Sex Abuse Scandals News Articles

Excerpts of key news articles on

Below are key excerpts of revealing news articles on sex abuse scandals from reliable news media sources. If any link fails to function, a paywall blocks full access, or the article is no longer available, try these digital tools.

Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news articles on dozens of engaging topics. And read excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.

Key reports detailing child sexual exploitation have disappeared from the archives, the outgoing chief executive of Rotherham Council has told MPs. Martin Kimber said he had not seen a full copy of a 2002 report, had never seen a 2003 report and only saw a 2006 report on [last] Sunday. A report published earlier this month found at least 1,400 children were abused in the town from 1997 to 2013. The council was heavily criticised by Professor Alexis Jay. In her report, Professor Jay said: "Further stark evidence came in 2002, 2003 and 2006 with three reports known to the police and the council, which could not have been clearer in their description of the situation in Rotherham." Addressing MPs, Mr Kimber said he did not know whether the archives had been destroyed, but he told the Local Government Committee: "They are not within the council's archives." Director of children's services Joyce Thacker told MPs the first two reports did not appear to have been referred to in any existing council minutes. Asked whether there had been a "deliberate attempt to suppress information", she said she could not answer. Meanwhile, Rotherham council announced plans to dissolve the cabinet and invest Ł120,000 in counselling services for victims of child sexual exploitation. Deputy leader Paul Lakin said the money would come from cutting two cabinet posts and banning overseas travel by members. The council has also approved an emergency motion calling for the Police and Crime Commissioner for South Yorkshire Shaun Wright to resign. Mr Wright ... was cabinet member for children's services in Rotherham between 2005 and 2010.

Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing sexual abuse scandals news articles from reliable major media sources.

A Home Office official who investigated the sexual exploitation of children in Rotherham accused the council of being involved in the unauthorised removal of information from her office. Her report in 2002 suggested there were then more than 270 victims of the scandal, which was finally exposed last week with revelations that at least 1,400 children were abused from 1997 to 2013. She [said] that she had sent her report to both the council and the Home Office on a Friday, but when she returned on Monday she found her office had been raided. "They'd gained access to the office and taken my data, so out of the number of filing cabinets, there was one drawer emptied and it was emptied of my data. It had to be an employee of the council," she said. The Home Office researcher, [whose name was not released], also said she had been accused of being insensitive when she told one official that most of the perpetrators were from Rotherham's Pakistani community. A female colleague talked to her about the incident. "She said you must never refer to that again – you must never refer to Asian men. And her other response was to book me on a two-day ethnicity and diversity course to raise my awareness of ethnic issues." The Home Office researcher said that at one point the council tried to get her sacked and the report was never published. A draft of the report severely criticised agencies working to tackle the child exploitation in the area, including "alleged indifference towards, and ignorance of, child sexual exploitation on the part of senior managers". It said: "Responsibility was continuously placed on young people's shoulders rather than with the suspected abusers."

Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing sexual abuse scandals news articles from reliable major media sources.

A group of Catholic and Anglican church leaders have accused the ... government of ''state-sanctioned child abuse'' in the immigration detention system, and called for Immigration Minister Scott Morrison to step down from his position as guardian for all unaccompanied minors. Leaders from nine Christian denominations, which form the Australian Churches Refugee Taskforce, [have released] a report [with] recommendations to the ... government to improve the wellbeing and treatment of children in onshore and offshore immigration detention centres. The church leaders ... say the church has learnt a painful lesson from decades of child abuse within their congregations. Reverend Peter Catt, the Anglican Dean of Brisbane said: ''We have the absolute duty to make sure the events that came out from the Royal Commission aren't repeated in any setting. Institutional child abuse occurs in many different settings and it's illegal, it's horrific and it's unacceptable.'' The recommendations in the report include ending closed detention for all unaccompanied children; providing institutional child welfare and protection; and replacing the Immigration Minister as the guardian of about 135 unaccompanied asylum seeker children who are being held in onshore and offshore centres. There are about 4330 children in immigration detention - most of them living in the community. ''The Minister forsakes his guardianship duties when he sends unaccompanied children to the detention camp in Nauru,'' says the report, titled Protecting the Lonely Children. The report said there was clear evidence that children are experiencing ''terrible physical and mental suffering''.

Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing sexual abuse scandals news articles from reliable major media sources.

A six-year-old schoolgirl has allegedly been raped by two staff members at a prominent school in the southern Indian city of Bangalore, police say. Hundreds of parents have protested outside the school, pulling down its gates and shouting slogans. Police have registered a case, but they are yet to make any arrests. India's sluggish judicial system means it can take years for victims to get justice. New Prime Minister Narendra Modi has promised a zero tolerance approach on crimes against women, but violence and discrimination against women remain deeply entrenched in society. The girl was allegedly raped by a security guard and a gym teacher, but as there are multiple guards and gym instructors in the school, police say they are trying to identify the guilty. As news of the incident became public, hundreds of parents gathered outside the school, protesting against the alleged insensitivity of the school management. Scrutiny of sexual violence in India has grown since the 2012 gang rape and murder of a student on a Delhi bus. The brutal crime led to massive outrage in the country and forced the government to introduce tougher anti-rape laws, including the death penalty in rare cases. But the law appears to have failed to act as a deterrent. Statistics from the National Crime Records Bureau for 2013 show one rape was reported every 21 minutes.

Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing sexual abuse scandals news articles from reliable major media sources.

A high-ranking friend of Cyril Smith tried to warn off police investigating claims that he had been sexually abusing boys, a report reveals. A senior detective investigating the claims against Smith said a magistrate made "veiled threats" to officers. The detective's 1970 report to the Chief Constable of Lancashire said there was "prima facie" evidence of the MP's guilt. The Director of Public Prosecution later advised against prosecuting. The 14-page report by the detective superintendent ... said that Smith would have been "at the mercy of a competent counsel", but also reported that the MP's magistrate "buddy" had warned of "unfortunate repercussions for the police force and the town of Rochdale" should he be prosecuted. Smith was interviewed by the detective superintendent, who reported to former chief constable William Palfrey that "it seems impossible to excuse [Smith's] conduct". "Over a considerable period of time, while sheltering beneath a veneer of responsibility, he has used his unique position to indulge in a series of indecent episodes with young boys towards whom he had a special responsibility," he wrote. He said Smith was "most unimpressive during my interview with him". The officer said: "He had difficulty in articulating and even the stock replies he proffered could only be obtained after repeated promptings from his solicitor. "Were he ever to be placed in the witness box, he would be at the mercy of any competent counsel. Prima facie, he appears guilty of numerous offences of indecent assault." The officer reported that he interviewed the magistrate who told him in his "personal opinion" he "sincerely hoped that this matter is not prosecuted before the court".

Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing sexual abuse news articles from reliable major media sources.

It’s a mythical number that skeptics never question. And it’s come up again and again in the national press for decades. It’s purportedly the number of victims from the infamous child sexual abuse cases of the 1980s and 1990s. Not child victims, though. The victims are said to be adults who were falsely charged and often convicted of sexual abuse, victims of a witch-hunt. Christina Hoff Sommers used the number just a few weeks ago in a Time column, referring to those cases and writing that “hundreds of innocent adults faced charges of ritual child abuse.” She was echoing a January article in Slate. The list goes back over the years. The number of accused or jailed is always impressive. But the numbers don’t add up. There’s no evidence of hundreds of cases of false convictions of child sexual abuse in this era. In my new book, The Witch-Hunt Narrative, I examine dozens of specific cases from the 1980s and early 90s that are said to be wrongful prosecutions or wrongful convictions. Looking closely at the record revealed substantial evidence of abuse and compelling reasons that jurors voted to convict. While the media publicizes sexual abuse stories about celebrities and cover-ups of abuse in the past, and repeats the mythical numbers from the witch-hunt narrative, they overlook a real number that concerns real victims - the number of children being sexually abused today.

Note: For solid evidence that rogue elements of government are involved in systematic child abuse sometimes with Satanic elements, see this excellent essay. Watch a disturbing seven-minute clip from a 1988 show of Geraldo interviewing Satanist Lt. Col. Michael Aquino and Ted Gunderson, former chief of the FBI's Los Angeles division. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing sexual abuse scandal news articles from reliable major media sources.

