Government 'gave money to child sex ring in 70s'

Government 'gave money to child sex ring in 70s' : Home Office has ordered an investigation into shocking allegations

    Government allegedly gave tens of thousands of pounds to Paedophile Information Exchange, which openly campaigned to legalise child sex
    Extraordinary move triggered by Permanent Secretary Mark Sedwill
    Labour MP Tom Watson says retired Home Office employee told him he had raised concerns in 70s about funding, but was warned to drop matter

By Martin Beckford  7 December 2013


The head of the Home Office has ordered an investigation into shocking allegations that the Government gave tens of thousands of pounds to a notorious paedophile group.

Civil servants are trawling through decades’ worth of files to look for any evidence that the Home Office once funded the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE), which openly campaigned to legalise child sex.

The extraordinary move has been triggered by Permanent Secretary Mark Sedwill following claims by an ‘insider’ that the Voluntary Services Unit (VSU), which gave annual grants totalling thousands of pounds to charities, had provided financial assistance to the network of abusers.

Labour MP Tom Watson says a retired Home Office employee told him he had raised concerns in the 1970s about the funding, but was warned to drop the matter....

PIE was formed in the early 1970s and openly called for the age of consent to be lowered to four, despite public outrage. In 1976 morality campaigner Mary Whitehouse accused a gay charity that did receive Government grants, the Albany Trust, of helping fund PIE, but this was denied at the time.

A one time chairman of PIE, Steven Smith, worked as a heating and lighting engineer at the Home Office’s headquarters in Whitehall until he was exposed by a Sunday newspaper in 1982. He went on the run but was jailed for possessing 3,000 drawings of child abuse two years ago....
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2520083/Probe-claims-government-gave-money-child-sex-ring-70s.html