUS: THE COVER-UP IN HIGH PLACES (Sunday People, 22nd March 1981)

There has been a scandalous cover-up in the case of Sir Peter Hayman. The powers that be, as usual, tried to protect one of their own.
No-one in authority would have raised a finger to save an ordinary man or woman from public disgrace after being found trafficking in child pornography.
Yet all along Sir Peter’s name was carefully concealed.
Neither he, nor eight others who had been corresponding about their vile “hobby” was prosecuted. In that one regard it could be claimed he was not shown favour.
But in every other respect he was given the complete V.I.P. treatment – Veiled from the Irate Public. Henderson was he name Sir Peter had used in his pornography ring. Henderson it remained throughout all the inquiries into the Paedophile Information Exchange and the court proceedings that followed.
Everyone who was investigated had to disclose his or her real name in witness statements or in giving evidence. Except for Sir Peter.
One of the witnesses in the committal proceedings spoke of nude photographs of nine and 11-year-old girls.
About one of the girls Henderson was alleged to have written: “Any dirty details about her would be much appreciated by us all.” No-one identified the man who had written that as Sir Peter Hayman.
Sir Peter is only the latest in a long list of establishment figures around whom the establishment has thrown its smokescreen.
Remember Sir Anthony Blunt; Philby, Burgess and Maclean; remember the long-hidden sexploit of our former ambassador in Moscow.
We are supposed to live in a society where, as near as humanly possible, all men and women enjoy equal protection and suffer equal penalties for their transgressions.
COVER-UPS FOR THE HIGH AND MIGHTY MAKE A MOCKERY OF JUSTICE.