When Australia's Susie O'Neill claimed the gold medal at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, she dedicated her victory to Scott Volkers, the swimming coach who had taken over her training two years earlier. By this time, three women who had been Volkers' students were losing belief in themselves and the swimming community. Julie Gilbert, Kylie Rogers and Simone Boyce took the stand at the royal commission into child abuse in Sydney this week to describe their mental breakdowns, eating disorders, anxiety and isolation from a swimming hierarchy that refused to believe them or failed to explore the possibility that Volkers molested them – as girls aged 12 to 18 – in the 1980s. Volkers remained on the payroll of elite Australian swimming institutions until 2010, when he was finally forced to move to Brazil, where he still works as a leading coach. Was it Australia's win-at-all-costs swimming culture that kept him in the presence of young athletes? An exasperated Andrew Boe, the lawyer representing Gilbert, Rogers and Boyce, pointed out: "This is not an examination of whether he was a good swimming coach or not." Nor is it an examination of the guilt or innocence of Volkers – against whom charges concerning these three alleged victims were dropped in 2002 – or other swimming coaches. It is an inquiry into the institutional responses to abuse. Swimming Australia's association with Volkers [ended] in 2005, when the coach's fourth accuser came forward with claims that Volkers had groped her breasts and attempted to stimulate her vagina in the late 1990s, when she was 15. The allegations were very similar to the earlier cases.

Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing sexual abuse scandals news articles from reliable major media sources.

A former cabinet minister has said there "may well have been" a political cover-up of child sex abuse in the 1980s. Lord Tebbit told the Andrew Marr Show the culture at the time was to protect "the establishment" rather than delving "too far" into such claims. His comments come after it emerged that the Home Office could not locate 114 potentially relevant files. Current MP Keith Vaz said files had been lost "on an industrial scale". The government has rejected calls for an over-arching public inquiry into the various allegations of child abuse from that era. Lord Tebbit, who served in various ministerial roles under Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, said at the time people had an "almost unconscious" tendency to protect "the system". "And if a few things had gone wrong here and there that it was more important to protect the system than to delve too far into them," he said. "That view was wrong." Labour MP Margaret Hodge, who chairs the Public Accounts Committee, said there had been a "veil of secrecy over the establishment" for far too long. The Home Office's 2013 review found 527 potentially relevant files which it had kept, but a further 114 were missing, destroyed or "not found". Mr Vaz, chair of the Home Affairs Committee, said this represented loss of files "on an industrial scale" and it was "a huge surprise" that so much potential evidence had gone missing.

Note: The truth is gradually coming out. To learn how child sex abuse rings lead to the highest levels of government, watch this highly revealing Discovery Channel documentary.

The home of an MP who compiled a dossier alleging paedophile activity within Westminster was burgled twice in suspicious circumstances around the time he took it to the authorities, his son has said. Barry Dickens said nothing was taken in what appeared to be two "very professional" intrusions into his father Geoffrey's home in 1983, leading to suspicions they may have been related to his attempt to expose alleged abuse. He said he did not know what had happened to an apparent second copy of the dossier after the Home Office admitted one which it received for investigation at the time appeared to have been destroyed. "My parents had two burglaries at the time close to it without anything being taken, which seemed a very professional job the way they were carried out," Mr Dickens – whose father died in 1995 – [said]. He said the dossier contained concerns and worries expressed to the MP about the behaviour of ''those with a high profile, in an office or high status'' and questioned its subsequent disappearance. He said his father had been motivated to take on the cause of vulnerable young people by his own difficult childhood in a succession of foster homes and that he would be pleased that the case had become public now. Backing a public inquiry, [he] added: "A lot of people came forward with facts. I think it does need doing and finishing."

Note: See powerful evidence from a suppressed Discovery Channel documentary showing that child sexual abuse scandals reach to the highest levels of government

Rolf Harris, then a trusted and beloved entertainer, strolls into [the] shot flanked by four youngsters [in] what is now an unsettling 20-minute long anti-child-abuse video that prosecutors planned to play for the jury at Harris’ indecent assault trial. Overnight, Harris was declared guilty of all 12 charges of indecent assault against four girls, from 1968 to 1986. The video, called 'Kids Can Say No', was developed in the mid-1980s, when he was indecently assaulting young women and girls - including one as young as seven or eight. Harris had commissioned and fronted the child protection video, with endorsement from the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, after being inspired by similar programs in Australia. In the period when the video began to be widely shown in schools, youth clubs and health institutes in the United Kingdom, the court found he was also having sexual encounters with his daughter’s best friend. In 1986, he had sexually abused an eight-year-old girl at a community centre near her home when Harris performed ‘Two Little Boys’ for the children.

Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing sex abuse scandals news articles from reliable major media sources.

A former Downing Street adviser has been charged with making and possessing indecent images of children. Patrick Rock ... was involved in Government policy on filtering online child abuse images. The 63-year-old has had a glittering career as a Conservative Party adviser spanning 30 years. On Friday, he was charged with three offences of making indecent images of children and one offence of possession of 59 indecent images of children. [He] resigned shortly before his arrest in February. Mr Rock has been an influential figure behind the scenes in the Conservative Party for decades and unsuccessfully stood as an MP three times. He met David Cameron when they were fellow advisers to the then Home Secretary, Michael Howard, in the 1990s and the Prime Minister brought him into the Downing Street policy unit in 2011. Judith Reed, a senior lawyer with the Crown Prosecution Service's organised crime division, said: “We have determined that there is sufficient evidence for a realistic prospect of conviction and that a prosecution is in the public interest.” Mr Rock has been bailed to appear at Westminster Magistrates' Court on 3 July.

Note: Why is it mentioned so casually that this man was involved in setting policy on child abuse images? For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing sex abuse scandals news articles from reliable major media sources.

The Vatican's former ambassador to the Dominican Republic has been convicted by a church tribunal of sex abuse and has been defrocked, the first such sentence handed down against a top papal representative. The Vatican said [on June 27] that Monsignor Jozef Wesolowski was found guilty by the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in recent days, and sentenced to the harshest penalty possible against a cleric: laicization, meaning he can no longer perform priestly duties or present himself as a priest. He also faces other charges by the criminal tribunal of Vatican City, since as a papal diplomat he is a citizen of the tiny city state. The Holy See recalled the Polish-born Wesolowski on Aug. 21, 2013, and relieved him of his job after the archbishop of Santo Domingo, Cardinal Nicolas de Jesus Lopez, told Pope Francis about rumors that Wesolowski had sexually abused teenage boys in the Dominican Republic. Wesolowski is the highest-ranking Vatican official to be investigated for alleged sex abuse, and his case raised questions about whether the Vatican, by removing him from Dominican jurisdiction, was protecting him and placing its own investigations ahead of that of authorities in the Caribbean nation. The case is particularly problematic for the Vatican since Wesolowski was a representative of the pope, accused of grave crimes that the Holy See has previously sought to distance itself from by blaming the worldwide sex abuse scandal on wayward priests and their bishops who failed to discipline them, not Vatican officials.

Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing sex abuse scandals news articles from reliable major media sources.

Detainees wrested from sleep every 30 minutes, the lights in their frigid cells never turned off. One detainee told by officials, don't lie or you'll be raped. Another detainee sexually abused by guards. Detainees forced to stand in stress positions. Others denied adequate food, water, and medical treatment and held in dehumanizing conditions. "Welcome to hell," one guard told a detainee, a good metaphor for what occurs across these sites of torment. These incidents don't come from military prisons in Iraq or Afghanistan or CIA black sites. This has been happening for years along the Southwest border in U.S. government facilities run by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and its Border Patrol. The victims: children, some as young as infants. Government agencies have known about these abuses for a long time, but [have] failed to take action. One in four detained children reported physical abuse at the hands of CBP, including sexual assaults and beatings. More than half reported verbal abuse, including racist and sexist insults and even death threats, as well as the denial of urgent medical care. Seven out of ten interviewed reported detentions lasting longer than the 72-hour period mandated by law. Three out of ten children reported that their belongings were confiscated and never returned. Many others reported being shackled during transport, the metal restraints excruciatingly digging into their wrists and ankles. Eighty percent reported CBP personnel denied them adequate food and water. The tolerance of child abuse by federal authorities violates our laws and our values -- it is both inhumane and immoral. Now is the time to put an end to it.

Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing sexual abuse scandals news articles from reliable major media sources.

