Favourite ‘uncle’ with the perfect profile plotted ultimate betrayal

From The Times

timesonline http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/scotland/article6896356.ece

30 October 2009

Mike Wade

James Rennie impressed almost everyone he met. Outwardly intelligent, articulate and successful, an influential lobbyist who advised Scottish parliamentarians on youth policy, he rose to the height of his profession and was invited to receptions where he met the Queen and Tony Blair.

In reality he was a man who had allowed “his profound interest in the sexual abuse of children to engulf his entire life,” the prosecutors at his trial said. “His mind [was] polluted by deviant sexual compulsion.”

Yesterday Rennie, the former chief executive of LGBT Youth Scotland and a former president of Heriot-Watt University Students Association, was sentenced to life at the High Court in Edinburgh for a catalogue of sexual offences dating back to 2004.

The litany of horrific charges against him included the sexual abuse of a baby, the possession and manufacture of abusive images and conspiracy to commit sexual assault on children. Rennie, 38, was guilty on all counts.

His accomplice, Neil Strachan, 41, a convicted sex offender, also received a life sentence. Among his collection of more than 7,000 brutal images and films was an image of himself and a child that horrified the trial judge, Lord Bannatyne. “[The image] would shock to the core any right-minded person who has had to see it,” he said.

Rennie was singled out for particular condemnation by the judge for “the colossal betrayal of trust”. The principal victim of his abuse was “Child F”, the infant son of his old friends. The couple cannot be identified, but in interviews with The Times they described their horror on discovering that the man who over more than 10 years had been one of their closest, most trusted confidants — who had shared their lives, and was always available for babysitting duties — had abused that trust.

Seasoned investigators were taken aback by the scale of his duplicity. The couple told the court that they had trusted Rennie implicitly because he had stood beside them at “the most difficult and vulnerable times in their lives”. After years of the closest ties he would become a favourite “uncle” to their little boy.

Rennie began his abuse when the baby was three months old and continued for four years, boasting about his activities over the internet to seven other members of his paedophile gang while hiding behind the online alias of kplover99. (“KP stands for kids porn — my attempt at humour,” Rennie told officers.) The boy would later require a battery of medical and psychological examinations, including a test for HIV/Aids, which left him in confusion and his parents in abject despair.

It proved just as easy for Rennie to betray his political ideals. In public life he campaigned against “homophobic bullying” in schools. He cut an impressive figure when, in 2000, he was called to the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood to advise the Local Government Committee on “ethical standards in public life”. He commented on equality issues and debated the controversy surrounding the promotion of homosexuality in schools. Invitations to Downing Street and the Royal Garden Party followed.

Many close to the case have expressed revulsion at the profound breach of trust behind Rennie’s behaviour. Child F’s father told The Times that he took another view. “I see Rennie as somebody who I thought I knew, but actually I didn’t know that person at all,” he said. “That person is someone I once spent a lot of time with, a face I know and recognise because we shared experiences together. But he was actually an outrageous and disgusting monster.

“He had a job and a suit and went to work and bought Ikea sofas and shopped in Sainsbury’s, all the usual stuff. But it was just a façade. That’s how I rationalise it. I never saw this as a betrayal. I think, ‘You weren’t my friend at all. You just pretended to be to suit your own ends.’

“He was just a skin and a shell. Underneath, that person was not in any shape or form a person I knew. He is an inhuman and amoral monster.”

Rennie was born in Beauly, Inverness-shire, and brought up in northern Scotland. His defence team claimed that he had been sexually abused as a child. He certainly spent a largely unhappy adolescence at Charleston High School in Inverness, where he struggled to come to terms with his sexuality.

Later he made attempts to stay in touch with former classmates and placed a boastful entry on the school’s Friendsreunited website: “Now the Chief Executive of a national youth charity, currently the chair of my professional peer grouping — the National Voluntary Youth Organisations’ Chief Officer’s Group.”

At university Rennie is recalled by former friends as someone who was quiet at first, but soon more confident. He came out as gay and enjoyed his times around Edinburgh’s “Pink Triangle”, the gay-friendly district close to the city centre. On campus he is remembered chiefly as a political animal, a consummate “operator” who had no obvious party loyalty.

