As Pride Month (June) meanders into Pride Season (July+), one English county was forced to adopt a selective silence. “Pride in Surrey” founder Stephen Ireland was starting a 30-year prison sentence imposed in March 2025 for several offences, most notoriously the rape of a 12-year-old boy.
Those who worked with Ireland seem to regard his conviction as an unfortunate blemish on an otherwise celebrated public image. But his digital footprint went far beyond the Grindr app, where he met his victim. Ireland spent years documenting his close ties with local authorities, police, and media outlets, all of which had publicly embraced him as a community leader.
Guilty parties include
- Surrey Police, who kept using a Pride in Surrey-branded patrol car even after two directors, including Ireland, had been charged with child sex abuse. The force defended its stance, stating, “We are an open-minded organisation. Our commitment to inclusion, diversity and equality remains resolute.”
- Surrey Police force (AGAIN), who attended a school talk alongside Pride in Surrey just six weeks after it had arrested Ireland, who was by then known to have smoked crystal meth with the group’s current directors.
- Former chief constable, Gavin Stephens, who told Surrey Police and Crime Commissioner Lisa Townsend, to “make it up” to Ireland, after she said “biological sex matters in policing.” Stephens replied on the force’s intranet site that ‘trans women are women,” before confronting Townsend, telling her: “You have three years to make it up to Stephen Ireland. He’s a friend of Surrey Police.” Stephens now chairs the National Police Chiefs’ Council.
- While Surrey County Council is now deleting its links to Ireland from its website, its partner Surrey Fostering—tasked with providing local children in care with a home—has repeatedly publicly praised both Pride in Surrey and Ireland by name.
- Surrey Heath Liberal Democrats, whose MP Al Pinkerton posted positively about Ireland on Twitter (now known as X) and borough councillors Lisa (former chief operating officer at Pride in Surrey) and Kel Finan-Cooke. Lisa reported a whistleblower to Surrey Police for ‘discrimination’ after safety concerns about Ireland were raised.
- Reporter Kathy Caton, whose BBC Radio Surrey programme platformed Ireland—but didn’t report on his recent conviction—and even enabled him to present his own show.
- The Winston Churchill School in Surrey, which denied at least one parent a meeting with the school’s safeguarding team or head teacher, after Ireland was depicted apparently alone with a child dressed in ‘pup’ fetish gear near school radio equipment. When the school refused to hear the parent’s concerns, her child was sent to a different school.
While some guilty-looking associations have now begun deleting internet content linking them to Ireland, others continue to support Pride in Surrey as if nothing happened. They also seem content to endorse Ireland’s pro-trans messaging, despite the recent UK Supreme Court ruling that the definition of sex in law is biological, and not subjective.
