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Caged child abuser Charles Napier faces a grilling by detectives who believe he could help expose a network of VIP paedophiles with links to Westminster.

Officers probing claims that span decades think the former teacher – jailed last week for abusing 23 boys – can name Establishment figures including peers, Government ministers, ­civil servants and police.

Napier, 67, was treasurer of the twisted Paedophile Information Exchange, which ­campaigned on behalf of ­paedophiles in the 1970s and 1980s and ­argued that the age of consent should be lowered to FOUR.

Dossiers compiled by ­campaigning MP Geoffrey Dickens and handed to former Home Secretary Leon Brittan in the 1980s were said to contain damning ­evidence about the group.

The allegations now form a key part of the large-scale Scotland Yard probe, which includes claims three young boys were murdered by a powerful VIP network.

A source close to the ­investigation said: “Now that he has been jailed police are going to want to talk to him again.

“He was treasurer of the PIE. That means he would know the names of a lot of the people ­involved. He must have more to tell the police.”

Napier was sentenced to 13 years for sex attacks on 23 boys between 1967 and 1983. The pervert ­admitted 30 indecent assault ­charges and one offence of ­indecency against a child.

Several high-profile abusers are thought have been members of PIE, including Peter Righton and former spy Geoffrey Prime.

The late Labour politician Barbara Castle is said to have named members of the group in a dossier seized by Special Branch in the 1980s amid allegations of a cover-up.

The Met Police are now trying to find the missing files and those compiled by Mr Dickens.

Officers recently revealed there are now 18 separate operations probing ­historic ­allegations in the 70s and 80s – and campaigners believe Napier would have had a full list of those ­involved with PIE.

Whistleblower Peter McKelvie, a former local authority child protection chief who has been fighting to bring abusers to ­justice, said: “Napier is an evil, calculating, ­manipulative paedophile.

"The charges he was found guilty on were the tip of the iceberg.

“In 1993 I spoke to three victims who refused to give evidence.

“One told me very convincingly that Napier took him to parties where he was introduced to the rich and famous and that Righton was involved in all these activities.”

Mr McKelvie believes Napier – who has said he regrets his actions – should now come clean about everything he knows.

He added: “I don’t believe he has shown one iota of remorse in an adulthood dedicated to the ruthless pursuit of vulnerable children purely to abuse sexually.

“As a test of his newfound ­‘remorse’, he can share all the names of the rich and ­famous who ­attended the parties that his victims ­referred to.

“As PIE treasurer in its peak period of membership in the mid-1970s, Napier holds the key to the identity of hundreds of dangerous abusers who continued to abuse thousands of children over many decades.

“He can now pass all this ­to ­police as testament to his newfound regret and remorse.”

The Sunday People was the first newspaper to track down Napier, who is the half-brother of Conservative MP John Whittingdale. He was found in picturesque Sherborne, Dorset.

After we passed our ­information to police, Napier was arrested as part of Operation Cayacos – an offshoot of Fairbank, which was set up to investigate allegations of ­historical child abuse.

At the time of our probe we spoke to respected author and journalist Francis Wheen, a former pupil at the boarding school Napier taught at.

The 57-year-old said: “He ­recruited a few of us, saying ‘Spend more time in the gym’ and appointed himself gym ­master.

"There was a room off the gym and that ­became his haunt. Four or five of us started going down there, vaulting over horses and things like that, in our gym shorts in all our innocence.

“At the end of it he would take us into his room off the gym and give us beer and cigarettes – ­bottles of Mackeson’s and Senior Service untipped.

“We thought this was ­all ­terrifically exciting. Here we were, 11 years old, being given beer and fags. We were thinking that he was on our side, not like any of the other masters.

“Of course, this was for an ulterior purpose, which very soon became clear when he stuck his hand down my gym shorts and I had to sort of fight him off.”

Sick Napier then revealed his ­technique for grooming the youngsters by trying to humiliate him.

Mr Wheen said: “He said ‘Don’t be such a baby’ and said I wasn’t grown-up enough for that sort of thing.

“He would point to a couple of other boys, saying ‘They let me do it, you just won’t let me because you’re so babyish’.

“I think he was hoping I’d say ‘No, I’m as grown up as them’ and let him get on with it but I didn’t.

“It meant I was excluded from his ‘charmed circle’ but by then I knew where he kept his beer and cigarettes.

“I used to break into his room, steal them and then go and sit in the woods.”

Mr Wheen visited Southwark Crown Court last week to see Napier sentenced.

He described the jail term as “a signal the judge was giving – these things will be pursued now, even if it’s 46 years later don’t think you’ve got away with it”.

(Image: Nick Cunard/Writer Pictures)

Mr Wheen admitted there had been times before the sentence when he almost felt pity for the pervert – but those feelings quickly evaporated.

He said: “I am glad that it’s been done.

“I’m glad that it’s happened after all these years.

“I thought in the last year or two, ‘Well, he’s getting quite old, maybe it wasn’t that serious,’ feeling a tiny bit of pity occasionally.

“But I don’t feel that now, hearing as we’ve heard about the sheer extent of what he was doing right under our noses while I was at school with all these other boys.

“We just had no idea of the scale of what he was doing and how damaged some of them were by what he did.

“Any element of pity ­disappeared fairly quickly.”