A former activist from Heriot-Watt said that Rennie grew to love the prestige of office after his election to a sabbatical post in 1993. “He enjoyed the power, the contact, the presence it brought,” said the former student, who asked not to be named. “Rennie was shrewd, much shrewder than your average campus politician. He read and outmanoeuvred people. He would be beaten in argument occasionally, but he would never forgive someone who had got the better of him.”

After graduation Rennie trained as a physics teacher at Moray House college in Edinburgh and qualified in 1995, but he later gave up on the idea. Instead, after a few months on the dole, he took a job at the Stonewall Youth Project in Edinburgh, which campaigned for homosexual causes, quickly rising to become its project co-ordinator. In 2003, when the organisation was reborn as LGBT Youth Scotland, Rennie was installed as chief executive, on a salary of £40,000.

A woman health worker who made friends with Rennie early in his career remembered him then as a “charismatic, funny guy ... you could have lots of friends round for a dinner party and he would make them laugh”. With success, however, Rennie became more distant.

“There was a real power play about him in the last couple of years. I would chat about my job and what I was doing, but he would always have a better story,” the woman said. “He’d say, ‘I’ve done this, I’ve done that’. There was always something more.

“You know how you hug your friends when you say goodbye? Before he disappeared [on remand] I was thinking ‘I can't remember the last time I hugged you, Jamie’.”

For all his outward respectibility, Rennie was sunk in depravity. One sordid sideline was to write his telephone number on toilet walls, begging for sexual encounters with adult strangers. From at least as early as 2000 he was exchanging images of child abuse and plotting attacks of his own.

Police could prove no “contact abuse” before 2004 but the record of his fantasies and boasts — recorded in MSN messenger logs — convinced detectives that he had already offended against young boys before he began his attacks on Child F.

In particular, the toxic nature of his relationship with Strachan, which began in the summer of 2004, was recorded on e-mail messages retrieved by police from Microsoft headquarters in San Jose, California. These clearly demonstrated that Rennie was accustomed to offending, but in the everyday world around him he lacked the opportunity to meet like-minded men.

The internet made that contact possible. When he encountered Strachan on a website notorious for its paedophile content, Rennie could scarcely contain himself. Here was a co-conspirator who could help him to indulge his desire to move away from looking at images or films of abuse to actually participate. Chilling messages from August 17 and 18, 2004, reveal that first online meeting, and point to its consequences a few days later.
“I am in edinburgh and have some access to a baby boy if you are near me? where r u ?,” Rennie wrote in his first message. The next day he took the relationship on. “We def need to meet, if it works out i would like to share my b with u, as this is much hotter than solitary. I might have the b this weekend if you are interested?”

They met three days later, on a day when Child F was found to have been in Rennie’s care. Police would find e-mail fragments on a hard disk drive which showed that Rennie’s kplover99 account was accessed from Strachan’s computer on that day. The most likely conclusion was that the men had met to abuse Child F.

The two remained close. Shortly after the new year Strachan sent Rennie a photograph that became known in court as “the Hogmanay image”. It showed a man assaulting an infant. Another photograph showed Strachan abusing the baby’s elder sibling, who was asleep. Rennie’s response? “Cool — Was that you in the pic?”

The conspiracy was brought tumbling down by Strachan’s carelessness. He mistakenly sent a work computer to be serviced while it still contained images and videos of abuse, complete with messaging and e-mail chat logs. When this data was analysed by police it not only condemned Strachan but revealed Rennie’s alter ego, kplover99, a ruthless, predatory paedophile.

It took six more weeks to unmask Rennie, who was arrested on December 16, 2007, at his flat in Edinburgh. Police initially struggled to identify the boy, but hours later an officer finally arrived at his home with horrific news for his parents. The life sentence for Child F’s family had just begun.

Gay rights campaigner James Rennie jailed for life over paedophile ring

From The Times (TimesOnline: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article6895388.ece)

30 October 2009

Mike Wade

The mother of a six-year-old boy who was subjected to what a judge described as “truly appalling” abuse from a man she had regarded as a close friend said yesterday that her child had been “shaped and moulded” for life by the experience.

