The patron of a defunct LGBT charity, which encouraged children to question the gender binary, has been charged with multiple counts of child sex abuse. The Telegraph has more.
Stephen Ireland, 40, is facing a total of 37 charges, including rape of a child under 13, six counts of making indecent photographs of children and two counts of causing a child to engage in sexual activity.
For 15 of the alleged offences, the founder of Pride in Surrey was jointly charged alongside David Sutton, 26.
Ireland was listed as a director for Pride in Surrey until June of this year, while Sutton was a former volunteer for the charity, according to Mail Online.
Sutton, who, like Ireland, is from Addlestone, Surrey, was also charged with seven further offences, including three counts of making indecent photographs of children.
The multiple offences, which the pair were formally charged with at Staines Magistrates’ Court on Thursday, date from August 2022 to last month.
They were both remanded in custody to appear at Guildford Crown Court on September 12.
One of Ireland’s social media accounts describes him as a patron of charity Educate and Celebrate, which claimed to equip and empower “school communities to tackle and reduce homophobia, biphobia and transphobia”.
The charity ran Pride workshops for primary and secondary school pupils, which included “How to break the binary and be gender inclusive”, according to its former website.
However, the organisation, which shut down earlier this year, came under fire for a number of controversies before its closure.
In 2022 trans woman Jordan Gray, a patron of the charity, prompted nearly 1,500 Ofcom complaints when the performer stripped-off during a live Channel 4 show before appearing to play a piano with their penis.
The comedian had previously described going into schools to “talk about gender” on behalf of Educate and Celebrate, adding that “toddlers kind of get it straight away”.
However, the defunct charity removed the performer as a patron following the skit and went on to say in a statement that Gray had “never gone into schools” on its behalf nor had been asked to carry out work for the organisation.
Dr Elly Barnes, the charity’s founder, had previously advised teachers that it is permissible not to tell parents if a pupil declares themselves to be transgender and also said that terms such as “boys”, “girls”, “son” and “mother” should be replaced with the gender-neutral words “pupils”, “students”, “child” and “parent”.
Last year, Educate & Celebrate was asked to remove references to Ofsted on its website following a demand to do so from the school inspectorate.
The charity had been listed as an Ofsted-recognised “best practice” programme on multiple primary school websites.
However, a spokesperson for the watchdog confirmed it did not not endorse any resource providers.
Worth reading in full.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.