The former patron of an LGBT educational charity for children in the UK has been jailed for 24 years for the rape of a 12-year-old boy.
Stephen Ireland, 41, who also co-founded Pride in Surrey in 2018, is <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2kkrxdpndo"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">reported</mark></a> to have plied the "extremely vulnerable" child with drugs, and was also charged with a number of other sexual offences.
Ireland, who comes from the Surrey area, is a former patron of the LGBT charity Educate & Celebrate, an influential educational charity that closed in 2024 amid a string of controversies.
Educate & Celebrate, founded in 2010 by teacher-turned-activist Elly Barnes, <a href="https://www.surrey.police.uk/news/surrey/news/2025/two-men-jailed-after-being-found-guilty-of-multiple-child-sex-offences/"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">received</mark></a> government funding to support its mission of creating a more LGBT-centred school environment.
Barnes <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fqwcYnZ70w"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">said</mark></a> she aimed to “smash heteronormativity” and to make “LGBT+ an everyday experience in the school”. The charity delivered programmes and training sessions to staff in nurseries and schools across the UK.
Barnes is reported to have instructed teachers that parents did not need to be informed if a child exhibited signs of gender confusion, and to have advocated for the use of gender-neutral language in place of terms like “boys”, “girls”, “son” and “mother”. She co-authored <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glgvUOtX8RI"><em><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">ABC Pride</mark></em></a>, a children’s book designed to teach the alphabet through LGBT-related topics.
In 2029, Trent College, a Church of England school in Derbyshire, <a href="https://christianconcern.com/ccpressreleases/patron-of-educate-and-celebrate-whose-schools-gender-identity-teaching-led-to-christian-chaplain-blacklisting-charged-with-sexual-abuse-against-children/#:~:text=At%20a%20staff%20training%20day%2C,%E2%80%99"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">invited Educate & Celebrate to provide equalities training for staff</mark></a>. During one session, Barnes reportedly led a “smash heteronormativity” exercise. The school’s chaplain, the Rev Dr Bernard Randall, subsequently delivered a sermon to students in which he reminded them that they were free to question the school’s LGBT policies in the light of the Church’s traditional teaching on marriage.
The sermon led to a dramatic fallout for the chaplain. Randall was dismissed and referred to the government’s Prevent counter-terrorism programme as a potential extremist. At an employment tribunal, the court ruled against him, accepting the school’s position that the training provided by Educate & Celebrate was appropriate and not indoctrinating.
The Church of England has since admitted that classifying the chaplain as a safeguarding risk was wrong.
Stephen Ireland is not the only controversial former patron of the now-defunct charity. Jordan Gray was <a href="https://www.christian.org.uk/news/controversial-sex-ed-charity-accused-of-falsely-claiming-ofsted-endorsement/#:~:text=heteronormativity%E2%80%9D%20during%20training%20sessions"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">removed</mark></a> as a patron of Educate & Celebrate in 2022 after public backlash following a performance on Channel 4’s <em>Friday Night Live</em>, during which he exposed his genitals on stage.
Shortly afterwards, a previous interview resurfaced in which Gray claimed to have visited schools on behalf of Educate & Celebrate to “talk about gender”. The charity later said that, based on their knowledge, Gray had not delivered any school talks as a representative of the charity.
In addition to the rape conviction, Ireland was found guilty of several other sexual offences, including making indecent photographs of children and possessing an extreme pornographic image. He was sentenced to 24 years in prison, with a further six years to be served on extended licence.
<em>Photo: LGBT badges being worn by a protester outside the Oxford Union, Oxford, England, 30 May 2023. (Photo by Eddie Keogh/Getty Images.)</em>