Welcoming the life sentences passed on James Rennie and Neil Strachan, the woman said that she had moved on from feelings of anger. “My focus is about my son, about how to support him and loving him for who he is. And who he is now has been shaped and moulded by what’s gone on.”

Rennie 38, the former chief executive of a gay youth organisation, was responsible for “a colossal breach of trust”, Lord Bannatyne said at the High Court in Edinburgh. He had abused the boy — identified as Child F — almost from birth to the age of four years. He distributed images and films of his attacks to a gang of seven other men.

Strachan, 41, the only one of the gang with previous convictions for offences against children, was shown in background reports to display evidence of a psychopathic personality. One image that showed him abusing a baby left in his care displayed all his basest instincts, the judge said. “By its very nature what is shown in that photograph is utterly appalling and would shock to the core any right-minded person who has had to see it.”

Strachan was ordered to spend a minimum of 16 years in prison, while Rennie was sentenced to a minimum of 13 years.

Nearly 125,000 indecent images were seized during an 18-month police investigation, codenamed Operation Algebra. Six men were jailed in June for their involvement in the gang. All were respected members of the community, as was Rennie, and they included a civil servant, a bank clerk and a church bell-ringer.

The nine-week trial in the spring invoked conspiracy laws for the first time in a sexual offences case in Scotland, a precedent that prosecutors hope will have a profound effect on curtailing the making and distribution of images of child abuse by paedophiles.

“These offences involve real children and many of the photographs involve children being sexually abused, often in the most appalling ways. There are real victims of these offences, namely the children who were photographed and abused,” Lord Bannatyne said.

The judge reserved special praise for Detective Inspector Stuart Hood and the squad of 13 detectives who uncovered the gang.

Their investigations required an international operation that stretched from Lothian and Borders police headquarters at Fettes in Edinburgh and drew on the skills of Scottish and American academics, FBI agents and Microsoft personnel in San Jose, California.

As a direct result of Operation Algebra more than 60 individuals have been arrested in Britain, and according to police hundreds of offenders are believed to have been identified in Britain and around the world. Significant operations are continuing in central Scotland, Sussex, the Netherlands and the United States.

Strachan, convicted of eight charges in total, was also found guilty of repeatedly touching a six-year-old boy indecently. The jury found Rennie guilty of 14 charges, including one of procuring his best friend’s child for other men, an offer that Strachan took up.

The men — along with Ross Webber, 27, from North Berwick, Craig Boath, 24 from Dundee and John Milligan, 40, from Glasgow — were also found guilty of conspiring to gain access to a child or children to commit abuse.

After sentencing the mother of an 18-month-old boy abused by Strachan said that she would never be able to forgive him. “The anguish I feel towards Mr Strachan is indescribable,” she said.

“I feel that no matter what punishment is given to Mr Strachan, it will never be able to compensate for the hurt, devastation and great deal of stress brought to me and my family.”

Webber, Boath, and Milligan, along with Neil Campbell, 46, and John Murphy, 44, both from Glasgow, were sentenced to a total of 43 years in jail in June for their involvement in the paedophile ring.

Abuse network ringleaders jailed

Strachan and Rennie denied being involved in the network

BBC

29 October 2009

The two men at the centre of Scotland's largest known child abuse network have been jailed for life.

Neil Strachan, 41, attempted to rape an 18-month-old boy while 38-year-old James Rennie sexually assaulted a three-month-old.

Strachan was sentenced to a minimum of 16 years in prison, while Rennie was ordered to serve at least 13 years.

Police said the operation had led to more than 200 suspected paedophiles, 70 of them in the UK, being identified.

Six other men had already been sentenced for their involvement in the network.

Strachan and Rennie, both from Edinburgh, were also found guilty after a 10-week trial of conspiring to get access to children in order to abuse them, while Strachan was convicted of a further charge of sexually assaulting a six-year-old boy.

Strachan, who is HIV positive, has already served a three-year prison sentence in 1997 for abusing a boy. Rennie was the chief executive of LGBT Youth Scotland, which offers advice to young gay and lesbian people.

Passing sentence on the pair, judge Lord Bannatyne referred to Strachan's abuse of the 18-month-old boy, which was captured in a photograph known as the "Hogmanay image" because it was taken on New Year's Eve in 2005.

