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Gay rights campaigner who led double life as boss of paedophile
ring among 8 guilty of catalogue of child abuse

Eight members of a paedophile ring were found guilty today of a
catalogue of child pornography and abuse charges, including the
sexual assault of a three-month old baby.

The ringleaders - convicted sex offender Neil Strachan and gay
rights campaigner James Rennie - were convicted of sex attacks
on children.

Strachan, 41, and Rennie, 38, both from Edinburgh, were also
found guilty of conspiring to abuse youngsters, as were three
other members of the gang.

All eight accused in the 10-week trial at the High Court in
Edinburgh were convicted of a series of child porn offences.

The gang members were traced through their explicit internet
chats about sexual fantasies involving children.

>From various locations across Scotland, they plotted, whether by
using web cameras or other means such as by phone, to
participate in sexual offences, including rape and sodomy.

The jury - down to 14 men and women after one member was
discharged during the trial - took 10 hours over two days to
reach its verdicts.

The court fell silent as the succession of verdicts to more than
50 charges were given.

Nearly 125,000 indecent images were seized during Operation
Algebra, which uncovered the group, believed to be Scotland's
biggest paedophile network.

Ross Webber, 27, of North Berwick, Craig Boath, 24, from Dundee
and John Milligan, 40, from Glasgow, were all found guilty of
conspiring to participate in the sexual abuse of children along
with Strachan and Rennie.

The five men, with Colin Slaven, 23, from Edinburgh and Neil
Campbell, 46 and John Murphy, 44, from Glasgow, were also
convicted of a catalogue of child porn offences

But the undisputed ringleaders of the ring were Strachan and
Rennie, who on the surface held down good jobs and were trusted
members of the community.

But the pair had a shared interest in young boys and had
collected some of the worst child abuse images ever seen by
police experts. They were also responsible for the abuse of very
young children - one as young as three months old.

Rennie was the successful chief executive of LGBT Youth
Scotland, an organisation dedicated to helping young gay people.

A former secondary school teacher, he regularly spoke out in
public on gay issues, particularly how they affected young
people.

But the High Court in Edinburgh heard he was 'polluted by
deviant compulsion'. Crown QC Dorothy Bain said: 'In reality he
is someone who allowed his profound interest in the sexual abuse
of children to engulf his entire life.'

The extent of his obsession with under-age sex unfolded as the
10-week trial progressed.

He was charged and ultimately convicted of molesting a child
over a number of years, starting at the age of three months.

And in an online conversation with another accused, he even
expressed a wish to see children with Down's Syndrome or a
learning disability sexually abused.

Operation Algebra officers found that Rennie had links with
paedophiles in the US and the Netherlands.

He was traced and arrested by police at the end of 2007. He was
suspended from his high-profile post and by February 2008 had
resigned.

Strachan also hid a dark past, in which he was jailed for three
years for molesting a young boy. He was the man who sparked
Operation Algebra when indecent images were found on computer
equipment used by him in his work.

Tests revealed 'sinister' emails between him and Rennie. They
had encountered each other online in 2004 when Strachan
congratulated Rennie on the content of his web page on a site
known to have been misused by paedophiles.

When the case came to trial, what the jury did not know was that
Strachan had offended before.

He was jailed for three years in 1997 for repeatedly molesting a
young boy while he was an official at a youth football club.

He started abusing the child when he was five years old and the
abuse went on for two years.

Strachan quit his post as secretary of Celtic East Boys Club in
Edinburgh after he was caught.

When he was jailed, it emerged that he had also been convicted
of a similar sex offence 12 years previously.

Among the charges faced by Strachan in the current trial was an
allegation that he committed a serious sexual offence against a
toddler at New Year from 2005 into 2006.

But Strachan, despite being one of the worst offenders in the
group, was the only one of the eight men on trial who denied
every charge against him.

Prosecutors were forced to piece together the case against him
bit by bit.

Crucial to their case was a photograph partially showing a man
sexually assaulting a young child.

The Crown called on a world-renowned expert in human anatomy to
examine the picture, known in court as The Hogmanay Image.

Pinpointing the abuser's physical traits, including a
distinctive thumbnail, Professor Susan Black said there was
'strong evidence' that Strachan and the man in the picture were
the same person.

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