UK: Prominent LGBT Activist Raped 12-Year-Old Boy, Court Hears

By Anna Slatz

A court has heard that a prominent LGBT activist from Surrey, UK, raped a 12 year old boy after inviting him over to smoke marijuana. Stephen Ireland, who founded Pride in Surrey in 2018, is currently facing a lengthy list of criminal charges related to the sexual abuse of children.

Ireland has been charged alongside his housemate, David Sutton, who also volunteered with his LGBT activist group.

The two men are jointly charged with 15 offenses relating to the sexual abuse of children, including four counts of arranging the commission of a child sex offense, six counts of conspiracy to sexually assault a child, and one count of conspiracy to kidnap a child.

Sutton is also facing five additional counts on charges involving the production of indecent photographs of children. Ireland is facing an additional 20 counts, including raping a child and causing a child to engage in sexual activity. Prosecutors say the offenses occurred between August 2022 and July 2024. Almost all of the children in question were male.

This week, Guildford Crown Court heard that the pair deliberately targeted children “for their sexual proclivities,” an allegation both of them are set to tell jurors was completely “ill-founded” and “untrue.”

During proceedings, it was revealed that in April of 2024, Ireland contacted the 12-year-old victim through gay dating app Grindr. Ireland then met with the child, and took him back to his flat to sexually assault him. According to a police interview conducted with the victim at a later date, pornography had been playing at Ireland’s residence on a laptop.

Following the assault, Ireland began to refer to the child as his “secret underage boy” in an encrypted Telegram chat, saying it was “naughty and kinky” that the victim was just 12 years old. Ireland also reportedly asked the boy if he would have a threesome with him and Sutton; Sutton allegedly received a message from Ireland about the boy later.

As previously reported by Reduxx, prior to his charges, Ireland was an influential and respected figure within the LGBT community. As the founder of a Pride group in Surrey, he was responsible for organizing the annual local Pride festival. His work put him in close contact with regional police, who repeatedly recommended that people follow his group from their official social media accounts.

Ireland was invited to speak by the police multiple times, including at a training day for their LGBT task force.

Disturbingly, Surrey Police visited a local senior school with Pride in Surrey on June 6 last year, shortly before Ireland was arrested on child sexual abuse charges. The timing of the investigation indicates that police were already aware that Ireland would be prosecuted, yet still collaborated with him on the youth-based project.

Ireland also had extensive connections to the education system, having been a patron of the trans activist charity Educate and Celebrate, which created lesson plans and resources for schools in order to “embed gender, gender identity and sexual orientation” into the fabric of educational institutions.

Another patron of the organization is Peter Tatchell, who has repeatedly drawn controversy for making sympathetic comments about child sexual abuse and pedophilia. Ireland once cited Tatchell as an “inspiration” in a glowing social media post from 2023.

In 2017, the charity placed books encouraging children to question their gender on their reading lists for nurseries and primary schools – meaning they would be accessible to children as young as three years old.

The organization ran a PRIDE Youth Network program targeted at children aged 11 – 18 years old, and encouraged youth to “campaign for social justice in their schools” while providing “a particular focus on gender identity and sexual orientation.”

In August of 2024, Reduxx learned that Ireland had further used his influence in the LGBT community to groom and encourage a teen girl to embrace being “transgender.”

In 2018, the 40-year-old communicated with “Julie,” then 16, telling her to come to the Pride in Surrey event that year. One year later, at the August 2019 Pride event, Julie can be seen dressed in “leather pup” fetish gear, a community most associated with gay males that involve sexually submissive partners roleplaying as dogs. In the photo, Ireland can be seen holding a lead fastened around the teenage girl’s neck.

Julie began volunteering with Pride in Surrey when she was just 17, a move that she credited with giving her the backing to take testosterone, and undergo a double mastectomy and hysterectomy. Ireland spent her 18th birthday with her, while she was wearing the pup fetish gear. The alleged child sexual abuser had previously defended minors being involved in the pup community, claiming children “inherently understand everything.”

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Anna Slatz
Anna Slatz
Anna is the Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief at Reduxx, with a journalistic focus on covering crime, child predators, and women's rights. She lives in Türkiye, enjoys Opera, and memes in her spare time.
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