The judge told Strachan: "By its very nature, what is shown in that photograph is utterly appalling and would shock to the core any right-minded person who has had to see it.

"Over and above that, this offence involves the most gross level of breach of trust. You were invited into a house, treated as a friend of the family, and then entrusted with their child.

"You then breached that trust in the way shown in the 'Hogmanay image' in order to satisfy your base sexual interests. This, in my judgment, can be properly described as a dreadful crime."

Lord Bannatyne said Rennie had also betrayed the trust of the parents of his victim to a "truly appalling" extent.

More suspects

The judge said Rennie, a trained teacher who was found guilty of 14 charges, was at the heart of the conspiracy to abuse youngsters, and likened him to a spider weaving an electronic web to bring about his crime.

The mother of Rennie's victim, known as Child F, told BBC Scotland of the "pain and torment" the case had put their family through.

She called for a "global strategy" between internet providers and government to prevent the distribution of abuse images.

"However, for those involved in paedophile behaviour to identify it in themselves and know where to seek help, society must be prepared to discuss this issue", she added.

"We need to allow an openness within society of where to seek help, just as alcoholics go to AA and gamblers go to GA.

"Clearly the protection of children must take precedence, but if individuals could have been stopped or deterred, we as a family may not have found ourselves in this situation."

Rennie had circulated pictures of the abuse and offered a boy to other paedophiles - an offer taken up by Strachan.

Both will remain under close supervision for the rest of their lives after the parole board sees fit to free them.

Defence counsel Mark Stewart QC said Rennie, who has no previous convictions, wanted to make a formal apology and place on public record his "shame and sorrow" at what happened.

Co-accused Colin Slaven, 23, from Edinburgh; Neil Campbell, 46, John Milligan, 40, and John Murphy, 44, all from Glasgow; Ross Webber, 27, from North Berwick in East Lothian; and Craig Boath, 24, from Dundee, were also convicted of various offences.

They were given prison sentences of between two and 17 years.

The men had been arrested during the Operation Algebra police investigation, which uncovered nearly 125,000 indecent images of children.

Operation Algebra also uncovered dozens more suspects around the country and worldwide, many of whom have already been charged.

The investigation was sparked by a single indecent image of a naked 11-year-old which was found on paint company engineer Strachan's computer when it was sent for repair.

Detectives discovered that Strachan and Rennie had filmed themselves sexually abusing children before distributing the images over the internet.

The two paedophiles had been trusted by the children's parents to look after the children.

Lothian and Borders Police said their inquiry had led to more than 200 suspected paedophiles being identified internationally, and at least 70 in the UK.

Detectives have said there were further suspects in Scotland as well as Avon and Somerset; Devon and Cornwall; Merseyside; South Wales; West Midlands; Sussex; Essex; London; Thames Valley; and Hampshire.

Speaking after the sentencing, Morag McLaughlin, procurator fiscal for Lothian and Borders, said recent advances in technology were making it easier for the police to bring child abusers to justice.

She added: "It is clear from the evidence in this case that the accused saw no limits on how far they would share, exploit and abuse children in order to satisfy their own horrific sexual gratification.

"However, our specialist prosecutors will use the constantly improving technology available to the police to stop and bring to court those who think they are hidden by the anonymity of the internet."

Six men jailed over Scottish paedophile ring

Pink News

http://www.pinknews.org/news/articles/2005-12795.html/

By Jessica Geen • June 11, 2009 - 13:17

Six of the eight men convicted of child abuse offences in a Scottish paedophile ring have received jail sentences.

The other two men, one of whom was a gay rights campaigner, are to be sentenced at a later date.

Ross Webber, 27, of North Berwick, Craig Boath, 24, from Dundee, Colin Slaven, 24, from Edinburgh, and John Milligan, 40, Neil Campbell, 46, and John Murphy, 44, all from Glasgow, received sentences ranging from two to 17 years at Edinburgh's High Court today.

Webber, Boath and Milligan were all found guilty of conspiring to participate in the sexual abuse of children. They were also convicted of child abuse images offences.

Slaven, Campbell and Murphy were also found guilty of child abuse images offences. Campbell was cleared of a charge of conspiracy.

The other two men convicted in the case will be sentenced at a later date for more serious crimes.

