Theresa May has promised an investigation. Wikimedia, CC The British government has announced it will conduct a series of investigations into allegations that as many as 20 senior British figures — including politicians at cabinet level — were involved in, or turned a blind eye to, the sexual abuse of children, The Guardian reports.

Home Secretary Theresa May told the House of Commons there would be two main areas of inquiry: Who, exactly, within the governments of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s may have abused young boys who had been taken into care by social services? And why were documents detailing those allegations lost by the Home Office back in the 1980s?

Britain is already reeling from a series of pedophilia cases that came out of the BBC in recent years, in which huge TV celebrities like the DJ Jimmy Savile and the children's entertainer Rolf Harris have been revealed as serial child abusers.

Now, it's getting worse, according to Peter McKelvie, a child protection manager in the Hereford and Worcester area whose work has previously resulted in the conviction of pedophiles. He told the BBC:

Peter McKelvie, whose allegations led initially to a 2012 police inquiry, said a "powerful elite" of pedophiles carried out "the worst form" of abuse.

"I would say we are looking at upwards of 20 (people) and a much larger number of people who have known about it and done nothing about it, who were in a position to do something about it," he said.

Mr McKelvie said some of those who were alleged to have abused children had now died.

He told the BBC he had spoken to victims over "many, many years" and that children - "almost exclusively boys" - were moved around like "lumps of meat".

They had been subjected to the "worst form of abuse", including rape, he said.

It gets even worse than that. In the 1970s, the government appears to have funded with taxpayers' money a lobby group for child abusers, the "Pedophile Information Exchange" (PIE). The Telegraph reports:

In the 1970s the Voluntary Services Unit, part of the Home Office, gave £65,750 to the Albany Trust, an organisation which provides counselling and support to lesbian, gay and transgender people.

According to the report, in December 1975 the Albany Trust invited members of PIE to a series of meetings about the need for a support group for paedophiles.

The meeting also recommended the publication of an information pamphlet about pedophilia targeted at professionals, parents and the general public.

The trust initially backed the pamphlet but withdrew its support after criticism by Mary Whitehouse, the [public morals] campaigner. The trust also arranged the translation of a Dutch government report calling for the age of consent to be lowered to 16.

A further £410,000 was given to the Princedale Trust between 1974 and 1984 to support Release, an charity which provides advice on drug use and laws. The charity shared the same address as PIE.

And, yes, there is still worse to come. The Telegraph reports that a former Conservative MP told the BBC back in 1995 that the party would help cover-up for members of parliament who had been caught committing acts "involving small boys" in return for their political cooperation on legislation they might otherwise have challenged:

“It might be debt, it might be… a scandal involving small boys, or any kind of scandal in which, erm er, a member seemed likely to be mixed up in, they’d come and ask if we could help and if we could, we did."

A lot of very important people within the British ruling class are now going to be very, very afraid. Here's who McKelvie says he believes will be affected by the investigations, per the Times:

“We are looking at the Lords, we are looking at the Commons, we are looking at the judiciary, we are looking at all institutions where there will be a small percentage of paedophiles and a slightly larger percentage of people who have known about it but have felt that in terms of their own self-interest and self-preservation and for political party reasons it’s been safer for them to cover it up rather than deal with it.

One lone voice is calling for calm. There is something of a witchhunt tone in British political life right now, according to former treasury secretary David Mellor:

Quite how this innocuous tale became the scandalous allegations and innuendos we have been hearing in recent days beggars belief. There is no evidence whatsoever that [MP Geoffrey Dickens, who prepared a dossier on child abusers among U.K. politicians which was lost in the early 1980s] was remotely dismayed by the way his dossier was treated, so why are so many other people anxious to be more Catholic than the Pope?