North London: Youth worker Roger Moody was a proud paedophile

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, youth worker Roger Moody called for the age of consent to be abolished, even writing a book bemoaning "simplistic and bigoted” attitudes towards paedophiles.

But press cuttings from the late 1980s and early 1990s show he was still managing to get jobs working with children.  

Earlier this month, the Islington Gazette interviewed a Met Police officer who said he was abused by Moody in the 1990s and recalled him being a volunteer at an Islington adventure playground.

In 2020, that officer was one of two people to approach the Islington Survivors Network (ISN) and report historic abuse by Moody.

Others made allegations decades earlier, but Moody was acquitted at trial.

Moody died in 2022.

The Gazette interviewed a Met Police officer who said he encountered Roger Moody as a direct result of neglect at the former Highbury Crescent children's home (Image: Charles Thomson)

"Boy-lover"

Roger Moody was a left-wing activist, campaigning against human rights abuses in the developing world.

In 1971, he even wrote for the Islington Gazette from Bangladesh, where he was delivering aid.

He lived in Caledonian Road at the time and was a “youth worker” in the Bemerton Adventure Playground in Copenhagen Street, Barnsbury.

But in 1975, when Moody outed himself as a paedophile, that should surely have spelled the end of his work with children.

He outed himself in a letter to Peace News, later calling it "the first confessional article by a boy-lover to appear in the British radical press".

In a follow-up, he claimed sex only occurred between children and paedophiles "because the kids really want it".

Alarmingly, the address he gave in those letters – in Dartmouth Park Hill, Kentish Town – was also the exact address of a “children’s community centre”.

Roger Moody as a young man, known at the time for his left-wing activism (Image: University of Bradford, Special Collections)

Trial

In 1978, Moody was charged with child sex offences.

He was acquitted in 1979 at the Old Bailey after the judge banned the jury from seeing his pro-paedophile articles.

In one, he had called on paedophiles to adopt "revolutionary" tactics against their "repression".

"Specifically, this means we don't work to lower the age of consent, but to abolish it," it said.

Ten days after his acquittal, he was arrested again after being seen hand-in-hand with a ten-year-old boy.

No charges followed.

Roger Moody rote a book titled 'Indecent Assault', described on the jacket as 'a defence of paedophilia' (Image: Charles Thomson)

"Indecent Assault"

In 1980, Moody wrote a book called Indecent Assault, described on its jacket as "a defence of paedophilia".

"I defend the rights of children to make mutual physical relationships with people of any age," he wrote, describing young boys as "provocateurs".

He even dedicated the book to "the boys", writing: "By the time they are full grown, I trust that most of what this work describes will have become redundant ritual".

In 1986, he wrote a chapter for another pro-paedophile book - "The Betrayal of Youth" by Warren Middleton, a former vice-chairman of the Paedophile Information Exchange.

He called his chapter: "Ends and Means: How to Make Paedophilia Acceptable”.

"The Dodger”

Despite his pro-paedophile advocacy, Moody continued finding work with kids.

In 1989, the Chelsea News and General Advertiser reported that he had just quit his job as a “youth worker” with the North Kensington Amenity Trust.

Now known as the Westway Trust, it was set up in partnership with the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.

“All employment matters would have been handled by the charity, not the local authority,” said Westway.

The trust does not hold staff records back to the 1980s, but said: “We have no reason to believe that all checks would not have been in line with requirements at the time.”

Roger Moody wrote to the Islington Gazette in 1991, saying he had recently been working in schools (Image: Newsquest)

A 1991 letter from Moody to the Islington Gazette, bemoaning "falling standards" in schools, revealed another job with children.

"As a youth worker who until recently worked in a school-based youth project, I was very disturbed to read your report," he wrote, giving his address as Liverpool Road.

It was at around this time that the Met Police officer interviewed by the Gazette recalled Moody also volunteering in an Islington play park.

Islington Council said it had found no records of Moody being a past employee.

Moody's death last year provoked tributes from academics and human rights campaigners, seemingly unaware of his murky past.

Among those who wrote eulogies was Thomas O'Carroll, former chairman of Paedophile Information Exchange.

He titled his: "Rodger the Dodger, who beat the rap".

The Islington Survivors Network can be reached on 0300 302 0930 or by emailing islingtonsn@gmail.com.