The BBC has finally noticed that Pride is losing friends. BBC radio presenter Darren Milby has written a feature which lists the respectable reasons: commercialisation, corporate rainbow-washing, the cost of staging a street party, the trans debate, councils preferring potholes to parades. All of that is real, but it is also the version of the story that never has to mention a courtroom. His “In depth” article carefully avoids any mention of the many, deeply concerning connections to a shocking prevalence of sex crimes, including the rape of children, amongst Pride organisers. They are not identical crimes, but they are the same kind of scandal: men in or around Pride committees with convictions or findings involving the sexual abuse of children.
Stephen Ireland co-founded Pride in Surrey in 2018. He was a local fixture: community radio, school outreach, a helpline for teenagers, children’s books with titles about inclusion, appearances on BBC Radio Surrey. In June 2025, Guildford Crown Court sentenced him to 24 years in prison, with a further six on extended licence, for the rape of a 12-year-old boy he met on Grindr, and for a string of other child sex offences. His then-partner, David Sutton, a Pride in Surrey volunteer, was jailed for four and a half years. The judge, Patricia Lees, said Ireland had “prided [Freudian slip from the judge there perhaps?] himself on being versed in and highly alive to the vulnerabilities of young people linked to the Surrey Pride organisation he was at the time pivotal to.”
That is not some kind of vague rumour, the BBC reported the conviction itself in a seperate report. What it did not do, in a piece asking why the public and sponsors are backing away from Pride, is treat that case of child rape as part of the answer.
Ireland is the most serious recent example but certainly not the only one. Andrew Way, who tried to launch Welshpool Pride, was jailed in 2023 after a sting and had previous sex-offence convictions plus a sexual harm prevention order he had already breached. Lee Clarke became acting chair of Swindon and Wiltshire Pride after serving a sentence in Australia for possessing thousands of indecent images of children; the Charity Commission later opened a compliance case. Ashley Boyd later chaired the same organisation and was struck off as a nurse after a panel found he had carried out unnecessary intimate examinations of children for sexual gratification. In Southampton, Jake Radwell, a registered sex offender who claimed a role around People’s Pride, was later sentenced for breaching a sexual harm prevention order after attending a children’s party.
What does this prove? I think it is clear that it demonstrates that a movement which now markets (somewhat bizarrely in the circumstances) itself as family-friendly, youth-facing and morally unassailable has had repeated, documented safeguarding failures and that some of the men involved used the language of inclusion and vulnerability as cover. When brands and councils retreat, they are not only reacting to “online backlash” or Reform UK. Some are reacting to liability, reputational risk, and the sight of fetish and adult sexual content at events sold as suitable for children. A serious feature would have held both thoughts at once: Pride has become expensive, corporate and politically contested; and parts of it have a record of putting the wrong people near the young. Milby’s piece does the first half with care and leaves the second half on the cutting-room floor. That is why the comments under it are angrier than the article. The public can see the gap. The BBC, on this subject, still prefers not to.