One
of Britain’s most senior judges actively campaigned to support a vile
paedophile group that tried to legalise sex with children, The Mail on
Sunday can reveal.
Lord
Justice Fulford, named last year as an adviser to the Queen, was a key
backer of the notorious Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) which
police suspect of abusing children on an ‘industrial scale’.
An
investigation by the Mail on Sunday has discovered that Fulford was a
founder member of a campaign to defend PIE while it was openly calling
for the age of consent to be lowered to just four.
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Implicated: Lord Justice Fulford, pictured in his full legal regalia, was named last year as an adviser to the Queen
It can also be revealed that the Appeal Court judge and Privy Counsellor:
- Planned
demonstrations outside courts where defendants – described by
prosecutors as ‘sick’ and a ‘force for evil’ – were on trial.
- Wrote
an article claiming PIE, now under investigation in the wake of the
Jimmy Savile scandal, was merely a way for paedophiles to ‘make friends
and offer each other mutual support’.
- Sought help with the campaign from future Labour Minister Patricia Hewitt, then in charge of a controversial civil rights group.
- Attended
meetings to discuss tactics with PIE chairman Tom O’Carroll, who has
since been jailed for possessing thousands of pictures of naked
children.
- Was praised by the paedophile group for coming to its defence.
Fulford
was a founder member of an organisation called Conspiracy Against
Public Morals set up to defend PIE leaders facing criminal charges.
It
later published a sickening pamphlet claiming that children would be
freed from the oppression of the state and their parents if they were
allowed to have sex with adults.
The 60-page document, unearthed by The Mail on Sunday, is adorned with disturbing child-like pictures and sexual cartoons.
At the time the organisation went under a slightly different name but had the same postal address as Fulford’s group had.
When
asked last night about his involvement in the group, Fulford said: ‘I
have no memory of having been involved with its foundation or the detail
of the work of this campaign.’
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He
added that any contribution he made would have been in general terms
against a law banning ‘conspiracy to corrupt public morals’ which he
believed ‘could be used against a wide variety of people in potentially
inappropriate ways’.
‘I have always been deeply opposed to paedophilia and I never supported the views of the PIE,’ he added.
Fulford is the most senior public figure to be implicated in the work of PIE.
Today’s
revelations follow controversy over the roles of Labour grandees
Patricia Hewitt, Harriet Harman and her husband Jack Dromey, who were
all involved in the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL) when it
counted paedophile activists among its members.
Last
night Fulford said: ‘On reflection the NCCL gay rights committee should
never have allowed members of PIE to attend any of its meetings.
'I
am very sorry for what happened. I have never espoused or in any way
supported the objectives of PIE – the abuse of children – which I
consider wholly wrong’.
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Nonetheless, the revelations are likely to raise questions about what vetting he underwent during his career.
However
Fulford insisted ‘There was nothing to report to the Lord Chancellor’s
department... at the time of my various appointments.’
The revelations also prompted fresh
calls for a full investigation of the links between the Establishment
and paedophile groups, following long-running allegations of cover-ups.
Scotland
Yard is already looking into PIE as part of Operation Fernbridge, its
probe into allegations of a child sex ring involving senior politicians
at a south London guest house.
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As
The Mail on Sunday revealed last year, the Home Office is also carrying
out urgent checks into a whistle-blower’s claims that taxpayers’ money
was handed to PIE.
Labour
MP Tom Watson said: ‘Today’s revelations reinforce the argument that
there should be a full investigation into the role of PIE.
'It’s incredible that someone of such distinguished legal authority could misunderstand the need to protect children.’
Tory
MP Sir Paul Beresford added: ‘I find it staggering. It wasn’t a clever
or appropriate campaign. They were a paedophile group and at the end of
the chain were little children’.’
Peter
Saunders of the National Association for People Abused in Childhood,
said it was ‘more than alarming’ that anyone in the judiciary could be
linked to PIE.
Fulford,
now 61, is the most senior public figure to be exposed as an apologist
for paedophiles among Left-wing political groups of the 1970s and 1980s.
He has enjoyed a stellar rise through the legal profession, becoming a QC in 1994 and a part-time judge the following year.
In
2002 he became the first openly gay High Court judge, being nominated
for a knighthood by Tony Blair, and in 2003 took up a prestigious role
at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
Last
year he was nominated as an Appeal Court judge by David Cameron and
appointed to the Privy Council, the elite group of senior politicians,
judges and clergy who advise the Queen on constitutional matters.