The discovery of a grave containing the remains of as many as 800 babies at a former home for unmarried mothers in Ireland is yet another problem for the Irish Catholic Church. The mother and baby home at Tuam in County Galway was run by the nuns of the Sisters of Bon Secours and operated between 1925 and 1961. It took in thousands of women who had committed the “mortal sin” of unwed pregnancy, delivered their babies and was charged with caring for them. But unsanitary conditions, poor food and a lack of medical care led to shockingly high rates of infant mortality. Babies’ bodies were deposited in a former sewage tank. Sadly, the mass grave at Tuam is probably not unique. Tuam was only one of a dozen mother and baby homes in Ireland in the years after the Second World War, all of which treated their inmates in a similar fashion. During 10 years of research into the Catholic Church’s treatment of “fallen women” — [a] book, Philomena: A Mother, Her Son, and a Fifty-Year Search, later turned into a feature film starring Dame Judi Dench — [revealed] that the girls were refused medical attention, including painkillers, during even the most difficult births; the nuns told them the pain was the penance they must pay for their sin. Philomena and thousands like her were forced to look after their babies for up to four years, bonding with them before they were taken away to be adopted. Many went to families in the United States in return for substantial “donations”; lack of proper vetting meant some were handed over to abusive parents.

Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on child abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.

Hundreds of people have contacted the FBI about a teacher suspected of drugging and molesting boys during a four-decade career at international schools on four continents, greatly expanding the potential number of suspected victims. The FBI said last month that William Vahey had molested at least 90 boys, whose photos were found on a memory drive stolen by his maid. Vahey killed himself at age 64 after evidence of molestation was found. He was one of the most beloved teachers in the world of international schools that serve the children of diplomats, well-off Americans and local elites. The discovery of his molestation has set off a crisis in the community of international schools, where parents are being told their children may have been victims, and administrators are scurrying to close loopholes exposed by Vahey's abuses. There were decades of missed opportunities to expose Vahey, starting with an early California sex-abuse conviction that didn't prevent him taking a series of jobs exposing him to children. Vahey began his international teaching career at the American School in Tehran, the first in a series of stays around the Middle East and Europe. He taught history, social studies and related subjects in Lebanon, Spain, Iran, Greece, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia, almost always to middle school students. In addition to teaching, he coached basketball and led school trips to Bahrain, Turkey and Africa.

Note: If you are ready to see how investigations into a massive child sex abuse ring have led to the highest levels of government, watch the suppressed Discovery Channel documentary "Conspiracy of Silence," available here. For more on sexual abuse scandals, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.

The CDC estimates that 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys are sexually abused before the age of 18. Worldwide 550 million children are survivors of child abuse according to the Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reports that there are currently 617,000 registered sex offenders in the United States, and typically 100,000 of those are unaccounted for. Other pedophiles are not on records or in databases. Research has shown that an average victim of child sex abuse has to tell at least seven adults before being believed. According to the Journal for the American Medical Association only 1 in 20 cases of child abuse are reported. It is critically important that every parent and adult responsible for the care of a child educate and empower themselves with the knowledge to stop predators. If we work together we can stop the stolen innocence of our children and that of others by spending a few hours educating ourselves. There is no greater tragedy than to live a life plagued by the shattered hopes and dreams of a vandalized childhood. To learn more about the education and prevention of child abuse go to the following websites: Joyful Heart Foundation, Childhelp, Stop Abusing Your Children and Arrow Child and Family Ministries.

Note: For more on what is being done to fight against the sexual abuse of children, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.

In 2009, when Robert H Richard IV, an unemployed heir to the DuPont family fortune, pled guilty to fourth-degree rape of his three-year-old daughter, a judge spared him a justifiable sentence – indeed, only put Richard on probation – because she figured this 1-percenter would "not fare well" in a prison setting. Richard’s ex-wife filed a new lawsuit accusing him of also sexually abusing their son. Since then, the original verdict has been fueling some angry speculation ... that the defendant's wealth and status may have played a role in his lenient sentencing. Inequality defines our criminal justice system just as it defines our society. It always has and it always will until we do something about it. America incarcerates more people than any other country on the planet, with over 2m currently in prison and more than 7m under some form of correctional supervision. More than 60% are racial and ethnic minorities, and the vast majority are poor. There is an abundance of evidence ... that both conscious and unconscious bias permeate every aspect of the criminal justice system, from arrests to sentencing and beyond. Unsurprisingly, this bias works in favor of wealthy (and white) defendants, while poor minorities routinely suffer. In August of last year the Sentencing Project, a non-profit devoted to criminal justice reform, released a comprehensive report on bias in the system. This is the sentence you need to remember: "The United States in effect operates two distinct criminal justice systems: one for wealthy people and another for poor people and minorities."

