2 days ago
‘If the council had listened to me, this paedophile would have been stopped'
When Marion Harding contacted the chief executive of Surrey County Council in 2021 to raise safeguarding concerns about her local Pride organisation, she expected a speedy response.
After all, the council itself had given Pride in Surrey tens of thousands of pounds in funding, and her concerns were about the protection of potentially vulnerable young people who came into contact with the LGBTQ organisation, which was set up in 2018 by local activist, Stephen Ireland.
Harding, 62, and her wife, Cathy, 59, had volunteered for Pride in Surrey, but both had a number of worries about Ireland's conduct, not least that he had appointed himself head of safeguarding – a role that, according to guidance for voluntary bodies, should 'not be the most senior person in the organisation'.
Ireland had sole responsibility for the group's LGBTQ 'helpline' for young people – meaning he had direct access to vulnerable children.
Volunteers were also concerned that Ireland appeared to be in a polyamorous relationship involving a young man, and that social media posts by Pride in Surrey celebrated 'fetishes' – some involving young people – while Ireland was in charge.
Harding wrote to Joanna Killian, the chief executive of Surrey County Council, outlining some of her concerns, including that Ireland was in a relationship with a young man 'who is barely 18', in what amounted to an 'abuse of power from a person in a position of trust, and could cause the wrong message to go out to young, vulnerable gay people'.
In an email to Harding on Oct 19 2021, Killian said: 'With your permission, I would like to raise these concerns directly with Pride in Surrey CIC's management. Although we cannot investigate these matters directly as Pride is an independent organisation, we take seriously the concerns raised about the event we sponsored and the organisation itself – the latter of which we would normally wish to engage with again on similar events in future.
'I am particularly concerned about the safeguarding concerns you have raised – both in respect of the specific case you cite, but also in respect of the qualifications of those managing Pride.'
Today, Harding feels deep anger.
In March this year, Stephen Ireland, 41, was convicted at Guildford Crown Court of raping a 12-year-old boy, along with additional counts of causing a child under 13 to engage in sexual activity, sexual assault and making indecent images.
His partner David Sutton, 27, a volunteer at Pride in Surrey, was convicted of offences including making indecent photographs and possessing extreme pornographic images.
Both were also found guilty of voyeurism and perverting the course of justice by deleting phone data after becoming aware of the investigation. Ireland pleaded guilty to possessing 274 prohibited images of children and possessing an extreme pornographic image, while Sutton pleaded guilty to distributing a category A indecent photograph of a child, distributing three category B indecent photographs of a child, and possessing 64 prohibited images of children. On Monday, Ireland was sentenced to 30 years in prison and Sutton received a minimum 54-month sentence.
'I've gone through a whole gamut of emotions from anger to frustration as to why did nobody listen?' says Harding, who lives with Cathy in Guildford. 'Because maybe if they had, there wouldn't have been so many people harmed by this man and David Sutton.
'They [Surrey County Council] said they would investigate and report back, but it went silent. And after a while I stopped chasing, because I didn't need to be reminded of what this man was.
'Last summer, when I heard about his arrest and what he'd done, it made me sick to my stomach to think what these poor kids had gone through. If we had been listened to, there was a very high chance it would not have happened.'
'It was like rubbing salt in the wound'
The Pride in Surrey case has sparked questions about what safeguarding concerns the local councils were aware of before the pair were arrested in April 2024. It wasn't just local councils that had formal ties to Surrey Pride. Until earlier this year, Surrey Police listed the organisation on its website as a 'partner agency' that 'can also offer information, advice, and support' on LGBTQ issues, in addition to the force's LGBTQ liaison officers.
Harding and Cathy are not the only people who tried to raise the alarm. The Telegraph has spoken to several Surrey residents who reported safeguarding concerns as long as six years ago with Surrey council, Guildford Borough Council and Woking Borough Council, which also had ties with Surrey Pride.
But no action appears to have been taken. Surrey County Council has, according to a Freedom of Information request, funded Pride in Surrey to the tune of more than £140,000 for various events and projects since 2020, including £24,275 for the year 2024-2025. Earlier this month, weeks after Ireland's conviction, Guildford Borough Council announced that 'Surrey Pride will be returning to Guildford' for a parade in October – the sixth annual Pride event in Surrey, and the second time it has taken place in Guildford. It included a hyperlink to the website of Pride in Surrey.
The decision astonished those who had been trying to raise the alarm.