They are James Rennie, 38, and Neil Strachan, 41.

Rennie, who was the former head of charity LGBT Youth Scotland, was found guilty of abusing one child over a four-year period. The child was three months old when the abuse began.

Convicted sex offender Strachan was found guilty of attempting to rape an 18-month-old boy and repeatedly touching a six-year-old boy indecently.

Both offenders were also found guilty of conspiring to participate in the sexual abuse of children.

Nearly 125,000 indecent images were seized during Operation Algebra, which uncovered the internet group.

The men had used web cameras and other means to plot and take part in sexual offences, including rape.

The offences were committed in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee and East Lothian between February 2004 to May 2008.

It is believed to be Scotland's biggest paedophile network.

Ringleader of paedophile gang created secret nursery for tots

SundayMail.co.uk

http://www.sundaymail.co.uk/news/scottish-news/2009/05/10/ringleader-of-paedophile-gang-created-secret-nursery-for-tots-78057-21347650/

10 May 2009

DETAILS of a secret nursery created by the ringleader of Scotland's worst paedophile gang can be revealed today.

The room in James Rennie's attic contained a cuddly Tigger from Winnie The Pooh, bedding, other toys and a gas mask for use in pictures.

One of the gang, Craig Boath, of Dundee, applied to be a cop just before his arrest and had enlisted as a special PC with Tayside Police.

Rennie, 38, Boath, 24, Neil Strachan, 41, Neil Campbell, 46, John Milligan, 40, John Murphy, 44, all of Glasgow, Ross Webber, 27, of North Berwick, and Colin Slaven, 23, of Edinburgh face jail over the sexual abuse of kids as young as 18 months.

Yesterday the man who caught them said they showed no remorse.

Lothian and Borders Det Insp Stuart Hood said: "Only Rennie offered any information, the rest refused.

"They were caught with child porn but didn't see it as a crime."

They were driven by a compulsion to abuse children, nothing would get in their way."

He said officers were given the chance to drop out because of the vile images they would have to view.He added: "We could not let emotions cloud our judgment." Rennie molested the toddler son of friends who trusted him to babysit - recording the abuse and sharing it with other perverts.

Cops were sickened when they discovered the attic room in his Edinburgh flat.

Di Hood added: "It was kitted out like a children's bedroom.

"We don't know how and when it was used - you can only imagine." Neighbours Rennie also hacked into the computers of 32 neighbours to access child porn - so-called hotspotting.

Strachan was found guilty of attempting to sodomise another 18- month-old toddler on Hogmanay 2005 at his flat in Dalry, Edinburgh.

Around 70 other suspected paedophiles are being investigated across the UK as a result of the probe into the eight men, codenamed Operation Algebra.

It led to the seizure of 125,000 indecent images and was the first time a conspiracy charge has been used in Scotland to nail a paedophile gang.

Yesterday Lord Advocate, Elish Angiolini QC, said: "The conspiracy charge allowed us to demonstrate the full scale of the offences and the shocking extent of the crimes they had agreed to commit."

She said the creation of a National Sexual Crimes Unit this summer would bring more paedophiles to justice..

Double Life Of Scotland's 'Worst' Paedophiles

Sky News http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Paedophile-Ring-In-Scotland-Operation-Alegebra-Snares-Ringleaders-Neil-Strachan-and-James-Rennie/Article/200905115277440?lpos=Home_Article_Related_Content_Region_2&lid=ARTICLE_15277440_Paedophile_Ring_In_Scotland%3A_Operation_Alegebra_Snares_Ringleaders_Neil_Strachan_and_James_Rennie_

6:03pm UK, Thursday May 07, 2009

The two ringleaders of Scotland's biggest paedophile network led sordid double lives

Ringleaders James Rennie and Neil Strachan had respectable jobs

On the surface, Neil Strachan and James Rennie held down good jobs and were trusted members of the community.

But the pair, both from Edinburgh, 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.

Strachan, 41, also hid a dark past, in which he was jailed for three years for molesting a young boy.

Sick gang traded in porn

Rennie, 38, was the successful chief executive ofLGBT 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.

Gang preyed on youngsters

Rennie 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 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.

Scottish paedophile ring found guilty of more than 50 charges