29/10/2009

Scottish Paedophile Ringleaders Jailed

The two men at the centre of Scotland's biggest known paedophile network have been jailed for life at the High Court in Edinburgh.

Convicted sex offender Neil Strachan, 41, from Edinburgh, was sentenced to a minimum of 16 years, after being found guilty of attempting to rape an 18-month-old boy and sexually assaulting a six-year-old boy.

James Rennie, 38, also from Edinburgh was sentenced to a minimum of 13 years, after being convicted of sexually assaulting a three-month-old baby.

The pair were also found found guilty to conspiring to abuse children.

During the trial, the court heard how Strachan, who is HIV-positive and previously served a three-year sentence in the 1990s for abusing a boy and Rennie, the former Chief Executive of LGBT Youth Scotland, which offers advice to young gay and lesbian people, had filmed themselves abusing children they had been trusted to look after and distributed the images over the internet.

Six other men have also been convicted of various offences related to the same network. 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, have all received sentences between two and 17 years.

The men were all arrested as part of the Operation Algebra investigation, which found nearly 125,000 indecent images of children. More than 200 suspected paedophiles have been identified during the inquiry, with at least 70 of them residing in the UK.

(KMcA/BMcC)

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