'I contacted Guildford Borough Council after the news about him being arrested and about the level of charges, and they didn't want to listen,' says Harding.
'I emailed Zöe Franklin [Lib Dem MP for Guildford] and Julia McShane [Lib Dem leader of the council] asking how they could let this event go ahead. Again, I got a very bland reply from Zöe that what was happening in court had nothing to do with the current Pride in Surrey.
'It was like they were rubbing salt in the wound, allowing them to have a Pride in Guildford again this year. There's an awful lot of bad feeling within the community in Guildford and those of us who are Guildford Borough Council taxpayers are thinking: 'What are you doing?''
Franklin and McShane say they were not aware of any concerns about Ireland before his arrest.
Pride in Surrey issued a statement after the guilty verdicts in March this year saying that both men were merely 'volunteers', and that they had been 'removed' from the organisation in June 2024, after initial investigations by Surrey Police.
Harding, who works as a driver for the disabled, claims the usual safeguarding role played by councils seemed to go 'out of the window' with Pride in Surrey.
'Cathy and I had joined in 2018 to help with the very first Pride event the following year in Woking, which was very successful,' she says.
'We would hang out socially with Stephen and his fiancé at the time. They were a gay couple and we were a gay couple and we really didn't have any concerns.
'But then Covid hit and the events had to stop, and afterwards, several things happened that we really weren't happy about.
'Stephen had appointed himself as a safeguarding officer of Pride in Surrey, which didn't sit right with us at all.
'I've worked with vulnerable adults and children much of my life, so I'm DBS checked and well trained in safeguarding, and knew that the founder of an organisation shouldn't be in charge of safeguarding.
'He'd also set up a helpline called You Are Not Alone, for young LGBT people if they were struggling. It was a texting service. They could text in and if they wanted to talk to him, they could.
'He wouldn't relinquish that phone to anyone. I offered numerous times to take it at the weekends to give him a break, as I knew some of the calls could be quite traumatic and that vulnerable children could be calling, but he wouldn't.
'Other people – at least ten – had expressed concerns about his behaviour,' says Harding, including an alleged 'polyamorous' relationship which involved a young man.
Initially, Harding raised the issues with other Pride in Surrey staff, including its then chief operating officer, Lisa Finan-Cooke, who is now a Lib Dem councillor. Harding says her concerns were 'pooh-poohed'.
'A few of us were talking about how we needed him removed from the organisation, and we asked for a meeting in August 2021, where it all blew up,' she says.
'At one point I said to Stephen: 'If you're bringing polyamory under the LGBT umbrella, what next – rapists and paedophiles?' He went absolutely loopy, ordering me out of the room. That was the last official contact I had with them.
'We were due to go to Pride in Godalming, and I'd already got tickets. But the night before, I received an email from Lisa Finan-Cooke saying that they'd cancelled my tickets and, due to my 'discriminatory nature', we were barred from attending, and that Surrey Police had been told.
'I also received a cease and desist letter saying that because I was 'discriminatory', I wasn't to talk about Pride in Surrey on my socials.'
Finan-Cooke, who left Pride in Surrey in May 2023, says she and others took safeguarding concerns 'extremely seriously', adding: 'Concerns were raised, although they did not relate to the charges against Mr Ireland, and these were investigated and reported to the authorities as appropriate.' Finan-Cooke says she welcomed the conviction of Ireland and Sutton.
'I will always regret not doing more'
Harding and Cathy say they were two of seven Pride in Surrey volunteers to walk away from the organisation at that point. The couple emailed Surrey County Council with their concerns and Harding believes that another four people also contacted them.
'I emailed them to raise safeguarding concerns and spoke to (then chief executive) Joanna Killian via email a few times, who said she would look into it, but nothing ever happened,' says Harding.
'It just went silent. Today [Ireland] has done an extraordinary amount of damage and the sentencing isn't going to put that right, but what's getting under a lot of people's skin right now, is the fact that Pride in Surrey is still going.'
Another Surrey resident agrees. It was in July 2019, after spotting photographs of Pride marches in Leeds and Manchester, that she first raised concerns with her local authority – Woking Borough Council – about a Pride in Surrey event which was due to take place in Woking the following month.
'I'm a supporter of gay rights and had been to Pride before, and it was always a fun day out and very family friendly,' says the woman, a marketing manager and married mother-of-one.
