The most famous sexual offender in modern Britain is almost certainly Ian Brady, Myra Hindley or Peter Sutcliffe.

When they met, in the early nineteen-fifties, Brady told Myra Hindley of his interest in the Marquis de Sade and sexual perversion. Hindley became more and more emotionally involved. A short time after she became a willing partner in the murder of a twelve-year-old boy and a ten-year-old girl, both of whose bodies were discovered on the moors above Saddleworth. Photographs were discovered of the girl and Brady in obscene poses; the girl had been tortured and a tape-recording had been made of her screams.

There is some suspicion that other children missing in the area may have been killed by Brady and Hindley. A third known victim was a youth of seventeen, killed with an axe. Some people have pointed to Brady's liking for pornography as a reason why such material should be banned; others, perhaps more persuasively, have noted that Brady had a reputation for sadism as a child, long before he gained access to erotic literature. Myra Hindley has stayed in the news, partly because she was later befriended by Lord Longford, partly through an abortive prison escape attempt in March 1974.

Peter Sutcliffe, known as the Yorkshire Ripper for the extreme and brutal violence with which his victims met their fate, was arrested in 1980. The full grisly details of his horrendous crimes were never made public. He claimed he had been instructed by God to murder women.