Note: For more on systemic injustice within the US prison/industrial complex, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.

Italy's bishops have adopted a policy, with backing from the Vatican, that states they are not obliged to inform police officers if they suspect a child has been molested. The Italian Bishops' Conference said the guidelines ... reflected suggestions from the Vatican's office that handles sex abuse investigations. Victims have denounced how bishops systematically covered up abuse by moving priests while keeping prosecutors in the dark. Only in 2010 did the Vatican instruct bishops to report abuse to police — but only where required by law. [The] guidelines cite a 1985 treaty between the Vatican and Italy stipulating that clergy aren't obliged to tell magistrates about information obtained through their religious ministry. The guidelines remind bishops, however, they have a ''moral duty“ to contribute to the common good. The ruling comes less than a week after Pope Francis appointed a former child victim as one of the first members of a new commission to help the Catholic Church put an end to clerical sexual abuse. A UN report published in March blasted what it called the Vatican's code of silence" around abusive priests. UN children's rights experts estimate "tens of thousands of children worldwide" have been sexually abused by predatory clerics as a result of moving, rather than reporting, paedophiles.

Note: For more on sexual abuse scandals, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.

Prompted by publicity surrounding recent child abuse scandals involving well-known figures, dozens of British men are breaking decades of silence about molestation they say they suffered as boys at expensive private schools, forcing the schools to confront allegations that in the past might have been hushed up, ignored or treated derisively. In one instance involving Aldwickbury School, which educates boys ages 4 to 13, a former student, who requested anonymity because of the intimate details of the case, said he suffered profound feelings of confusion and guilt after being abused by a teacher in the 1970s. He said the teacher molested him regularly during English lessons over a period of two years. The former Aldwickbury student is one of dozens of people who have come forward. Last month, a former headmaster of Caldicott, a school in Buckinghamshire attended by Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, was jailed for past child abuse offenses. The former headmaster, Roland Peter Wright, now 83, was convicted of abusing students 8 to 13 from 1959 to 1970. Other schools facing compensation claims include Ashdown House, which has educated, among others, the queen’s nephew, Viscount Linley. Most of these claims are directed at Britain’s preparatory schools, which typically admit children 4 to 13, with students living at the school starting at 7 or 8. The very nature of boarding schools — closed environments in which teachers can wield enormous power — can make them attractive to child abusers.

Note: For more on sexual abuse scandals, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.

A top judge campaigned to support a paedophile group that tried to legalise sex with children, a newspaper claims. The Mail on Sunday said Lord Justice Fulford was a founder member of a campaign to defend the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE). The judge told the BBC he had "no memory" of this, but had in the 1970s been involved with a civil liberties group to which PIE was affiliated. He said he had never supported PIE and child abuse was "wholly wrong". The Daily Mail has run a series of articles questioning the links between PIE and civil liberties group the National Council for Civil Liberties during the 1970s and early 1980s. PIE had called for greater tolerance and paedophile "rights" and campaigned for a lowering of the age of consent to 10. Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman, her husband and fellow Labour MP Jack Dromey and former Labour health secretary Patricia Hewitt were all prominent figures in the NCCL, which granted PIE affiliate status in 1975. Ms Hewitt has apologised for having "got it wrong", while Mr Dromey has accused the Daily Mail of "dirty, gutter journalism". Ms Harman has said she "regrets" the links between the two groups but she has "nothing to apologise for". The Mail on Sunday said its investigation had found that Lord Justice Fulford, a member of the Privy Council, was a founder member of a campaign set up to defend PIE against criminal charges.

Note: If you are ready to see how investigations into a massive child sex abuse ring have led to the highest levels of government, watch the suppressed Discovery Channel documentary "Conspiracy of Silence," available here. For more on sexual abuse scandals, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.

Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.