'But that year, I'd seen images of people in leather 'pup-play' fetish gear, such as masks and dog collars, which particularly worried me as children as young as two or three were being encouraged to pet them. As a mother of a then three-year-old son, I didn't want him exposed to that. I asked if this kind of 'fetish' was going to be allowed at Woking Pride.
'The woman at Woking Borough Council sent a reply reassuring me that, 'Pride in Surrey have been working closely with Surrey Police and youth organisations, to make the first Pride in Surrey a truly inclusive event that adheres with UK law.'
'She suggested I get in touch with the organiser – Stephen Ireland – who didn't really answer my question, and when I asked again, he was slightly aggressive. In the end, I decided I wouldn't attend. I wasn't at all surprised when I saw pictures of people in this leather fetish gear, playing out their kink in the middle of Woking Pride.
'I raised a formal safeguarding complaint with Surrey County Council and spoke to a safeguarding officer, who said that exposure to these 'pups' sounded like non-contact child abuse, but agreed that the evidence was weak and it would be difficult to take forward.
'She suggested I could contact Surrey Police, but as their support of Pride in Surrey was obvious, I didn't have the energy. I will always regret not doing more, but – as I've since discovered – like many other women, we did what we could at the time.'
One is Louise*, herself part of the LGBTQ community, who says she felt 'an immediate sense of unease' when she stumbled upon a Pride in Surrey social media post in 2021, 'celebrating' International Fetish Day.
'The image was striking,' she says. 'It was Ireland holding a leash, with someone in a dog mask on all fours. As a bisexual woman I don't feel that 'fetish' is part of my 'community', and my instinct told me that there was something deeply unsettling about this organisation.' On further investigation, the person in the mask appeared to be a 17-year-old girl, says Louise.
'I was stunned. Where was the safeguarding? Given that my workplace had previous sponsorship of Pride in Surrey's annual event, I decided to voice my concerns, only to be swiftly shut down and accused of transphobia. It was one of the worst times of my life.'
Undeterred, Louise also wrote to other Pride in Surrey sponsors, including Surrey County Council and the district and borough councils, to express concern about their support for Pride in Surrey.
'Over four years, I must have written over a hundred emails in the hope that someone might look into the organisation and check the safeguarding,' she says. 'It wasn't just that one image. I noticed that they were visiting schools, and I worried that their message wouldn't simply be that it's OK to be gay or have two mummies, but might carry a more sinister message.
'Then they began a campaign to have Surrey's Police & Crime Commissioner Lisa Townsend removed from office because they decided she was 'transphobic', after she said that male-bodied people were not women. Wholly inappropriate given she is a democratically-elected official.
'But the response was always the same. Most didn't reply, or they said whilst they were taking my concerns seriously, they were committed to showing how inclusive and diverse they were.'
'Young people were badly let down'
It is this commitment to 'inclusiveness' that some say may have clouded the judgment of council and police officials over the activities of Ireland and Sutton within Pride in Surrey.
'Once again, we see paedophiles using the cover of the 'LGBTQIA+ community' to conceal their evil acts,' says Kate Harris of the charity LGB Alliance. 'Several people tried to alert those in leadership positions, and they were ignored – as far back as 2019. It is in the public interest for the facts to come out. Young lesbians and gays should expect to be protected from predators – safeguarding is the responsibility of every single one of us. In this appalling case, young people were badly let down.'
Terence Herbert, the chief executive of Surrey County Council, says that the organisation is 'reviewing any interactions regarding Stephen Ireland and Pride in Surrey during his time at the organisation. We are awaiting the conclusions of that review. While we wholeheartedly support the LGBTQ community in Surrey, there is no funding currently committed to sponsoring Pride in Surrey.'
In a statement, Pride in Surrey says it 'takes safeguarding concerns extremely seriously and has safeguarding policies in place to respond to raised safeguarding concerns.
'Concerns were raised about Stephen Ireland that were unrelated to the charges against him. These concerns were investigated, and where necessary, reported to the appropriate authorities. The concerns were investigated in line with our safeguarding policy. Due to the importance of confidentiality in safeguarding procedures, we cannot comment publicly about specific details relating to safeguarding concerns. This is to ensure people can raise concerns with the assurance that they are heard in confidence.
'These investigations gave no indication that any wrongdoing had taken place.
'As per our statement released in March in relation to the verdicts regarding Mr Ireland and Mr Sutton, we express solidarity with and give our heartfelt thoughts to the victims and their families. We utterly condemn the crimes of both individuals.'