Back
in the late 1970s he was a newly qualified Left-wing barrister when he
joined the NCCL, now known as Liberty, which had links to known
paedophile groups and attempted to lower the age of consent to 14 and
water down child pornography laws
Fulford’s
involvement with the radical movement to legalise child sex goes even
further than that of the Labour Ministers, documents uncovered by The
Mail on Sunday show.
He
personally set up a group to support the ‘executive committee’ of PIE
in the summer of 1979, after they had their homes raided by police.
Images
of child abuse and group literature were seized and five leaders,
including chairman O’Carroll, were charged with the rare offence of
‘conspiracy to corrupt public morals’.
Fulford
and his colleagues called the organisation the Conspiracy Against
Public Morals (CAPM), and it went on to distribute leaflets calling for
the PIE ‘show trial’ to be dropped, and held protests outside
courtrooms.
In
October 1979 Fulford wrote a full-page article in gay rights magazine
Broadsheet, in which he was described as ‘the founder’ of the PIE
support group.
He
claimed that classified adverts placed by PIE members, which led to the
trial, were ‘simply to enable paedophiles to make friends and offer
each other mutual support’ rather than to contact children or exchange
banned images.
A
leaflet distributed by CAPM and available through PIE’s mailing list
went further, claiming: ‘This is a trumped-up charge designed to silence
a group merely because it is unpopular with the guardians of public
morality.’
And the prosecution was condemned as ‘an attack on PIE’s right to freedom of speech and freedom of association’.
A
longer briefing note put together by the CAPM called the paedophiles a
‘minority group ripe for bashing’ because they were open about their
aims.
In
1980, a Marxist collective used the almost identical name, Campaign
Against Public Morals, and the same Central London PO Box address as
Fulford’s group to publish a 60-page diatribe that called for the age of
consent to be scrapped ‘for the liberation of children’.
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The revelations follow controversy over the
roles of Labour grandees Patricia Hewitt, left, and Harriet Harman, who
were all involved in the National Council for Civil Liberties when it
counted paedophile activists among its members
Fulford successfully proposed a
motion at the August 1979 conference of an established gay rights group,
the Campaign for Homosexual Equality, that it should affiliate itself
to his new group and also call for the PIE leaders to be cleared.
His actions were praised in the
paedophiles’ in-house journal, Magpie, which declared: ‘No longer alone –
new group to support PIE’ and said they ‘owed much to a speech by
barrister Adrian Fulford, which Gay News declared to be the best made at
the conference.’
The
following month the CAPM held its third meeting at which Fulford and
O’Carroll himself were present, as well as several members of the NCCL
gay rights committee.
Minutes
of the gathering show that they discussed picketing the magistrates
court where the PIE defendants appeared and state ‘Adrian’ would ‘ask
Patricia Hewitt about the possibilities of using NCCL’s number to take
messages’.
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Probe: Labour MP Tom Watson said there should be a full investigation into the role of PIE
Records
show PIE leader O’Carroll – who was jailed for two years in 1981 – was a
member of the gay rights committee at the same time as Fulford.
The
paedophile group was often discussed at the gay rights committee’s
meetings, and O’Carroll was given its support as he came under
increasing public pressure.
Last
night, Fulford admitted he attended meetings of the NCCL gay rights
committee when O’Carroll was there, but added that his presence ‘left me
feeling extremely uncomfortable’.
He
added: ‘In the main, I provided some legal advice in the context of
general civil liberties objections to the wide-ranging charge of
conspiracy to corrupt public morals.’ And he stated that he has never
wanted the age of consent to be lower than it is now.
PIE
folded in 1984 after the arrest of several more leading figures,
including one – Steven Adrian Smith – who had worked at the Home
Office.
Miss
Hewitt, Miss Harman and Mr Dromey have now expressed regret for the
paedophile activists involvement with the NCCL, while insisting they
never condoned child sex and that PIE did not influence their policies.
However
archive material shows the NCCL’s Nettie Pollard actually invited PIE
to become an affiliate group in 1975, offering them the chance to
propose motions and take votes at its conferences.
Last
night, Fulford said: ‘On reflection, the NCCL gay rights committee
should never have allowed members of PIE to attend any of its meetings
and a clear separation should have been created with the two
organisations.’
- Additional reporting: Stephen Johns, Paul Cahalan and Peter Henn
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