Last updated on January 16th, 2023 at 11:52 am
A leading Scottish LGBT youth organization, LGBT Youth Scotland, has contacted the police about suspected links to child grooming and sexual exploitation in the past.
The LGBT youth organization, which received nearly £400,000 in taxpayer funding from the SNP government and more than £250,000 from councils last year, said it called in Police Scotland over “new allegations” and pledged to fully support an investigation, The Telegraph reports.
Two men who had previously used the charity’s services as minors claimed to have been exploited and abused as young members more than a decade ago.
One of the two men, Sam Cowie, told the online magazine Reduxx that he had been supplied with cigarettes and alcohol by charity workers and taken to gay nightclubs with fake IDs. He stated he first came into contact with the charity in 2010 when he was a 15-year-old living in foster care before breaking off contact as a 17-year-old.
Another man stated that he first came into contact with the charity as a 13- or 14-year-old seeking support as a gay teenager in Edinburgh, and that he believed it was “more of a social network matching older men with teenagers.”
In 2009, James Rennie, the former executive director of LGBT Youth Scotland, was convicted of being the ringleader of the largest pedophile network in Scotland. Disturbing and horrid details of what was called “Scotland’s worst child sex abuse scandal” involving Rennie were reported back in 2009 by The Scotsman. Reader discretion is advised (disturbing descriptions of sex abuse involving very young children).