Formerly Stonewall Youth Project
EXCLUSIVE: Two Survivors Allege They Were “Groomed,” Sexually Exploited By Staff at Scottish LGBT Youth Charity
REDUXX TEAM – 22 December 2022 – REDUXX
Two men who had previously accessed services at LGBT Youth Scotland as minors have come forward to speak to Reduxx about what they describe as a nightmarish involvement with the charity – one they allege involved child grooming and sexual exploitation. Sam Cowie and Daniel Nechtan, two abuse survivors, are demanding an inquiry into the organization and asking why no investigation was launched after the CEO was imprisoned for raping a baby.
LGBT Youth Scotland, formerly the Stonewall Youth Project, is known as Scotland’s national charity for “LGBTI young people.” The organization works with youth aged 13 to 25, and delivers programs to schools, organizations and businesses. The charity was founded in 1989 and renamed in 2003, the same year a notorious pedophile, James Rennie, became the Chief Executive Officer.
In 2009, Rennie was found guilty and given “lifelong restriction” orders after it was discovered he was operating what was described as Scotland’s “largest pedophile network.”
Rennie and a man named Neil Strachan were considered the ringleaders of the network, which involved at least eight other men who collectively held over 125,000 pieces of child sexual abuse materials. The ring was broken up in 2007 after a lengthy operation by Lothian and Borders police.
Other men arrested include John Murphy, a former journalist with The Gay Times; Neil Campbell, an after-school program instructor who was married with children but led a double life with a male lover; and Craig Boath, who had just applied to become a special constable with police. Neil Strachan’s much younger boyfriend, Colin Slaven, was also amongst those arrested. Slaven had been a minor when Strachan began a “relationship” with him.
As well as distributing child sexual abuse material, Rennie also sexually abused his godson over a four-year period starting when the child was just 3 months old. During court proceedings it was also uncovered that Rennie had used the e-mail handle “kplover,” standing for “kiddie porn lover,” to communicate with a sick predator in the Netherlands who described how he would like to rape, torture, and murder a child. The trial was labeled the “worst ever” abuse case in Scotland by media.
While soliciting child sexual abuse materials from other perverts, Rennie once sent an email specifically requesting media featuring “young Down’s syndrome or learning difficulty kids.”
Rennie’s accomplice, Neil Strachan, had also sexually abused an infant boy, attempting to sodomize him while being HIV positive.
While secretly operating the pedophile network, Rennie managed to become the CEO of LGBT Youth Scotland, a charity which gave him access to children as young as 13. Rennie had been a strong proponent for gay adoption, and, under his leadership, LGBT Youth Scotland lobbied the Government to allow same-sex couples to adopt children. In 2005, LGBT Youth Scotland received a Phillip Lawrence Award for community safety, and Rennie was welcomed in parliament.
Shockingly, Rennie’s sentence was reduced on appeal. He was originally ordered to serve a minimum of 13 years in jail, but this was reduced to a minimum of just eight-and-a-half years before he can apply for parole.
Questions are now being raised on social media about why the Scotland’s charity regulator never publicly investigated the organization to see if Rennie abused his power to access vulnerable children, and how Rennie’s influence may have impacted the culture of the charity.
While LGBT Youth Scotland claimed at the time that there was “no evidence” that the young people assisted by their agency were assaulted by Rennie, two survivors have now come forward to allege they were groomed and sexually abused after joining the charity as youth members…
Two ringleaders of child abuse network jailed for life
SEVERIN CARRELL – 29 October 2009 – The Guardian
Two men have been jailed for life for masterminding a child abuse conspiracy that included an “utterly appalling” attack on an infant boy and the assault of a three-month-old baby.
Neil Strachan, a convicted sex offender, was sentenced to life with a minimum of 16 years in prison while his co-accused James Rennie, once an influential youth worker, was jailed for life with a minimum of 13 years at the high court in Edinburgh today.
Both men were given “lifelong restriction” orders, using powers introduced in 2006 for the most serious and violent sexual offenders, which will place them under risk assessment and management plans until they die.
Strachan and Rennie were ringleaders of Scotland’s largest paedophile network, involving eight men who held 125,000 images and videos of child abuse. The ring was broken up in 2007 after a lengthy operation by Lothian and Borders police. Six other men have already received sentences ranging from two to 17 years.
The judge, Lord Bannatyne, said the pair were guilty of gross and appalling breaches of trust since both men had abused children entrusted to them for babysitting by close friends, and had photographed the abuse.
Strachan, 41, who is HIV-positive, had attempted to sodomise one 18-month-old boy on New Year’s eve, taking a photograph known as the “Hogmanay image”. Bannatyne said: “By its very nature, what is shown in that photograph is utterly appalling and would shock to the core any right-minded person who has had to see it.
“Over and above that, this offence involves the most gross level of breach of trust. You were invited into a house, treated as a friend of the family, and then entrusted with their child. You then breached that trust in the way shown in the ‘Hogmanay image’ in order to satisfy your base sexual interests. This, in my judgment, can be properly described as a dreadful crime.”
The judge added: “You were in my view on the evidence a central player in this dreadful crime. You were one of the principal movers in the conspiracy.”
Rennie, 38, had betrayed the parents of his victim, a three-month-old baby known as Child F who was also his godson, to a “truly appalling” extent by assaulting him over a four-year period.
Bannatyne likened Rennie, then co-ordinator of the gay rights agency LGBT Youth Scotland and a former teacher, to a spider “weaving an electronic web” to set up and then control their conspiracy….