Stephen Ireland was predator in rainbow clothing - UK policing must change now

Lisa Townsend sat in court last week as a paedophile - a man the Surrey Police and Crime Commissioner had once been told to apologise to - was jailed for 24 years. The moment marked a reckoning, not just for a predator, but for senior public officials who championed him. Pride in Surrey founder Stephen Ireland was the face of LGBTQ+ inclusion; positioning himself as a partner to the police, cosying up to councillors and posing as a safe pair of hands for vulnerable teenagers. He campaigned against so-called 'anti-trans bigots', ran a helpline and posed proudly in a patrol car wrapped in the rainbow flag.

All the while, he was preying on children. The warning signs were there. But when ordinary people - some of them former Pride in Surrey volunteers - spoke up, they were ignored, sneered at, branded bigots. One was even silenced with a legal letter. Now it's brutally clear: those who should have protected children instead protected the reputations of their abusers.

Ireland was 'Mr Inclusion', and that made him untouchable. Being associated with him, and the beliefs he promoted, was good branding.

Until it wasn't.

Over the years, his views on gender became embedded in the policies of organisations across Surrey. According to Townsend, her concerns about allowing men to 'self-identify' as women were met with hostility by Surrey's then-chief constable Gavin Stephens.

Yet she insists her position was always about safeguarding because, "Whether it's in custody or a refuge, or being searched by an officer, biological sex matters in policing".

Within 24 hours of giving an interview to a national newspaper - warning about the risks of trans-inclusive policies - Stephens took to the force intranet to distance himself from her views, declaring: "Trans women are women, and trans men are men." Worse still, she claims he told her directly: "You have three years to make it up to Stephen Ireland. He's a friend of Surrey Police." "In hindsight, it looks incredibly naïve," she says.

Stephens has since moved on to chair the National Police Chiefs' Council. A spokesperson for that organisation claims his intranet comments were context-specific, reflecting "the legal position at the time". But when senior police officials throw their weight behind activists without due diligence, it creates a chilling effect. Female officers, Townsend said, were too afraid to speak publicly but whispered their support in corridors.

Her office was flooded with cards and flowers from hundreds of women - many thanking her for saying what they couldn't. But the backlash was coordinated and aggressive.

After an acrimonious meeting between Ireland, Townsend and a local councillor, Pride in Surrey began a campaign to have her removed from office. More than 70 formal complaints followed - many anonymous and from outside Surrey. This is a scandal not just about one man's crimes, nor even the poor judgment of a senior officer, but about a culture which puts being seen to do the right thing above actually doing the right thing.

Police forces in recent years have fallen over themselves to curry favour with fashionable causes - from "taking the knee" to marching in Pride parades. Rainbow-wrapped patrol cars cruise parades, while rape victims are failed, Pakistani-Muslim abuse gangs go unchallenged, and women are still being locked up with dangerous men in wigs.

An apology is surely due - and not just to Townsend but to every officer pressured into silence. And to the public, who have paid for rainbow rebrands of taxpayer-institutions, sometimes being persecuted by the very people charged with their protection.

Under Gavin Stephens, the National Police Chiefs' Council has updated its guidance to reflect a Supreme Court ruling that sex means biology in law. Stephens has also praised Surrey police for their efforts in bringing Ireland to justice. This is of course welcome.

But it shouldn't have taken a judgment from the UK's highest court to bring clarity to an issue as basic as who conducts intimate searches. Policing is not a platform for ideology. Senior officers are not elected to preach, parade, or punish dissent. Their role is to uphold the law without fear or favour.

Until the thin blue line is redrawn - firm, fair, and free of ideology - predators will keep hiding behind the rainbow flag.

And the rest of us will keep paying the price.