[Crimson Dynamo]

Marion Harding, right, and partner Cathy were not the only people to raise
the alarm over Stephen Ireland

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.”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/202...ncil-warnings/